“Put it all in your report, sergeant. You had better be eating and sleeping while I prepare a statement that will induce the military branch to act and aid promptly.”
The summons for the chief’s secretary was sounding when the sergeant and his young companions left the office.
“I think a half hour in the chop house around the corner will be good medicine to start with,” remarked the big officer, who was a famous feeder, and who had missed several meals since his hold-up in the rear of the silversmith’s shop.
In the continuous run of excitement following their discovery of Strogoff trussed up on the counting house floor in the old warehouse the policeman had never made a single inquiry as to the boys’ identity. If he had noticed them on the day they were posing as would-be customers in the shop of the silversmith, and when he served summons on Ricker to appear as an expert witness, there had been no sign of the fact.
As Billy said, in an aside to his chum, “He thinks, maybe, that we dropped out of the sky just to help him out of a scrape.”
Strogoff, having gorged himself with a mammoth beefsteak flanked by onions, and the boys fully satisfied with their own prowess at table, the trio hied themselves back to police headquarters.
“Andreas,” said the sergeant to the desk man, “we are going to take a snooze in the rest room, and if the chief wants me never stop shaking until you get my eyes open. And, what is more, do not come too soon if you can help it, but by the powers do not come too late if you know it.”
The desk man grinned and nodded understanding. Three hours later he fell like a fire alarm on the snoring officer, and as the latter rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, handed him an envelope, sealed with red wax. It was addressed to Colonel Malinkoff.
It was in the gray dawn that the sergeant and the boys set out for army headquarters.
Stopped by a sentry, Strogoff displayed his badge and also produced the letter from the police chief.