He groped in its depths and then brought forth something and held it out in his palm.
The poor light of the single electric bulb glinted upon an object which threw off dulled translucent tints of bluish-green—not a trade dollar, but a big overcoat button the size of a trade dollar—a flat, smooth, rimless disk of smoked pearl with a tiny depression in the middle where the thread holes went through. For a little space of time both of them with their heads bent forward contemplated it.
Then with a flirt of his manacled hands Trencher flung it away from him, and with a sickly pallor of fright and surrender stealing up under the skin of his cheeks he stared at the detective.
"You win, Murtha," he said dully. "What's the use bucking the game after your luck is gone? Come on, let's go down-town. Yes, I bumped off Sonntag."
CHAPTER V
QUALITY FOLKS
IN our town formerly there were any number of negro children named for Caucasian friends of their parents. Some bore for their names the names of old masters of the slavery time, masters who had been kindly and gracious and whose memories thereby were affectionately perpetuated; these were mainly of a generation now growing into middle age. Others—I am speaking still of the namesakes, not of the original bearers of the names—had been christened with intent to do honour to indulgent and well-remembered employers of post-bellum days. Thus it might befall, for example, that Wadsworth Junius Courtney, Esquire, would be a prominent advocate practicing at the local bar and that Wadsworth Junius Courtney Jones, of colour, would be his janitor and sweep out his office for him. Yet others had been named after white children—and soon after—for the reason that the white children had been given first names having a fine, full, sonorous sound or else a fascinatingly novel sound.
Of these last there were instances amounting in the aggregate to a small host.
I seem to remember, for example, that once a pink girl-mite came into the world by way of a bedroom in a large white house on Tilghman Avenue and was at the baptismal font sentenced for life to bear the Christian name of Rowena Hildegarde.