Page:Bob Chester's Grit.djvu/30

20 for holding the envelope until those bad men returned was to be one dollar—and they didn't even come back to pay me, and now I haven't delivered the groceries, and Mr. Dardus will be very angry."

"Oh, ho! So you are Len Dardus' kid, are you?" queried the other of Bob's inquisitors.

"I'm not his kid, but he is my guardian," corrected the lad in a voice so full of reproach that the two men could not refrain from smiling.

"Then you don't like Dardus?" smiled the one who had addressed him first.

"I think he is unreasonable," returned Bob.

"Yes, and none too honest," commented the other.

With the various methods known only to the police detectives of the large metropolitan police forces, the two men put Bob through a grilling examination, trying in every possible way to scare him into admitting either a knowledge of who the swindlers were, or of direct complicity in the confidence game, but without being able to shake his story, even in the slightest detail.

Loath as the police officials were to admit Bob's innocence, his straightforward answers and manly manner finally convinced them that he was, as he had said, entirely guiltless, and they withdrew.

As they returned to the outer room of the