“No go, Bob,” spoke the chief, turning to flash a look full in the face of the staggering man.
“No,” was the answer.
“Who says I shan’t go?” angrily demanded the man, mistaking the words spoken. “I’m my own boss. I’ll go see elephant if I like!”
“I’m not going to stop you,” declared the chief. “You’re your own boss, though I wouldn’t give much for your pocketbook when you come off the Barbary Coast. Go ahead, I don’t want you.”
“Don’t you think it would be a good plan,” suggested Bob, “to get him away from this neighborhood? He’s sure to be robbed and maybe injured if he stays here.”
“You never said a truer thing in all your life, Bob Dexter,” spoke the chief. “But trying to get him to come with us wouldn’t do a bit of good. We couldn’t keep him with us all night, or until he is in better senses. He’d only be an elephant on our hands. And if we took him away from here he’d wander back again in a few hours. The night is young yet.”
“Then what can we do? I hate to see him get plucked.”
“So do I, and I have a plan. I don’t want the Cardiff police to know I’m in town. But I can telephone to headquarters, in the guise of a citizen who has seen a man with money in this dangerous neighborhood, and they’ll send the wagon and a couple of men in uniform. Brass buttons are the only thing that will impress this fellow.
“Of course they can’t arrest him, for he hasn’t done anything more than get himself into a foolish and miserable state. But they can detain him until morning, when he’ll be sober. That’s often done, and that will save his money for him. Come on, we’ll slip out of here and find a telephone.”
“Yes, but while we’re gone some one of these sharks will pull him into their holes.”