“Soaked for ten days in the cooler,” said Mr. Fobes, indifferently. By which it will be understood that the village magistrate had imposed upon the man a fine of ten days in jail.
“Well, who is he? Can we see him?” Worth continued rapidly.
“He’s just a bum, I guess. I don’t know him and—well, you can ask Willie Creek whether I know everybody around here or whether I don’t. He was hanging around all Saturday afternoon and drinking. By night I had to pinch him.”
With a show of real interest Chief Fobes now heard the story Billy told and the belief that the man in the lockup could throw light on the disappearance of the Big Six. Slowly, very slowly, nevertheless, the officer rose, yawned and led the way to the corridor below, so conducting the boys to a group of steel cells in a basement at the rear of the building. The man they sought was lying on an iron bunk. He stepped forward when Mr. Fobes called sharply, “Here, you! Step up!” quite as if the unfortunate were a refractory horse.
“Might I ask you a question?” began Billy. He and Paul were both keeping pretty close to Mr. Fobes as the prisoner, still in the mud-stained boots and garments, approached the bars.
“I’ll do the talkin’,” put in the officer bluntly. Then to the man who peered out from the gloomy cell, “What was you doing on the South Fork road last—last Friday?”
“I don’t know anything about any South Fork road. What ye givin’ us? I come in here from Rochester, hittin’ the road an’ lookin’ fer a job in the country, an’ I told the judge the same thing, didn’t I?”
“It don’t go, Billy. You can’t throw any bluff here,” said Fobes with an air of familiarity, but shaking his head coldly, too. “You was seen on the South Fork road an’ there’s an automobile man lookin’ for you. Guess he wants to give you a raincoat you lost somewhere.”
This, of course, was just the kind of talk that Mr. Fobes himself had termed a “bluff” and, in the vernacular, nothing else. Whether the prisoner thought so or otherwise, for a few seconds he made no reply. Then as if feeling his way carefully, he said: “Somebody lookin’ for me, eh? Tell ’im where I am. Or mebbe he knows it.”
“It ain’t no go, I tell you,” said Fobes sharply. “There’s a little matter of a patent dinner basket on you straight. Swipin’ grub from boys, too! Ain’t you ashamed of yourself? You don’t happen to remember what you left in the raincoat, do ye?”