I couldn’t find anything to say except something meaningless, like:
“Things happen that way.”
In the chief’s office we found one of the men who had been on the storming party the night before—a red-faced official named Biddle. He goggled at me with curious gray eyes, but asked no questions about the King Street doings.
Biddle called in a young lawyer named Dart from the prosecuting attorney’s office. Albury was repeating his story to Biddle, Dart and a stenographer, when the chief of police, looking as if he had just crawled out of bed, arrived.
“Well, it certainly is fine to see you,” Noonan said, pumping my hand up and down while patting my back. “By God! you had a narrow one last night—the rats! I was dead sure they’d got you till we kicked in the doors and found the joint empty. Tell me how those son-of-a-guns got out of there.”
“A couple of your men let them out the back door, took them through the house in back, and sent them away in a department car. They took me along so I couldn’t tip you off.”
“A couple of my men did that?” he asked, with no appearance of surprise. “Well, well! What kind of looking men were they?”
I described them.
“Shore and Riordan,” he said. “I might of known it. Now what’s all this?” nodding his fat face at Albury.
I told him briefly while the boy went on dictating his statement.
The chief chuckled and said: