“But they’ll get it back, Roger?”
“Yes, if they catch the other fellow, and they’re sure to do it. Bonny, you’re not to talk. Just tell me if this is straight—I want it for the papers. You stood at your desk, all the others ran to the street door. Then—”
“Then,” said Bonny, “I was mad. I wanted to look at the circus, but I had promised you not to shirk. But I just gritted my teeth as I stood there. I was staring after the others when I heard a little noise in the president’s room. I turned round, and saw a man peeping out. I had no revolver, and I didn’t know where Danvers kept his, and like an idiot I never thought to scream. I just grabbed for Buckley’s camera. You know he is a photographic fiend.”
“Yes,” smiled Roger, and he thought of what the captured thief had asked one of the policemen guarding him: “How’s that gritty little demon that tried to snap us?”
“I was just pressing the button,” went on Bonny, “when the man leaped like a cat, and, first thing I knew, he was smashing me over the head with that camera. There was such a row in the street that the others didn’t hear it.”
“Five minutes are up,” said the doctor, coming into the room.
“One minute, Roger,” said the boy, feebly. “I had a second before I got whacked, and in that second I thought, ‘Here’s a specimen of the leisure class toward which I am drifting. I’ll stay with the workers,’ so, Roger, we’ll not call off that contract of ours to-night.”
“All right,” said Roger, beaming on him, and backing toward the door. “It’s to stand—for how long?”
“For ever!” said the boy, with sudden force, just as the doctor gently pushed him back on his pillow, and, putting a teaspoonful of medicine to his lips, said, “Now, young sir, you take this.”