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“Son of a bitch,” the little man said. His lip was cut and he sucked it.

“Who?” asked the sergeant.

“Not you,” said the little man. “Not you with me chained to you. Certainly not.”

The sergeant moved his wrist under the table and looked at the little man’s face.

“What do you say?”

“Not a thing,” said the little man. The sergeant looked at his face and then reached for his coffee again with his handcuffed hand. The little man’s right hand was pulled out across the table as the sergeant reached. The sergeant lifted the coffee cup and as he raised it to drink it it jerked out of his hand and the coffee spilled all over everything. The sergeant brought the handcuffs up into the little man’s face twice without looking at him. The little man’s face was bloody and he sucked his lip and looked at the table.

“You got enough?”

“Yes,” said the little man. “I’ve got plenty.”

“You feel quieter now?”

“Very quiet,” said the little man. “How do you feel?”

“Wipe your face off,” said the sergeant. “Your mouth is bloody.”

We saw them get on the train two at a time and we got on too and went to our seats. The other detective, not the one they called Sergeant but the one handcuffed to the big prisoner, had not taken any notice of what happened at the table. He had watched it but he had not seemed to notice it. The big prisoner had not said anything but had watched everything.

There were cinders in the plush of our seat in the train and my father brushed the seat with a newspaper. The train started and I looked out the open window and tried to see Cadillac but you could not see much, only the lake, and factories and a fine smooth road along near the tracks. There were a lot of sawdust piles along the lake shore.

“Don’t put your head out, Jimmy,” my father said. I sat down. There was nothing much to see anyway.

“That is the town Al Moegast came from,” my father said.

“Oh,” I said.

“Did you see what happened at the table?” my father asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you see everything?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you think the little one made that trouble for?”

“I guess he wanted to make it uncomfortable so they would take the handcuffs off.”

“Did you see anything else?”

“I saw him get hit three times in the face.”

“Where did you watch when he hit him?”

“I watched his face. I watched the sergeant hit him.”

“Well,” my father said. “While the sergeant hit him in the face with the handcuff on his right hand he picked up a steel-bladed knife off the table with his left hand and put it in his pocket.”

“I didn’t see.”

“No,” my father said. “Every man has two hands, Jimmy. At least to start with. You ought to watch both of them if you’re going to see things.”

“What did the other two do?” I asked. My father laughed.

“I didn’t watch them,” he said.

We sat there in the train after lunch and I looked out of the window and watched the country. It did not mean so much now because there was so much else going on and I had seen a lot of country but I did not want to suggest that we go up into the smoker until my father said to. He was reading and I guess my restlessness disturbed him.

“Don’t you ever read, Jimmy?” he asked me.

“Not much,” I said. “I don’t have time.”

“What are you doing now?”

“Waiting.”

“Do you want to go up there?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think we ought to tell the sergeant”

“No,” I said.

“It’s an ethical problem,” he said and shut the book.

“Do you want to tell him?” I asked.

“No,” my father said. “Besides a man is held to be innocent until the law has proved him guilty. He may not have killed that Italian.”

“Are they dope fiends?”

“I don’t know whether they use dope or not,” my father said. “Many people use it. But using cocaine or morphine or heroin doesn’t make people talk the way they talked.”

“What does?”

“I don’t know,” said my father. “What makes anyone talk the way they do?”

“Let’s go up there,” I said. My father got the suitcase down, opened it up and put the book in it and something out of his pocket. He locked the suitcase and we went up to the smoker. Walking along