"What did ye do with the coat?" he roared. "It'll go easier with ye if ye tell me!"
"What do you mean?" cried Hedin, white to the lips, meeting McNabb's gaze with a look of mingled surprise, pain, and anger.
"I mean just what I say. Ye've got the coat—where is it?"
Hedin felt suddenly weak and sick. He had expected McNabb's anger at his foolish whim, and knew that he deserved it—but that McNabb should accuse him of theft! Sick at heart, he faltered his answer, and in his own ears his voice sounded strange, and dull, and unconvincing. "You think I—I stole it?"
"What else am I to think? What will the police think? What will the jury think when they hear your flimsy yarn—an' the straightforward evidence of my daughter? They'll think that the coat she wore to the show, an' that she still has, is the coat she wore from the store, an' that you've got the other. An' when Kranz tells of your midnight visit to the store, what'll they think then?" McNabb finished and, reaching for the telephone, called the police headquarters. A few minutes later the chief himself appeared, accompanied by the night watchman, Kranz, whose story of the nervous and agitated appearance of Hedin on his midnight visit to the store forged the strongest link in the chain of circumstantial evidence.
After the watchman had been dismissed, Hedin was subjected to a bullying at the hands of the burly officer that stopped just short of personal violence, and through it all he stubbornly maintained his innocence.
After another brief telephone conversation, the three visited the private room of the judge where, waiving a preliminary hearing, the prisoner was bound over to await the action of the grand jury, and his bail fixed at ten thousand dollars.
X
At the mouth of the alley that led from a side street to the rear of the jail, the policeman plucked at Hedin's sleeve, and turned in. Mechanically Hedin fell in beside him. Someone passed upon the street. "See who that was?" asked the officer maliciously, for he knew all the town gossip. Hedin scarcely heard the question. "It was McNabb's gal. Her throwin' you over fer this here Wentworth didn't give you no license to steal her old man's fur coat, all right—but maybe you ain't so onlucky, at that. Folks says she's all right—a little gay an' the like of that—but runnin' the streets at midnight, like she was a Saturday, with a guy that goes after 'em like Wentworth! Call it gay if they want to, but if it was anyone but old McNabb's daughter, they'd be callin' it somethin' else."
Smash! Hedin's fist drove with terrific force into the flappy jaw, and the big officer reeled, and crashed into the snow between a row of ash barrels, and a dilapidated board fence. The young man stared in surprise as he waited for the other to regain his feet. The officer's words had roused a sudden flash of fury, and with nerves already strained to the breaking point, he had struck. But the man, grotesquely sprawled behind the barrels, made no move.