It acted like magic. An expression darted back into his face. He turned, told Roper to shut up, said something to the crowd about its being only a little misunderstanding, and walked without another word towards the doors. I walked beside him, the men made a way; a few seconds later we were in the street. Roper, who had waited to finish his drink, and was puzzled besides by the quick manœuvre, lurched at some distance after us. The two policemen, who had watched the scene through the windows, stood waiting. Boyde swayed against me when he saw them. I marched him up to the nearest one. “I make a charge of larceny against this man, and the warrant is at Mulberry Street with Detective Lawler. I am the complainant.” They told him he was under arrest, and we began our horrible little procession to the station in West 21st Street. Boyde was between the two policemen, I was next to the outside one, on the kerb, Roper came reeling in the rear, shouting abuse and threats into my face. The next time I saw Roper was in the court of General Sessions, weeks later, when Boyde was brought up for trial. By that time he had learned the truth; he came up and apologized. Boyde, he told me, had swindled him even more completely than he had swindled me. The search in the station made me sick at heart; every pocket was turned out; there was 80 dollars in cash; the sergeant used filthy language. Boyde was taken down to a cell, and I, as a newspaper reporter, was allowed to go down with him. I stayed for two hours, talking through the bars. It was two in the morning when the sergeant turned me out after a dreadful conversation, and when I reached home, to find Kay sitting up anxiously still, I was too exhausted, from cold, excitement and hunger, to tell him more than a bare outline of it all. I had to appear at eight o’clock next morning and make my formal charge against Boyde, in the Tombs Police Court--the Tombs, of all places!--and with that thought in my mind I fell asleep. CHAPTER XXIV Boyde came up with the first batch of prisoners. The portentous shadow of the Tombs prison, with its forbidding architecture, hung over the whole scene. My first sight of him was sitting among the rows of prisoners, waiting to be called. He looked ill and broken, he made a pleading sign to me. As a reporter I had the right to interview anybody and everybody, and I made my way along the serried wooden benches. Lawler sat next him, looking very pleased to have secured his prisoner, and a good story into the bargain, without any trouble to himself; but when I tried to shake hands with Boyde, I found to my horror that he was handcuffed. “Say, boss, be sure and git me name spelled right, and tell the reporters that _I_ effected the arrest,” was the first thing that Lawler said, using the phrase the detectives always used.