Then down to the alleyway had stolen the evil pair.  Kahn’s rear door had been opened with false keys and left ajar.  Then Phin Drayne stole back to the junk shop, while Stevens, whose voice could not be recognized over the wire by Dick, sent the message.

Next, back to where he could watch the alleyway, hurried Stevens, and hid.  Stevens saw Dick Prescott slip into the alleyway, then go inside the store.  That was enough for Stevens, who had slipped back and into the drug store once more, getting the police station on the wire and ’phoning to the chief that Gridley’s burglars had just entered Kahn’s through the rear door.

Only a block and a half from Kahn’s was the police station.  Almost immediately the officers were on the spot, stalking—–­Dick Prescott.

But, at the time when Dick left his own home and went down the street so hurriedly Dave Darrin had been sauntering along, to call his chum out on their nightly quest for “The Blade.”  Seeing Dick move so swiftly, Darrin concluded that something most unusual was about to happen.  So Dave trailed swiftly in the rear.

Thus it was that Darrin drew back just in time to see Bill Stevens slipping away from a hiding place at the head of that alleyway.

“That does for Prescott,” chuckled Stevens, half aloud.

“Oh, it does, does it?” silently murmured alert Dave, and now he intently followed Stevens to the drug store, and thence back to the junk shop.  Dave’s next swift move was to rush back to Kahn’s with the result already known.

“Well, did you think the folks of Gridley would continue to believe such a charge against young Prescott?” demanded Chief Simmons of the sneak.

“I knew some wouldn’t, but I thought the whole affair would make such a row that Prescott would never be quite able to hold up his head in Gridley again,” declared Drayne huskily.  “But I thought that it would stop his thinking of going to West Point, anyway.”

“Instead of which,” muttered Simmons dryly, “you’ll get four years—–­or more, Drayne at some place that won’t be West Point.”

“Oh, my father won’t quite stand for that,” returned Phin, a bit more loftily.  “He has money and some family pride.”

“Money doesn’t help much for confessed burglars,” rejoined Chief Simmons.

At that moment Heathcote Drayne, who had been roused out of bed by a policeman, came in, so white faced that Dick and Dave felt sorry indeed for the unhappy parent.

But Dick didn’t remain to see the meeting between father and son.  Prescott and his chum hastened around to “The Blade” office.  Gladly enough would both boys have kept Phin’s disgrace from going before the public, but it was too big a story, locally, and was bound to come out.  So Dick wrote a straight account, after which he and Dave hurried home to get the fag end of a night’s rest.

Gridley merchants lost but little, in the end, through the series of burglaries.  Most of the plunder was recovered at the junk shop.