"That's so," exclaimed Arthur. "Suppose we go right back and interview that policeman if we can find him."
When Arthur proposed this plan Rowe Shelly's face grew white again.
"That will be a dead give-away on me, won't it?" said he.
"I don't see why it should be," replied Joe. "We're not going to tell any one that we have seen you. If you are afraid of it, go somewhere while we are gone, and then we can say, if we are asked questions we don't care to answer, that we don't know where you are."
The young stranger evidently thought this a suggestion worth heeding, for when Joe and his companion left the room he followed slowly after them, first carefully reconnoitering the office to make sure there was no one there he did not want to meet.
"What's your opinion of that fellow, any way?" asked Joe, as he and Arthur hurried along the street toward the Academy of Music. "He tells a queer story, but I really believe there are some grains of truth in it."
"So do I," answered Arthur. "And if it turns out that Roy has been kidnapped, I shall believe it is all true. I wish that Shelly boy had been in Guinea before he adopted our uniform."
"Or else that we had been there," added Joe. "He's got as much right to it as we have. Look here, Art. We mustn't let the Mount Airy folks know anything about this."
"Not by a long shot. They'd order us home as they did when they read in the papers that Matt Coyle had tied you to a tree in the woods. If Roy is in a scrape we'll help him out of it and get well on our way beyond Bloomingdale before we say a word about it."
The boys were not obliged to go all the way to the hall in which they had passed the evening, for they met the officer of whom they were in search at the lower end of his beat. Arthur thought he looked at them rather sharply as they came up, but he answered their questions civilly enough.