Luke looked at him vacantly.
"I do want to," he said.
One of the policemen glanced significantly at the empty whiskey-bottle and smiled.
"I have some things to think about," said Luke. "I'll go up to the office over this. Tell the fellows I don't want anybody to butt in, Breil."
He decided that it would be well for him to do his thinking in the room in which he had so nearly done Betty what she must consider the ultimate wrong. He went there.
§3. He closed, but did not lock the door; he trusted to his orders against intrusion.
The street-lamp furnished the room with sufficient illumination. Luke saw that one of the chairs had been overturned and lay close beside the table. He must have overturned it while struggling with Betty, but, so far as he could recollect—and his mind for some time employed itself with such trifles—he had not remarked the fall at the moment of its occurrence.
He went to the broken window and lounged there, now looking out upon the scene of the street-battle, now back at the scene of the essentially similar combat that had been fought inside. It was astonishing how little he remembered of the details of either, but perhaps the reason for that was to be found in the size of their results.
Something glittered in the lamplight on the floor at his feet. He stooped and picked it up; it was one of those yellow wire hairpins that Betty used to supplement the pins of tortoiseshell. Down in the street he saw a draggled necktie that had been torn from the throat of some striker. His gaze wandered from one object to the other and back again.
He stood there for a long time....