Джек Лондон
The Night-Born
A familiar phrase rang in his ears: “It is to laugh.” At the height of the wrangle, he giggled, once, aloud, and earned a sullen frown from Judge Witberg. Worse, a myriad times, he decided, were these bullying lawyers and this bullying judge then the bucko mates in first quality hell-ships, who not only did their own bullying but protected themselves as well. These petty rapscallions, on the other hand, sought protection behind the majesty of the law. They struck, but no one was permitted to strike back, for behind them were the prison cells and the clubs of the stupid policemen – paid and professional fighters and beaters-up of men. Yet he was not bitter. The grossness and the sliminess of it was forgotten in the simple grotesqueness of it, and he had the saving sense of humor.
Nevertheless, hectored and heckled though he was, he managed in the end to give a simple, straightforward version of the affair, and, despite a belligerent cross-examination, his story was not shaken in any particular. Quite different it was from the perjuries that had shouted aloud from the perjuries of Patsy and his two witnesses.
Both Patsy’s attorney and the Prosecuting Attorney rested their cases, letting everything go before the Court without argument. Watson protested against this, but was silenced when the Prosecuting Attorney told him that Public Prosecutor and knew his business.
“Patrick Horan has testified that he was in danger of his life and that he was compelled to defend himself,” Judge Witberg’s verdict began. “Mr. Watson has testified to the same thing. Each has sworn that the other struck the first blow; each has sworn that the other made an unprovoked assault on him. It is an axiom of the law that the defendant should be given the benefit of the doubt. A very reasonable doubt exists. Therefore, in the case of the People Versus Carter Watson the benefit of the doubt is given to said Carter Watson and he is herewith ordered discharged from custody. The same reasoning applies to the case of the People Versus Patrick Horan. He is given the benefit of the doubt and discharged from custody. My recommendation is that both defendants shake hands and make up.”
In the afternoon papers the first headline that caught Watson’s eye was: “CARTER WATSON ACQUITTED.” In the second paper it was: “CARTER WATSON ESCAPES A FINE.” But what capped everything was the one beginning: “CARTER WATSON A GOOD FELLOW.” In the text he read how Judge Witberg had advised both fighters to shake hands, which they promptly did. Further, he read:
“‘Let’s have a nip on it,’ said Patsy Horan.
“‘Sure,’ said Carter Watson.
“And, arm in arm, they ambled for the nearest saloon.”
IV
Now, from the whole adventure, Watson carried away no bitterness. It was a social experience of a new order, and it led to the writing of another book, which he entitled, “POLICE COURT PROCEDURE: A Tentative Analysis.”
One summer morning a year later, on his ranch, he left his horse and himself clambered on through a miniature canyon to inspect some rock ferns he had planted the previous winter. Emerging from the upper end of the canyon, he came out on one of his flower-spangled meadows, a delightful isolated spot, screened from the world by low hills and clumps of trees. And here he found a man, evidently on a stroll from the summer hotel down at the little town a mile away. They met face to face and the recognition was mutual. It was Judge Witberg. Also, it was a clear case of trespass, for Watson had trespass signs upon his boundaries, though he never enforced them.
Judge Witberg held out his hand, which Watson refused to see.
“Politics is a dirty trade, isn’t it, Judge?” he remarked. “Oh, yes, I see your hand, but I don’t care to take it. The papers said I shook hands with Patsy Horan after the trial. You know I did not, but let me tell you that I’d a thousand times rather shake hands with him and his vile following of curs, than with you.”
Judge Witberg was painfully flustered, and as he hemmed and hawed and essayed to speak, Watson, looking at him, was struck by a sudden whim, and he determined on a grim and facetious antic.
“I should scarcely expect any animus from a man of your acquirements and knowledge of the world,” the Judge was saying.
“Animus?” Watson replied. “Certainly not. I haven’t such a thing in my nature. And to prove it, let me show you something curious, something you have never seen before.” Casting about him, Watson picked up a rough stone the size of his fist. “See this. Watch me.”
So saying, Carter Watson tapped himself a sharp blow on the cheek. The stone laid the flesh open to the bone and the blood spurted forth.
“The stone was too sharp,” he announced to the astounded police judge, who thought he had gone mad.
“I must bruise it a trifle. There is nothing like being realistic in such matters.”
Whereupon Carter Watson found a smooth stone and with it pounded his cheek nicely several times.
