by now should be coated over with a calloused shell inches deep
and hard as horn. Trying with half his mind to figure out what it was
that had quickened these emotions, he listened all the harder as Weil
went on.

"So this here big chunk of rock or slate or whatever it was falls on him
and the two others and kills them. Not knowing where to send the body,
they bury it up there at Sing Sing, and she never sees him again, living
or dead. But here just a few days ago it seems she picks up, from
overhearing some of the other Italians talking, that we've got such a
thing as a Rogues' Gallery down here at headquarters and that her
husband's picture is liable to be in it. So that's why she's here. She's
found her way here somehow and she asks me won't I"--he caught
himself--"won't the police please give her her husband's picture out of
the gallery."

"And for why did she want that?" rumbled Donohue.

"That's what I asks her myself. It seems she's got no shame about it at
all. She tells me she wants to hang on to it until she can get the
money to have it enlarged into a big picture, and then she's going to
keep it--till the bambino--that's Italian for baby, commissioner, you
know--till the baby grows up, so he can see what his dead father looked
like."

Now of a sudden La Farge knew--or thought he knew--why his interest had
stirred in him a minute before. Instinctively his reporter's sixth sense
had scented a good news story before the real point of the story had
come out, even. A curious little silence had fallen on the half-lighted,
almost empty big room. Only the voice of Weil broke this silence:

"Of course, commissioner, I tries to explain to her what the
circumstances are. I tells her that, in the first place, on account of
the mayor's orders about cutting down the gallery having gone into
effect, it's an even bet her husband's picture ain't there anyhow--that
it's most likely been destroyed; and in the second place, even if it is
there, I tells her I've got no right to be giving it to her without an
order from somebody higher up. But either she can't understand or she
won't. I guess my being in uniform makes her think I'm running the whole
department, and she won't seem to listen to what I says.

"She cries and she carries on worse than ever, and begs and begs me to
give it to her. I guess you know how excitable those Italian women can
be, especially when they are Sicilians. Anyhow, commissioner, after a
lot of th