«Case No. 99,852,743.»
Up stepped a plain–clothes man—there were lots of 'em there, dressed exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around just like cops do on earth—and by the arm he dragged—whom, do you think? Why, Liz!
The court officer took her inside and closed the door. I went up to Mr. Fly–Cop and inquired about the case.
«A very sad one,» says he, laying the points of his manicured fingers together. «An utterly incorrigible girl. I am Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was assigned to me. The girl murdered her fiance and committed suicide. She had no defense. My report to the court relates the facts in detail, all of which are substantiated by reliable witnesses. The wages of sin is death. Praise the Lord.»
The court officer opened the door and stepped out.
«Poor girl,» said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones, with a tear in his eye. «It was one of the saddest cases that I ever met with. Of course she was»—
«Discharged,» said the court officer. «Come here, Jonesy. First thing you know you'll be switched to the pot–pie squad. How would you like to be on the missionary force in the South Sea Islands—hey? Now, you quit making these false arrests, or you'll be transferred—see? The guilty party you've got to look for in this case is a red–haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by the window reading, in his stocking feet, while his children play in the streets. Get a move on you.»
Now, wasn't that a silly dream?
ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS
Somewhere in the depths of the big city, where the unquiet dregs are forever being shaken together, young Murray and the Captain had met and become friends. Both were at the lowest ebb possible to their fortunes; both had fallen from at least an intermediate Heaven of respectability and importance, and both were typical products of the monstrous and peculiar social curriculum of their overweening and bumptious civic alma mater.
The captain was no longer a captain. One of those sudden moral cataclysms that sometimes sweep the city had hurled him from a high and profitable position in the Police Department, ripping off his badge and buttons and washing into the hands of his lawyers the solid pieces of real estate that his frugality had enabled him to accumulate. The passing of the flood left him low and dry. One month after his dishabilitation a saloon–keeper plucked him by the neck from his free–lunch counter as a tabby plucks a strange kitten from her nest, and cast him asphaltward. This seems low enough. But after that he acquired a pair of cloth top, button Congress gaiters and wrote complaining letters to the newspapers. And then he fought the attendant at the Municipal Lodging House who tried to give him a bath. When Murray first saw him he was holding the hand of an Italian woman who sold apples and garlic on Essex street, and quoting the words of a song book ballad.
Murray's fall had been more Luciferian, if less spectacular. All the pretty, tiny little kickshaws of Gotham had once been his. The megaphone man roars out at you to observe the house of his uncle on a grand and revered avenue. But there had been an awful row about something, and the prince had been escorted to the door by the butler, which, in said avenue, is equivalent to the impact of the avuncular shoe. A weak Prince Hal, without inheritance or sword, he drifted downward to meet his humorless Falstaff, and to pick the crusts of the streets with him.
One evening they sat on a bench in a little downtown park. The great bulk of the Captain, which starvation seemed to increase—drawing irony instead of pity to his petitions for aid—was heaped against the arm of the bench in a shapeless mass. His red face, spotted by tufts of vermilion, week–old whiskers and topped by a sagging white straw hat, looked, in the gloom, like one of those structures that you may observe in a dark Third avenue window, challenging your imagination to say whether it be something recent in the way of ladies' hats or a strawberry shortcake. A tight–drawn belt—last relic of his official spruceness—made a deep furrow in his circumference. The Captain's shoes were buttonless. In a smothered bass he cursed his star of ill–luck.
Murray, at his side, was shrunk into his dingy and ragged suit of blue serge. His hat was pulled low; he sat quiet and a little indistinct, like some ghost that had been dispossessed.
«I'm hungry,» growled the Captain — «by the top sirloin of the Bull of Bashan, I'm starving to death. Right now I could eat a Bowery restaurant clear through to the stovepipe in the alley. Can't you think of nothing, Murray? You sit there with your shoulders scrunched up, giving an imitation of Reginald Vanderbilt driving his coach—what good are them airs doing you now? Think of some place we can get something to chew.»
«You forget, my dear Captain,» said Murray, without moving, «that our last attempt at dining was at my suggestion.»
«You bet it was,» groaned the Captain, «you bet your life it was. Have you got any more like that to make—hey?»
«I admit we failed,» sighed Murray. «I was sure Malone would be good for one more free lunch after the way he talked baseball with me the last time I spent a nickel in his establishment.»
«I had this hand,» said the Captain, extending the unfortunate member — «I had this hand on the drumstick of a turkey and two sardine sandwiches when them waiters grabbed us.»
«I was within two inches of the olives,» said Murray. «Stuffed olives. I haven't tasted one in a year.»
«What'll we do?» grumbled the Captain. «We can't starve.»
«Can't we?» said Murray quietly. «I'm glad to hear that. I was afraid we could.»
«You wait here,» said the Captain, rising, heavily and puffily to his feet. «I'm going to try to make one more turn. You stay here till I come back, Murray. I won't be over half an hour. If I turn the trick I'll come back flush.»
He made some elephantine attempts at smartening his appearance. He gave his fiery mustache a heavenward twist; he dragged into sight a pair of black–edged cuffs, deepened the crease in his middle by tightening his belt another hole, and set off, jaunty as a zoo rhinoceros, across the south end of the park.
When he was out of sight Murray also left the park, hurrying swiftly eastward. He stopped at a building whose steps were flanked by two green lights.
«A police captain named Maroney,» he said to the desk sergeant, «was dismissed from the force after being tried under charges three years ago. I believe sentence was suspended. Is this man wanted now by the police?»
«Why are ye asking?» inquired the sergeant, with a frown.
«I thought there might be a reward standing,» explained Murray, easily. «I know the man well. He seems to be keeping himself pretty shady at present. I could lay my hands on him at any time. If there should be a reward — »
«There's no reward,» interrupted the sergeant, shortly. «The man's not wanted. And neither are ye. So, get out. Ye are frindly with um, and ye would be selling um. Out with ye quick, or I'll give ye a start.»
Murray gazed at the officer with serene and virtuous dignity.
«I would be simply doing my duty as a citizen and gentleman,» he said, severely, «if I could assist the law in laying hold of one of its offenders.»
Murray hurried back to the bench in the park. He folded his arms and shrank within his clothes to his ghost–like presentment.
Ten minutes afterward the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy and thunderous as a dog–day in Kansas. His collar had been torn away; his straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with ox–blood stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he was drenched with some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly proclaimed to the nose its component leaven of garlic and kitchen stuff.