CHAPTER V
CLIFFORD HAS A NEW PURPOSEHalf an hour later Clifford entered the octagonal reception room at Police Headquarters and sent his name in to Commissioner Thorne. Word came back that Thorne was engaged and would be so for half an hour; but in the meantime wouldn’t Clifford visit about the building.
Clifford descended to the great corridor on the main floor. Here he met captains and lieutenants and first-grade detectives—old friends, with whom, until the events that had sent him out of the Department, he had worked for close upon a decade. They treated him with a respect that, coming after his scene with Mary Regan, was soothing to his rasped spirit. The very surroundings, too, affected him—begot in him a formless longing; in a way it was like coming back to one’s home town.
Here,
