“Give it back to ’em. Turn ’em loose.” The Chief’s voice had taken on a hostile, almost savage tone. “There’s no law against receiving money by Air Mail. You can’t hold a man on any such evidence. Turn ’em loose. Do you hear me? Turn ’em loose!”
“And now,” he said, after Greasy Thumb and his partner had vanished, “I’m going to put you boys where it won’t be so much trouble to report to me. From now on you’re on court room duty. No more carnivals and baseball games for you. You’re on court room duty, see?”
For one full minute by the clock Drew Lane and Tom Howe stood where they were. It was a minute of grim silence. The Chief sat staring like an angry Buddha. The young man behind him wore on his face one of those fixed smiles that never become a sign of mirth.
Johnny looked first at Drew, then at Tom in a vain attempt to understand.
At last Drew turned in silence and led the way out of the room.
CHAPTER X
“FIND THAT MAN”
Drew walked down the corridor, turned to the right, entered the third door to the left, waited for Tom Howe and Johnny Thompson to enter, and then closed the door. Dropping into one of the three hard-bottomed chairs the narrow, box-like room afforded, he sat looking out of the window, first down the cement paved court, then far up to the tenth floor where were many barred windows.
“What does it mean?” Johnny asked at last.
“Mean?” Drew Lane pointed to the bars above and across the court. “It means that the fellows behind those bars (and we put some there, too) are going to have it soft compared with us.
“They got thirty days, maybe sixty. But when that’s over, they are free. But we—we have an indeterminate sentence.