Before the desk sergeant of a metropolitan police station friendship usually ceases. It did tonight in the Arsenal, otherwise the 33rd Precinct. By not so much as the ghost of a grin could the be-mustached official in a uniform striped by decades of service have detected even a speaking acquaintance between captors and prisoners. The “case” was Pudge O’Shay’s and he made the arraignment, Moore having subsided into a wooden arm-chair tilted against the wall. “These are the grub worms that the ’phone message was about,” announced the sparrow cop. “Mind telling me who sent in that get-your-gun alarm?” Pape asked with a naïveté that masked the effrontery of his request. The sergeant stared at him in amazement. “None of your business, you human mole.” “Then I’ll tell you,” was his easy-manner counter. “A sharp-faced little crook named Swinton Welch.” “Easy there with the hard names, young fellow! Swin Welch is a friend of mine and no person’s going to call him a crook to my face, much less a prisoner.” “Thought so,” said Pape with a grin. “If he ain’t a crook, how about the folks he’s working for?” Ignoring him, the sergeant opened the blotter. “Name?” “Peter Stansbury——” “Never heard about a little rule of ladies first, I reckon,” interrupted the officer. “If the ship was sinking you’d make the first boat, I bet. Answer up, mother.” For the first time the poke-bonneted head of the less aggressive prisoner lifted sufficiently to show the face within. “Well, I’ll be——” He was—struck dumb, if that was what he had been about to say. Next minute, however, he must have remembered that sergeants are supposed to be superior to shock. At any rate, he began the routine questions. The red, soft-curved lips of youth answered readily from the shadow of the antiquated headgear. Even “How old are you?” had no terrors for one who had voted at the last election. Her “more than twenty-one” suggested the folly of pressing the point. “Are you armed?” asked the officer in charge when the skeleton biography was completed. Jane’s startled glance at Pape told him at least that now she understood the commandeering of her automatic—that some penalty was imposed for the bearing of weapons without permit. With a word and wag of chin she replied in the negative. “Not having a matron here to search you, I’ll have to take your say-so.” The sergeant, after a meditative tug at his gray mustache, waved her back. Pape was pedigreed with scant ceremony and his answers recorded as he gave them, even to “Hotel Astor, residence.” “Frisk him, Pudge!” was the concluding order. Because Jane’s automatic was first found and placed upon the desk the more personal “hardware,” a 45 Colt snugly fitted into its arm-pit holster, was almost overlooked. The sparrow cop’s triumph on drawing it forth was weighty as his figure.