in.

"Captain Meagher is the first witness," said the policeman. "He's the
one that's makin' the charge."

"What is the charge?" put in Rogers.

"At this distance I couldn't make out--Cap Meagher, he mumbles so,"
confessed the doorkeeper. "Somethin' about misuse of police property, I
take it to be."

"Aha!" gloated La Farge in his gratification. "Come on, Rogers--I don't
want to miss any of this."

It was plain, however, that they had missed something; for, to judge by
his attitude, Captain Meagher was quite through with his testimony. He
still sat in the witness chair alongside the deputy commissioner's desk;
but he was silent and he stared vacantly at vacancy. Captain Meagher was
known in the department as a man incredibly honest and unbelievably
dull. He had no more imagination than one of his own reports. He had a
long, sad face, like a tired workhorse's, and heavy black eyebrows that
curved high in the middle and arched downward at each end--circumflexes
accenting the incurable stupidity of his expression. His black mustache
drooped the same way, too, in the design of an inverted magnet. Larry
Magee had coined one of his best whimsies on the subject of the shape of
the captain's mustache.

"No wonder," he said, "old Meagher never has any luck--he wears his
horseshoe upside down on his face!"

Just as the two reporters, re-entering, took their seats the trial
deputy spoke.

"Is that all, Captain Meagher?" he asked sonorously.

"That's all," said Meagher.

"I note," went on Donohue, glancing about him, "that the accused does
not appear to be represented by counsel."

A man on trial at headquarters has the right to hire a lawyer to defend
him.

"No, sir," spoke up Weil briskly. "I've got no lawyer, commissioner."
His speech was the elaborated and painfully emphasized English of the
self-taught East Sider. It carried in it just the bare suggestion of the
racial lisp, and it made an acute contrast to the menacing Hibernian
purr of Donohue's heavier voice. "I kind of thought I'd conduct my own
case myself."

Donohue merely grunted.

"Do you desire, Lieutenant Weil, for to ask Captain Meagher any
questions?" he demanded.

Weil shook his oily head of hair.

"No, sir. I wouldn't wish to ask the captain anything."

"Are there any other witnesses?" inquired Donohue next.

There was no answer. Plainly there were no other witnesses.

"Lieutenant Weil, do you desire for to say something in your own
be