RAYNOR’S UNLUCKY POCKET.

It was the most unpleasant predicament of his life in which Jack now found himself. Naturally, his chum felt the same way about it. The irony of the situation was irritating.

Having chased away, at the risk of their own lives, some desperate crooks, the lads who had done all this found themselves accused of being nefarious characters.

“They are Anglise,” exclaimed one of the men as he turned a bull’s-eye lantern on them.

“No, sir, we are not. We are Americans,” exclaimed Jack proudly.

The leader of the gendarmes laughed in an amused way.

“Your country should be proud of you,” he said in good English with a provoking sarcasm.

In fact, neither Jack nor Raynor looked at his best just then. Their caps were gone, lost in the struggle with the would-be robbers, their hair was tousled, perspiration streamed down their faces and their garments were torn and dusty.

Jack felt all this, and the knowledge of it did not tend to cheer him. Had he been a policeman and known no more of the facts than did the gendarmes, he felt that he would have been justified in acting in the same way. But he determined to try to explain the case.

“We are off the American tank steamer Ajax,” he said. “To-night we had an important errand in this section of the city. On our way back to the ship we heard screams, and investigated. We found three men trying to rob an old lady and a younger one who were seated in the closed part of a blue limousine.

“After a struggle we disarmed them and put them to flight. Just as you people came up, the chauffeur, who ran away during the fight, reappeared, jumped into his seat and drove off. We were in a hurry to get back to our ship and so, foolishly, as I can see now, we ran off, thinking that if we stayed we might be detained and questioned.”

“Is that all?” asked the officer calmly.

“That is all,” responded Jack.

“It is enough.”

“Enough for what?” The man’s tone nettled Jack in spite of himself.

“Enough to secure you both a lodging in the prison of the city to-night.”

The boys looked aghast.

“What! Do you mean to make us prisoners and lock us up?” asked Jack, who had hoped that at the worst nothing more would be done than to question them and, having ascertained the truth of their stories, set them free.

The officer nodded and then gave a brisk command. At his words, a policeman took hold of both boys by the right and left arms, twisting them back so that if they made any great struggle to escape, their arms would be broken.

It was not till then that the full seriousness of their positions broke over the boys. Raynor gave a wrench to free himself of the grip of the police, but an excruciating pain that followed made him quickly desist.

“Keep cool, old fellow,” advised Jack, “this will all be straightened out.”

Then he turned to the English-speaking policeman.

“Of course we can send a message to the ship, and then you can speedily ascertain that we are telling the truth and set us free,” he said bravely, but with a sinking heart.

To his dismay the reply was a decided negative.

“You will be allowed to tell your story to the examining magistrate in the morning,” he said coldly. “And in the meantime, allow me to inform you that if it isn’t any more probable than the one you told me,—well——”

He shrugged his shoulders and twisted his sharp-pointed, little black mustache.

“But, great heavens, man, it’s the truth!” burst out Jack.

“No doubt, no doubt. All our prisoners tell us that,” was the reply.

Suddenly the little officer’s eyes fell on Raynor’s coat. It bulged conspicuously in one of the pockets. He stepped quickly to the American lad’s side and, with a cry of triumph, drew out a revolver.

It was the one Raynor had taken from the foot-pad; but its discovery made things look black for the boys. The officer’s eyes narrowed. He looked at them with a sneer.

“So,” he said, holding up the pistol, “you two honest, law-abiding lads carry pistols abroad at night! This discovery alone, messieurs, proves that your story is a concoction from beginning to end. If you really come off a ship, you are samples of the sort of sailors we don’t want here.”

Jack tried in vain to be heard, but a wave of the hand enjoining silence and a crisp command to the subordinate police silenced him.

The next moment, held as if they had been desperate characters, the two boys found themselves, under armed guard, being marched through the sleeping city of Antwerp to prison cells.

Here was a fine end to their evening of adventure. But protests, they knew, would be worse than silence, and so they submitted to being ignominiously marched along without uttering a word. Beside them strutted the little officer, vastly proud of his “important captures,” word of which he took care reached the newspapers that night.