led the captain.

Dragging Howard after him, he made his way to the elevator. Throwing his
prisoner into the cage, he turned to give orders to his subordinate.

"Maloney, you come up with me and bring Officer Delaney." Addressing the
other men, he said: "You other fellers look after things down here.
Don't let any of these people come upstairs," Then, turning to the
elevator boy, he gave the command: "Up with her."

The elevator, with its passengers, shot upward, stopped with a jerk at
the fourteenth floor, and the captain, once more laying a brutal hand on
Howard, pushed him out into the corridor.

If it could be said of Captain Clinton that he had any system at all, it
was to be as brutal as possible with everybody unlucky enough to fall
into his hands. Instead of regarding his prisoners as innocent until
found guilty, as they are justly entitled to be regarded under the law,
he took the direct opposite stand. He considered all his prisoners as
guilty as hell until they had succeeded in proving themselves innocent.
Even then he had his doubts. When a jury brought in a verdict of
acquittal, he shook his head and growled. He had the greatest contempt
for a jury that would acquit and the warmest regard for a jury which
convicted. He bullied and maltreated his prisoners because he firmly
believed in undermining their moral and physical resistance. When by
depriving them of sleep and food, by choking them, clubbing them and
frightening them he had reduced them to a state of nervous terror, to
the border of physical collapse, he knew by experience that they would
no longer be in condition to withstand his merciless cross-examinations.
Demoralized, unstrung, they would blurt out the truth and so convict
themselves. The ends of justice would thus be served.

Captain Clinton prided himself on the thorough manner in which he
conducted these examinations of persons under arrest. It was a laborious
ordeal, but always successful. He owed his present position on the force
to the skill with which he brow-beat his prisoners into "confessions."
With his "third degree" seances he arrived at results better and more
quickly than in any other way. All his convictions had been secured by
them. The press and meddling busy-bodies called his system barbarous, a
revival of the old-time torture chamber. What did he care what the
people said as long as he convicted his man? Wasn't that what he was
paid for? He was there to find the murderer,