Making the rounds of the dark, thunderous subway tunnels under Manhattan’s Time Square one afternoon last week, a trackwalker was startled by the sight of a small boy lashed by wire to a steel stanchion. His hands and feet were bound, his mouth was stuffed with a gag, and his right shoe and stocking were off. He was moaning and tossing his tousled blond head.
Loosed, the boy identified himself as Ronald Davis, 12, of Long Island City. Breathlessly, he told his story. He had been on his way to school that morning when a big man—”more than six feet tall” —came up to him and said, “Sonny, would you like to have some old guns and swords and ammunition and stuff like that? Just come along with me.”
They boarded a subway, Ronald said, and got off at Times Square, where the man told him the “stuff” was down along the tracks below the platform. “Well, we climbed down, and when he got me down a little ways, he suddenly turned on me and shoved a gag in my mouth and tied me up with wire. And he took one of my shoes off so I couldn’t run so well if I got away, I guess.”
When the trackwalker said the police should be told, Ronald declared, “Sure, sure! Boy, what a tough guy! What a bandit!” But on the way to the station, the trackwalker got to thinking. Ronald had been gagged with his own handkerchief, and had tied himself up. Boy-wise policemen wormed out the rest.
Fearful of flunking a test at school that day, Ronald had figured out a new way to play hooky. His theory: “I thought Pa would be so sorry for me he’d forget about me failing.”
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