John scrambled on the truck.
"Come right along, brother, join our party," said a red-faced man in a brown check suit and a greasy derby hat, who reached down to help John up.
The truck was now crowded with standing men. Three of the deputies swung themselves up on the back of it to act as a rear guard. Murphy squirmed through the tightly packed load until he reached John's side again.
"Listen, kid," he said in his husky voice. "If you want to find out something about dis game, just keep your trap shut and do what Tim Murphy tells you. Get me? I was tipped to dis raid but I didn't know it was coming so soon or I'd got ya out of it, see? It's a phoney, see. There's ten bucks in it for ya if ya go through with it like I tell ya, see?"
"What are you talking about, Murphy?" John demanded.
"I know what I'm talkin' about and don't you forget it," Murphy said. "Just do what I tell ya, will ya?"
"All right," he agreed.
The truck turned to the left at First and Spring streets and struggled up the grade at First west of Broadway, backing into the curb in front of the central police station. By the time they were leaving the truck John had decided to "go through with it," as Murphy had suggested. It would be an adventure, at least, and Murphy's repeated assertions that it was "a phoney" invited investigation. He knew that a word to Kenyon, the police reporter for his paper, would get him out of his trouble, but he concluded he had nothing to lose and perhaps something to gain by following Murphy's whispered instructions.
Herded into an alley-way leading back to the desk sergeant's room were, John estimated, more than 150 other men and boys, arrested like himself and evidently brought to headquarters in other trucks. In this crowd he learned that every place along Spring street where it was suspected that a handbook on the races at Tia Juana was being operated had been raided simultaneously by squads of deputy sheriffs detailed to the command of Police Commissioner Gibson by the sheriff. Over the heads of the crowd he caught a glimpse of Gibson himself surrounded by Kenyon and the other police reporters. He saw Gibson pose for a photograph with the crowd of men he had arrested as a background. Once, he thought, he had a glimpse of Brennan in conversation with Police Chief Sweeney.