So Phil Ryder went out into the night a friendless prisoner in a strange city, leaving his travelling-bag, rifle, and overcoat behind him, the clerk remarking significantly that he would take good care of them until they should be called for.
No word was spoken between the officer and his prisoner as they passed through the brilliantly lighted streets until they finally reached the police station, and the latter stood before the sergeant’s desk, behind which that functionary was prepared, pen in hand, to enter a record of this case in his blotter. Then a torrent of words sprang to Phil’s lips. He told his story with such evident honesty and pleading anguish of soul that even the grizzled sergeant, accustomed as he was to scenes of this kind, was moved by it. “It does seem hard,” he said, when Phil paused, more for want of breath than anything else, “that a young gent like you should be compelled to pass a night in the cooler. If you had any one to go on your bail now, we might get the justice to give you a private examination, late as it is, and perhaps he’d accept a bond for the night.”
“But I haven’t. I don’t know a soul in the city,” answered Phil, despondently. “How much do you think the bail would be?” he asked, with a sudden inspiration.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe not more than a hundred or so.”
“I have that much right here with me!” cried Phil, eagerly, “and I’d gladly give every cent of it rather than pass a night in a cell. That would be too awful, and it doesn’t seem as though I could bear it.”
“Let us see your money,” said the sergeant, with a caution bred of long experience.
With eager but trembling fingers Phil fumbled at the hateful safety-pins that seemed determined never to relax their hold of his pocket-book. At length he drew it forth, and opened it with an air of anxious triumph. At least one of his assertions was about to be proved true.
Suddenly his face turned to a deathly pallor. The empty wallet, in which no bill remained, dropped from his nerveless grasp, and he clutched wildly at the rail of the sergeant’s desk for support.
“I have been robbed!” he gasped. “Robbed of every cent I had in the world. What shall I do? What shall I do?”
The sergeant and officer exchanged significant glances, and for a few minutes only the ticking of a big clock and the boy’s panting breathing that closely resembled sobbing broke the painful stillness.