The amazed officers, for an instant handicapped by their surprise,
since they were expecting to monopolize the brutality of the occasion,
came to their senses, and had instant recourse to the comforting
reinforcement of their locust clubs. The boy went down under a rat-tat
of night sticks, which left him as groggy and easy to handle as a
fainting woman.
"You got ter hand it ter dat guy," commented a sweater-clad onlooker,
as they dragged Samson into a doorway to await the wagon. "He was goin'
some while he lasted."
The boy was conscious again, though still faint, when the desk
sergeant wrote on the station-house blotter: "Carrying a deadly weapon, and resisting an officer."
The lieutenant had strolled in, and was contemplatively turning over
in his hand the heavy forty-five-calibre Colt.
"Some rod that!" he announced. "We don't get many like it here. Where
did you breeze in from, young fellow?"
"Thet's my business," growled Samson. Then, he added: "I'll be
obleeged if ye'll send word ter Mr. George Lescott ter come an' bail me
out."
"You seem to know the procedure," remarked the desk sergeant, with a
smile. "Who is Mr. George Lescott, and where's his hang-out?"
One of the arresting officers looked up from wiping with his
handkerchief the sweat-band of his helmet.
"George Lescott?" he repeated. "I know him. He's got one of them
studios just off Washington Square. He drives down-town in a car the
size of the Olympic. I don't know how he'd get acquainted with a boob
like this."
"Oh, well!" the desk sergeant yawned. "Stick him in the cage. We'll
call up this Lescott party later on. I guess he's still in the hay, and
it might make him peevish to wake him up."
Left alone in the police-station cell, the boy began to think. First
of all, he was puzzled. He had fared forth peaceably, and spoken to no
one except the storekeeper. To force a man into peace by denying him
his gun, seemed as unreasonable as to prevent fisticuffs by cutting off
hands. But, also, a deep sense of shame swept over him, and scalded
him. Getting into trouble here was, somehow, different from getting
into trouble at home--and, in some strange way, bitterly humiliating.
Lescott had risen early, meaning to go down to the studio, and have
breakfast with Samson. His mother and sister were leaving for Bermuda
by a nine o'clock sailing. Consequently, eight o'clock found the
household gathered in the breakfast-room, supplemented by Mr. Wilfred
Horton, whose orchids Adrienne Lescott was wearing, and whose luggage
was already at the wharf.