Greg fell into step beside the policeman. "Poor devil! Are you obliged to lay a charge against him?"
"They always do. Attempted suicide's a crime."
"But nobody's ever sent to jail for it."
"If I let him go he might try it again."
"Four days to Christmas, officer. Let me take care of him. I'll give him a square meal and a bed. I've got a cab around the corner. I'll take him home in that."
Voices from the crowd said: "Aw, let him go. It's Christmas. He ain't harmed nobody but himself."
The blue-coat was a bit nettled by the implication of hard-heartedness. "'Tain't nothin' to me," he said. "Come on to the station, and if the loot'nant says all right, all right."
"I'll be there," said Greg. "You take him on, and I'll get my cab."
Greg and Hickey doubled back through the next street and were already at the station-house door when the officer arrived with his prisoner. Greg had no great difficulty in persuading the good-natured officer at the desk to let the wretched young man go. The inconsistency of arresting a man for trying to kill himself cannot but be apparent to all. It is something that he cannot be prevented from doing if he wants to. A mumbled promise was extracted from the prisoner that he would not try it again, and he was handed over to Greg's care.
Wrapping him in the lap-robe, Greg bundled him into the flivver and they drove off amid the plaudits of the crowd gathered around the station-house steps. The young man did not come face to face with Hickey. Greg felt a little shamefaced that the people should think he was playing the part of the good Samaritan.