And the robbers? Conviction followed, as a matter of course. There could be no doubt of their guilt, and in the end they saw the wisdom of confessing and throwing themselves upon the mercy of the court. The madman was consigned to an asylum for the criminally insane, where he remains to this day, occupying for the most part a straitjacket and a padded cell, for he has never recovered from his lust of blood and instinct to murder.
CHAPTER XXIII
COMPLICATIONS
“Well, well; wonders will niver cease!” remarked Reddy Magraw, contemplating the newspaper he held in his hand—Reddy safe once more in the bosom of his family, a hero if there ever was one, a czar whose slightest word was law—and, all in all, as true and loyal and honest and warm-hearted an Irishman as ever lived in this world.
“What is it?” asked Mrs. Magraw, looking over his shoulder.
“That,” answered Reddy, slapping the page with his open hand—a page overflowing with heavy headlines and further embellished with a group of photographs. “Now who’d ’a’ thought that anybody would iver want t’ put my ugly mug in the paper?”
“Sure ’tis no uglier than lots of others,” protested Mrs. Magraw, gazing at it fondly.
“Mebbe so; but this here picter don’t look nothin’ like what I see when I looks in the glass.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Magraw, examining it critically, “it ain’t jest what I’d call a perfect likeness; but the eyes are yours an’ the nose an’ the mouth.”
“If they are, they ain’t put together right,” said Reddy. “I’ve often wondered how a criminal could git away when the papers all over the country was printin’ his picter, but I understand now. If I’d done somethin’ an’ was runnin’ away an’ was arrested on suspicion, I could prove by that picter that they’d got the wrong man.”