There are two rows of desks, for the reporters, and behind them sit representatives of the Times, Daily News, Daily Telegraph, Standard, Morning Advertiser, and other leading journals, the evening papers, with the exception of the Echo, Pall Mall Gazette and Globe not being represented, the others always copying their police reports from the morning journals.
THE RICH RASCAL.
There are two or three high desks in the centre of the room, a square iron railing, and a number of police waiting to make charges, but the prisoners are kept below in the lockup and will presently appear through a trap door in the floor when they are called to answer to the charges on the sheet.
The American detective has just finished his business regarding Harwood's case, and saunters in carelessly with his hat in his hand to take a look around him.
Presently there is a bustle and commotion, and a man looking like a drum major of a band, with scarlet and gold facings on his coat, whom I am informed enjoys the dignity of Mayor's Marshal, marches into the room like a peacock, with his big staff of office, and cries out:
"Make way there, for the Right Honorable the Lud Mayor."
Then enters the awful being himself, in a furred robe of heavy cloth, like one of Rembrandt's burgomasters, a blazing gold chain depending from his neck and covering his waistcoat, and having taken his seat, the charge sheet is examined by him in a dignified way, and the first case is called.
This is the case of the forger Harwood, a young man, the son of the senior partner of one of the largest banking firms in London, who has forged his father's name for the amount of £15,000.
The trap door opens and discloses a fashionably-dressed and good-looking young fellow, with a police officer on each side. The case had excited great interest in London, and the prisoner having fled to New York was captured before the steamer got to her dock, and brought back to London. Harwood had been brought to justice because the junior member of the firm, to protect its interests, had been compelled to the unwilling task of making the charge against his partner's son.
