cleaner rallied and clinched; two bookstands were overturned, and the books sent flying. A cop came up, took an arm of each, and marched them to the nearest station house. “Fighting and disorderly conduct,” said the cop to the sergeant.
“Three hundred dollars bail,” said the sergeant at once, asseveratingly and inquiringly.
“Sixty-three cents,” said James Turner with a harsh laugh.
The caliph searched his pockets and collected small bills and change amounting to four dollars.
“I am worth,” he said, “forty million dollars, but—”
“Lock ’em up,” ordered the sergeant.
In his cell, James Turner laid himself on his cot, ruminating. “Maybe he’s got the money, and maybe he ain’t. But if he has or he ain’t, what does he want to go ’round butting into other folks’s business for? When a man knows what he wants, and can get it, it’s the same as $40,000,000 to him.”
Then an idea came to him that brought a pleased look to his face.
He removed his socks, drew his cot close to the door, stretched himself out luxuriously, and placed his tortured feet against the cold bars of the cell door. Something hard and bulky under the blankets of his cot gave one shoulder discomfort. He reached under, and drew out a paper-covered volume by Clark Russell called