DISTRICT-ATTORNEY WICKSON
tion; and this investigation had been made, with Collins's usual ingenious audacity, by a man who had pretended to be working for the city directory. Collins was proud of the job. He noticed that Wickson looked at it without interest, absent-mindedly.
He was again aware of the same thing in Wickson's manner that had worried him during his interview with the District Attorney when they had spoken about Cooney and the police plot. Collins might not have been able to say what it was that worried him, any more than Arnett could; yet it had worried Arnett, too, though it had expressed itself to him in Wickson's air of genial superiority to the sculptor. And there can be no doubt that it was this dimly felt emotion in Wickson, detached and dangerous, that moved him to involve himself now in the final catastrophe of the day.
While Wickson was standing inside the rail Cooney, the ex-policeman, slunk into the court- room and loitered there, leaning against the rear wall—a disheveled, unshaven, blowsy derelict of a man, horrible, but pathetic. Plummer had followed him in, and Plummer went at once to notify Collins. He tapped Collins on the shoulder from behind, and Collins turned his head away from Wickson while Plummer whispered in his ear.
At that moment Wickson himself saw Cooney, and saw him with pity, obviously, and with a desire to aid him. He said a word of excuse to his assistant
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