Following this, the ordinary procedure for him would have been to call up the East Twenty-second Street station house by telephone and report that, having made an arrest, he had seen fit to bring his prisoner direct to court; then visit the complaint clerk's office in a little cubby-hole of a room, and there swear to a short affidavit setting forth the accusation in due form; finally, file the affidavit with the magistrate's clerk and stand by to await the calling of that particular case. Strangely enough, he did none of these things. Instead, he made his way direct to the magistrate's desk inside the railing which cut the room across from side to side. The pent, close smell of the place was fit to sicken men unused to it. It commingled those odours which seem always to go with a police court--of unwashed human bodies, of iodoform, of stale fumes of alcohol, of cheap rank perfumery. Petty crime exhales an atmosphere which is peculiarly its own. This man was used to this smell. Smelling it was to him a part of the day's work--the night's work rather. The magistrate upon the bench was a young magistrate, newly appointed by the mayor to this post. Because he belonged to an old family and because his sister had married a rich man the papers loved to refer to him as the society judge. As the detective came up he was finishing a hearing which had lasted less than three minutes. "Any previous record as shown by the finger prints and the card indexes?" he was asking of the officer complainant. "Three, Your Honour," answered the man glibly. "Suspended sentence oncet, thirty days oncet, thirty days oncet again. Probation officer's report shows that this here young woman----" "Never mind that," said the magistrate; "six months." The officer and the woman who had been sentenced to six months fell back, and the detective shoved forward, putting his arms on the top of the edge of the desk to bring his head closer to the magistrate. "Your Honour," he began, speaking in a sort of confidential undertone, "could I have a word with you?" "Go ahead, Schwartzmann," said the magistrate, bending forward to hear.