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“Yes. ”

“When you get through here, meet me in that hallway behint Mullins’ Casino. So long, boy. ”

“So long, Dad. ”

When Polo came to him in the hallway behind Mullins’ Casino, Dorgan demanded: “I been thinking; have you seen old Kugler?”

“Ain’t dared to lay an eye on him, Dad. Trouble enough without stirrin’ up more. Gettin’ diplomatic. ”

“I been thinking. Sometimes the most diplomatic thing a guy can do is to go right to the point and surprise ’em. Come on. ”

They came into Kugler’s shop, without parley or trembling; and Dorgan’s face was impassive, as befits a patrolman, as he thrust open the door and bellowed “Evenin’!” at the horrified old Jewish scholar and the maid.

Don Dorgan laid his hands on the counter and spoke.

“Kugler,” said he, “you’re going to listen to me, because if you don’t, I’ll wreck the works. You’ve spoiled four lives. You’ve made this boy a criminal, forbidding him a good, fine love, and now you’re planning to keep him one. You’ve kilt Effie the same way— look at the longing in the poor little pigeon’s face! You’ve made me an unhappy old man. You’ve made yourself, that’s meanin’ to be good and decent, unhappy by a row with your own flesh and blood. Some said I been off me nut, Kugler, but I know I been out beyont, where they understand everything and forgive everything—and I’ve learnt that it’s harder to be bad than to be good, that you been working harder to make us all unhappy than you could of to make us all happy. ”

Dorgan’s gaunt, shabby bigness seemed to swell and fill the shop; his voice boomed and his eyes glowed with a will unassailable.

The tyrant Kugler was wordless, and he listened with respect as Dorgan went on, more gently:

“You’re a godly man among the sinners, but that’s made you think you must always be right. Are you willing to kill us all just to prove you can’t never be wrong? Man, man, that’s a fiendish thing to do. And oh, how much easier it would be to give way, onct, and let this poor cold boy creep home to the warmness that he do be longing so for, with the blizzard bitter around him, and every man’s hand ag’in’ him. Look—look at them poor, good children!”

Kugler looked, and he beheld Polo and Effie—still separated by the chill marble counter—with their hands clasped across it, their eyes met in utter frankness.

“Vell—” said Kugler wistfully.

“So!” said Patrolman Dorgan. “Well, I must be back on me beat—at the asylum … There’s things that’d bear watching there!”