“Yes, Mr. Mayor. Of course, I don’t make a practice of readin’ that disreputable sheet, but somebody happened to hand me a copy this mornin’, and called my attention to the—ahem—dastardly outrage on the front page. Ain’t it fierce, Mr. Mayor?”
His honor glared at him. “Yes, it’s fierce, all right!” he growled. “But it’s only what we’ve got to expect when we’ve got a bonehead like you at the head of the department.”
The chief’s round face turned purple. “Now, see here, Mr. Mayor,” he said plaintively, “is it fair to blame me when you——”
“Never mind that now,” his honor interrupted curtly. “I’ll attend to your case later on—and to all those others who have gone and got my administration in bad by getting their pictures in that confounded newspaper. I’m going to teach you all a lesson you won’t forget in a hurry, I promise you. But that’ll keep for a little while.[Pg 43] There’s something else that I want to attend to first. Do you know who took those snapshots for the Bulletin?”
“I am told that it was that young loafer from New York named Hawley, who——” began the chief.
“So it was he, was it? I suspected as much,” Mayor Henkle muttered. “Do you know where he is at this moment, Hodgins?”
“No, I don’t,” replied the chief of police, with a scowl. “But I guess I can find him, all right. I am going to court as soon as I leave here, to swear out a warrant for his arrest; and then I——”
“You’re going to do nothing of the kind,” his honor broke in, with much vehemence. “You big, blundering boob, haven’t you got enough sense to realize that we can’t arrest him?”
“Why not?” demanded Hodgins in great astonishment. “He took those snapshots without a license, didn’t he? That’s a clear violation of the law. It seems to me that here’s a fine opportunity to put the scamp behind bars for six months. He can’t beat the case this time.”
“Oh, it seems that way to you, does it?” sneered his honor. “Well, maybe if you stop to think for a minute, you’ll realize what effect it would have upon the people of this town if we were to send that chap to jail for taking those pictures. It would be regarded as a piece of spite work, and public sentiment would be dead against us. I don’t want that.”