The prisoner fixed his eyes on the ground and said nothing.
"The trouble is, you haven't done your wife's grocery shopping, or you could tell a more plausible string of lies," Mr. Buckley commented. "Now, let me tell you this: It's been a long time since you saw the inside of a grocery store."
"If you don't want to believe me, it's up to you," snarled the prisoner.
"Now, Mr. Howard," the inquisitor continued, "your friends, I am told, addressed you as Captain. Why was that?"
This query stimulated a little brilliance in the fellow.
"I run a grocery boat on the river," he said. "I don't do much clerking, but supply groceries to several stores from a wholesale house."
"So that is your explanation for not being very familiar with retail prices, is it?" Mr. Buckley inferred.
"Yes."
"Well," the Government "sweater" went on, "your story doesn't hang together very well."
"You don't want it to hang together," the prisoner snapped. "You're here to make me out a liar. You don't want the truth. You haven't got no right to keep me here."