“Ah,” he cooed. “That will turn beautifully green and black in a few hours. It will be most convincing.”
“You are insane,” Judge Witberg quavered.
“Don’t use such vile language to me,” said Watson. “You see my bruised and bleeding face? You did that, with that right hand of yours. You hit me twice – biff, biff. It is a brutal and unprovoked assault. I am in danger of my life. I must protect myself.”
Judge Witberg backed away in alarm before the menacing fists of the other.
“If you strike me I’ll have you arrested,” Judge Witberg threatened.
“That is what I told Patsy,” was the answer. “And do you know what he did when I told him that?”
“No.”
“That!”
And at the same moment Watson’s right fist landed flush on Judge Witberg’s nose, putting that legal gentleman over on his back on the grass.
“Get up!” commanded Watson. “If you are a gentleman, get up – that’s what Patsy told me, you know.”
Judge Witberg declined to rise, and was dragged to his feet by the coat-collar, only to have one eye blacked and be put on his back again. After that it was a red Indian massacre. Judge Witberg was humanely and scientifically beaten up. His checks were boxed, his cars cuffed, and his face was rubbed in the turf. And all the time Watson exposited the way Patsy Horan had done it. Occasionally, and very carefully, the facetious sociologist administered a real bruising blow. Once, dragging the poor Judge to his feet, he deliberately bumped his own nose on the gentleman’s head. The nose promptly bled.
“See that!” cried Watson, stepping back and deftly shedding his blood all down his own shirt front. “You did it. With your fist you did it. It is awful. I am fair murdered. I must again defend myself.”
And once more Judge Witberg impacted his features on a fist and was sent to grass.
“I will have you arrested,” he sobbed as he lay.
“That’s what Patsy said.”
“A brutal – sniff, sniff, – and unprovoked – sniff, sniff – assault.”
“That’s what Patsy said.”
“I will surely have you arrested.”
“Speaking slangily, not if I can beat you to it.”
And with that, Carter Watson departed down the canyon, mounted his horse, and rode to town.
An hour later, as Judge Witberg limped up the grounds to his hotel, he was arrested by a village constable on a charge of assault and battery preferred by Carter Watson.
V
“Your Honor,” Watson said next day to the village Justice, a well to do farmer and graduate, thirty years before, from a cow college, “since this Sol Witberg has seen fit to charge me with battery, following upon my charge of battery against him, I would suggest that both cases be lumped together. The testimony and the facts are the same in both cases.”
To this the Justice agreed, and the double case proceeded. Watson, as prosecuting witness, first took the stand and told his story.
“I was picking flowers,” he testified. “Picking flowers on my own land, never dreaming of danger. Suddenly this man rushed upon me from behind the trees. ‘I am the Dodo,’ he says, ‘and I can do you to a frazzle. Put up your hands.’ I smiled, but with that, biff, biff, he struck me, knocking me down and spilling my flowers. The language he used was frightful. It was an unprovoked and brutal assault. Look at my cheek. Look at my nose – I could not understand it. He must have been drunk. Before I recovered from my surprise he had administered this beating. I was in danger of my life and was compelled to defend himself. That is all, Your Honor, though I must say, in conclusion, that I cannot get over my perplexity. Why did he say he was the Dodo? Why did he so wantonly attack me?”
And thus was Sol Witberg given a liberal education in the art of perjury. Often, from his high seat, he had listened indulgently to police court perjuries in cooked-up cases; but for the first time perjury was directed against him, and he no longer sat above the court, with the bailiffs, the Policemen’s clubs, and the prison cells behind him.
“Your Honor,” he cried, “never have I heard such a pack of lies told by so bare-faced a liar – !”
Watson here sprang to his feet.
“Your Honor, I protest. It is for your Honor to decide truth or falsehood. The witness is on the stand to testify to actual events that have transpired. His personal opinion upon things in general, and upon me, has no bearing on the case whatever.”
The Justice scratched his head and waxed phlegmatically indignant.
“The point is well taken,” he decided. “I am surprised at you, Mr. Witberg, claiming to be a judge and skilled in the practice of the law, and yet being guilty of such unlawyerlike conduct. Your manner, sir, and your methods, remind me of a shyster. This is a simple case of assault and battery. We are here to determine who struck the first blow, and we are not interested in your estimates of Mr. Watson’s personal character. Proceed with your story.”
