"I started last night, an' if I'd got there, you an' Plums would be in jail by this time; but I wasn't such a chump as to run right over without findin' out if things had been goin' wrong. You think I don't 'mount to anything as a detective, eh? Well, jest look at this, an' see what would have happened if I'd gone there same's you'd done!"
As he ceased speaking Dan handed his friend a copy of an evening paper, folded in such a manner that a certain advertisement stood out prominently.
Joe's face paled, as he read the following lines:
One hundred dollars will be paid for information concerning the whereabouts of a fruit vendor known as Joseph Potter, and two newsboys, one of whom answers to the nickname of "Plums," and the other known as Dan Fernald. The above reward will be paid to any one who will secure for the undersigned an interview with either of the boys named.
Address Cushman & Morton, Attorneys at Law, 47-1/2 Pine Street, New York.
As before, he failed to see immediately below this an advertisement requesting information concerning a little girl who had strayed from the Grand Central Depot, and offering one thousand dollars reward for the same.
"You see I got myself into a scrape tryin' to help you through and how's it turned out! You wouldn't so much as give me a bite to eat when I was starvin', even when you had plenty of it without costin' a cent. Now, if I'm caught, I've got to go to jail, jest the same's if I'd done whatever you did."
"But I haven't done anything crooked, Dan. I can't so much as guess what these lawyers want me for."
"Oh, you tell that to the marines! Fellers what get so swell they can't sell papers for a living, but splurge out into a fruit store, with a clerk, an' all them things, have to get money somehow. I don't say as you've robbed a bank, 'cause I don't see how you could get into one; but it must be something pretty nigh as bad, else who'd offer a hundred dollars jest to get hold of you? I ain't so certain but I shall snoop in that cash, an' take the chances of goin' to jail."
"I don't s'pose it's any use for me to keep on tellin' you I've been straight ever since I started out sellin' papers," Joe said, sadly. "It's true all the same, though, an' you can't find a feller what'll say I ever did him out of one cent."