By promising the man all he wanted and more besides, I managed to get us all three into a corner where we could talk without everybody else hearing; also I got the handcuffs taken off, for they were quite unnecessary inside the building. The first thing Boyde said was to beg for a drink; he had taken a lot the night before, his throat was parched, his nerves were bad. At the moment this was quite impossible, but I got one for him in the reporters’ room after his case had been called. The second thing he said was to beg me to “keep it out of the papers,” though this, of course, lay quite beyond my powers. Apart from this he said very little except to repeat and repeat that he was repentant, and to beg me to withdraw the charge, though this was now impossible, the matter being out of my hands. Also, he wondered what the sentence would be--he meant to plead guilty--and implored me to leave out the forgery. He was very badly frightened. That early morning hour in the stinking atmosphere of the over-heated police court was too ghastly ever to be forgotten, but there were particular moments when pain and pity, to say nothing of other strangely mixed emotions, stabbed me with peculiar ferocity. When the reporters flocked round him like vultures after prey was one of these; another was when Boyde stood in front of the Tammany magistrate, Ryan by name, and pleaded guilty. A mistake, though not actually wrong, had crept into the charge sheet. In my excitement of the night before the amount stolen had been entered as $32, and though this was the truth, I had meant to make it only $25. I was unintentionally to blame for this--it was now Grand Larceny instead of Petit Larceny. A magistrate could only deal with the lesser offence, and Boyde therefore was held for trial in General Sessions, instead of being sentenced then and there. The look he gave me as Ryan spoke the words was like a knife. He believed I had done this purposely. A third unforgettable moment was when he was being roughly pushed downstairs on his way to a cell in the Tombs: he looked back forlornly over his shoulder at me. In the reporters’ room it was decided to print the “Boyde story.” I knew all the men; Acton Davies was there for the _Evening Sun_, specially sent down by McCloy. The reporters dragged and tore at me. I realized what “interviewed” victims felt when they wished to hide everything away inside themselves. Yet the facts had to be told; it was best I should give them accurately, if as briefly, as leniently, as possible. The sight of all those vultures (of whom, incidentally, I was one) scribbling down busily the details of my intimate life with Boyde, to be hawked later in the streets as news, was likewise a picture not easily forgotten.