Sol Witberg would have bitten his bruised and swollen lip in chagrin, had it not hurt so much. But he contained himself and told a simple, straightforward, truthful story.
“Your Honor,” Watson said, “I would suggest that you ask him what he was doing on my premises.”
“A very good question. What were you doing, sir, on Mr. Watson’s premises?”
“I did not know they were his premises.”
“It was a trespass, your Honor,” Watson cried. “The warnings are posted conspicuously.”
“I saw no warnings,” said Sol Witberg.
“I have seen them myself,” snapped the Justice. “They are very conspicuous. And I would warn you, sir, that if you palter with the truth in such little matters you may darken your more important statements with suspicion. Why did you strike Mr. Watson?”
“Your Honor, as I have testified, I did not strike a blow.”
The Justice looked at Carter Watson’s bruised and swollen visage, and turned to glare at Sol Witberg.
“Look at that man’s cheek!” he thundered. “If you did not strike a blow how comes it that he is so disfigured and injured?”
“As I testified – ”
“Be careful,” the Justice warned.
“I will be careful, sir. I will say nothing but the truth. He struck himself with a rock. He struck himself with two different rocks.”
“Does it stand to reason that a man, any man not a lunatic, would so injure himself, and continue to injure himself, by striking the soft and sensitive parts of his face with a stone?” Carter Watson demanded
“It sounds like a fairy story,” was the Justice’s comment.
“Mr. Witberg, had you been drinking?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you never drink?”
“On occasion.”
The Justice meditated on this answer with an air of astute profundity.
Watson took advantage of the opportunity to wink at Sol Witberg, but that much-abused gentleman saw nothing humorous in the situation.
“A very peculiar case, a very peculiar case,” the Justice announced, as he began his verdict. “The evidence of the two parties is flatly contradictory. There are no witnesses outside the two principals. Each claims the other committed the assault, and I have no legal way of determining the truth. But I have my private opinion, Mr. Witberg, and I would recommend that henceforth you keep off of Mr. Watson’s premises and keep away from this section of the country – ”
“This is an outrage!” Sol Witberg blurted out.
“Sit down, sir!” was the Justice’s thundered command. “If you interrupt the Court in this manner again, I shall fine you for contempt. And I warn you I shall fine you heavily – you, a judge yourself, who should be conversant with the courtesy and dignity of courts. I shall now give my verdict:
“It is a rule of law that the defendant shall be given the benefit of the doubt. As I have said, and I repeat, there is no legal way for me to determine who struck the first blow. Therefore, and much to my regret,” – here he paused and glared at Sol Witberg – “in each of these cases I am compelled to give the defendant the benefit of the doubt. Gentlemen, you are both dismissed.”
“Let us have a nip on it,” Watson said to Witberg, as they left the courtroom; but that outraged person refused to lock arms and amble to the nearest saloon.
WINGED BLACKMAIL
PETER WINN lay back comfortably in a library chair, with closed eyes, deep in the cogitation of a scheme of campaign destined in the near future to make a certain coterie of hostile financiers sit up. The central idea had come to him the night before, and he was now reveling in the planning of the remoter, minor details. By obtaining control of a certain up-country bank, two general stores, and several logging camps, he could come into control of a certain dinky jerkwater line which shall here be nameless, but which, in his hands, would prove the key to a vastly larger situation involving more main-line mileage almost than there were spikes in the aforesaid dinky jerkwater. It was so simple that he had almost laughed aloud when it came to him. No wonder those astute and ancient enemies of his had passed it by.
The library door opened, and a slender, middle-aged man, weak-eyed and eye glassed, entered. In his hands was an envelope and an open letter. As Peter Winn’s secretary it was his task to weed out, sort, and classify his employer’s mail.
“This came in the morning post,” he ventured apologetically and with the hint of a titter. “Of course it doesn’t amount to anything, but I thought you would like to see it.”
“Read it,” Peter Winn commanded, without opening his eyes.
The secretary cleared his throat.
“It is dated July seventeenth, but is without address. Postmark San Francisco. It is also quite illiterate. The spelling is atrocious. Here it is:
“Mr. Peter Winn, SIR: I send you respectfully by express a pigeon worth good money. She’s a loo-loo – ”
“What is a loo-loo?” Peter Winn interrupted.
The secretary tittered.
“I’m sure I don’t know, except that it must be a superlative of some sort. The letter continues:
“Please freight it with a couple of thousand-dollar bills and let it go. If you do I wont never annoy you no more. If you dont you will be sorry.
