But New York reporters are up to the tricks of people who want to evade
them. At the sight of them a sentry reporter on the corner shouted a
warning which was instantly caught up and passed on by another picket
stationed half-way down the block; and around the wall of the Tombs came
pelting a flying mob of newspaper photographers and reporters, with a
choice rabble behind them. Foot passengers took up the chase, not
knowing what it was about, but sensing a free show. Truckmen halted
their teams, jumped down from their wagon seats and joined in. A
man-chase is one of the pleasantest outdoor sports that a big city like
New York can offer its people.
Fairly running now, the manacled banker and the deputy marshal shot down
the winding steps into the subway a good ten yards ahead of the foremost
pursuers. But there was one delay, while Meyers skirmished with his free
hand in his trousers pocket for a dime for the tickets, and another
before a northbound local rolled into the station. Shouted at, jeered
at, shoved this way and that, panting in gulping breaths, for he was
stout by nature and staled by lack of exercise, Mr. Trimm, with Meyers
clutching him by the arm, was fairly shot aboard one of the cars, at the
apex of a human wedge. The astonished guard sensed the situation as the
scrooging, shoving, noisy wave rolled across the platform toward the
doors which he had opened and, thrusting the officer and his prisoner
into the narrow platform space behind him, he tried to form with his
body a barrier against those who came jamming in.
It, didn't do any good. He was brushed away, protesting and blustering.
The excitement spread through the train, and men, and even women, left
their seats, overflowing the aisles.
There is no cruder thing than a city crowd, all eyes and morbid
curiosity. But Mr. Trimm didn't see the staring eyes on that ride to the
Grand Central. What he saw was many shifting feet and a hedge of legs
shutting him in closely--those and the things on his wrists. What the
eyes of the crowd saw was a small, stout man who, for all his bulk,
seemed to have dried up inside his clothes so that they bagged on him
some places and bulged others, with his head tucked on his chest, his
hat over his face and his fingers straining to hold his coat sleeves
down over a pair of steel bracelets.
Mr. Trimm gave mental thanks to a Deity whose existence he thought he
had forgotten when the gate of the train-shed clanged behind him,
shutting out the mob that had come with them all the way. Cameras had
been shoved in his face like gun muzzles, reporters had scuttled
alongside him, dodging under Meyers' fending arm to shout questions in
his ears. He had neither spoken nor looked at them. The sweat still ran
down his face, so that when finally he raised his head in the
comparative quiet of the train-shed his skin was a curious gray under
the jail paleness like the color of wet wood ashes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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