Then Jim went into the witness-box, feeling horribly uncomfortable. He thought the two magistrates regarded him contemptuously, and as if they thought his proper place was in the dock with the prisoners. However, he managed to give a connected account of what had passed, and was stepping down again when one of the magistrates observed, "If this witness speaks the truth, it is clear that the prisoner Peters could not have been in the shop."
"I wasn't, sir," spoke up Curly. "I never put my foot inside it."
"We suggest that he was acting as a blind," said the inspector—"that he engaged the shop-boy's attention while the other prisoner stole the money. I think the next witness will make that clear."
"Very well," said the magistrate; "let him he called."
"Richard Boden!"
Dick stepped into the box, took the oath, and began his story without the least hesitation. As he proceeded Curly's confident smile began to fade: the witness was not leaving him a single loophole for escape. The evidence was so clear and simple and yet so conclusive that, as one constable remarked in a whisper, the prisoners had not "the ghost of a chance."
"Uncommon smart boy that," he added graciously. "Ought to join the force when he's old enough."
When Dick had finished, Sir Thomas Arkell, the senior magistrate, a tall, stout man with bristling moustache, leaning forward, said, "I congratulate you on the way in which you have given your evidence, my lad." And the compliment was well deserved.
Martin, the tobacconist, then identified Bryant as the boy who had paid him the marked shilling, and the officers deposed to searching the prisoners and finding the florin on Peters. No one had any doubt of their guilt, but several people thought Jim very lucky in not having been placed with them.
However, Curly did not quite despair of getting off. Certainly he would leave his accomplice in the lurch, but that misfortune he was prepared to bear philosophically.