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Guilty As Charged
by
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.
“Listen!” he said under his breath to Rogers. “I think they must have the goods on Mister Wisenheimer at last. Usually he’s the cockiest person round this building. Now take a look at him.”
Indeed, there was a visible air of self-abasement about Lieutenant Weil as he crossed the wide chamber. It was a thing hard to define in words; yet undeniably there was a diffidence and a reluctance manifest in him, as though a sense of guilt wrestled with the man’s natural conceit and assurance.
“Rogers,” said La Farge, “let’s hustle out and ‘phone in what we’ve got and then come back right away. If this fellow’s going to get the harpoon stuck into him I want to be on hand when he starts bleeding.”
Only a few of the dwindled crowd turned back to hear the beginning of the case, whatever it might be, against the Jew. The rest scattered through the corridors, heading mainly for the exits, so that the two newspaper men had company as they hurried toward the main door, making for their offices across the street. When they came back the long cross halls were almost deserted; it had taken them a little longer to finish the job of telephoning than they had figured. At the door of the trial room stood one bulky blue figure. It was the acting bailiff.
“How far along have they got?” asked La Farge as the policeman made way for them to pass in.
“Captain Meagher is the first witness,” said the policeman. “He’s the one that’s makin’ the charge.”
“What is the charge?” put in Rogers.
“At this distance I couldn’t make out–Cap Meagher, he mumbles so,” confessed the doorkeeper. “Somethin’ about misuse of police property, I take it to be.”
“Aha!” gloated La Farge in his gratification. “Come on, Rogers–I don’t want to miss any of this.”
It was plain, however, that they had missed something; for, to judge by his attitude, Captain Meagher was quite through with his testimony. He still sat in the witness chair alongside the deputy commissioner’s desk; but he was silent and he stared vacantly at vacancy. Captain Meagher was known in the department as a man incredibly honest and unbelievably dull. He had no more imagination than one of his own reports. He had a long, sad face, like a tired workhorse’s, and heavy black eyebrows that curved high in the middle and arched downward at each end–circumflexes accenting the incurable stupidity of his expression. His black mustache drooped the same way, too, in the design of an inverted magnet. Larry Magee had coined one of his best whimsies on the subject of the shape of the captain’s mustache.
“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.”