an hour, off his post, where he
belonged, and in a saloon where he did not belong, sitting down, with
his blouse unfastened and his belt unbuckled; and for having no better
excuse, or no worse one, than the ancient tale of a sudden attack of
faintness causing him to make his way into the nearest place where he
might recover himself--that it happened to be a family liquor store was,
he protested, a sheer accident--Patrolman Rogan was required to pay five
days' pay and, moreover, to listen to divers remarks in which he heard
himself likened to several things, none of them of a complimentary
character.

Properly crushed and shrunken, the culprit departed thence with his
uniform bagged and wrinkling upon his diminished form, and the third
deputy commissioner, well pleased, on the whole, with his day's hunting,
prepared to adjourn. The two lone reporters got up and made for the
door, intending to telephone in to their two shops the grand total and
final summary of old Donohue's bag of game.

They were at the door, in a little press of departing witnesses and late
defendants, when behind them a word in Donohue's hard-rolled official
accents made them halt and turn round. The veteran had picked up from
his desk a sheet of paper and was squinting up his hedgy, thick eyebrows
in an effort to read what was written there.

"Wan more case to be heard," he announced. "Keep order there, you men at
the door! The case of Lieutenant Isidore Weil"--he grated the name out
lingeringly--"charged with--with----" He broke off, peering about him
for some one to scold. "Couldn't you be makin' a light here, some of
you! I can't see to make out these here charges and specifications."

Some one bestirred himself and many lights popped on, chasing the
shadows back into the far corners. Outside in the hall a policeman doing
duty as a bailiff called the name of Lieutenant Isidore Weil, thrice
repeated.

"Gee! Have they landed that slick kike at last?" said La Farge, the
older of the reporters, half to himself. "Say, you know, that tickles
me! I've been looking this long time for something like this to be
coming off." Like most old headquarters reporters, La Farge had his
deep-seated prejudices. To judge by his present expression, this was a
very deep-seated one, amounting, you might say, to a constitutional
infirmity with La Farge.

"Who's Weil and what's he done?" inquired Rogers. Rogers was a young
reporter.

"I don't know yet--the charge