I had almost forgotten that I was expecting a visitor when, a couple of
hours later, an undersized deputy-sheriff entered my office and reported
that he had a prisoner in his custody for whom I had sent to the Tombs.
Glancing up from my desk I saw standing behind his keeper a tall and
distinguished-looking man in fashionably cut garments, whose well shaped
head and narrow face, thin aquiline nose, and carefully trimmed pointed
beard seemed to bespeak somewhat different antecedents from those of the
ordinary occupant of a cell in the City Prison. I should have
instinctively risen from my chair and offered my aristocratic looking
visitor a chair had not the keeper unconsciously brought me to a
realization of my true position by remarking:
"Say, Counsellor, I guess while you're talking to his nibs I'll step out
into the hall and take a smoke."
"Certainly," said I, glad to be rid of him, "I will be responsible for
the--er--prisoner."
Then, as the keeper hesitated in putting his suggestion into execution,
I reached into the upper right-hand drawer of my desk, produced two of
what are commonly known in the parlance of the Criminal Courts Building
as "cigars" and handed them to him.
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