“Might jest as well tell ye everything else,” retorted Tip.  “Didn’t these High School kids find the packages on me?”

“Then tell us who the chap was that you were talking with tonight.”

“Not fer anything ye could give me,” asserted Tip Scammon, with great promptness.

“Oh, well, then,” returned Hemingway, with affected carelessness, “Prescott can tell us the name of the chap he grappled with in that back yard.”

“Yep!  Let young Prescott tell,” agreed Tip with great cheerfulness.  That was as far as the police could get with the prisoner.  He readily admitted all that was known, and he had even gone so far as to tell how he had stolen the watch and the pin, and how he had secreted them in Dick’s trunk, but beyond that the fellow would not go further.

“Did you have anything to do with placing Ripley’s pin in Prescott’s pocket?” questioned Hemingway.

“Nope,” declared Tip, in all apparent candor.

“Know anything about that?”

“Nope.”

“Then how did you know that that particular morning was the right morning to hide the other two stolen articles in Prescott’s trunk?”

“I heard, on the street, what was happenin’,” declared Tip, confidently.  “So I knew ’twas the right time ter do the rest of the trick.”

At last Hemingway gave up the attempt to learn the name of the party with whom Tip had been talking in Stetson’s Alley on this night.  Then Tip was led away to a cell.

“Come on, fellows,” muttered Dick to his chums.  “Since Tip is under arrest, anyway, and has confessed, and since the whole thing is bound to become public, I want to run down to ‘The Blade’ office, find Len Spencer, and send him up here to get the whole, straight story. With this yarn printed I can go back to school in the morning!”

“Now, see here, Dick,” expostulated Dave Darrin, as the three chums hurried along the street, “in the station house you told the police you didn’t get a look at the other fellow’s face.”

“Well, that was straight,” Prescott asserted.

“Do you mean to say you don’t know who the fellow was—–­you really don’t?” persisted Dave Darrin.

“I don’t know,” Dick declared flatly.

“You’ve a suspicion, just the same,” asserted Greg Holmes, dryly.

“Possibly.”

“Who was it, then?” coaxed Greg Holmes.

“Was it Fred Ripley?” shot out Dave Darrin.

“Will you fellows keep a secret, on your solemn honor, if I tell you one?” Dick questioned.

Dave and Greg both promised.

“Well, then,” Prescott admitted, “I’m convinced in my own mind that it was Fred Ripley that I had hold of for an instant tonight.  But I didn’t see his face, and I can’t prove it.  That’s why I’m not going to tell about it.  But this fellow wore lavender striped trousers, just like a pair of Fred’s.  There is just a chance or two in a thousand that it wasn’t Ripley—–­and I’m not going to throw it all over on him when I can’t prove it.  Fellows, I know just what it feels like to be under suspicion when you really didn’t do a thing. It hurts—–­awfully!”