“That is all. It is unsigned. I thought it would amuse you.”
“Has the pigeon come?” Peter Winn demanded.
“I’m sure I never thought to enquire.”
“Then do so.”
In five minutes the secretary was back.
“Yes, sir. It came this morning.”
“Then bring it in.”
The secretary was inclined to take the affair as a practical joke, but Peter Winn, after an examination of the pigeon, thought otherwise.
“Look at it,” he said, stroking and handling it. “See the length of the body and that elongated neck. A proper carrier. I doubt if I’ve ever seen a finer specimen. Powerfully winged and muscled. As our unknown correspondent remarked, she is a loo-loo. It’s a temptation to keep her.”
The secretary tittered.
“Why not? Surely you will not let it go back to the writer of that letter.”
Peter Winn shook his head.
“I’ll answer. No man can threaten me, even anonymously or in foolery.”
On a slip of paper he wrote the succinct message, “Go to hell,” signed it, and placed it in the carrying apparatus with which the bird had been thoughtfully supplied.
“Now we’ll let her loose. Where’s my son? I’d like him to see the flight.”
“He’s down in the workshop. He slept there last night, and had his breakfast sent down this morning.”
“He’ll break his neck yet,” Peter Winn remarked, half-fiercely, half-proudly, as he led the way to the veranda.
Standing at the head of the broad steps, he tossed the pretty creature outward and upward. She caught herself with a quick beat of wings, fluttered about undecidedly for a space, then rose in the air.
Again, high up, there seemed indecision; then, apparently getting her bearings, she headed east, over the oak-trees that dotted the park-like grounds.
“Beautiful, beautiful,” Peter Winn murmured. “I almost wish I had her back.”
But Peter Winn was a very busy man, with such large plans in his head and with so many reins in his hands that he quickly forgot the incident. Three nights later the left wing of his country house was blown up. It was not a heavy explosion, and nobody was hurt, though the wing itself was ruined. Most of the windows of the rest of the house were broken, and there was a deal of general damage. By the first ferry boat of the morning half a dozen San Francisco detectives arrived, and several hours later the secretary, in high excitement, erupted on Peter Winn.
“It’s come!” the secretary gasped, the sweat beading his forehead and his eyes bulging behind their glasses.
“What has come?” Peter demanded. “It – the – the loo-loo bird.”
Then the financier understood.
“Have you gone over the mail yet?”
“I was just going over it, sir.”
“Then continue, and see if you can find another letter from our mysterious friend, the pigeon fancier.”
The letter came to light. It read:
Mr. Peter Winn, HONORABLE SIR: Now dont be a fool. If youd came through, your shack would not have blew up – I beg to inform you respectfully, am sending same pigeon. Take good care of same, thank you. Put five one thousand dollar bills on her and let her go. Dont feed her. Dont try to follow bird. She is wise to the way now and makes better time. If you dont come through, watch out.
Peter Winn was genuinely angry. This time he indited no message for the pigeon to carry. Instead, he called in the detectives, and, under their advice, weighted the pigeon heavily with shot. Her previous flight having been eastward toward the bay, the fastest motor-boat in Tiburon was commissioned to take up the chase if it led out over the water.
But too much shot had been put on the carrier, and she was exhausted before the shore was reached. Then the mistake was made of putting too little shot on her, and she rose high in the air, got her bearings and started eastward across San Francisco Bay. She flew straight over Angel Island, and here the motor-boat lost her, for it had to go around the island.
That night, armed guards patrolled the grounds. But there was no explosion. Yet, in the early morning Peter Winn learned by telephone that his sister’s home in Alameda had been burned to the ground.
Two days later the pigeon was back again, coming this time by freight in what had seemed a barrel of potatoes. Also came another letter:
Mr. Peter Winn, RESPECTABLE SIR: It was me that fixed yr sisters house. You have raised hell, aint you. Send ten thousand now. Going up all the time. Dont put any more handicap weights on that bird. You sure cant follow her, and its cruelty to animals.
Peter Winn was ready to acknowledge himself beaten. The detectives were powerless, and Peter did not know where next the man would strike – perhaps at the lives of those near and dear to him. He even telephoned to San Francisco for ten thousand dollars in bills of large denomination. But Peter had a son, Peter Winn, Junior, with the same firm-set jaw as his fathers, and the same knitted, brooding determination in his eyes. He was only twenty-six, but he was all man, a secret terror and delight to the financier, who alternated between pride in his son’s aeroplane feats and fear for an untimely and terrible end.
