“Oh, but you came here to tell us something, you know,” said Eleanor. “Surely you’re not going away without doing that, are you?”
“I did think you’d keep your word, Jake,” said Bessie, reproachfully.
“I can’t! I’ve got to go, I tell you!” Jake broke out. His fright was not assumed; it was plain that he was terrified. “If they was after you, I guess you’d know–here, I’m going–”
“Not so fast, young man!” said a stern voice in the door of the tent, and Jake almost collapsed as Bill Trenwith, a policeman in uniform at his back, came in. “There you are, Jones, there’s your man. Arrest him on a charge of having no means of support–that will hold him for the present. We can decide later on what we want to send him to prison for. He’s done enough to get him twenty years.”
Jake gave a shriek of terror and fell to the ground, grovelling at the lawyer’s feet.
“Oh, don’t arrest me!” he begged. “I’ll tell you everything I know. Don’t arrest me!”
“It’s the only way to hold you,” said Trenwith. “You’ve got to learn to be more afraid of us than of Holmes.”
CHAPTER X
JAKE HOOVER’S CAPTURE
“You’re a fine lot,” declared Jake, something about Trenwith’s manner seeming to steady him so that he could talk intelligibly. “You tell me I won’t get into any trouble if I come here, and then I find it’s a trap!”