Even now, Burke did not look up, and his pen continued to hurry over the paper.
“Who told you you were arrested?” he remarked, cheerfully, in his blandest voice.
Garson uttered an ejaculation of disgust.
“I don't have to be told,” he retorted, huffily. “I'm no college president, but, when a cop grabs me and brings me down here, I've got sense enough to know I'm pinched.”
The Inspector did not interrupt his work, but answered with the utmost good nature.
“Is that what they did to you, Joe? I'll have to speak to Cassidy about that. Now, just you sit down, Joe, won't you? I want to have a little talk with you. I'll be through here in a second.” He went on with the writing.
Garson moved forward slightly, to the single chair near the end of the desk, and there seated himself mechanically. His face thus was turned toward the windows that gave on the corridor, and his eyes grew yet more clouded as they rested on the grim doors of the cells. He writhed in his chair, and his gaze jumped from the cells to the impassive figure of the man at the desk. Now, the forger's nervousness increased momently it swept beyond his control. Of a sudden, he sprang up, and stepped close to the Inspector.
“Say,” he said, in a husky voice, “I'd like—I'd like to have a lawyer.”
“What's the matter with you, Joe?” the Inspector returned, always with that imperturbable air, and without raising his head from the work that so engrossed his attention. “You know, you're not arrested, Joe. Maybe, you never will be. Now, for the love of Mike, keep still, and let me finish this letter.”
Slowly, very hesitatingly, Garson went back to the chair, and sank down on it in a limp attitude of dejection wholly unlike his customary postures of strength. Again, his fear-fascinated eyes went to the row of cells that stood silently menacing on the other side of the corridor beyond the windows. His face was tinged with gray. A physical sickness was creeping stealthily on him, as his thoughts held insistently to the catastrophe that threatened. His intelligence was too keen to permit a belief that Burke's manner of almost fulsome kindliness hid nothing ominous—ominous with a hint of death for him in return for the death he had wrought.