“Well, what if I am? Are you another feller what wants to send me to the Mayor’s office?”
While speaking he glanced toward the opposite side of the street, and there saw his enemies running at full speed as if the coming of this last boy had alarmed them.
“I ain’t tryin’ to play any tricks,” the stranger replied in a friendly tone. “Tom an’ Bob are huntin’ for you, an’ I offered to help. Sadie Mitchell told ’em what was done last night, an’ when they come out of the office they’re hired to clean every mornin’, you wasn’t anywhere to be found. They’re pretty nigh wild to know what’s happened to you.”
“Why didn’t they meet me at the station?” Josiah asked suspiciously.
“They both went there, an’ staid more’n an hour after your train got in. I happen to know, ’cause I was with ’em.”
“Mighty funny,” Josiah said half to himself. “I hung ’round the place two hours, an’ didn’t see hide nor hair of either one.”
“It must be you didn’t get into the right station, ’cause we watched so’s you couldn’t get past, no matter which door you came through.”
“Why, I went right out into the street after I got tired standin’ on the platform.”
The stranger was silent an instant as he tried to reconcile this story with his own knowledge of the facts, and then the truth suddenly dawned upon him.
“It must have been that you didn’t strike the station at all, but stood in the train-sheds till you went to Jersey City, instead of comin’ ’cross the ferry.”