at the bottom. Robert’s face had a worried look, for the law was such that a capture of this sort might also mean the confiscation of the owner’s car.
Blake, meanwhile, had been talking in a low, craftily persuasive tone of drunken insinuation and bribery to the policeman up front, saying:
“Now I know you boys don’t want to get us into any trouble. We weren’t doing anything wrong—just having a drink or two together and if you fellows will just forget about this thing, we’ll fix it up right with you—anything you say,” he whispered cunningly, “and get on out of town right now without anyone knowing a thing about it. What do you say, now? Come on! You can do it,” he said, with a leer of ingratiation.
The policeman to whom he spoke smiled good-naturedly, but said nothing. At this moment they drove up before the station-house, a shabby-looking little building of brick, with bars over the window, and which was situated on a side-street.
The shabby street looked warm, faded, sleepy, touched with the ghosts of autumn, but in an instant, as the police got out, opened the doors, and the gay men clambered down drunkenly among them, a rabble-rout of ragged negro boys, grinning, gape-mouthed countrymen with red faces, slouchy-looking barbers in their shirt-sleeves, and wormy-looking loafers, had gathered magically from nowhere, stood in a ring about them and snickered and shuffled about, pressed up to the barred windows and peered in curiously with shaded eyes as the policemen took them into the station.
As they started, Robert held back a little, and said hoarsely, and in a plaintive, troubled voice to the policeman who had him by the arm:
“What are you taking us in here for? We weren’t doing anything. Honest we weren’t. What are you going to do to us?”
The policeman smiled good-humouredly, and then said in a hearty reassuring voice:
“Aw, we’re not goin’to do anything to you. We were just afraid you boys might run into something and hurt yourself, that’s all. We’re just goin’to take you in here, and let you stay here a little while until you feel better,” he said, at the same time winking at his fellows.
“Well,” said Robert sullenly, casting a troubled and unwilling glance back at his shining car, “—I want to find my car here when I come out. Now if anything happens to that car, there’s going to be trouble,” he said ominously.
