"Lock me up? I tell you I have no friends here! How can I get bail? Where will you put me?"
"Show him his cell," replied the chief to his sergeant.
"Come along," said the policeman kindly. "All witnesses are treated that way. We'll give you the most comfortable quarters we've got."
He took Isaac by the arm after the professional manner. The young man flung off the touch. For an instant his eyes swept the station menacingly. What if he should exert his strength! There were two—three—four officers in the room. He might even overpower these, and dash for liberty. He saw the livid reflection of electric lights through the windows. Unconsciously he contracted his sinews, and tightened his muscles until they were rigid. Then the hopelessness of his position burst upon him like a red strontian fire. He felt blasted by his disgrace.
"What are you doing to me?" he cried out. "Put me in prison? My God! This will kill my mother!"
The next morning at ten o'clock Tom Muldoon was released on ten thousand dollars bail. The surety was promptly furnished by the alderman of the—th Ward. Muldoon was to present himself before the grand jury, which met the first Monday in each month. As this was the beginning of the month, his appearance could not be required for three weeks at least, and by mutual agreement of the district attorney and the counsel for the defendant, action might be put off for one or even for two months more, pending the recovery or eventual death of the assaulted. This would give the saloon-keeper plenty of time for the two ribs that Isaac Masters had crushed, to mend!
There are sensitive men and women who would go insane after spending an innocent night in a cell. In the dryest, the largest, the best of them there is everything to debase the manhood and nauseate the soul. The tin cup on the grated window-sill, half-filled with soup which the last occupant left; the cot to the right of the hopeless door, made of two boards and one straw mattress; and that necessity which is the nameless horror of such a narrow incarceration—that which suffocates and poisons; then the flickering jet up the concrete corridor, casting such fitful shadows by the prisoner's side that he starts from his cot in terror to touch the phantoms lest they be real; the alternate waves of choking heat and harrowing cold; the hammering of the steam-pipes; the curses, the groans, and the eruptive breathing of the sleeping and the drunken; the thoughts of home, and friends, and irreparable disgrace; the feeble hope that, after all, the family will not hear of this so far away; and the despair because they will—mad visions of suicide; blasphemy, repentant tears and prayers, each chasing the other amid the persistent thought that all things are impotent but freedom. Oh, what a night! What a night!
There are souls that have existed five, ten years under the courtine of Catharine in the Petropavlovskaya Fortress—drugged, tortured, at last killed like rats in a hole. All the while the maledict banner of the Romanoffs writhes above them. What has been the power to keep alive thousands of prisoners in those bastions, beyond the natural endurance of the flesh? The glory of principle.
No wonder that a ghastly face and haggard eyes and wavering steps followed the keeper to the American court-room the next morning; for nothing could be tortured into a principle to stimulate Isaac's courage. It is easy to die for right, but not for wrong.
There were three short flights of iron that led past tiers of cells, through the tombs, into the prisoner's dock. Isaac dully remembered the huge coils of steam-pipe that curled up the side of the wall. He thought of pythons. As he passed by, the prisoners awaiting sentence held the rods of their doors in their hands, like monkeys, and swore, and laughed, and shot questions at the keeper as he passed along.