"Here, here!" broke in the sergeant's brusque voice. "None of that. What were you muttering there? Never mind. Be silent. Here comes a gentleman who will dispose of your case in quick order."
At the south, a golden door had opened and a man was seen descending the short flight of green marble steps before it. Even at a distance, he seemed an impressive figure. Over a largely checked vest he wore an exquisitely cut frock coat. His trousers were of a delicate pearl-gray hue, and a pair of white spats surmounted immaculate patent-leather pumps. On his head gleamed a shining silk hat.
Had the gentleman but carried a flag, or Roman candle, he might creditably have adorned a political parade. A large bouquet would have completed his costume for a Bowery wedding. Amid the barbaric splendor which actually surrounded him, he seemed out of place, but happily unconscious of that fact.
Slowly and with dignity he advanced, while in the gleaming porcelain beneath an inverted, silk-hatted replica of him followed every step. At last his majestic progress ceased. He had halted some six paces from the group of prisoners and policemen. Without speaking, he surveyed them with a slow, long, insolent gaze.
He was a small man, handsome in a weak, dissipated way; old with the age of self-indulgence rather than years. His greenish-hazel eyes were close-set and cunning. He possessed a little, pointed mustache, and, in the opinion of the prisoners, an unjustifiably impertinent manner.
Out of the corner of his eye Drayton saw that his Irish friend was bristling anew. Well, if the outbreak had to come, he wished it would burst now and annihilate this silk-hatted monstrosity. No man could eye Viola in just the manner of this stranger and deserve continued life!
The high-hatted one deigned to speak.
"Well, Fifty-three," he drawled languidly, addressing the sergeant, "and why have you brought them here? The chief is in attendance on His Supremity, and there's no one else about who cares to be bothered. I myself came over to warn you that Penn Service is tired of having these trivial cases brought to the Temple. Lately you police chaps seem to consider the Temple a sort of petty court for pickpockets!"
Trenmore passed the sergeant in one stride.
"You miserable, insolent, little whippersnapper!" he thundered in a voice that was amazingly re-echoed from the golden dome above.