“Now, you understand,” said Dobbs, “that I’m in no hurry. You can go anywhere you want to and I’ll trot around with you. I want to see how you do it—I’m going to get one of those things myself one of these days.”
“You can’t learn much from the way I do it,” said Allan. “I’m only a beginner.”
“It seems to me,” pursued Dobbs, “that we might do a little of the Bowery and around the Pell Street way—in the Chinese quarter and so on. Oh, I suppose you could put in a week here—slumming with a camera, how would that go?—unless you don’t like slums. First, I’ve got to run in and see one of the Central Office men at headquarters.”
And so they went over to Mulberry from the “L” road, and Allan was so much interested in being at police headquarters that he thought no more about the camera until Dobbs was ready to go.
“Suppose we go and look at the Rogue’s Gallery,” suggested Dobbs, and he led the way into one of the rooms opening off the main hall. “There’s a collection of photographs for you!” exclaimed Dobbs, turning the doors of a curious cabinet like a vast wooden book.
Allan stared in amazement at the countless faces that stared out of this curious collection. Something in the style of these faces made Allan feel sad. Yet the faces were not all evil-looking faces by any means. Perhaps it was because they were not that Allan felt awkward and grieved as he looked at them. There were handsome faces of both men and women, some of them very young—mere boys and girls, sometimes—and the well-dressed and the ragged were shoulder to shoulder. One face, that of a boy who appeared to be of about Allan’s age, held Allan’s attention until Dobbs asked if he knew the face.
“‘Young America and Young Italy.’”
“No,” said Allan. He had been thinking how clear-eyed and manly the boy looked. He wondered what trouble the boy had fallen into, and if the boy’s mother thought he was guilty.
“Well,” said Allan, a lump in his throat, “I don’t believe they are all rogues. I believe there were some mistakes—that some of them were innocent.”