Paul's mind was numb as he stood between the officers at the call box. He could not force his brain to function even normally, let alone execute any mental tricks discovered in the bottom of a martini glass. A squad car pulled up and he climbed docilely in the back seat and sat like a man in a trance between the two silent policemen. At the station there was the added chill of feeling like a man alone, a criminal involved in a terrible experience that was merely routine to the tormentors who walked by his side.
It was one of the older stations with a well-worn floor marked by the scuffing footsteps of many an unhappy wrongdoer. The desk sergeant had a sagging disillusioned face and a pair of eyes that had given up all hope of Utopia. He turned them on Paul and grunted, "What's the gripe?"
The senior officer did the talking. "We don't exactly know, Sergeant, but we got a lead on this character, found him sitting in a gin mill with enough dough in his ketch to pay off the national debt. It seemed a little out of line somehow."
The desk sergeant stretched his scrawny neck and peered down at the offending briefcase. "The dough in there?"
"Right."
"Let's have a look."
The younger officer lifted the bag as though it contained the secret to every unsolved crime on the books and deposited it triumphantly on the desk.
"Pretty battered leather to lug around real dough in," the sergeant commented. He lifted the flap and reached inside. Then he scowled at the accusing cop and tipped the briefcase upside down.
A sheaf of white papers fell out; a pack of new lead pencils Paul had lifted from the supply shelf that afternoon and a copy of Lurid Sex he had bought at the corner newsstand. That was all.