“All right; now, how much have you in your pockets?”
He took out some bills and counted them. “Forty-five dollars is all I have.”
The captain counted them and returned them. “That’s correct. Now, which girl took your money?”
The man pointed out the youngest girl of the bunch. She was about twenty or twenty-two, a plump girl with a boyish face and lots of black hair. She was pleasant looking, but not pretty, and she did not look as worn and tired as the others.
She looked straight at him but never opened her mouth. The lawyer-looking man said to her: “Julia, did you take that man’s money?”
“No,” she answered.
“Take all these women in and have the matron search them. Madam Singleton, you have no objection to being searched, have you?” smiled the captain.
“None at all, captain, only make it short and sweet. I am losing time and money here.”
They all trooped off to a room down the hall.
An officer came out from behind the desk and searched me and the two drunks. We had no fifty-dollar bills, so he told us to sit on a bench in front of his desk. The lawyer, or bondsman, or fixer, or whatever he was, paced up and down the room nervously. The captain had gone back to his office.