at sort of thing I tells her to wait where she is for a minute.
I leaves her and I goes across into the Bertillon room, where the
pictures are, and I looks up this here Antonio Terranova. I forget his
number now and I don't know how it is he comes to be overlooked when
we're cleaning out the gallery; but he's there all right, full face and
side view, with his gallery number in big white figures on his chest.
And, commissioner, he's a pretty tolerable tough-looking Ginney." The
witness checked an inclination to grin. "I takes a slant at his picture,
and I can't make up my own mind which way he'll look the worst enlarged
into a crayon portrait--full face or side view. I can still hear her
crying outside the door. She's crying harder than ever.

"I puts the picture back, and I goes out to where she is and tries to
argue with her. It's no use. She goes down on her knees and holds the
baby up, and tells me it ain't for her sake she's asking this--it's for
the bambino. And she calls on a lot of Italian saints that I never even
heard the names of some of them before--and so on, like that. It's
pretty tough.

"She's such a stupid, ignorant thing you can't help from feeling sorry
for her--nobody could." He hesitated a moment as though seeking for
words of explanation and extenuation that were not in his regular
vocabulary. "I got kids of my own, commissioner," he said suddenly, and
stopped dead short for a moment. "I'm no Italian, but I got kids of my
own!" he repeated, as though the fact constituted a defense.

"Well, well--what happened then?" The deputy commissioner's frosty voice
seemed to have frozen so hard it had a crack in it. And now then the
Semitic face of Weil twisted into a grin that was more than
shamefaced--it was downright sheepish.

"Why, then," he said, "when I comes back out of the Bertillon room the
second time she goes back down on her knees again and she says to me--of
course she ain't expected to know what my religion is--maybe that
explains it, commissioner--she says to me that all her life--every
morning and every night--she's going to pray to the Blessed Virgin for
me. That's what she says anyway. So I just lets it go at that."

He halted as though he were through.

"Then do I understand that, without an order from any superior
authority, you gave this here woman certain property belonging to the
Police Department?" Old Donohue's voice was gruffer than common, even.
He whetted his talon forefinger