Chapter XV: Caleb Hook Makes Himself at Home

The boys stared at the man who had leaped among them from off the ladder with feelings of alarmed surprise.

Nor was the surprise of Frank Mansfield less than the others.

It was Detective Hook who stood before him--Detective Hook, whom he had supposed to be already far upon his homeward way.

"So these are your friends?" he said, quietly, as the boys gathered about him, with faces expressive of anything but welcome. "I rather thought I should tumble on something like this. Introduce me, Frank. It will take off the awkwardness a bit."

"Oh, we don't want to know you, boss," spoke up one of the boys, with a threatening air. "We don't allow no visitors, we don't, and we're going to show yer, too, blame quick."

"Yes," growled Garibaldi, the Italian boy, "disa whata coma from taka in de stranger among us."

As for Jerry Buck, Barney the bootblack, and Frank himself, they stared at one another, the two Bats surveying the boy whom they had befriended with angry looks, Frank regarding them with a face upon which was seen plainly imprinted every evidence of innocent surprise.

He did not dare to offend the detective, who could, as he was well aware, throw him into the hands of the law at any moment. He felt both sorry and ashamed to think that the kind-hearted boys who had befriended him in his trouble should for a moment think that he had betrayed their hiding-place to a member of the police.

"Is this feller a friend of yourn?" demanded Barney, in no pleasant tone.

"It is Detective Hook, boys," replied Frank, with as much firmness as he could muster. "I swear to you all that I never breathed a word."

"I knowed it," muttered Jerry beneath his breath.

But Caleb Hook, with a keen realization of the way matters stood, gave no opportunity for further words.

He had suspected the existence of just such a place as this from the first moment of Frank's mysterious disappearance on the previous night.

Now, it was a life rule of this remarkable man that no suspicion worthy of entertaining at all should be abandoned until either its truth or its falsity had been proved.

It was for that reason he had chosen for his meeting with this boy, in whose strange case he was becoming hourly more interested, the time and place he had.

"Hold on, boys," he said, a broad smile breaking over his face, "before you fire me out of here, before that little Italian sticks a tooth-pick into me or you condemn Frank Mansfield for a traitor, hear what the detective has got to say."

"Well, say on, den, blame quick!" exclaimed Sandy the Bat, who had first spoken, "for we fellers is a-goin' to pound the life outer yer in jest about a minit and a half."

"Indeed! Well, I'm not afraid. In the first place I swear now, without being asked, never to give this place away, provided I catch none of you boys transgressing the law. Second, I tell you now, and tell you the truth when I say it, that this young man, Frank Mansfield, never by so much as a word told me anything about this place, any boy here present, or gave me the slightest clew how to enter it as I did."

All the boys stared at the detective in surprise.

"I knowed it," growled Jerry Buck again. "How could Frank Mansfield tell him about the up-stairs way, fellers, when he didn't know nothing about it himself?"

"Well, what do you want with us, anyhow?" asked Barney, with a somewhat mollified air. "We're only a lot of poor kids as hasn't got no better place to tie up in winter-time nor this. We don't do no one any harm."

"I know that," answered Hook, pleasantly, "and that's why I propose to let you alone. I found the entrance beneath the flat tombstone in the church-yard entirely by itself. If you wished to conceal it you were foolish to clear the snow away. But you need have no fears of me, not one of you. All I want now is that you answer me a few questions, and then I'll be off about my business and forget that I was ever here."

"Well, that depends upon de questions," replied Barney, taking upon himself the duty of spokesman. "Maybe we'll answer and maybe we won't."

"They concern Frank Mansfield only and can't harm you."

"Fire away, den," said Barney, shortly.

Frank, meanwhile, maintained a discreet silence.

It was plainly evident that nothing he could say or do would help matters at all.

"Who was the woman that passed through here just now by the way I came in?"

The detective had seated himself carelessly upon the table, with one foot resting upon the ground.

As he propounded the question he coolly lighted a cigar, and passed one to each of the boys.

"I don't know wot yer mean," replied Barney, with some slight evidence of embarrassment. "Dere's no woman comes in here, is dere, Jerry?"

"Not much!" said Jerry, shortly, as he produced matches and lit his cigar.

"Well, I'll try again. Which of you boys found the box last night?"

He held up the tin box of papers handed him by Frank Mansfield a short time before.

"I found it first. And I gave it to Barney to take care of," replied Jerry. "I picked it up on Rector street, right in front of the bank, after I see'd the burglars run."

"Oh, you saw the burglars, did you? By the way, you are the newspaper boy that was with Frank at the Catherine Market this morning?"

"Yes."

"What's your name?"

"Jerry Buck."

"How did you come to see these fellows?"

"Why, I was coming down Rector street on my way here just as they were comin' out of the bank."

"Did they see you?"

"Not much," replied the boy, laughing and showing his teeth. "I'm too fly for that, mister. I hid in the shadow of the wall, and give them the bat call. Gosh! you orter seen them run! There was three of 'em--one had a big bag, another a carpet sack. It was the big feller wot dropped that box."

"What do you mean by the 'bat call?'"

"I didn't mean to say nothin' 'bout that," answered Jerry, hesitatingly, seeing that the Bats were regarding him with no pleasant eyes.

"Well, never mind," said the detective, indifferently. "I don't want to pry into your secrets, boys. All I want is to bring these bank robbers to justice, and remove suspicion from our young friend here. That's my business here to-night, and I've nothing to do with any other matters at all. I suppose you are all friends of his, or he wouldn't be among you. By the way, that was a mighty sharp trick, getting him away from the officer who had him in charge last night."

"Oh, we're fly every time, boss," replied Barney, with an air of conscious pride. "You can just bet your life on that."

Caleb Hook laughed pleasantly, and took an extra puff at his cigar.

"Frank, here's one witness to prove that you didn't rob the bank," he said, pointing carelessly to Jerry Buck.

"An' here's anoder," put in Barney. "I seen the fellers too."

"I'm sure both of them will testify to what they know, Mr. Hook," said Frank, somewhat puzzled to discern the detective's aim.

"Of course we will," exclaimed Barney. "Me an' Jerry has undertook to set you right, and we're de kind as goes de whole hog or none."

The reply came heartily, nor was the assent of Jerry Buck any less strong.

It seemed strange that these wild street Arabs had taken up his cause in the manner they had.

Strange to Caleb Hook as he sat scanning the faces of the "bats" about him. Doubly strange to Frank himself the more he turned it over in his mind.

But his situation was such that there was nothing for it but to drift helplessly with the tide, with Detective Hook for his rudder, to steer him to whatever haven of safety he might choose.

And the boy did well to place his reliance where he did.

Had he searched New York from end to end, he could not have found a shrewder ally or a better man.

"Good!" exclaimed the detective. "The testimony of two is better than that of one. Would either of you know the three men again?"

"Every one on 'em," said Jerry, decidedly.

"Good again. You saw the man over whom I tumbled in Catherine street this morning, when I tried to catch hold of your coat. Was he one of them?"

"Yes, he was, boss, an' a minute after another--the big feller wot dropped the box--went up the street."

"He did?"

"Sure's yer born. I know'd him the minute I saw him."

"I saw him, too, Mr. Hook," said Frank, eagerly, "and with him----"

"One moment," said the detective, throwing a warning look toward Frank. "I'm listening to Jerry now. You can tell your story by and by. Where did the man go, Jerry? Do you know?"

"No," replied the newsboy, shaking his head. "I went down to the house where the woman was murdered. You seen me there, you know."

This, of course, was true.

And yet the reader knows, as well as did Jerry Buck himself, that it was far, very far, from being the whole truth.

Of his subsequent adventures in Cagney's sanctum, of the conversation he had overheard while crouched behind the whisky barrels outside the half door, he said nothing at all.

Nor did he mention the little fact--and this the reader does not know--of his having followed the respectable Mr. Elijah Callister to the very door of his Fifth avenue mansion before allowing him to pass from before his eyes.

For reasons best known to himself Jerry Buck was silent in all these points, neither Frank nor the detective, as a matter of course, dreaming of the knowledge he thus held in reserve.

But whatever had been the motive of Caleb Hook in thus penetrating the retreat of the Bats in the Wall--the entrance to which let us say right here, his keen eyes had detected from the suspicious circumstances of the snow being cleared away around the great flat tombstone by the side of which he had come to a halt, when in company with Frank he had followed the strange apparition through the Trinity church-yard--whatever had been his motive, we repeat, it was evident that he had satisfied it now, for he leaped from the table and moved toward the foot of the ladder leading to the church-yard above.

"Well, good-bye, boys," he exclaimed, as carelessly as though his unexpected visit had been an every-day affair. "I'll call upon you fellows when I want your testimony. Never mind opening the door; I can raise the stone myself. Frank Mansfield, I want you. Come along with me."

He sprang up the ladder, Frank following him.

Completely carried away by the manner of the man, not one of the Bats even thought of interfering.

The flat tombstone was raised and lowered as they passed out.

It was of sandstone, much decayed, and only a light affair, after all.

What Caleb Hook had to say to Frank as they once more vaulted the fence, this time walking up Broadway together, we do not know, but it is a fact that the boy, who, had he fallen into the hands of a detective of the average density of skull, would at that moment, in all probability have been an inmate of the Tombs, spent the short remainder of the night upon a lounge in Detective Hook's own room, as comfortably as you pleased.