The Escape of Mr. Trimm: His Plight and other PlightsCobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
General
The Escape of Mr. Trimm: His Plight and other Plights
Cobb, Irvin S. (Irvin Shrewsbury)
Crime -- Fiction; Judges -- Fiction; Short stories
Properly crushed and shrunken, the culprit departed thence with his
uniform bagged and wrinkling upon his diminished form, and the third
deputy commissioner, well pleased, on the whole, with his day's hunting,
prepared to adjourn. The two lone reporters got up and made for the
door, intending to telephone in to their two shops the grand total and
final summary of old Donohue's bag of game.
They were at the door, in a little press of departing witnesses and late
defendants, when behind them a word in Donohue's hard-rolled official
accents made them halt and turn round. The veteran had picked up from
his desk a sheet of paper and was squinting up his hedgy, thick eyebrows
in an effort to read what was written there.
"Wan more case to be heard," he announced. "Keep order there, you men at
the door! The case of Lieutenant Isidore Weil"--he grated the name out
lingeringly--"charged with--with----" He broke off, peering about him
for some one to scold. "Couldn't you be makin' a light here, some of
you! I can't see to make out these here charges and specifications."
Some one bestirred himself and many lights popped on, chasing the
shadows back into the far corners. Outside in the hall a policeman doing
duty as a bailiff called the name of Lieutenant Isidore Weil, thrice
repeated.
"Gee! Have they landed that slick kike at last?" said La Farge, the
older of the reporters, half to himself. "Say, you know, that tickles
me! I've been looking this long time for something like this to be
coming off." Like most old headquarters reporters, La Farge had his
deep-seated prejudices. To judge by his present expression, this was a
very deep-seated one, amounting, you might say, to a constitutional
infirmity with La Farge.
"Who's Weil and what's he done?" inquired Rogers. Rogers was a young
reporter.
"I don't know yet--the charge must be newly filed, I guess," said La
Farge, answering the last question first. "But I hope they nail him! I
don't like him--never did. He's too fresh. He's too smart--one of those
self-educated East Side Yiddishers, you know. Used to be a court
interpreter down at Essex Market--knows about steen languages. And
he--here he comes now."
Weil passed them, going into the trial room--a short, squarely built man
with oily black hair above a dark, round face. Instantly you knew him
for one of the effusive Semitic type; every angle and turn of his
outward aspect testified frankly of his breed and his sort. And at sight
of him entering you could almost see the gorge of Deputy Commissioner
Donohue's race antagonism rising inside of him. His gray hackles
stiffened and his thick-set eyebrows bristled outward like bits of
frosted privet. Again he began whetting his forefinger on the leather
back of the closed docket book. It was generally a bad sign for somebody
when Donohue whetted his forefinger like that, and La Farge would have
delighted to note it. But La Farge's appraising eyes were upon the
accused.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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