“Why, yes. That was more of it. He had the nerve to say his name was Chick Carter, your assistant!”
“Good heavens! And you’ve arrested a man against whom you have no case, even when he told you he was my assistant, and that his name was Chick Carter. Didn’t you think it worth while to make any inquiries?”
“No. We——”
“Didn’t it occur to anybody in this police station that he might be telling the truth?”
“Why, no, Mr. Carter,” answered the lieutenant at the desk. “We put the name he gave us on the blotter. We always do that, even when we know it isn’t the real name. We have so many arrests where men say their name is something entirely different from the one they give. We have no time to make inquiries into that sort of thing.”
“Let me see this prisoner—this man Chick Carter!” demanded Nick.
The lieutenant called out to the doorman to bring Chick up from below.
There was silence until the door opened. Nick was frowning, and every officer in the big station looked worried. They began to feel that there had been a mistake somewhere.
“Here he is, lieutenant!”
It was the uniformed officer in charge of the cells who spoke, and he held by the elbow no less a person than Chick.