The sergeant wrote. Then he said: "Age?"
No answer from Susan. Black Mustache answered for her: "About twenty-two now."
"She don"t look it," said the sergeant, almost at ease once more. "But brunettes stands the racket better"n blondes.
Native parents?"
No answer.
"Native. You don"t look Irish or Dutch or Dago--though you might have a dash of the Spinnitch or the Frog-eaters. Ever arrested before?"
No answer from the girl, standing rigid at the bar. Black Mustache said:
"At least oncet, to my knowledge. I run her in myself."
"Oh, she"s got a record?" exclaimed the sergeant, now wholly at ease. "Why the h.e.l.l didn"t you say so?"
"I thought you remembered. You took her pedigree."
"I do recollect now," said the sergeant. "Take my advice, Queenie, and drop that bluff about the officers lying.
Swallow your medicine--plead guilty--and you"ll get off with a fine. If you lie about the police, the judge"ll soak it to you. It happens to be a good judge--a friend of Freddie"s."
Then to the policemen: "Take her along to court, boys, and get back here as soon as you can."
"I want her locked up," objected Black Mustache. "I want F. P.
to see her. I"ve got to hunt for him."
"Can"t do it," said the sergeant. "If she makes a yell about police oppression, our holding on to her would look bad. No, put her through."
Susan now straightened herself and spoke. "I shan"t make any complaint," said she. "Anything rather than court. I can"t stand that. Keep me here."
"Not on your life!" cried the sergeant. "That"s a trick.
She"d have a good case against us."
"F. P."ll raise the devil if----" began Black Mustache.
"Then hunt him up right away. To court she"s got to go. I don"t want to get broke."
The two men fell afoul each other with curse and abuse. They were in no way embarra.s.sed by the presence of Susan. Her "record" made her of no account either as a woman or as a witness. Soon each was so well pleased with the verbal wounds he had dealt the other that their anger evaporated. The upshot of the hideous controversy was that Black Mustache said:
"You take her to court, Pete. I"ll hunt up F. P. Keep her till the last."
In after days she could recall starting for the street car with the officer, Pete; then memory was a blank until she was sitting in a stuffy room with a prison odor--the anteroom to the court. She and Pete were alone. He was walking nervously up and down pulling his little fair mustache. It must have been that she had retained throughout the impa.s.sive features which, however stormy it was within, gave her an air of strength and calm. Otherwise Pete would not presently have halted before her to say in a low, agitated voice:
"If you can make trouble for us, don"t do it. I"ve got a wife, and three babies--one come only last week--and my old mother paralyzed. You know how it is with us fellows--that we"ve got to do what them higher up says or be broke."
Susan made no reply.
"And F. P.--he"s right up next the big fellows nowadays. What he says goes. You can see for yourself how much chance against him there"d be for a common low-down cop."
She was still silent, not through anger as he imagined but because she had no sense of the reality of what was happening.
The officer, who had lost his nerve, looked at her a moment, in his animal eyes a humble pleading look; then he gave a groan and turned away. "Oh, h.e.l.l!" he muttered.
Again her memory ceased to record until--the door swung open; she shivered, thinking it was the summons to court. Instead, there stood Freddie Palmer. The instant she looked into his face she became as calm and strong as her impa.s.sive expression had been falsely making her seem. Behind him was Black Mustache, his face ghastly, sullen, cowed. Palmer made a jerky motion of head and arm. Pete went; and the door closed and she was alone with him.
"I"ve seen the Judge and you"re free," said Freddie.
She stood and began to adjust her hat and veil.
"I"ll have those filthy curs kicked off the force."
She was looking tranquilly at him.
"You don"t believe me? You think I ordered it done?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "No matter," she said. "It"s undone now. I"m much obliged. It"s more than I expected."
"You don"t believe me--and I don"t blame you. You think I"m making some sort of grandstand play."
"You haven"t changed--at least not much."
"I"ll admit, when you left I was wild and did tell "em to take you in as soon as they found you. But that was a long time ago. And I never meant them to disturb a woman who was living respectably with her husband. There may have been--yes, there was a time when I"d have done that--and worse. But not any more. You say I haven"t changed. Well, you"re wrong. In some ways I have. I"m climbing up, as I always told you I would--and as a man gets up he sees things differently. At least, he acts differently. I don"t do _that_ kind of dirty work, any more."
"I"m glad to hear it," murmured Susan for lack of anything else to say.
He was as handsome as ever, she saw--had the same charm of manner--a charm owing not a little of its potency to the impression he made of the man who would dare as far as any man, and then go on to dare a step farther--the step from which all but the rare, utterly unafraid man shrinks. His look at her could not but appeal to her vanity as woman, and to her woman"s craving for being loved; at the same time it agitated her with specters of the days of her slavery to him.
He said:
"_You_"ve changed--a lot. And all to the good. The only sign is rouge on your lips and that isn"t really a sign nowadays.
But then you never did look the professional--and you weren"t."
His eyes were appealingly tender as he gazed at her sweet, pensive face, with its violet-gray eyes full of mystery and sorrow and longing. And the clear pallor of her skin, and the slender yet voluptuous lines of her form suggested a pale, beautiful rose, most delicate of flowers yet about the hardiest.
"So--you"ve married and settled down?"
"No," replied Susan. "Neither the one nor the other."
"Why, you told----"
"I"m supposed to be a married woman."
"Why didn"t you give your name and address at the police station?" said he. "They"d have let you go at once."
"Yes, I know," replied she. "But the newspapers would probably have published it. So--I couldn"t. As it is I"ve been worrying for fear I"d be recognized, and the man would get a write-up."
"That was square," said he. "Yes, it"d have been a dirty trick to drag him in."
It was the matter-of-course to both of them that she should have protected her "friend." She had simply obeyed about the most stringent and least often violated article in the moral code of the world of outcasts. If Freddie"s worst enemy in that world had murdered him, Freddie would have used his last breath in shielding him from the common foe, the law.
"If you"re not married to him, you"re free," said Freddie with a sudden new kind of interest in her.