raged wildly and more wildly. He took to batting with his head in the clinches. The first time, he landed his forehead flush on Watson's nose. After that, the latter, in the clinches, buried his face in Patsy's breast. But the enraged Patsy batted on, striking his own eye and nose and cheek on the top of the other's head. The more he was thus injured, the more and the harder did Patsy bat.
This one-sided contest continued for twelve or fifteen minutes. Watson never struck a blow, and strove only to escape. Sometimes, in the free moments, circling about among the tables as he tried to win the door, the pasty- faced men gripped his coat-tails and flung him back at the swinging right of the on-rushing Patsy. Time upon time, and times without end, he clinched and put Patsy on his back, each time first whirling him around and putting him down in the direction of the door and gaining toward that goal by the length of the fall.
In the end, hatless, disheveled, with streaming nose and one eye closed, Watson won to the sidewalk and into the arms of a policeman.
'Arrest that man,' Watson panted.
'Hello, Patsy,' said the policeman. 'What's the mix-up?'
'Hello, Charley,' was the answer. 'This guy comes in—'
'Arrest that man, officer,' Watson repeated.
'G'wan! Beat it!' said Patsy.
'Beat it!' added the policeman. 'If you don't, I'll pull you in.'
'Not unless you arrest that man. He has committed a violent and unprovoked assault on me.'
'Is it so, Patsy?' was the officer's query.
'Nah. Lemme tell you, Charley, an' I got the witnesses to prove it, so help me God. I was settin' in me kitchen eatin' a bowl of soup, when this guy comes in an' gets gay wid me. I never seen him in me born days before. He was drunk—'
'Look at me, officer,' protested the indignant sociologist. 'Am I drunk?'
The officer looked at him with sullen, menacing eyes and nodded to Patsy to continue.
'This guy gets gay wid me. 'I'm Tim McGrath,' says he, 'an' I can do the like to you,' says he. 'Put up yer hands.' I smiles, an' wid that, biff biff, he lands me twice an' spills me soup. Look at me eye. I'm fair murdered.'
'What are you going to do, officer?' Watson demanded.
'Go on, beat it,' was the answer, 'or I'll pull you sure.'
The civic righteousness of Carter Watson flamed up.
'Mr. Officer, I protest—'
But at that moment the policeman grabbed his arm with a savage jerk that nearly overthrew him.
'Come on, you're pulled.'
'Arrest him, too,' Watson demanded.
'Nix on that play,' was the reply.
'What did you assault him for, him a peacefully eatin' his soup?'
II
Carter Watson was genuinely angry. Not only had he been wantonly assaulted, badly battered, and arrested, but the morning papers without exception came out with lurid accounts of his drunken brawl with the proprietor of the notorious Vendome. Not one accurate or truthful line was published. Patsy Horan and his satellites described the battle in detail. The one incontestable thing was that Carter Watson had been drunk. Thrice he had been thrown out of the place and into the gutter, and thrice he had come back, breathing blood and fire and announcing that he was going to clean out the place. 'EMINENT SOCIOLOGIST JAGGED AND JUGGED,' was the first head-line he read, on the front page, accompanied by a large portrait of himself. Other headlines were: 'CARTER WATSON ASPIRED TO CHAMPIONSHIP HONORS'; 'CARTER WATSON GETS HIS'; 'NOTED SOCIOLOGIST ATTEMPTS TO CLEAN OUT A TENDERLOIN CAFE'; and 'CARTER WATSON KNOCKED OUT BY PATSY HORAN IN THREE ROUNDS.'
At the police court, next morning, under bail, appeared Carter Watson to answer the complaint of the People Versus Carter Watson, for the latter's assault and battery on one Patsy Horan. But first, the Prosecuting Attorney, who was paid to prosecute all offenders against the People, drew him aside and talked with him privately.
'Why not let it drop!' said the Prosecuting Attorney. 'I tell you what you do, Mr. Watson: Shake hands with Mr. Horan and make it up, and we'll drop the case right here. A word to the Judge, and the case against you will be dismissed.'
'But I don't want it dismissed,' was the answer. 'Your office being what it is, you should be prosecuting me instead of asking me to make up with this—this fellow.'
'Oh, I'll prosecute you all right,' retorted the Prosecuting Attorney.
'Also you will have to prosecute this Patsy Horan,' Watson advised; 'for I shall now have him arrested for assault and battery.'
'You'd better shake and make up,' the Prosecuting Attorney repeated, and this time there was almost a threat in his voice.
The trials of both men were set for a week later, on the same morning, in Police Judge Witberg's court.
'You have no chance,' Watson was told by an old friend of his boyhood, the retired manager of the biggest paper in the city. 'Everybody knows you were beaten up by this man. His reputation is most unsavory. But it won't help you in the least. Both cases will be dismissed. This will be because you are you. Any ordinary man would be convicted.'
'But I do not understand,' objected the perplexed sociologist. 'Without warning I was attacked by this man; and badly beaten. I did not strike a blow. I—'
'That has nothing to do with it,' the other cut him off.
'Then what is there that has anything to do with it?'
'I'll tell you. You are now up against the local police and political machine. Who are you? You are not even a legal resident in this town. You live up in the country. You haven't a vote of your own here. Much less do you swing any votes. This dive proprietor swings a string of votes in his precincts—a mighty long string.'
'Do you mean to tell me that this Judge Witberg will violate the sacredness of his office and oath by letting this brute off?' Watson demanded.
'Watch him,' was the grim reply. 'Oh, he'll do it nicely enough. He will give an extra-legal, extra-judicial decision, abounding in every word in the dictionary that stands for fairness and right.'
'But there are the newspapers,' Watson cried.
'They are not fighting the administration at present. They'll give it to you hard. You see what they have already done to you.'
'Then these snips of boys on the police detail won't write the truth?'
'They will write something so near like the truth that the public will believe it. They write their stories under instruction, you know. They have their orders to twist and color, and there won't be much left of you when they get done. Better drop the whole thing right now. You are in bad.'
'But the trials are set.'
'Give the word and they'll drop them now. A man can't fight a machine unless he has a machine behind him.'
III
But Carter Watson was stubborn. He was convinced that the machine would beat him, but all his days he had sought social experience, and this was certainly something new.
The morning of the trial the Prosecuting Attorney made another attempt to patch up the affair.
'If you feel that way, I should like to get a lawyer to prosecute the case,' said Watson.
'No, you don't,' said the Prosecuting Attorney. 'I am paid by the People to prosecute, and prosecute I will.
