The Auto Boys' Vacation — Text and Context

Billy was called only after Mr. Fobes had failed to extract from the man any information whatever. Cautioning the lad to tell the prisoner little or nothing, the policeman, who was also turnkey, it will have been noticed, took Worth into the lockup and left him.

"What was yer question, bub! Mebbe I might answer it," said the fellow. He held a bar of the cell in each hand and leaned forward on his elbows. His face, pressed between the steel rods, had a really hideous look.

"Where's the Big Six automobile that dinner basket came from? Now you tell me that and you'll make a friend. You seem to need one all right."

Billy was surprised by his own boldness in this speech. The fact was the man's manner had quite startled him.

The prisoner laughed in a coarse guffaw. Abruptly checking himself, he said in a whisper: "You get me out o' here. Swipe the keys--any old way! Pass me in a saw--just so's I get out to-night, an' I'll show you where you can find that automobile, good as ever she was. And--" the fellow swore venomously and wickedly--"you blab this an' I'll get ye fer it if I go to the chair!"

"Might as well be reasonable," spoke the boy, frightened by the very nature of the proposal, but scarcely showing it. "I'll help you get out if it means just paying a fine for you, if you can do all you say, but----"

"Do all I _say?_ Don't you think I couldn't?"

Billy hardly knew what to say. For a few seconds he made no answer.

"Aw, I was just a kiddin' ye," the fellow said with a coarse laugh again, as if he had quite suddenly changed his mind.

"Oh! All right!" the boy replied indifferently. And then, moved by a sudden impulse, whose origin he could never have explained, he stepped close to the cell, "Mr. Smith, of Buffalo, has been staying at our hotel. Maybe you'd like to see _him_," he said in a low tone. "He was looking for someone and I shouldn't be surprised from what I saw of him that you are the man."

In general it was a chance shot--a random word without particular aim, such as Fobes had used in his questioning, but Billy fully believed that the remark struck home.

"Say, kid, say, on the level is he the party His Nibbs was talkin' about? Look 'e here, bub, you play fair with the old man that's down an' out. You won't lose nothin' by it. They's none of 'em plays fair any more or I wouldn't be here. You slip them very words to Smith fer me, and don't ye breathe it to His Nibbs."

"Where's our machine?" persisted Worth soberly.

Again a vile oath came from the dirty lips pressed between the bars. The prisoner's pleading manner had changed to anger. "Jest like 'em all, ain't ye?" he said with a vicious sneer in his tone. Then he walked away. Nothing Billy could say served to draw another word from him and that young gentleman could only take his leave. This he did with the words: "We are over at the American hotel. You may want to send for us when you get a little sense."

"How was I to know what to say to him? Wish Phil had been there," said Billy earnestly, telling Paul all about the interview later.

"Gee whizz! We're getting warm, though, I'll bet!" cried Jones with enthusiasm.

"If it wasn't just guesswork that Pickem or Smith--whatever his real name is--knows something about this man in the lockup, who in turn knows something about our car! Pickem certainly does know something about the Torpedo, but he's gone. Even if he might help us, it's too late."

The boys spent the evening trying to realize, with Willie Creek's help, some value from the day's developments. They were late getting to bed and still sleeping soundly when Phil and Dave, the following morning, were well on the road to Pittsfield. And now to return to the latter pair of eager searchers, it may be briefly stated that their day's work was without results. Except that they had made the theft of the Big Six the more widely known, they felt their efforts in Pittsfield to have been a total failure. At nine o'clock on Tuesday night they were on a Pullman, their tickets reading "Syracuse."