“Well?” the officer who had been doing the talking asked.
I said, “There’s only one answer to that. We’re going back. I’ll make the damn clerk get down on his knees and eat those words — every one of ’em. The guy’s just plain nuts.”
“Now that’s the sensible way to look at it. You know we could take you back, but we’d have a lot of notoriety which wouldn’t do anybody any good. If it’s a mistake, the less said about it the better. You know how it is, buddy. It’s kind of hard to identify people from a photograph. We drag you back and get a lot of newspaper publicity that the clerk’s positively identified you as the guy. Then he takes a look at your mug and says he ain’t so certain. Then a while later the real bird turns up. He looks something like you, but not too much, and the clerk says, ‘Sure. That’s the guy.’ But you know what some shyster lawyer would do? He’d make that clerk look like two bits on the witness stand because he’d identified somebody else first.”
“Sure,” I said. “The fool clerk makes a false identification and puts me to a lot of trouble, but it’s the shyster lawyer for the defendant that’s to blame.”
The cop looked at me for a minute. “Say, buddy, you ain’t trying to kid me, are you?”
“How do we go?” I asked.
“We drive you down the road about a hundred miles. There’s an airport there and a special officer that telephoned us to go pick you up. He’s waiting with a plane. If it’s all a mistake, he’ll bring you back, and you can take a stage from the airport right back here.”
“And I won’t be out anything except stage fare and a day’s time,” I said sarcastically.
They didn’t say anything.
I did a little thinking. “Well, I won’t travel on a plane at night for anyone. I’ll drive down with you. I’ll go to an hotel with the officer. I won’t leave until tomorrow morning. I’ve got some irons in the fire I can’t shove to one side—”