“Whew—old Fogey’s in one of his tantrums, then. He’d have only got three at Dark Street.”
Then some one called the name “Reginald,” and the policeman near him said “Coming.” Then, turning to the prisoner, he said,—
“Fogey’s on the bench to-day, and he’s particular. Look alive.”
Reginald found himself being hurried to the door through a lane of officials and others towards the stairs.
“Your turn next, Grinder,” he heard some one say as he passed. “Ten-minutes will do this case.”
To Reginald the stairs seemed interminable. There was a hum of voices above, and a shuffling of feet as of people taking a momentary relaxation in the interval of some performance. Then a loud voice cried, “Silence—order in the court, sit down, gentlemen,” and there fell an unearthly stillness on the place.
“To the right,” said the policeman, coming beside him, and taking his arm as if to direct him.
He was conscious of a score of curious faces turned on him, of some one on the bench folding up a newspaper and adjusting his glasses, of a man at a table throwing aside a quill pen and taking another, of a click of a latch closing behind him, of a row of spikes in front of him. Then he found himself alone.
What followed he scarcely could tell. He was vaguely aware of some one with Mr Sniff’s voice making a statement in which his (Reginald’s) own name occurred, another voice from the bench breaking in every now and then, and yet another voice from the table talking too, accompanied by the squeaking of a pen across paper. Then the constable who had arrested him said something, and after the constable some one else.
Then followed a dialogue in undertone between the bench and the table, and once more Mr Sniff’s voice, and at last the voice from the bench, a gruff, unsympathetic voice, said,—