Yes; a man named Klutchem had made a charge of assault against one George Carter. Carter was then locked up in one of the cells and could not be interviewed without the consent of the Captain of the Precinct who would be back in a few minutes.
“Guess it ain’t serious,” the Sergeant added. “Couple of old sports got hot, that’s all, and this old feller—” and he hunched his shoulder towards the cells—“pasted the other one over the nut with his toothpick. Step one side. Next!”
I sat down on a bench. The dear Colonel locked up in a cell like a common criminal. What would Chad say; what would Aunt Nancy say; what would Fitz say; what would everybody say? And then the mortification to him; the wounding of his pride; the disgrace of it all.
Men and women came and went; some with bruised heads, some with blackened eyes, one wearing a pair of handcuffs—a sneak thief, caught, with two overcoats. Was the Colonel sharing a cell with such people as these? The thought gave me a shiver.
A straightening-up of half a dozen policemen; a simultaneous touching of caps, and the Captain, a red-faced, black-moustached, blue-coated chunk of a man, held together at the waist by a leather belt and be-decked and be-striped with gilt buttons and gold braid, climbed into the pulpit of justice and faced the room.
I stepped up.
He listened to my story, nodded his head to a doorman and I followed along the iron corridor and stood in front of a row of cells. The Turnkey looked over a hoop of keys, turned one in a door, threw it wide and said, waving his finger:
“Inside!” These men use few words.
The Colonel from the gloom of the cell saw me first.