The crowd was stricken still. Archie stood looking at Kouka, his eyes burning, his face white, his smoking revolver lowered in his hand. A smile came to his pale, tense lips. Then the crowd closed in on him; the policemen, angry and ferocious, caught and pinioned him, began to club him. The crowd pressed closer, growing savage, shaking fists at him, trying to strike him. Suddenly some one began to call for a rope.
Then the policemen, so eager a moment before to wreak their own vengeance on him, were now concerned for his safety. A sergeant gave a command; they dragged Archie toward the patrol wagon. The crowd surged that way, and Archie, bareheaded, his yellow hair disordered, his eyes flashing, his white brow stained with blood, stared about on the policemen and on the crowd with a look of hatred. Then he glanced back to where some men were bending over Kouka, and he smiled again.
"Well, I croaked him all right," he said.
A patrolman struck him with a club; and he staggered as the blow fell with a sharp crash on his head.
"Get on there!" said the sergeant, cursing him. He was thrown into the patrol wagon beside Curly, and he sat there, white, with the blood trickling in two streams from his forehead, his eyes flashing, and the strange smile on his lips whenever he looked back where Kouka lay. The patrol wagon dashed away.
VI
Marriott was sensible of a hostile atmosphere the moment he entered the police station. The desk sergeant glanced at him with disapproval, kept him waiting, finally consulted an inspector, blew savagely into a speaking tube, and said:
"Here's a young lawyer to see Koerner."
The contemptuous description, the tone, the attitude, all expressed the hatred the police had for Archie, a hatred that Marriott realized would extend itself to him for taking sides with Archie. The turnkey, a thin German with cheek-bones that seemed about to perforate his sallow skin, a black mustache, and two black, glossy curls plastered on his low forehead, likewise scowled and showed reluctance.
"How many damned lawyers," he said, taking a corn-cob pipe from his mouth, "is that feller going to have, anyway?"