"Well, Brennan, are you quite sure, are you prepared to swear that when you were kicking Mrs. Muscovitz about this gentleman did not knock you down as you deserved--as any real man would have done?" "I didn't kick the woman," Brennan said. "That's not the question. Are you sure it wasn't Professor Longman who laid you out?" For a moment Brennan hesitated. It was hard for him to believe that Yetta had knocked him senseless. He knew that Braun was trying to catch him in a perjury. And he had a guilty conscience. "If it was him that hit me," he roared, "I'll have him sent up. I was doing my duty." "Officer," the judge said, "see that this man does not leave the room." "It is a useless precaution, Your Honor," Braun said. "Professor Longman was nowhere in the neighborhood. But I think it is quite clear that Brennan does not know who or what hit him." The reporter who had come with them, not being regularly detailed to the court, was not afraid to laugh out loud. "I have no other questions to ask," Braun went on. "Will the Court have the defendant's account of what happened?" The oath was administered to Yetta and she told the story, which Braun had taught her, more calmly and simply than most people tell the truth. The judge did not believe that a person who had just committed a murderous assault could be so cool under the charge. He knew Brennan, and that he was probably lying now. He himself had slipped on the wet pavement that morning, his motor had skidded on the way downtown. He believed Yetta. He had generally believed the strikers against whom Brennan and the other "private detectives" had testified, but, knowing just what was expected of him by those on whom he depended for advancement, he had sent the other girls to jail. He twirled his pencil a moment, asking her a few inconsequential questions, and regretfully came to the conclusion that he could not possibly hold her on the assault charge. "Are there any other witnesses?" he asked. "Mrs. Muscovitz, who was picketing with the defendant, is here," Braun said. "She tells me exactly the same story. She will tell it to the Court if Your Honor so directs. But it seems rather a waste of time. There is no case against my client. Brennan has shown the Court that he doesn't know what hit him. Look at the two of them, Your Honor. If you think that any twelve men on earth will believe that this slip of a girl assaulted the complainant, you can of course hold her for the Grand Jury. But I ask the Court to discharge the defendant." "Not so fast, Mr. Braun," the judge snapped. "Even admitting the truth of her improbable story--which I very much question--admitting there is insufficient evidence to hold her on the assault charge, she confesses to disorderly conduct in interfering with an officer who was making an arrest. Clerk, make out a charge of disorderly conduct. I suppose you'll swear to the complaint, Brennan."