When Marowitz left headquarters he walked on air. Here was a chance, indeed. He had been a policeman for nearly six years, and in all that time there had come no opportunity to distinguish himself through heroism or skill, or through any achievement, save the faithful performance of routine duty. His heart now beat high with hope. How pleased his wife would be! His name would be in all the newspapers. “The Murderer Caught! Officer Marowitz Runs Him to Earth!” Officer Marowitz already enjoyed the taste of the intoxicating cup of fame.
In mounting the stairs of the tenement where he lived Marowitz nearly stumbled over the figure of a little boy who was busily engaged in playing Indian, lurking in the darkness in wait for a foe to come along. The next moment the little figure was scrambling over him, shouting with delight:
“It’s papa! Come to play Indian with Bootsy!”
“Hello, little rascal!” cried the policeman. “Papa can’t play to-day. Got to go right out after naughty man.”
Suddenly an idea came to him.
“Want to come along with papa, little Boots?” he asked. The little fellow yelled with joy at the prospect of this rare treat. He was six years old, and had blue eyes and a winsome face. His real name was Hermann, but an infantile tendency to chew for hours all the shoes and boots of the household had fastened upon him the name of “Boots,” by which all the neighbourhood knew him and loved him. An hour later, and all that day, and all the next day, and the day after for a whole week, Marowitz and his little son wandered, apparently in aimless fashion, up and down the streets of the East Side. The companionship of the boy was as good as a thousand disguises. It would have been difficult to imagine anything less detective-like or police-like than this amiable-looking young father taking his son out for a holiday promenade.
Occasionally they would wander into one or another of the Jewish cafés, where little Boots ascended to the seventh heaven of joy in sweet drinks while Marowitz gazed about him, carelessly, for a man with a dark beard and a marked ear. In one of these cafés, happening to pick up a Russian newspaper, he read an account of the crime with which this man Gratzberg was charged. It appeared that Gratzberg, while returning from the synagogue with his wife, had accidently jostled a young soldier. The soldier had struck him, and abused him for a vile Jew, and Gratzberg, knowing the futility of resenting the insult, had edged out of the soldier’s way, and was passing on when he heard a scream from his wife. The soldier, attracted by the woman’s comeliness, had thrown his arms around her, saying, “I will take a kiss from those Jewish lips to wipe out the insult to which I have been subjected.” In sudden fury Gratzberg rushed upon the soldier, and, with a light cane which he carried, made a swift thrust into his face. The soldier fell to the ground, dead. The thin point of the cane had entered his eye and pierced through into the brain. Gratzberg turned and fled, and from that moment no man had seen him.
Marowitz laid down the paper and frowned. He sat for a long time, plunged in thought. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he muttered, “Duty is duty.” And, taking little Boots by the hand, he resumed his search for the man with the black beard and the marked ear.
It was a long and tedious search, and almost barren in clues. Two men whom he approached—men whom he knew—remembered having seen a man who answered the description, but their recollection was too dim to afford him the slightest assistance. In the course of the week he had made a dozen visits to every café, restaurant, and meeting place in the neighbourhood, had conscientiously patrolled every street, both by day and by night, had gone into many stores, and followed the delivery of nearly all the Russian newspapers that came into that quarter. But without a glimpse of the man with the marked ear.
There came a night when the heat grew so intense, and the atmosphere so humid and suffocating that nearly every house in the Ghetto poured out its denizens into the street to seek relief. Numerous parties made their way to the river, to lounge about the docks and piers, where a light breeze brought grateful relief from the intense heat.