XVI

A LIMB  OF THE LAW
 

IT was Thursday, trial day at headquarters, and
the session in the deputy commissioner's room
was nearing its end. The usual calendar of
minor breaches of the rules and regulations—being
off post, in saloons, talking to citizens—^had been
overshadowed by the importance of Wardman
Nugent's case.

The city had been treated to a few disclosures
in the police department, and hints by the prosecut¬
ing powers seemed to promise even graver revela¬
tions. So far only patrolmen and wardmen had
been tried, and convicted or acquitted, and the or¬
gans of the party press printed columns of uncon¬
vincing compassion for these more or less vicarious
sufferers, who were magnanimously shielding the
real grafters. These straws of sympathy were
greedily grasped by those about to drown in the
quagmire of corruption, and the role of persecuted
saints sat funnily on the fat-paunched satraps of the
hidden powers.

The plague spot first to be probed was the Twelfth
Precinct. Here the ruddy illumination of the il¬
legal resorts had thrown a vicious glow over the

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