“Hold on, father, don’t send that money,” said Peter Winn, Junior. “Number Eight is ready, and I know I’ve at last got that reefing down fine. It will work, and it will revolutionize flying. Speed – that’s what’s needed, and so are the large sustaining surfaces for getting started and for altitude. I’ve got them both. Once I’m up I reef down. There it is. The smaller the sustaining surface, the higher the speed. That was the law discovered by Langley. And I’ve applied it. I can rise when the air is calm and full of holes, and I can rise when its boiling, and by my control of my plane areas I can come pretty close to making any speed I want. Especially with that new Sangster-Endholm engine.”
“You’ll come pretty close to breaking your neck one of these days,” was his father’s encouraging remark.
“Dad, I’ll tell you what I’ll come pretty close to-ninety miles an hour – Yes, and a hundred. Now listen! I was going to make a trial tomorrow. But it won’t take two hours to start today. I’ll tackle it this afternoon. Keep that money. Give me the pigeon and I’ll follow her to her loft where ever it is. Hold on, let me talk to the mechanics.”
He called up the workshop, and in crisp, terse sentences gave his orders in a way that went to the older man’s heart. Truly, his one son was a chip off the old block, and Peter Winn had no meek notions concerning the intrinsic value of said old block.
Timed to the minute, the young man, two hours later, was ready for the start. In a holster at his hip, for instant use, cocked and with the safety on, was a large-caliber automatic pistol. With a final inspection and overhauling he took his seat in the aeroplane. He started the engine, and with a wild burr of gas explosions the beautiful fabric darted down the launching ways and lifted into the air. Circling, as he rose, to the west, he wheeled about and jockeyed and maneuvered for the real start of the race.
This start depended on the pigeon. Peter Winn held it. Nor was it weighted with shot this time. Instead, half a yard of bright ribbon was firmly attached to its leg – this the more easily to enable its flight being followed. Peter Winn released it, and it arose easily enough despite the slight drag of the ribbon. There was no uncertainty about its movements. This was the third time it had made particular homing passage, and it knew the course.
At an altitude of several hundred feet it straightened out and went due east. The aeroplane swerved into a straight course from its last curve and followed. The race was on. Peter Winn, looking up, saw that the pigeon was outdistancing the machine. Then he saw something else. The aeroplane suddenly and instantly became smaller. It had reefed. Its high-speed plane-design was now revealed. Instead of the generous spread of surface with which it had taken the air, it was now a lean and hawklike monoplane balanced on long and exceedingly narrow wings.
When young Winn reefed down so suddenly, he received a surprise. It was his first trial of the new device, and while he was prepared for increased speed he was not prepared for such an astonishing increase. It was better than he dreamed, and, before he knew it, he was hard upon the pigeon. That little creature, frightened by this, the most monstrous hawk it had ever seen, immediately darted upward, after the manner of pigeons that strive always to rise above a hawk.
In great curves the monoplane followed upward, higher and higher into the blue. It was difficult, from underneath to see the pigeon, and young Winn dared not lose it from his sight. He even shook out his reefs in order to rise more quickly. Up, up they went, until the pigeon, true to its instinct, dropped and struck at what it thought to be the back of its pursuing enemy. Once was enough, for, evidently finding no life in the smooth cloth surface of the machine, it ceased soaring and straightened out on its eastward course.
A carrier pigeon on a passage can achieve a high rate of speed, and Winn reefed again. And again, to his satisfaction, he found that he was beating the pigeon. But this time he quickly shook out a portion of his reefed sustaining surface and slowed down in time. From then on he knew he had the chase safely in hand, and from then on a chant rose to his lips which he continued to sing at intervals, and unconsciously, for the rest of the passage. It was: “Going some; going some; what did I tell you! – going some.”
Even so, it was not all plain sailing. The air is an unstable medium at best, and quite without warning, at an acute angle, he entered an aerial tide which he recognized as the gulf stream of wind that poured through the drafty-mouthed Golden Gate. His right wing caught it first – a sudden, sharp puff that lifted and tilted the monoplane and threatened to capsize it. But he rode with a sensitive “loose curb,” and quickly, but not too quickly, he shifted the angles of his wing-tips, depressed the front horizontal rudder, and swung over the rear vertical rudder to meet the tilting thrust of the wind. As the machine came back to an even keel, and he knew that he was now wholly in the invisible stream, he readjusted the wing-tips, rapidly away from him during the several moments of his discomfiture.
