The Greatest Christmas Murder Mysteries & Thrillers. Джером К. Джером
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it. Here we are!"
They got out upon an upper floor and crossed the hall. On their left a matron was arranging rows of tiny chairs in a small school-room or nursery. At any other time the Lost Children's Room might have aroused a flicker of interest in McAllister, but he felt none whatever in it now. Tom opened a door and pushed the clubman gently into a small, low-ceiled chamber. Charts and diagrams of the human cranium hung on one wall, while a score of painted eyes, each of a different color, and each bearing a technical appellation and a number, stared from the other. Upon a small square platform, about eight inches in height, stood a half-clad Italian congealed with terror and expecting momentarily to receive a shock of electricity. The slender young man was rapidly measuring his hands and feet and calling out the various dimensions to an assistant, who recorded them upon a card. This accomplished, he ordered his victim down from the block, seated him unceremoniously in a chair, and with a pair of shining instruments gauged the depth of his skull from front to rear, its width between the cheekbones, and the length of the ears, describing all the while the other features in brief terms to his associate.
"Now off with you!" he ejaculated. "Here, lug this Greaser in and mug him."
The officer in the case haled the Italian, shrieking, into another room.
"Ah, Fatty!" remarked the slender man. "I trust you won't object to these little formalities? Take off that left shoe, if you please."
McAllister's soul had shrivelled within him. His powers of thought had been annihilated. Mechanically he removed the shoe in question and placed his foot upon the block. The young man quickly measured it.
"Now get up there and rest your hand on the board."
McAllister observed that the table bore the painted outline of a human hand. He did as he was told unquestioningly. The other measured his forefinger and the length of his forearm.
"All right. Now sit down and let me tickle your head for a moment."
The operator took the silver calipers which had just been used upon the Italian and ran them thoughtfully forward and back above the clubman's organs of hearing.
"By George, you've got a big head!" remarked the measurer. "Prominent, Roman nose. No. 4 eyes. Thank you. Just step into the next room, will you, and be mugged?"
McAllister drew on his shoe and followed Tom into the adjoining chamber of horrors.
"No tricks, now!" commented the officer in charge of the instrument.
Snap! went the camera.
"Turn sideways."
Snap!
"That's all."
The clubman staggered to his feet. He entirely failed to appreciate the extent of the indignity which had been practised upon him. It was hours before he realized that he had actually been measured and photographed as a criminal, and that, to his dying hour and beyond, these insignia of his shame would remain locked in the custody of the police.
"Where now?" he asked.
"Time to go over to court," answered Tom. "The wagon'll be waitin' for us. But first we'll drop in on Sheridan—record-room man, you know."
"Isn't there some way I can see the Commissioner?" inquired McAllister.
Tom burst into a roar of laughter.
"You have got a gall!" he commented, thumping his prisoner good-naturedly in the middle of the back. "The Commissioner! Ho-ho! That's a good one! I guess we'll have to make it the Warden. Come on, now, and quit yer joshin'."
Once more they entered the main room, where the detectives were congregated. The Inspector was still at it. There had been a big haul the night before. He intended running all the crooks out of town by New Year's Day. Tom shoved McAllister through the crush, across an adjoining room and finally into a tiny office. A young man with a genial countenance was sitting at a desk by the single window. He looked up as they crossed the threshold.
"Hello, Welch! How goes it? Let's see, how long is it since you were here?"
Somehow this quiet, gentlemanly fellow with his confident method of address, telling you just who you were, irritated McAllister to the explosive point.
"I'm not Welch!" he cried indignantly.
"Ha-ha!" laughed Mr. Sheridan. "Pray who are you?"
"You'll find out soon enough!" answered McAllister sullenly.
"Look here," remarked the other, "don't imagine you can bluff us. If you think you are not Welch, perhaps I can persuade you to change your mind."
He turned to an officer who stood in the doorway of a large vault.
"Bring 2,208, if you please."
The officer pulled out a drawer, removed a long linen envelope, and spread out its contents upon the desk. These were fifteen or twenty newspaper clippings, at least one of which was embellished with an evil-looking wood-cut.
"Let's see," continued Mr. Sheridan. "You began with a year up the river. Took a pearl pin from a man named McAllister. Then you turned several tricks in Chicago, St. Louis, Buffalo and Philadelphia, and got away with it every time. Have we got you right?"
McAllister ground his teeth.
"You have not!" said he.
"Look at yourself," continued the other. "There's your face. You can't deny it. I wonder the Inspector didn't have you measured and photographed the first time you were settled. Still, the picture's enough."
He handed the clubman a newspaper clipping containing a visage which undeniably resembled the features which the latter saw daily in his mirror. McAllister wearily shook his head.
"Well," said the expert, "of course you don't have to tell us anything unless you want to. We've got you right—that's enough."
He pushed the clippings back into the envelope, handed it to the officer, and turned away.
"Come on!" ordered Tom.
Once more McAllister and his mentor availed themselves of the only free transportation offered by the city government, that of the patrol wagon, and were soon deposited at the side entrance of the Jefferson Market police court. A group of curious idlers watched their descent and disappearance into what must have at all times seemed to them a concrete and ever-present temporal Avernus. The why and wherefore of these erratic trips were, of course, unknown to McAllister. Presumably he must be some rara avis of crime whose feet had been caught inadvertently in the limed twig set by the official fowler for more homely poultry. Fatty Welch, whoever he might be, apparently enjoyed the respect incident to success in any line of human endeavor. It seemed likewise that his presence was much desired in the sister city of Philadelphia, in which direction the clubman had a vague fear of being unwillingly transported. He did not, of course, realize that he was held primarily as a violator of the law of his own State, and hence must answer to the charge in the magistrate's court nearest the locus of his supposed offence.
Inside the station house Tom held a few moments' converse with one of its grizzled guardians, and then led our hero along a passage and opened a door. But here McAllister shrank back. It was his first sight of that great cosmopolitan institution, the police court. Before him lay the scene of which he had so often read in the newspapers. The big room with its Gothic windows was filled to overflowing with every variety of the human species, who not only taxed the seating capacity of the benches to the utmost, but near the doors were packed into a solid, impenetrable mass. Upon a platform behind a desk a square-jawed man with chin-whiskers disposed rapidly of the file of defendants brought before him.
A long line of officers, each with one or more prisoners, stood upon the judge's left, and as fast as the business of one was concluded the next pushed forward. McAllister perceived that at best only a few moments could elapse before he was brought to face the charge against him, and that he must make up his mind quickly what course of action to pursue. As he stepped down from the doorway there was a perceptible flutter among the spectators. Several hungry-looking men with note-books opened