black-faced headlines: WELL-KNOWN LAWYERCLAD IN PINK ROMPERSHALED TO NIGHT COURT [Pg 46] [Pg 46] He saw—but Switzer's next remark sent a fresh shudder of apprehension through him, caught all again, as he was, in the coils of accursed circumstance. "Magistrate Voris will be gettin' sleepy what with waitin' for them raids to be pulled off, and I make no doubt the sight of you will put him in a good humour." And Magistrate Voris was his rival for the favours of Miss Milly Hollister! And Magistrate Voris was a person with a deformed sense of humour! And Magistrate Voris was sitting in judgment this moment at Jefferson Market night court. And now desperation, thrice compounded, rent the soul of the trapped victim of his own misaimed subterfuge. "I won't be taken to any night court!" he shouted, wresting himself toward the edge of the sidewalk and dragging his companion along with him. "I won't go there! I demand to be taken to a station house. I'm a sick man and I require the services of a doctor." "Startin' to be rough-house all over again, huh?" grunted Switzer vindictively. "Well, we'll see about that part of it, too—right now!" Surrendering his lowermost clutch, the one in the silken seat of the suit of his writhing prisoner, he fumbled beneath the tails of his overcoat for the disciplinary nippers that were in his righthand rear trousers pocket. With a convulsive twist of his body Mr. Leary jerked himself free of the mittened grip upon his neckband, and as, released, he gave a deerlike lunge forward for liberty he caromed against a burdened ash can upon the curbstone and sent it spinning backward; then recovering sprang onward and outward[Pg 47] across the gutter in flight. In the same instant he heard behind him a crash of metal and a solid thud, heard a sound as of a scrambling solid body cast abruptly prone, heard the name of Deity profaned, and divined without looking back that the ash can, conveniently rolling between the plump legs of the personified Arm of the Law, had been Officer Switzer's undoing, and might be his salvation.
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