They were at the door, in a little press of departing witnesses and late defendants, when behind them a word in Donohue's hard-rolled official accents made them halt and turn round. The veteran had picked up from his desk a sheet of paper and was squinting up his hedgy, thick eyebrows in an effort to read what was written there.
“Wan more case to be heard,” he announced. “Keep order there, you men at the door! The case of Lieutenant Isidore Weil”—he grated the name out lingeringly—“charged with—with——” He broke off, peering about him for some one to scold. “Couldn't you be makin' a light here, some of you! I can't see to make out these here charges and specifications.”
Some one bestirred himself and many lights popped on, chasing the shadows back into the far corners. Outside in the hall a policeman doing duty as a bailiff called the name of Lieutenant Isidore Weil, thrice repeated.
“Gee! Have they landed that slick kike at last?” said La Farge, the older of the reporters, half to himself. “Say, you know, that tickles me! I've been looking this long time for something like this to be coming off.” Like most old headquarters reporters, La Farge had his deep-seated prejudices. To judge by his present expression, this was a very deep-seated one, amounting, you might say, to a constitutional infirmity with La Farge.
“Who's Weil and what's he done?” inquired Rogers. Rogers was a young reporter.
“I don't know yet—the charge must be newly filed, I guess,” said La Farge, answering the last question first. “But I hope they nail him! I don't like him—never did. He's too fresh. He's too smart—one of those self-educated East Side Yiddishers, you know. Used to be a court interpreter down at Essex Market—knows about steen languages. And he—here he comes now.”
Weil passed them, going into the trial room—a short, squarely built man with oily black hair above a dark, round face. Instantly you knew him for one of the effusive Semitic type; every angle and turn of his outward aspect testified frankly of his breed and his sort. And at sight of him entering you could almost see the gorge of Deputy Commissioner Donohue's race antagonism rising inside of him. His gray hackles stiffened and his thick-set eyebrows bristled outward like bits of frosted privet. Again he began whetting his forefinger on the leather back of the closed docket book. It was generally a bad sign for somebody when Donohue whetted his forefinger like that, and La Farge would have delighted to note it. But La Farge's appraising eyes were upon the accused.
“Listen!” he said under his breath to Rogers. “I think they must have the goods on Mister Wisenheimer at last. Usually he's the cockiest person round this building. Now take a look at him.”
Indeed, there was a visible air of self-abasement about Lieutenant Weil as he crossed the wide chamber. It was a thing hard to define in words; yet undeniably there was a diffidence and a reluctance manifest in him, as though a sense of guilt wrestled with the man's natural conceit and assurance.
“Rogers,” said La Farge, “let's hustle out and 'phone in what we've got and then come back right away. If this fellow's going to get the harpoon stuck into him I want to be on hand when he starts bleeding.”