"Ah, say, people," one of the police called out, "give the young guy a chanst. Can't you see he's only a kid?"
"'Kid' be damned!" came the response. "Say, fellows, here's the telegraph pole! Let's lynch him!"
"No! Let's make a bonfire and burn him alive!"
"Chuck the cops into the Hackensack, and then we can do as we like."
Teddy didn't care whether they lynched him or not. In as far as he could form a wish he wished they would; but then he was past forming wishes. They could string him up to the telegraph pole or burn him alive just as they felt inclined; for he had traveled beyond fear.
Just then the crowd parted, the police van drove up, and his protectors dragged him to its shelter. Even then there was a new sensation in store for him. The parting of the crowd showed Flynn lying by the roadside, also waiting for the van. He was on his back, his knees drawn up, his mouth dropped open. Waistcoat and shirt had been torn apart, and Teddy saw a red spot.
He started back. Except for the groan when he had been kicked in the face, it was the only time he opened his lips.
"I didn't do that!" he cried, so loud that a jeer broke from the crowd.
Appalled by the sight of the dead man, Teddy could do no more than stupidly shake his head.
But the boy collapsed, his head sagging, his knees giving way under him. When he returned to consciousness he was lying in the dark, jolting, jolting, jolting, on the floor of the police van.
At the station he was pulled out again. He could stand now, and walk, though not very well. Hands supported him as he stumbled up the steps and into a room where a man in uniform sat behind a desk, while three or four police and half a dozen unexplained hangers-on stood about idly.
"A live one," the policeman who led Teddy called out, jocosely, as they approached the desk.
"Looks like a dead one," the man behind the desk replied, with the same sense of humor. "Looks like he'd been dead and buried and dug up again."
The allusion to Teddy's hatless, mud-caked appearance raised a laugh.
The man behind the desk dipped his pen in the ink bottle and drew up a big ledger.
Teddy could just articulate. "Edward Scarborough Follett."
"Gee, whiz! Guess you'll have to spell it out."