"Yes, he was there."
"You'll swear to it?" asked Marriott.
"Sure," said Wales, "with pleasure."
There was relief in Mason's eyes and in his manner, as there was relief in Marriott's mind.
"That makes it all right, Joe," he said, and Mason smiled gratefully. Marriott left the jail happy. His faith was restored. The universe resumed its order and its reason. After all, he said to himself, justice will triumph. He felt now that he could await the preliminary hearing with calmness. Wales's identification of Mason made it certain that he could establish an alibi for him; he must depend on Gibbs for the others, but somehow he did not care so much for them; they had not appealed to him as Mason had, whether because of his conviction that they were guilty or not, he could not say. The hearing was set for Thursday at two o'clock, but Marriott looked forward to it with the assurance that as to Mason, at least, there was no doubt of the outcome.
VII
Although Fallen had told the police they could set Archie free, the police did not set him free.
"It's that fellow Kouka," Archie explained to Marriott. "He's got it in for me; he wants to see me get the gaff."
That afternoon Archie was legally charged with being a "suspicious person." The penalty for being thus suspected by the police was a fine of fifty dollars and imprisonment in the workhouse for sixty days. Marriott was angry; the business was growing complicated. He began to fear that he would never get away on his vacation; he was filled with hatred for Fallen, for Kouka, because just now they personified a system against which he felt himself powerless; finally, he was angry with Archie, with Dillon, even with Mason, for their stupidity in getting into such desperate scrapes.
"They're fools--that's what they are," he said to himself; "they're crazy men." But at this thought he softened. When he recalled Mason in his cell at the jail, and Archie in the old prison at the Central Station, his anger gave way to pity. He resolved to give up his vacation, if necessary, and fight for their release. He determined to demand a jury to try Archie on this charge of suspicion; he knew how Bostwick and all the attachés of the police court disliked to have a jury demanded, because it made them trouble. As he walked up the street he began to arrange the speech he would make in Archie's defense; presently, he noticed that persons turned and looked at him; he knew he had been talking to himself, and he felt silly; these people would think him crazy. This dampened his ardor, crushed his imagination and ruined his speech. He began to think of Mason again; he would have to let Archie's case go until after Mason had had a hearing; he must do one thing at a time.