Tony saw all hope fade.  He hadn’t a chance—­even to go to a decent jail!  He had heard all about the horrors of the reformatory.  They wouldn’t even let your people visit you on Sundays!  And his mother would think he was run over or murdered.  She would go crazy with worry.  He didn’t mind on his own account, but his mother—­ He loved the old widowed mother who worked her fingers off to send him to school.  And he was the only one left, now that Peter had been killed in the war.  It was too much.  With a sudden twist he tore out of his coat and dashed blindly down the street.  As well might a rabbit hope to escape the claws of a wildcat.  In three bounds Delany had him again, choking him until the world turned black.

But this is not a story about police brutality, for most cops are not brutal.  Delany was an old-timer who believed in rough methods.  He belonged, happily, to a fast-vanishing system more in harmony with the middle ages than with our present enlightened form of municipal government.  He remained what he was for the reason that farther up in the official hierarchy there were others who looked to him, when it was desirable, to deliver the goods—­not necessarily cash—­but to stand with the bunch.  These in turn were obligated on occasion, through self-interest or mistaken loyalty to friend or party, to overlook trifling irregularities, to use various sorts of pressure, or to forget what they were asked to forget.  There was a far-reaching web of complicated relationships—­official, political, matrimonial, commercial and otherwise—­which had a very practical effect upon the performance of theoretical duty.

Delany was neither an idealist nor a philosopher.  He was an empiricist, with a touch of pragmatism—­though he did not know it.  He was “a practical man.”  Even reform administrations have been known to advocate a liberal enforcement of the laws.  Can you blame Delany for being practical when others so much greater than he have prided themselves upon the same attribute of practicality?  There were of course a lot of things he simply had to do or get out of the force; at any rate, had he not done them his life would have been intolerable.  These consisted in part of being deaf, dumb and blind when he was told to be so—­a comparatively easy matter.  But there were other things that he had to do, as a matter of fact, to show that he was all right, which were not only more difficult, but expensive, and at times dangerous.

He had never been called upon to swear away an innocent man’s liberty, but more than once he had had to stand for a frame-up against a guilty one.  According to his cop-psychology, if his side partner saw something it was practically the same as if he had seen it himself.  That phantasmagorical scintilla of evidence needed to bolster up a weak or doubtful case could always be counted on if Delany was the officer who had made the arrest.  None of his cases were ever thrown out of court for lack of evidence, but then, Delany never arrested anybody who wasn’t guilty!