When they were away Archie looked at Curly in surprise. There were things, evidently, he had not yet learned.
"The best lifter in the business," Curly said, but he added a qualification that expressed a tardy loyalty, "except Jane."
Archie found he could wear the clothes, and he felt better when he had them on.
"If I only had a rod now," he remarked. "I'll have to go out and boost one, I guess."
"You can't show for a day," said Curly.
"I wish I had that gat of mine. I wouldn't mind doing time if I had that to show for it!"
"I told you that gat would get you in trouble," said Curly, and then he added peremptorily: "You'll stay here till to-morrow night; then you'll go home and see your mother. Then you'll go to work."
They remained at Gray's all that Saturday night and all the following day, spending the Sunday in reading such meager account of the murder of the Flanagan sisters as the morning papers were able to get into extra editions.
III
Sergeant Cragin, a short, red-haired Irishman with a snub nose that with difficulty kept his steel-bowed spectacles before his small, rheumy eyes, had just finished calling the roll of the night detail at the Central Police Station when the superintendent of police, Michael Cleary, unexpectedly appeared in the great drill hall. Cleary stood in the doorway with Inspector McFee; his cap was drawn to his eyebrows, revealing but a patch of his close-cut white hair; his cheeks were red and freshly shaven, his small chin-whiskers newly trimmed. The velvet collar and cuffs of his blue coat, as usual, were carefully brushed, the diamonds on his big gold badge flashed in the dim, shifting light. The men did not often see their chief; he appeared at the station but seldom, spending most of his time, presumably, in his office at the City Hall.