The pigeon drove straight on for the Alameda County shore, and it was near this shore that Winn had another experience. He fell into an air-hole. He had fallen into air-holes before, in previous flights, but this was a far larger one than he had ever encountered. With his eyes strained on the ribbon attached to the pigeon, by that fluttering bit of color he marked his fall. Down he went, at the pit of his stomach that old sink sensation which he had known as a boy he first negotiated quick-starting elevators. But Winn, among other secrets of aviation, had learned that to go up it was sometimes necessary first to go down. The air had refused to hold him. Instead of struggling futilely and perilously against this lack of sustension, he yielded to it. With steady head and hand, he depressed the forward horizontal rudder – just recklessly enough and not a fraction more – and the monoplane dived head foremost and sharply down the void. It was falling with the keenness of a knife-blade. Every instant the speed accelerated frightfully. Thus he accumulated the momentum that would save him. But few instants were required, when, abruptly shifting the double horizontal rudders forward and astern, he shot upward on the tense and straining plane and out of the pit.
At an altitude of five hundred feet, the pigeon drove on over the town of Berkeley and lifted its flight to the Contra Costa hills. Young Winn noted the campus and buildings of the University of California – his university – as he rose after the pigeon.
Once more, on these Contra Costa hills, he early came to grief. The pigeon was now flying low, and where a grove of eucalyptus presented a solid front to the wind, the bird was suddenly sent fluttering wildly upward for a distance of a hundred feet. Winn knew what it meant. It had been caught in an air-surf that beat upward hundreds of feet where the fresh west wind smote the upstanding wall of the grove. He reefed hastily to the uttermost, and at the same time depressed the angle of his flight to meet that upward surge. Nevertheless, the monoplane was tossed fully three hundred feet before the danger was left astern.
Two or more ranges of hills the pigeon crossed, and then Winn saw it dropping down to a landing where a small cabin stood in a hillside clearing. He blessed that clearing. Not only was it good for alighting, but, on account of the steepness of the slope, it was just the thing for rising again into the air.
A man, reading a newspaper, had just started up at the sight of the returning pigeon, when he heard the burr of Winn’s engine and saw the huge monoplane, with all surfaces set, drop down upon him, stop suddenly on an air-cushion manufactured on the spur of the moment by a shift of the horizontal rudders, glide a few yards, strike ground, and come to rest not a score of feet away from him. But when he saw a young man, calmly sitting in the machine and leveling a pistol at him, the man turned to run. Before he could make the corner of the cabin, a bullet through the leg brought him down in a sprawling fall.
“What do you want!” he demanded sullenly, as the other stood over him.
“I want to take you for a ride in my new machine,” Winn answered. “Believe me, she is a loo-loo.”
The man did not argue long, for this strange visitor had most convincing ways. Under Winn’s instructions, covered all the time by the pistol, the man improvised a tourniquet and applied it to his wounded leg. Winn helped him to a seat in the machine, then went to the pigeon-loft and took possession of the bird with the ribbon still fast to its leg.
A very tractable prisoner, the man proved. Once up in the air, he sat close, in an ecstasy of fear. An adept at winged blackmail, he had no aptitude for wings himself, and when he gazed down at the flying land and water far beneath him, he did not feel moved to attack his captor, now defenseless, both hands occupied with flight.
Instead, the only way the man felt moved was to sit closer.
Peter Winn, Senior, scanning the heavens with powerful glasses, saw the monoplane leap into view and grow large over the rugged backbone of Angel Island. Several minutes later he cried out to the waiting detectives that the machine carried a passenger. Dropping swiftly and piling up an abrupt air-cushion, the monoplane landed.
“That reefing device is a winner!” young Winn cried, as he climbed out. “Did you see me at the start? I almost ran over the pigeon. Going some, dad! Going some! What did I tell you? Going some!”
“But who is that with you?” his father demanded.
The young man looked back at his prisoner and remembered.
“Why, that’s the pigeon-fancier,” he said. “I guess the officers can take care of him.”
Peter Winn gripped his son’s hand in grim silence, and fondled the pigeon which his son had passed to him. Again he fondled the pretty creature. Then he spoke.
“Exhibit A, for the People,” he said.
