“I want to tell you, Johnny, I wish I could tell every boy in the land a thousand times, crime is not attractive! It is mean and low down, sordid and dirty. That’s the best you can make out of it.”
“One more case,” he whispered as he rose, “then comes ours. You wait here. I’ll go get the men.”
CHAPTER VIII
PRISONERS AT THE BAR
Johnny will never know what that next brief trial was about. It had struck him all of a sudden that he was to play a part in the trial that was to follow. This thought set his blood racing. He was glad not to be the defendant. But as a witness his responsibility was great. For the first time in his life he was to utter words that would without doubt send a fellow human being to jail. The thought was not pleasing.
“And yet it’s my plain duty,” he told himself. He found much consolation in that.
A fresh turn of his mind for the moment crowded out all other thought. Who had beaten him up the night before? Was it some pal of these pickpockets? Would he be able to tell from the expressions on their faces when they saw him? His head was heavily bandaged. “They could not help but notice that. Perhaps they believe that their confederate made a thorough job of it,” he told himself. “They may not expect to see me here at all.”
“Ah! Now’s the time!” he whispered to himself. His name was being called. So, too, were the names of the two pickpockets and Drew Lane.
“Here they come.” He caught his breath and half rose from his chair. As he did so, one of the two prisoners coming down the aisle caught sight of him. It was the larger of the pickpockets. For ten seconds he stood there motionless, one foot poised in midair. Then his face spread in a broad grin, and he marched on up to the bar.
That grin puzzled the boy. “Wouldn’t grin if he hadn’t expected to see me,” he reasoned. “But why the grin at all?”
There was no further time for such thoughts. He was at the bar, between a police officer and a pickpocket. His right hand was in the air. He was being sworn to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me, God.”