"Wasting time!" grunted Adolph. "Let me tickle him with my
little toy here. Safety first, as these people always say."

"Be quiet!" ordered Ledermann. "And you too, young fellow! If
you try to scream, we will kill you."

"Aw, quit your kiddn'!" said Porky cheekily. "What would I want
to yell for? I don't want to get arrested any more than I am. I
want to go home! tell you, how could I hear anything when I was
asleep? I want to go home! What's it to me what you talk
about?" He sniffed, and drew his cuff across his eyes.

"Let me have him," said Adolph. "Let me go outside the gates
with him."

"No," said Porky, using his cuff again. "I ain't goin' with
nobody. I know how to get home. I don't have to have somebody
take me." He tried to wiggle away, but felt Adolph's clutch
close like an iron vise.

"There, there," said Ledermann quietly, as he nudged Adolph under
cover of the darkness. "All we want to know is how much you
heard. It is nothing to me what you do after that. You see my
friend here does not mean what he says, but--well, I may as well
tell you how it is." He turned the flashlight on the boy's face
and held it there, watching him like a hawk while he talked. "My
friend has invented something that will prove to be a very
wonderful thing for everybody in the world, and he is very
anxious that it shall be kept a secret until he is ready to put