Chapter XIV: At the Bar

“If you fool around that jail, you’re crazy and you’ll get yourself in trouble,” Craig called after him.

“I’ll free him,” shouted Hervey. “I’ll have everybody in town laughing at you--a couple of half-baked detectives! You must have been reading _Young Sleuth, the Boy Detective._ I’ll show you.”

“You’re a fool, Herve,” was the last he heard.

It was odd how, even at his best and on the right trail, he must work differently from other boys and quite alone. He might have sought the advice and co-operation of these good scout comrades. But he must make them out worse than himself and leave them astonished and bewildered. He must get things all askew in his mind and conjure an honorable act into a sort of stunt. The throwing down of a dare! He could not just do the right thing for its own sake. Yet he could not bear the lashings of his own conscience. We can only follow in his trail and see where it leads. And it leads through strange and devious ways, I promise you.

In this episode of his story it led to a good destination--the police station. There was nothing contrite or remorseful about him as he faced the elevated desk at which the sergeant sat facing him. The frowning officer gazed down upon him and took in at a glance the brown face, the dancing, daredevil, gray eyes, the huge hole in his stocking. He fixed a quizzical look of scrutiny on the rimless hat, Hervey’s most treasured and original possession, which seemed to set him apart from all other boys on the face of the earth, embodying as it did the very essence of the bizarre. The sergeant leaned forward and read with interest the largest tin button on that perforated felt crown--_Be good and you’ll be happy_, and another which said _Keep smiling_.

“You better take your hat off,” he said.

Hervey took off his hat.

“Well, young feller, what’s troubling you?”

“I came to tell you that I’m the one who turned in that false alarm,” said Hervey. “I did it because a feller that I met dared me to. Maybe he was a burglar, but anyhow you got to prove it to me first. Maybe the police are only fools thinking he’s a burglar. Those two scouts are a couple of fools because they admit they were up at the corner and they didn’t even see me, they’re such punk scouts. I can show you my own tracks in the field. So you better let Chesty McCullen go home, because he didn’t do it.”

“Go easy, young feller,” warned the officer, “you’re puttin’ too many fools in your talk. So you sent in the alarm, huh? What’s your name?”

The chief strolled in, leaned against the desk and listened while Hervey told the story of his encounter with the stranger who had thought up the hot tamale stunt. Then this scout who was no scout, or this happy-go-lucky boy who was one (suit yourself) was held on the charge of malicious mischief.

“So that’s what you call a hot tamale, is it?” the sergeant asked.

“It’s a hot tamale,” said the chief. It was not clear whether he was characterizing the stunt or the fact of Hervey’s coming and giving himself up. That was a pretty good hot tamale. The chief was in about the same uncomfortable predicament that Councilor Wainwright was in when he dismissed Hervey from Temple Camp. But like Councilor Wainwright he had his duty to perform.

So Hervey was held on the charge of malicious mischief and they called up Walton’s Stationery Store and told poor Mr. Walton about it. And meanwhile, they liberated little Chesty McCullen and told him that he had better not loiter around on corners and near fire boxes. He went scuffling home where his poor, scrawny, overworked mother was relieved to learn that her elder son, absent from home, was no longer wanted. Thus Chesty McCullen got a sort of a backwash from scouting; he was later to be borne upon its rising tide.

Poor Mr. Walton hurried to the station, a lanky, elderly man with a troubled countenance. They knew him and respected him. He was more troubled than Hervey, for Hervey was triumphant, whereas Mr. Walton was just humiliated.

“Well, Hervey,” was all he said.

“He came and told us of his own accord,” said the chief. “He’s a little devil, but a white one.”

Mr. Walton nodded.

“They’re so smart, _not_; thinking they can send a feller to jail,” said Hervey. “They dared me that I couldn’t set him free, so who’s got the laugh?” Mr. Walton did not have the laugh, at all events. He listened soberly as they told him that Hervey would have to be taken before the recorder for proper disposition of the case. Such things get around like wildfire and even before the little party with the culprit had started for the recorder’s court, a couple of reporters were upon the scene, scenting perhaps some move in the more important end of the case. Instead of a burglar they saw only a rather bewildered boy as the center of attraction. And they listened and made the most of it as Hervey gave a description of the stranger for whom he had performed. It may be told now that that stranger was never found; nor was it ever proven that Hervey had played the dupe and all unconsciously been an accessory to a major crime.

As for his own excursion in the dangerous field of malicious mischief, he was lucky as he always claimed to be. Poor Mr. and Mrs. Walton suffered more keenly than he.

“Of course this kind of thing can’t be tolerated,” said the recorder. “Tampering with the public emergency apparatus is a serious business.” Hervey had never supposed that he had done that. He knew he had sent in a false alarm. But “tampering with the public emergency apparatus”--that sounded pretty big. It had been even a greater stunt than he had supposed. Mr. Walton could only stand and listen. The recorder was a young lawyer and liked to hear himself talk and see people hang with suspense upon his words. Let no one say that the law is no respecter of persons. Poor Chesty McCullen would have been fined for this offense and his father would not have been able to pay the fine and Chesty would have spent a week or two in jail. He owed more to Hervey than to the law.

“I think,” the recorder said, addressing Hervey, “that you have had a good lesson. I think you realize the seriousness of what you did.” (He was never more mistaken in his life.) “I think you are sufficiently punished,” he added.

“Those fellers are punished too,” said Hervey.

“But if you are ever brought here again,” the recorder continued, “this affair will be remembered and it will go hard with you.” He glanced significantly at Mr. Walton, as if to say that he thought a little warning of that sort was a good thing. “Now young man, you go home and look out who you make friends with and don’t try to show off.” He did Hervey an injustice there, for most of our hero’s exploits were performed when he was quite alone and he never “showed off.” If that were all there were to it, it would be easy to comprehend him.

Out of his mortification Mr. Walton, always fair, must say one last word. “I think, your Honor, that it is to his credit that he came here and gave himself up just when his safety seemed assured. I’m not quite sure about his motive, but I suppose we ought to judge people by their acts and get at their motives that way.”

“I’d rather you’d try to work out his motives than I,” smiled the young judge. And Mr. Walton bowed acknowledgment.

He said not one single word to Hervey except to lay his hand on the boy’s shoulder as they left the place. Perhaps it meant that he was pleased that in the big essentials his stepson had not been tried and found wanting. But he seemed disheartened and if Hervey had been approachable through the channels of sentiment, he would have felt a little twinge as this plain, kindly man went off down the street, back to his stationery store.