“Willoughby Pastures.”
The captain could not contain himself. “Well, Willoughby Pastures,—or whatever your name is,—you'll get yourself into the papers this time, sure. And I must say it serves you right. If you can't speak for yourself, who's going to speak for you, do you suppose? Might send round to the girl's house——No, she wouldn't be there, ten to one. You've got to go through now. Next time don't be such an infernal fool.”
The captain blotted his book and shut it.
“We'll have to lock him up here to-night,” he said to the policeman. “Last batch has gone round. Better go through him.” But Lemuel had been gone through before, and the officer's search of his pockets only revealed their emptiness. The captain struck a bell on his desk. “If it ain't all right, you can make it right with the judge in the morning,” he added to Lemuel.
Lemuel looked up at the policeman who had arrested him. He was an elderly man, with a kindly face, squarely fringed with a chin-beard. The boy tried to speak, but he could only repeat, “I never saw her before. I never touched her.”
The policeman looked at him and then at the captain.
“Too late now,” said the latter. “Got to go through the mill this time. But if it ain't right, you can make it right.”
Another officer had answered the bell, and the captain indicated with a comprehensive roll of his head that he was to take Lemuel away and lock him up.
“Oh, my!” moaned the boy. As they passed the door of a small room opening on an inner corridor, a smell of coffee gushed out of it; the officer stopped, and Lemuel caught sight of two gentlemen in the room with a policeman, who was saying——
“Get a cup of coffee here when we want it. Try one?” he suggested hospitably.