Читать книгу Son of a Hundred Kings - Thomas B. Costain - Страница 20

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The publisher of the Star had buttonholed William Christian as the latter was leaving the train and had suggested he accompany the boy to the police station. “I’m in a great hurry and can’t go myself, Billy,” he said. “But I don’t like the idea of leaving him in the care of this drunken reporter of mine. Just go along with them like a good fellow and sort of keep an eye on things.” William Christian was in a great hurry too. If he didn’t get home promptly, Tilly would be pacing the floor when he arrived or standing at the door of their cottage at 138 Wilson Street, her arms grimly akimbo, her expression unforgiving. But he had nodded his head and said he would go along.

There was no mistaking the police station. It was a three-story building which seemed as unsteady and teetering as the drunks it harbored, its brick walls splashed over with a dark red paint, and a gaslight, blazing away like the all-seeing eye of Justice, above the front entrance. The boy drew back at the worn stone steps and said, “I don’t think I like this place, sir.”

“No one likes this place, sonny,” said William Christian. “But you and me, we don’t have to care. We’re just going in to see about getting some things done for you.”

On the way from the station in a hired hack (paid for by the Star, of course), the carpenter had realized that the boy could not be kept in the dark and had told him that his father had gone away for a long time and that he, Ludar, would not see him after all. The boy had looked frightened and had asked in a tense whisper where he would go now. The explanation that he would probably be sent back to his relatives in England had thrown him into an immediate panic. He had clutched at Christian’s arm and had said no, he would not go back. When asked if he didn’t like the lady he had been living with he had cried and said that she was a very mean lady and didn’t like little boys. Realizing then that he was in deep water, Christian had said nothing more.

“You’ll laugh yourself sick, boy, at the things which go on here,” said Sloppy Bates. Now that a good look could be had at the reporter, it was apparent that he richly deserved his nickname. Two buttons were missing from his threadbare overcoat, which came almost to his heels, and the black ribbon of his tam-o’-shanter was dangling down his back. “Yes, boy, they’re out-and-out comedians in here.”

The boy still held back. “Come, Ludar,” said Christian. “I’ll stay right with you. All you’ll have to do is to sit down for a few minutes in a nice warm room. You won’t have to say a word.”

They found themselves, after entering, in a room which opened to the left of the main door. It was heavy with what is called the institutional smell. A big man in uniform was sitting behind a high desk and growling at two disheveled individuals standing in front of him in the care of another officer.

“Eliven of them,” said the big man in a pleasant brogue. “And all in one afternoon.”

“There’ll be more before this night’s over with,” declared the other officer.

“Do they think all the whisky in town must be lapped up in one day? It makes me ashamed of the human race, it does.” The sergeant turned to one of the delinquents. “So, it’s you again, is it, Connie Stockarrah? You’ll have to tell me how to spell your name. It fools me every time. How can people have such names?”

“You don’t have to spell it,” said the drunk indignantly. “You just write it down.”

Bates went to a corner of the desk between the two drunks and said to the sergeant, “If it pleases the guard who holds the flaming sword at the entrance, I’ll have a word with the Lord of Law and Order.”

“Be getting along to the chief’s office, then,” said Sergeant Feeny, treating the reporter to an unfriendly stare. “And don’t be giving me any more of this highfalutin talk.”

Bates crossed the hall and vanished through a door to the right of the entrance. For ten minutes or more Christian and the frightened boy waited. When the reporter returned he nodded to them and pointed a finger at the ceiling. “We’re to go up. The Lord High Mucky-muck’s holding special court tonight, and we’ll have a consultation as soon as it’s through.” Then, in a sudden burst of drunken laughter, he asked the boy, “Well, Masther Ludar, and is it the good laugh ye’ve been gettin’ out o’ Sergeant Feeny?”

The face of the man at the desk, with its long upper lip and wide mouth, flushed with the slow anger of a good-natured man. “And it’s a laugh I’ll be havin’ at you, Mister Bates, when ye’re booked with the rest of the drunks as you deserve.”