California, Southern -- Fiction; Motion picture industry -- Fiction; Petroleum industry and trade -- Fiction; Political fiction
So there was another job for Bunny. He didn’t know quite how to set
about it, and Dad was on the way to Paradise, and could not be
consulted. Bunny went to see Dad’s lawyer, Mr. Dolliver, a keen-witted,
soft-spoken gentleman who had no sympathy with reds, but, like all
lawyers, was prepared for any weird trouble his wealthy clients might
bring along. He called up police headquarters and ascertained that the
self-confessed socialistic agitator was to be arraigned the following
day; bail would be set at that time, and it would be up to Bunny to have
the cash on hand, or real estate to twice the amount. Bunny said he
wanted to see the prisoner, and Mr. Dolliver said he knew the chief of
police, and might be able to arrange it.
He wrote a note, and Bunny went over to the dingy old building which had
been erected to serve a city of fifty thousand, and was now serving one
of a million. The chief proved to be a burly person in civilian
clothing, smelling strongly of civilian whiskey; he requested Bunny to
sit down, and summoned a couple of detectives, and began an obvious
effort to find out all that Bunny knew about Chaim Menzies, and Bunny’s
ideas, and Chaim’s ideas. And Bunny, who was growing up fast in an ugly
world, gave a carefully phrased exposition of the difference between the
right and left wings of the Socialist movement. Finding that he could
not be trapped into indiscretions, and knowing that he was a
millionaire’s son, and could not be thrown into a cell, the chief gave
him up, and told one of the detectives to take him in to see the
prisoner.
So Bunny got a glimpse of his city’s jail. The old building was cracked,
and had been condemned as a menace to life by half a dozen successive
commissions; nevertheless, here it was, a monument to the greed of real
estate speculators, who cared nothing about a city’s good name, provided
only its tax-rate were low. The mouldy old place stank, and if you
looked carefully, you might see vermin crawling on the walls. The
prisoners were confined in a number of “tanks,” which were steel-barred
cages holding thirty or forty men each, with no ray of daylight, and not
enough artificial light to enable anyone to read. This city, so oddly
named “Angel,” appeared anxious to cultivate all possible vices in its
victims, for it provided them no reading matter, and no exercise or
recreation, but permitted them to have cards, dice and cigarettes—and
the jailers secretly smuggled in whiskey and cocaine to such as had
money for bribes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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