In front of him was a huge pewter ink-stand with pens sticking up in it like quills upon a porcupine. Before this personage, whom they guessed to be the officiating magistrate, the boys were marched with much pomp and ceremony. Then the little mustached official who had played the leading part in their arrest stepped forward.
With a bow and a flourish he explained the case. To the boys’ astonishment, too, they saw their caps handed up. Evidently the police had found them and taken them up as evidence. This was a hopeful sign, for in each cap the owner’s name was inscribed.
“They’ll know that we told the truth about our names, anyway,” said Jack, nudging Raynor.
At this juncture there was a sudden disturbance in the back of the court room, and in broke a burly, sun-bronzed man. It was Captain Bracebridge, the last man in the world the boys wanted to have see them in such a position. They crimsoned with mortification and felt ready to sink through the floor.
The captain burst through a line of small Antwerp police, who tried to restrain him, like a runaway horse through a crowded street. He came straight up to the boys and gasped out breathlessly:
“Read about it in the papers and rushed straight here. What’s the truth of it all?”
“Then you don’t believe that police story?” asked Jack gratefully.
“Of course not. Tell me all about it.” He turned to a short, sallow man, carrying a big bag, who had followed him in, like the dust in the trail of the whirlwind. “This is a lawyer. He’ll straighten this thing out in a brace of shakes.”
The lawyer made a long harangue to the court, of which none of the Americans understood a word; but apparently he had asked leave to take his clients into a consulting room, for presently they were ushered into a chamber which might have been, and probably was, used for the purpose in medieval times. They were in the midst of their story, when another disturbance occurred outside. A handsome automobile had driven up, out of which stepped a portly personage with dignified, white whiskers, gold-rimmed eye-glasses, top-hat and frock-coat.
“Monsieur La Farge, the head of the government railways,” whispered the loungers in the court room as he hastened down the aisle and whispered to the magistrate, who received him with great deference.