Two Boys and a Fortune Part 7

He was therefore reduced to walking to kill time, choosing the shady side and watching for any incident of city life that might divert his mind. He came to a bicycle emporium presently and stood for some time in front of it, trying to decide which wheel he should select when he came to purchase as he hoped to do very shortly now.

"That's the dandy kind," remarked a voice over his shoulder. "The Wizard motor. You can ride over all sorts of roads with it."

Rex turned and saw a fellow about a year older than himself. He had a red face and wore an outing s.h.i.+rt that was not as fresh as it might have been.

Rex, who was rather fastidious as to his friends, simply said "Yes,"

and moved on.

The fellow noticed the look which accompanied the word.

"The dude!" he muttered. "Thinks he's too good to talk with the likes o' me. I'll get even with him."

He waited an instant and then followed Rex at a distance. Presently something that he espied ahead caused him to scan the sidewalk and the street next it closely.

Then he stepped out into the roadway and picked up a piece of coal that had dropped from a pa.s.sing cart. He quickened his steps and nearly caught up with Rex just as the latter was pa.s.sing a Chinese laundry.

"Run for your life! Runaway team behind you!" he exclaimed suddenly, darting forward and calling out the words almost in Rex's ear. At the same instant he flung the piece of coal he had picked up straight into the window of the Chinese laundry.

There was a crash of gla.s.s and Rex, connecting the sound with the warning he had received, immediately took to his heels.

"There he goes!" called out the red faced youth to the Chinaman who promptly appeared in the door of his shop.

The Celestial's almond eyes caught sight of Rex's fleeing figure. It was enough. He dropped his iron and rushed after Rex, the conscienceless hoodlum joining in the chase.

Rex, hearing no further sound to tell him that a dangerous runaway was close upon him, had just decided to slacken his pace and turn around to investigate, when he felt a hand laid on his shoulder.

"Me got you," crowed a wheezy voice in his ear. "Now for pleecy man."

Rex was horrified to find himself in the grasp of a Chinese laundryman.

"Let go of me! What do you want?" he cried, struggling to get free.

"You breakee gla.s.s. You go to jailee. Here pleecyman now."

True enough, among the crowd that had hastily collected, was a blue-coated officer.

"Make him let me go," exclaimed Rex, appealing to the representative of the law. "I didn't do anything to him."

"Yes, he did," called out a bystander, whose sympathies had been awakened for the much suffering heathen. "I saw him running for all he was worth. That's pretty strong evidence, isn't it?"

The policeman appeared to think so, for he came up and caught Rex by the arm.

CHAPTER VII

REGINAND'S HUMILIATION

Rex never felt so humiliated in his life. Here he was, surrounded by a crowd, captured by a policeman and accused by a miserable Chinaman of breaking a pane of gla.s.s.

"It's all a mistake, I tell you," he cried, starting to wrest himself loose from the officer's grasp, and then suddenly remaining pa.s.sive as he reflected that this was undignified.

"What did you run for then!" questioned the policeman.

"Because he told me to-- the fellow with the red face," and Rex looked around in the throng to pick out the cause of his misfortune, but that individual had discreetly disappeared.

"I don't see him now," he went on.

"I guess you don't," put in the bystander who had already spoken. "Do you run every time anybody tells you to?"

"He said there was a runaway team behind me. Then I heard the gla.s.s break. He must have thrown the stone himself."

Rex tried to speak calmly, but he was boiling over with rage at the trick which he now realized had been played upon him.

"Me wantee new gla.s.s," the Chinaman insisted. "Play money."

How fervently Rex wished at that moment that they had come into their inheritance. He would have put his hand into his pocket, drawn out a five dollar bill with a lordly air and handed it over with the words: "Take this. I didn't break the gla.s.s, but I pity the poor heathen's distress."

As it was, he had not a penny about him. It was difficult to keep up an air of bravado under these circ.u.mstances.

The crowd was growing bigger each minute. The policeman looked somewhat perplexed. He judged from Rex's appearance that he was not a hoodlum who would be likely to throw a stone at a Chinaman's window, but he admitted that he had been running, and here was a man ready to swear that he saw him throw the stone.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Reginald Bemis Pell," replied Rex promptly. He was proud of his name, and brought it out now with a kind of flourish.

"Where do you live?" went on the officer, while the crowd pressed closer to hear the replies.

"At Marley."

"You don't look like a boy who would break windows for the fun of it."

"Of course I wouldn't, and when my brother hears of this outrage he'll raise a big fuss over it. He's a lawyer and knows how to do it."

Rex didn't feel a bit humorous when he made this a.s.sertion, but there was something in it that struck the crowd as very funny. A good many laughed, and the policeman tried to repress a smile.

"Where is this brother of yours?"

"Right here in the city," and Rex gave the address.

"That's not far," said the officer. "We'll go round there and see if you have told us a straight story. Come along, John," he added to the laundry-man.

Rex glowed with a sense of triumph for a minute, and then began to reflect on what Syd would say at seeing him appear in such company-- with a police officer and a Chinaman. And there was the crowd that strung on behind as the three moved off!

"I wish I'd stayed at home," groaned poor Rex to himself.

However, he tried to take some comfort from the fact that the policeman's arm was not on his shoulder. People they pa.s.sed might think it was the Chinaman who was under arrest. Then he felt that he ought to be glad that it was midsummer, with no chance of his meeting any of his friends.

He was trying to decide what he should do in case Syd had not come back by the time they reached the office, when just as they turned into Chestnut Street a familiar voice cried out: