“Let us see your money,” said the sergeant, with a caution bred of long experience.
With eager but trembling fingers Phil fumbled at the hateful safety-pins that seemed determined never to relax their hold of his pocket-book. At length he drew it forth, and opened it with an air of anxious triumph. At least one of his assertions was about to be proved true.
Suddenly his face turned to a deathly pallor. The empty wallet, in which no bill remained, dropped from his nerveless grasp, and he clutched wildly at the rail of the sergeant’s desk for support.
“I have been robbed!” he gasped. “Robbed of every cent I had in the world. What shall I do? What shall I do?”
The sergeant and officer exchanged significant glances, and for a few minutes only the ticking of a big clock and the boy’s panting breathing that closely resembled sobbing broke the painful stillness.
“You certainly seem to be playing to hard luck, young fellow,” remarked the sergeant at length, “and I don’t mind saying that I’m sorry for you. You appear to be an honest, well-meaning sort of a chap, too. Now, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Though appearances are often deceitful and I’ve been misled by them a many times, I’m going to trust ’em once more. So, if you’ll give me your word not to make any disturbance, nor the slightest effort to escape, I’ll let you occupy my room, where you’ll find a bed that is fairly comfortable. You can spend the night there, and it will be better than being locked up in a cell, anyway. Maybe in the morning something will turn up that will straighten matters out for you.”
Phil’s gratitude for this favor was expressed more by looks than by words, though he did manage to give the required promise.
Then he was shown into a small bare room, where, flinging himself face downward on a little iron bedstead that stood in one corner, he lay for a long time motionless and apparently unconscious. At length he began once more to think, but his thoughts were of the most gloomy and despairing nature. Was ever a fellow in such a scrape? What should he do? Was there any way in which he could get out of it? He could not communicate with his father, for the steamer must already have left. He had no friends in Victoria. He had no money. No money! For the first time in his life Phil realized the full horror of being absolutely penniless. He had not even money to buy breakfast with in case he should be set free on the following day. Perhaps a prison would prove his only refuge after all.