His captor shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. It was a policeman, a huge, bearded fellow, six feet high. Bertie was like a plaything in his hands. On hearing some one coming, the boy, without any thought of what he was doing, had slipped the hand which held the purse behind his back. The policeman was down on it at once.
"What's that you've got there?"
He twisted the boy round, revealing the hand which held the purse. He took it away.
"Oh, that's it, is it? You hadn't got time to throw it away, I suppose, or perhaps you thought it was too good to lose--worth running a little risk for, eh? Well, you've run the risk just once too often."
By this time others had come into the entry, and now Bertie recognised the words which he had heard. What they had been shouting was, "Stop thief!"
The new comers showed a lively interest in the captive. A man, who looked like a respectable mechanic, reckoned him up.
"That's not the boy," he said.
"Oh, isn't it? It doesn't look like it, not when he was hiding here, and holding the purse in his hand!"
The policeman held up the purse with an air of smiling scorn.
"Had he got the purse? Well, whether he had or whether he hadn't, all I can say is he isn't the boy who took it; I'm willing to take my oath to that. He was a different-looking sort of boy altogether, and I was standing as close to him as I am to you."