Mystery and detective stories; Short stories; Single men -- Fiction; Valets -- Fiction
"Look at yourself," continued the other. "There's your face. You can't
deny it. I wonder the Inspector didn't have you measured and
photographed the first time you were settled. Still, the picture's
enough."
He handed the clubman a newspaper clipping containing a visage which
undeniably resembled the features which the latter saw daily in his
mirror. McAllister wearily shook his head.
"Well," said the expert, "of course you don't have to tell us anything
unless you want to. We've got you right--that's enough."
He pushed the clippings back into the envelope, handed it to the
officer, and turned away.
"Come on!" ordered Tom.
Once more McAllister and his mentor availed themselves of the only free
transportation offered by the city government, that of the patrol wagon,
and were soon deposited at the side entrance of the Jefferson Market
police court. A group of curious idlers watched their descent and
disappearance into what must have at all times seemed to them a concrete
and ever-present temporal Avernus. The why and wherefore of these
erratic trips were, of course, unknown to McAllister. Presumably he must
be some _rara avis_ of crime whose feet had been caught inadvertently in
the limed twig set by the official fowler for more homely poultry.
Fatty Welch, whoever he might be, apparently enjoyed the respect
incident to success in any line of human endeavor. It seemed likewise
that his presence was much desired in the sister city of Philadelphia,
in which direction the clubman had a vague fear of being unwillingly
transported. He did not, of course, realize that he was held primarily
as a violator of the law of his own State, and hence must answer to the
charge in the magistrate's court nearest the locus of his supposed
offence.
Inside the station house Tom held a few moments' converse with one of
its grizzled guardians, and then led our hero along a passage and opened
a door. But here McAllister shrank back. It was his first sight of that
great cosmopolitan institution, the police court. Before him lay the
scene of which he had so often read in the newspapers. The big room with
its Gothic windows was filled to overflowing with every variety of the
human species, who not only taxed the seating capacity of the benches to
the utmost, but near the doors were packed into a solid, impenetrable
mass. Upon a platform behind a desk a square-jawed man with
chin-whiskers disposed rapidly of the file of defendants brought before
him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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