As soon as Mabel had left he hurriedly repeated the story they were to tell.
"Don't tell anybody the truth," he insisted. "Not any one. Not even Miss Train. We've got to bluff. And the more people who believe we are telling the truth, the better the bluff is."
They went out into the main room, and Yetta was formally put under arrest.
"That's the other woman," Pick-Axe said at sight of Mrs. Muscovitz.
"I haven't any warrant for her," the plain-clothes man said. He had no especial affection for the ruffian who pretended to be a detective.
"She is coming to court anyhow as a witness," Braun said.
At that moment he caught sight of Longman and a reporter and a ray of hope. He hurried over to them.
"Longman," he said, "they've arrested Yetta Rayefsky on an utterly absurd charge of attacking that thug, Brennan, whom the girls call Pick-Axe. I wish you'd come over to court. I can use you, I think, in the defence. And"—he turned to the reporter, "it may be worth your while to come, too. I think there'll be a story in it."
So the little procession set out. Yetta walked ahead between Pick-Axe and the detective. Braun and Mrs. Muscovitz and Longman and the reporter trailed behind.
There was hardly anything more sincere about Pick-Axe than his fear and hatred of Braun, so he kept his mouth shut as long as he was in hearing. But when the steel door of Essex Market Prison had clanged shut behind him, as soon as the desk man had entered Yetta's name and age and address on his book, Pick-Axe gave rein to his filthy wrath. They had taken her into the "examination room," and Yetta, following Braun's advice, refused to answer any questions. She crouched in a corner and tried not to hear what he was saying. She had grown up in a community where men are not over-careful in their choice of expletives, but she had never listened to anything like this.