Right now Dick Prescott and Dave Darrin were treated to a sight that they never forgot. In point of size Old Dut was somewhat over-matched. At the same time his opponent was a younger man. Yet it looked like a battle of giants. For some moments Old Dut had all he could do to hold his own. He took severe punishment, but gave back the same kind. Then, all of a sudden, Fits showed signs of wanting to get away. But Mr. E. Dutton Jones followed him up persistently, and at last a hard blow stretched the thief on the ground.
"Don't try to get up," Old Dut warned the fellow, "until I announce that I am ready for you."
With that the principal put on his coat once more, while Dave, with a very respectful air, passed the principal's hat.
"Now, you may get up," nodded Old Dut. "Put on your hat and coat."
Mr. Fits obeyed, next remarking whiningly:
"As you got the best of it, now I suppose you are ready to let me go."
"I never let a thief go, if I can help it," Old Dut retorted, gripping one of the fellow's wrists. "We'll walk along together, my friend, until we reach the police station. And woe unto you if you start anything funny!"
So it happened that, within five minutes, Mr. Fits was turned over to the members of a rejoicing police force. At the station house Mr. Fits described himself more especially as being one John Clark. Whether that was really his own name no one in Gridley ever found out.
Clark took his arrest philosophically enough. Now that he was behind bars, with no help for his situation, he became almost goodnatured. Ere long he admitted all of the charges against him. It was he who had entered the Prescott flat and had taken away Dick's watch and the fan intended for Dick's mother. Clark told freely how he and his confederates had taken toll from the Christmas shoppers, confessing also that they had had a number of houses "located" for burglary.
The prisoner told, also how he had found a megaphone in the little "lumber loft" of the cook shack, and how, with this, he had improvised the ghostly sounds. He had also found in that loft the snowshoes on which he had escaped from Constable Dock.