of the hundred-odd criminals whom Elmer named. But the chief of police triumphed by announcing that it was impossible to find any of the others.
"All right," Elmer murmured to the chief, in the gentleness of a boxed newspaper interview in bold-face type, "if you'll make me a temporary lieutenant of police and give me a squad, I'll find and close five dives in one evening—any evening save Sunday."
"I'll do it—and you can make your raids tomorrow," said the chief, in the official dignity of headlines.
Mr. Rigg was a little alarmed.
"Think you're going too far, Elmer," he said. "If you really antagonize any of the big wholesale bootleggers, they'll get us financially, and if you hit any of the tough ones, they're likely to bump you off. Darn' dangerous."
"I know. I'm just going to pick out some of the smaller fellows that make their own booze and haven't got any police protection except slipping five or ten to the cop on the beat. The newspapers will make 'em out regular homicidal gangsters, to get a good story, and we'll have the credit without being foolish and taking risks."
At least a thousand people were trying to get near the Central Police Station on the evening when a dozen armed policemen marched down the steps of the station-house and stood at attention, looking up at the door, awaiting their leader.
He came out, the great Reverend Mr. Gantry, and stood posing on the steps, while the policemen saluted, the crowd cheered or sneered, and the press cameras went off in a fury of flashlight powder. He wore the gilt-encircled cap of a police lieutenant, with a lugubrious frock coat and black trousers, and under his arm he carried a Bible.
Two patrol wagons clanged away, and all the women in the crowd, except certain professional ladies, who were grievously profane, gasped their admiration of this modern Savonarola.
He had promised the mob at least one real house of prostitution.
