“Lieutenant Weil, do you desire for to say something in your own behalf?” queried the deputy commissioner.
“I think I'd like to,” answered Weil.
He stood to be sworn, took the chair Meagher vacated and sat facing the room, appearing—so La Farge thought—more shamefaced and abashed than ever.
“Now, then,” commanded Donohue impressively, “what statement, if any, have you to make, Lieutenant Weil, touchin' on this here charge preferred by your superior officer?”
Weil cleared his throat. Rogers figured that this bespoke embarrassment; but, to the biased understanding of the hostile La Farge, there was something falsely theatrical even in the way Weil cleared his throat.
“Once a grandstander always a grandstander!” he muttered derisively.
“What did you say?” whispered Rogers.
“Nothing,” replied La Farge—“just thinking out loud. Listen to what Foxy Issy has to say for himself.”
“Well, sir, commissioner,” began the accused, “this here thing happens last Thursday, just as Captain Meagher is telling you.” He had slipped already into the policeman's trick of detailing a past event in the present tense.
“It's late in the afternoon—round five o'clock I guess—and I'm downstairs in the Detective Bureau alone.”