There was an instant's sighing from the courtroom, a momentary relaxation. So Donegan had fought and won his first fight, and now they were going to hear the History of the Spicy Isles. Now all the mystery would be lifted that had been hanging about the court-room like a necromancer's mist.
"Call Thomas McCarthy!" Donegan barked from the side of his mouth.
"Officer Thomas McCarthy."
"Thomas McCarthy to the stand!"
As he stood in the witness-box, McCarthy seemed to bulk tremendously in the room. As Anna Janssen seemed to fill the court spiritually, so he seemed to fill it physically. Emanations of strength, emanations of power came from him like current from a battery. He was not six feet tall, but so erect did he stand, so free was his carriage that he seemed to tower above all in the court-room. He was not a big man, but he suggested tremendous strength, so easily with the smallest movement did the sinews ripple beneath his coat. Brown as copper, his face had not the strange mystery of Anna Janssen's, because his eyes and hair were black, where hers were fair. Yet he was strange.
It was principally that he was out of place in his city clothes. One could have imagined him easily as some young athlete in the Olympic games, hurling the discus possibly, or flinging himself over the high jump. Or one might have suffered him in the clothes of summer in the country, soft rolling collar and roomy sport coat. But in the "business suit" of some department-store, he seemed like an actor some inept stage manager had dressed. Grotesquely, a police badge was pinned to the lapel of his coat.
As he entered the box, Anna Janssen turned toward him with a swift outpouring of her eyes. It might have been interest, but it was warmer than interest. It might have been appeal, but it was more confident than appeal.
"You are plain-clothes officer Thomas McCarthy?" the district attorney examined.
"Yes, sir. Number eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen."
"Attached to police headquarters?"