They caught him at two o’clock, and the crowd which had joined in the chase were flabbergasted when they found that the ruffian was only a weeping little man in his shirt sleeves. Someone at the station house was wise enough to give him an opiate instead of a padded cell, and in the morning he felt much better.
Mr. Cushmael, accompanied by an anxious young lady with crimson hair, called at the jail before noon.
“I’ll get you out,” cried Mr. Cushmael, shaking hands excitedly through the bars. “One policeman, he’ll explain it all to the other.”
“And there’s a surprise for you too,” added Edna softly, taking his other hand. “Mr. Cushmael’s got a big heart and he’s going to make you his day man now.”
“All right,” agreed Charles Stuart calmly. “But I can’t start till to-morrow.”
“Why not?”
“Because this afternoon I got to go to a matinee—with a friend.”
He relinquished his employer’s hand but kept Edna’s white fingers twined firmly in his.
“One more thing,” he went on in a strong, confident voice that was new to him, “if you want to get me off don’t have the case come up in the 35th Street court.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he answered with a touch of swagger in his voice, “that’s the judge I had when I was arrested last time.”
“Charles,” whispered Edna suddenly, “what would you do if I refused to go with you this afternoon?”
He bristled. Color came into his cheeks and he rose defiantly from his bench.
“Why, I’d—I’d—”
“Never mind,” she said, flushing slightly. “You’d do nothing of the kind.”
Notes
Written in Great Neck in March 1924. Also, the story was syndicated by the Metro Newspaper Service; it was included in The Cream of the Jug, a 1927 humor anthology; and it was made into a movie in 1929. This story reads like a movie scenario, and maybe it was intended as one.
