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Then Patrolman Don Dorgan sat in on the game. He decided that Polo Magenta should marry Effie. He told Polo that he would bear a message from him to the girl, and while he was meticulously selecting a cut of sausage for sandwich, he whispered to her that Polo was waiting, with his car, in the alley off Minnis Place. Aloud he bawled: “Come walk the block with me, Effie, you little divvle, if your father will let you. Mr. Kugler, it isn’t often that Don Dorgan invites the ladies to go a-walking with him, but it’s spring, and you know how it is with us wicked cops. The girl looks as if she needed a breath of fresh air. ”

“That’s r-r-r-right,” said Kugler. “You go valk a block with Mr. Dorgan, Effie, and mind you come r-r-r-right back. ”

Dorgan stood like a lion at the mouth of the alley where, beside his taxi, Polo Magenta was waiting. As he caught the cry with which Effie came to her lover, he remembered the evenings long gone when he and his own sweetheart had met in the maple lane that was now the scrofulous Minnis Place.

“Oh, Polo, I’ve just felt dead, never seeing you nowhere. ”

“Gee, it hurts, kid, to get up in the morning and have everything empty, knowing I won’t see you any time. I could run the machine off the Boulevard and end everything, my heart’s so cold without you. ”

“Oh, is it, Polo, is it really?”

“Say, we only got a couple minutes. I’ve got a look in on a partnership in a repair shop in Thornwood Addition. If I can swing it, we can beat it and get hitched, and when your old man sees I’m prospering—”

While Dorgan heard Polo’s voice grow crisp with practical hopes, he bristled and felt sick. For Kugler was coming along Minnis Place, peering ahead, hunched with suspicion. Dorgan dared not turn to warn the lovers, nor even shout.

Dorgan smiled. “Evening again,” he said. “It was a fine walk I had with Effie. Is she got back yet?”

He was standing between Kugler and the alley-mouth, his arms akimbo.

Kugler ducked under his arm, and saw Effie cuddled beside her lover, the two of them sitting on the running-board of Polo’s machine.

“Effie, you will come home now,” said the old man. There was terrible wrath in the quietness of his graybeard voice.

The lovers looked shamed and frightened.

Dorgan swaggered up toward the group. “Look here, Mr. Kugler: Polo’s a fine upstanding lad. He ain’t got no bad habits—to speak of. He’s promised me he’ll lay off the booze. He’ll make a fine man for Effie—”

“Mr. Dorgan, years I have respected you, but—Effie, you come home now,” said Kugler.

“Oh, what will I do, Mr. Dorgan?” wailed Effie. “Should I do like Papa wants I should, or should I go off with Polo?”

Dorgan respected the divine rights of love, but also he had an old-fashioned respect for the rights of parents with their offspring.

“I guess maybe you better go with your papa, Effie. I’ll talk to him—”

“Yes, you’ll talk, and everybody will talk, and I’ll be dead,” cried young Polo. “Get out of my way, all of you. ”

Already he was in the driver’s seat and backing his machine out. It went rocking round the corner.

Dorgan heard that Polo had been discharged by the taxi-company for speeding through traffic and smashing the tail-lights of another machine; then that he had got a position as private chauffeur in the suburbs, been discharged for impudence, got another position and been arrested for joy-riding with a bunch of young toughs from Little Hell. He was to be tried on the charge of stealing his employer’s machine.