Part 30

"No wonder," he said, "old Meagher never has any luck--he wears his horseshoe upside down on his face!"

Just as the two reporters, re-entering, took their seats the trial deputy spoke.

"Is that all, Captain Meagher?" he asked sonorously.

"That's all," said Meagher.

"I note," went on Donohue, glancing about him, "that the accused does not appear to be represented by counsel."

A man on trial at headquarters has the right to hire a lawyer to defend him.

"No, sir," spoke up Weil briskly. "I've got no lawyer, commissioner." His speech was the elaborated and painfully emphasized English of the self-taught East Sider. It carried in it just the bare suggestion of the racial lisp, and it made an acute contrast to the menacing Hibernian purr of Donohue's heavier voice. "I kind of thought I'd conduct my own case myself."

Donohue merely grunted.

"Do you desire, Lieutenant Weil, for to ask Captain Meagher any questions?" he demanded.

Weil shook his oily head of hair.

"No, sir. I wouldn't wish to ask the captain anything."

"Are there any other witnesses?" inquired Donohue next.

There was no answer. Plainly there were no other witnesses.

"Lieutenant Weil, do you desire for to say something in your own behalf?" queried the deputy commissioner.

"I think I'd like to," answered Weil.

He stood to be sworn, took the chair Meagher vacated and sat facing the room, appearing--so La Farge thought--more shamefaced and abashed than ever.

"Now, then," commanded Donohue impressively, "what statement, if any, have you to make, Lieutenant Weil, touchin' on this here charge preferred by your superior officer?"

Weil cleared his throat. Rogers figured that this bespoke embarrassment; but, to the biased understanding of the hostile La Farge, there was something falsely theatrical even in the way Weil cleared his throat.

"Once a grandstander always a grandstander!" he muttered derisively.

"What did you say?" whispered Rogers.

"Nothing," replied La Farge--"just thinking out loud. Listen to what Foxy Issy has to say for himself."

"Well, sir, commissioner," began the accused, "this here thing happens last Thursday, just as Captain Meagher is telling you." He had slipped already into the policeman's trick of detailing a past event in the present tense.

"It's late in the afternoon--round five o'clock I guess--and I'm downstairs in the Detective Bureau alone."

"Alone, you say?" broke in Donohue, emphasizing the word as though the admission scored a point against the man on trial.

"Yes, sir, I'm alone. It happens that everybody else is out and I'm in temporary charge, as you might say. It's getting along toward dark when Patrolman Morgan, who's on duty out in the hall, comes in and says to me there's a woman outside who can't talk English and he can't make out what she wants. So I tells him to bring her in. She comes in. Right away I see she's a Ginney--an Italian," he corrected himself hurriedly. "She's got a child with her--a little boy about two years old."

"Describe this here woman!" ordered Donohue, who loved to drag in details at a trial, not so much for the sake of the details themselves as to show his skill as a cross-examiner.

"Well, sir," complied Weil, "I should say she's about twenty-five years old. It's hard to tell about those Italian women, but I should say she's about twenty-five--or maybe twenty-six. She's got no figure at all and she's dressed poor. But she's got a pretty face--big brown eyes and----"

"That will do," interrupted the deputy commissioner--"that will do for that. I take it you're not qualifyin' here for a beauty expert, Lieutenant Weil!" he added with elaborate sarcasm.