"What"s the rights of this affair?"
"Don"t you listen to what they say!" screamed Bunny. "They"ll lie like a house afire. I was going along, minding my own business, when this pair jumped on me. You see what they did to me."
"Officer, what"s the meaning of this?" demanded a man who had just come on the scene. It was Bunny"s father, the agitator and anarchistic lecturer.
"If you"ll keep quiet long enough I"ll soon find out," retorted the policeman.
"Officer," demanded the elder Hepburn, "do you know who I am?"
"Yes; that"s why I want you to keep quiet," retorted the policeman, with no great show of awe or respect.
"But----"
"Get back and keep quiet until I"ve had time to look into this thing!"
blazed the policeman ominously.
"Minion of the hireling law," began the elder Hepburn, running his fingers through his hair and striking an att.i.tude.
"Hepburn, in the name of the Commonwealth, I demand your a.s.sistance in taking care of the prisoners," retorted the policeman grimly. "Disobey at your peril. Here, take charge of this prisoner," indicating Bunny.
"If you let him escape you"ll go to jail for it!"
Thus summoned in the name of the Commonwealth the elder Hepburn, though he loathed his task, had to play the part of a police officer or take the consequences. Hepburn, like his son, was noisy but not brave; he had no desire to serve his state in jail, so he served it on the street.
However, the arresting party and prisoners had gone only as far as the next corner when they encountered Chief of Police Blake, an official who was not afraid of any one or anything.
"What"s this?" asked the chief.
Hal and Noll were asked to explain the affair, while the two Hepburns and Bunny"s companions were forced, much against their will, to keep still.
"We don"t care about pressing any charge, chief," Hal added. "This crowd got punished enough as it was."
"One of them certainly did," grinned Chief Blake, taking in the extent of damage done to Bunny"s countenance.
"Chief, I insist that you arrest these two soldier-loafers!" cried Bunny hoa.r.s.ely.
"And I back up that demand!" added the elder Hepburn, with what he considered impressive dignity.
"Bosh!" retorted Chief Blake. "I"d take the word of these two Army officers against a whole slumful of rowdies like these young fellows.
And so would any judge in his right mind. I refuse to arrest either of these young Army officers, for I"m convinced that they acted only in their own defense."
"Officer," broke in the elder Hepburn dramatically, "you have no right to take the word of hireling soldiers against honest young working----"
"Go on! Chase yourselves! A quick vanish or a long night behind the hard iron bars!" cried Chief Blake, dropping into the language that Bunny and his companions could best understand. "Another piece of jaw, and to the green-lighted doorway you all go!"
Then, nodding to Hal and Noll to stroll along with him, Chief Blake left the discomfited trouble-makers.
"Another proof that the law exists only for the benefit of the favored few!" hissed Bunny"s father. "But this latest outrage shall not go unnoticed. There are ways of getting justice, even under such a miserable government as ours, and we shall have recourse to those ways.
Come with me, gentlemen, and I shall show you what can be done!"
There are always ways of making trouble when one is bound to do it.
Moreover, Mr. Hepburn was an expert at trouble-making, and on this night he worked overtime.
There was trouble ahead, as the two Army boys discovered on awakening in the morning.
CHAPTER IV
A COURT OF INQUIRY ORDERED
There were two morning newspapers published in the town; or, as some people put it, "one and a quarter."
The _Tribune_ appealed to the more orderly element in the community. In the _Tribune_ was an account of the police version of the night before, to the effect that Bunny Hepburn and a gang had set upon Lieutenants Overton and Terry, of the Regular Army, and that the two young officers had given an excellent account of themselves in the encounter, afterwards declining to prosecute the gangsters.
The _Sphere_, the other morning sheet, made its appeal to the rougher element of the city. It was through this sheet that Orator Hepburn had been able to acquire much of his local notoriety. Hepburn and Sayles, the latter the proprietor of the _Sphere_, had been cronies for five years. To Sayles the older Hepburn had gone, taking along with him his "witnesses."
As was to be expected, the _Sphere_ attacked the two young officers, giving wholly the Hepburn version of the affair.
"But this will not be the last of the matter," the _Sphere_ proclaimed dramatically. "There are reliefs to be had from such outrages. Mr.
Hepburn has already taken the matter up with a strong hand. Through the night two of our ablest local attorneys toiled at preparing the papers in the case. A formal complaint has been drawn up, backed by the testimony of the witnesses under oath, and all the papers in the case are now on their way to Washington. The residents of this city will soon be in a position to know whether such outrages may be safely committed by officers of our Regular Army, a body of men organized supposedly for the protection of the citizens of the country!"
"Well, wouldn"t that blow your hat off?" demanded Lieutenant Noll, as he and his chum went over the account published by the _Sphere_.
"It"s evidently aimed with a view to blowing our heads off," muttered Hal Overton.
"What talented liars there are in this world!" uttered Noll Terry, in high disgust.
"They wouldn"t do so much harm, though, if it weren"t for the fact that sometimes liars, under oath, manage to get themselves believed,"
returned Hal.
"Is anybody going to believe this rot?" insisted Noll.
"Some one in the War Department might, not knowing the local reputation of the Hepburns."
"Well, the War Department will know, if it takes any action on these trumped-up, lying charges," declared Lieutenant Noll hotly.
"Of course we won"t lie down and tamely submit to such false charges,"
agreed Lieutenant Overton.
"Going out for a walk this morning?" Noll wanted to know.
"I feel much more inclined to sit here and think this whole thing over,"
Hal answered, pointing to the lying sheet.
"Hal, if we stay indoors to-day the _Sphere_ will have it to-morrow that we are overwhelmed with shame and fear, and have kept in hiding."
"And, if we go out around the town," laughed Hal, "the _Sphere_ will proclaim to-morrow that we are brazenly showing ourselves and trying to cheek down the charges against us."