Closely hyphenated together the deep blue figure and the bright pink one
rounded the corner and were alone. It was time to open the overtures
which would establish Patrolman Switzer upon the basis of a better
understanding of things. Mr. Leary, craning his neck in order to look
rearward into the face of his custodian, spoke in a key very different
from the one he had last employed.
"I really didn't intend, you know, to resist you, officer. I had a
private purpose in what I did. And you were quite within your rights.
And I'm very grateful to you--really I am--for driving those people
away."
"Is that so?" The inflection was grimly and heavily sarcastic.
"Yes. I am a lawyer by profession, and generally speaking I know what
your duties are. I merely made a show--a pretence, as it were--of
resisting you, in order to get away from that mob. It was--ahem--it was
a device on my part--in short, a trick."
"Is that so? Fixin' to try to beg off now, huh? Well, nothin' doin'!
Nothin' doin'! I don't know whether you're a fancy nut or a plain souse
or what-all, but whatever you are you're under arrest and you're goin'
with me."
"That's exactly what I desire to do," resumed the schemer. "I desire
most earnestly to go with you."
"You're havin' your wish, ain't you? Well, then, the both of us should
oughter be satisfied."
"I feel sure," continued the wheedling and designing Mr. Leary, "that as
soon as we reach the station house I can make satisfactory atonement to
you for my behaviour just now and can explain everything to your
superiors in charge there, and then----"
"Station house!" snorted Patrolman Switzer. "Why, say, you ain't headin'
for no station house. The crowd that's over there where you're headin'
for should be grateful to me for bringin' you in. You'll be a treat to
them, and it's few enough pleasures some of them gets----"
A new, a horrid doubt assailed Mr. Leary's sorely taxed being. He began
to have a dread premonition that all was not going well and his brain
whirled anew.
"But I prefer to be taken to the station house," he began.
"And who are you to be preferrin' anything at all?" countered Switzer.
"I'll phone back to the station where I am and what I've done; though
that part of it's no business of yours. I'll be doin' that after I've
arrainged you over to Jefferson Market."
"Jeff--Jefferson Market!"
"Sure, 'tis to Jefferson Market night court you're headin' this minute.
Where else? They're settin' late over there to-night; the magistrate is
expectin' some raids somewheres about daylight, I dope it. Anyhow,
they're open yet; I know that. So it'll be me and you for Jefferson
Market inside of five minutes; and I'm thinkin' you'll get quite a
reception."
Jefferson Market! Mr. Leary could picture the rows upon rows of gloating
eyes. He heard the incredulous shout that would mark his entrance, the
swell of unholy glee from the benches that would interrupt the
proceedings. He saw stretched upon the front pages of the early editions
of the afternoon yellows the glaring black-faced headlines:
WELL-KNOWN LAWYER
CLAD IN PINK ROMPERS
HALED TO NIGHT COURT
He saw--but Switzer's next remark sent a fresh shudder of apprehension
through him, caught all again, as he was, in the coils of accursed
circumstance.
"Magistrate Voris will be gettin' sleepy what with waitin' for them
raids to be pulled off, and I make no doubt the sight of you will put
him in a good humour."
And Magistrate Voris was his rival for the favours of Miss Milly
Hollister! And Magistrate Voris was a person with a deformed sense of
humour! And Magistrate Voris was sitting in judgment this moment at
Jefferson Market night court. And now desperation, thrice compounded,
rent the soul of the trapped victim of his own misaimed subterfuge.
"I won't be taken to any night court!" he shouted, wresting himself
toward the edge of the sidewalk and dragging his companion along with
him. "I won't go there! I demand to be taken to a station house. I'm a
sick man and I require the services of a doctor."
"Startin' to be rough-house all over again, huh?" grunted Switzer
vindictively. "Well, we'll see about that part of it, too--right now!"
Surrendering his lowermost clutch, the one in the silken seat of the
suit of his writhing prisoner, he fumbled beneath the tails of his
overcoat for the disciplinary nippers that were in his righthand rear
trousers pocket.
With a convulsive twist of his body Mr. Leary jerked himself free of the
mittened grip upon his neckband, and as, released, he gave a deerlike
lunge forward for liberty he caromed against a burdened ash can upon the
curbstone and sent it spinning backward; then recovering sprang onward
and outward across the gutter in flight. In the same instant he heard
behind him a crash of metal and a solid thud, heard a sound as of a
scrambling solid body cast abruptly prone, heard the name of Deity
profaned, and divined without looking back that the ash can,
conveniently rolling between the plump legs of the personified Arm of
the Law, had been Officer Switzer's undoing, and might be his salvation.