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But when he spoke it was not to Mallard but to the sweeper.

“Look here, Mel Harris,” he said; “you call yourself a purty good Amurican, don’t you?”

“You bet your life I do!” was the answer. “Ain’t I got a boy in camp soldierin’?”

“Well, I got two there myself,” said the policeman; “but that ain’t the question now. I see you’ve got a kind of a little bruised place there on your head. Now then, as a good Amurican tryin’ to do your duty to your country at all times, I want you to tell me how you come by that there bruise. Did somebody mebbe hit you, or as a matter of fact ain’t it the truth that you jest slipped on a piece of banana peelin’ or something of that nature, and fell up against the door jamb of that lunch room out yonder?”

For a moment the sweeper stared at his interrogator, dazed. Then a grin of appreciation bisected his homely red-streaked face.

“Why, it was an accident, officer,” he answered. “I slipped down and hit my own self a wallop, jest like you said. Anyway, it don’t amount to nothin’.”

“You seen what happened, didn’t you?” went on the policeman, addressing the station master. “It was a pure accident, wasn’t it?”

“That’s what it was–a pure accident,” stated the station master.

“Then, to your knowledge, there wasn’t no row of any sort occurring round here to-night?” went on the policeman.

“Not that I heard of.”

“Well, if there had a-been you’d a-heard of it, wouldn’t you?”

“Sure I would!”

“That’s good,” said the policeman. He jabbed a gloved thumb toward the two witnesses. “Then, see here, Harris! Bein’ as it was an accident pure and simple and your own fault besides, nobody–no outsider–couldn’t a-had nothin’ to do with your gettin’ hurt, could he?”

“Not a thing in the world,” replied Harris.

“Not a thing in the world,” echoed the station master.

“And you ain’t got any charge to make against anybody for what was due to your own personal awkwardness, have you?” suggested the blue-coated prompter.

“Certainly I ain’t!” disclaimed Harris almost indignantly.

Mallard broke in: “You can’t do this–you men,” he declared hoarsely. “I struck that man and I’m glad I did strike him–damn him! I wish I’d killed him. I’m willing to take the consequences. I demand that you make a report of this case to your superior officer.”

As though he had not heard him–as though he did not know a fourth person was present–the policeman, looking right past Mallard with a levelled, steady, contemptuous gaze, addressed the other two. His tone was quite casual, and yet somehow he managed to freight his words with a scorn too heavy to be expressed in mere words:

“Boys,” he said, “it seems-like to me the air in this room is so kind of foul that it ain’t fitten for good Amuricans to be breathin’ it. So I’m goin’ to open up this here door and see if it don’t purify itself–of its own accord.”

He stepped back and swung the door wide open; then stepped over and joined the station master and the sweeper. And there together they all three stood without a word from any one of them as the fourth man, with his face deadly white now where before it had been a passionate red, and his head lolling on his breast, though he strove to hold it rigidly erect, passed silently out of the little office. Through the opened door the trio with their eyes followed him while he crossed the concrete floor of the concourse and passed through a gate. They continued to watch until he had disappeared in the murk, going toward where a row of parked sleepers stood at the far end of the train shed.

* * * * *

Yet another policeman is to figure in this recital of events. This policeman’s name is Caleb Waggoner and this Caleb Waggoner was and still is the night marshal in a small town in Iowa on the Missouri River. He is one-half the police force of the town, the other half being a constable who does duty in the daytime. Waggoner suffers from an affection which in a large community might prevent him from holding such a job as the one he does hold. He has an impediment of the speech which at all times causes him to stammer badly. When he is excited it is only by a tremendous mental and physical effort and after repeated endeavours that he can form the words at all. In other regards he is a first-rate officer, sober, trustworthy and kindly.