Larry nodded in assent. The detectives looked rather foolish. Someone in the crowd, that had gathered outside the door, began to laugh. Soon there were several titters.
“Would you mind letting me up now?” asked the man on whom Detective Jones was sitting.
“Get up!” growled the detectives, much disgusted at the outcome of the affair.
They had expected to discover a counterfeiting plant and had only succeeded in unearthing an improvised toy shop. Larry’s suspicions had been dispelled as soon as he entered the place, a few days previous, but he and Mr. Newton had decided to say nothing of this, as they wished to play a trick on the officers who had gone out of their way once to treat the reporter in rather a shabby fashion.
“This will make a good story,” remarked Mr. Newton so the detectives would hear.
“You’re not going to print this, are you?” asked the officers, looking more foolish than ever.
“Of course,” replied the reporter. “It isn’t often that you fellows make mistakes, but when you do it’s only fair to tell of them. I’ll make a good story out of it.”
“We’ll get even with you if you do,” growled Jones. “We’ll fix you for this.”
“I’m only paying you for what you did to me some time ago,” said Mr. Newton, as the detectives released their prisoners. The soldier-makers brushed the dirt from their clothes as the detectives left.
“I couldn’t imagine what was up,” said one of the toy-men. “The first I knew those detectives burst the door in. I thought perhaps they were thieves, but when they threw us down and sat on us, I knew there must be something strange the matter. The idea to take us for counterfeiters!”
“I thought you were myself,” said Larry, “especially when you gave my mother that bad fifty-cent piece.”
“That’s so, I nearly forgot about that,” one of the men exclaimed. “That was an old pocket-piece of mine. I gave it to her by mistake. I will give her a good one for it right away.”
“Here it is,” Larry remarked, producing the bad coin, and receiving a good one.
“Now that the excitement is over I guess we can go on making lead soldiers,” remarked the head workman, as he propped up the broken door and started the furnace.
“Yes, and we must get to work on the story,” the reporter said.