“Come on!” David ordered his prisoners, and the chief officer scowled at them as if to identify them for future reference as they descended the gangplank. They made their way to the little building at the end of the wharf, which, to their astonishment, was filled with harbor police. It did seem as if Cochran must have been blind not to find it himself. A plain-clothes man, evidently of authority, looked up and smiled with great satisfaction and lighted eyes, as he said: “Hello! ‘Crump’ Smith and ‘Slippery’ Murdock, eh? Hope you’ve got somethin’ on ’em, this time, that we can put ’em over for. I’ve been tryin’ to get the goods on them for a long time now.”
The disconsolate sharpers scowled like a pair of pirates and sank down on a bench, while the detective called David into an inner office to question him. He listened to David’s story and then shook his head doubtfully.
“Something funny about this,” he said at last. “This man Cochran’s been gone more than an hour. He’s the complaining witness. We can’t hold this pair of sharks without him. Not but that I’d like to, right enough. We can detain ’em for a few hours, but no longer. You two men better go and see if you can find your friend that they skinned out of his wad. If I don’t hear from you before morning and have to turn ’em loose, I’ve got a way of keepin’ track of ’em so that we can pick ’em up again, when you find your man. What hotel you going to stop at?”
He wrote down the address David gave, and ushered him out. The partners caught a nighthawk taxi and went to their hotel first, and then instituted such inquiries as they could for the missing Mr. Cochran—all without success. Alarmed over his disappearance, and fearing that ill had befallen him, they arose, after a few hours’ sleep, prepared to resume their philanthropic quest. They pictured him as having wandered off the dock and having been sandbagged. They feared he might have fallen even into more merciless hands than those of the two callous crooks who had rooked him aboard the steamer. They recalled tales of doping, of shanghaiing, of murders done on the Barbary Coast, and dead men thrown into the bay. They forgot the boredom of his gabbling tongue, his tiresome and unquenchable garrulity, and remembered only that he was a simple and unsophisticated old fellow who had shown a touching and homely liberality to a derelict whom he had accidentally met. As their apprehensions increased, so did their sense of helplessness.
“The only thing left for us to do,” said David wisely, “is to go down to the harbor police and see if they’ve learned anything about what became of him.”
“Good!” said Goliath. “And if they ain’t, don’t you reckon we ought to kind of stir ’em up by offerin’ a reward or somethin’?”
“Sure! We can’t balk at blowin’ in a little money for that poor old cuss. I reckon we’re the only friends he’s got in this whole blamed town to look after him and help him out. But— By the great horn spoon! He ought to be in an orphan asylum or hire a guardian, I reckon.”
Glum with anxiety they boarded a Market Street car and rode to the ferry. Glum with anxiety they trudged from there to the police office and, glum with anxiety they entered. The same plain-clothes man they had interviewed in the night lowered a paper he had been reading, looked at them, recognized them, and grinned.
“Well,” he inquired pleasantly, “did you find your man Cochran? No? Humph! Guess you didn’t; but I did!”
And then, as if unable to restrain himself, he indulged in a great laugh.