They grinned simultaneously. "Guess you ain't so irrational, after all," said one. "Look, friend, you ain't been arrested enough to know this is for the record, to show you're innercent and indignant."
"All right, I'll resist. What do I do?"
"Make a swing at Lafe, here."
With a sense of the ridiculous overcoming his irritation, Finch started a slow-motion roundhouse right in the direction of Lafe's jaw. The officer did an unrealistic back-flop into the chair. "Swung on me," he said to the other, who produced from his pocket a blackjack, with which he touched Finch lightly on the back of the neck.
"Prisoner subdued while resisting arrest," he remarked gravely, and with Finch between them, the pair took up their march down the corridors to what would be the prison quarters of Strawberry House.
Three cells were visible as they entered, all empty. One of them was small and bare, with only a cot in it; one large and luxurious, with an easy chair, curtains and a shaded light, the remaining one a compromise between the other two.'
The man behind the desk looked and acted like some kind of hotel clerk than like a police sergeant. Adjusting his glasses, he recognized Finch. "Hello, Arthur. Hmm, resisted arrest on a charge of advertising. Not planning on a political career, are you?"
"Not that I know of," answered Finch. .
"Sure about that?"
"Certainly I am. What would I be doing in politics?"
The man sighed. "Put him in the small cell."
The Procter who conveyed Finch into the comfortless little cell murmured: "Why didn't you give Joe an out, Finch? He likes your poetry."
"What do you mean?"
"Most people that are up for advertising claim politics, and then they get the middle cell that's usually for patrons only."
"You mean politicians get the gravy—as usual?"
"Why not? Wouldn't expect a cop to be tough on a guy that's maybe going to be his house boss, would you?"
It had not occurred to Finch before, but of course venality would be a part of any rule of absolute reason. He went to sleep wondering where he would wake up.
Four:
The high, hot sun of July glared in through the tall windows of an apartment whose door described it as the Board Room. Behind a long table sat six men, of whom only one was more than ordinary in aspect—a huge man, with a nose like the bill of a duck and bushy grey sideburns.
"Charge of advertising with request for reclassification, brought by Orange William Banker against Finch Arthur Poet," a clerk ,read rapidly. "Resisted arrest." A Proctor nudged Finch to stand up. The man-mountain at the center of the table turned to where Orange sat:
"Speak your piece, Bill."
With energy and malice Orange described Finch's behavior at patron-call as irrational and indicating an intention to commit advertising; "—and this alleged poet, after accepting my advance for a eulogistic sonnet to my first-class wife, recited one to my second, to the scandal ..."
Bang! went the big man's gavel. "Irrelevant and immaterial," he said. "The question of whether you got what you paid for is a purely civil matter. We have to do with a question of advertising. I am inclined to think that if the recitation of a sonnet to Orange Eulalie Mrs., is advertising in itself, it advertises nothing but the accused's affection for the lady, and if I felt that way about her, I'd write her a sonnet myself, or my name's not Sullivan. What we want is evidence of public, not private advertising. Has anybody got any?"
"I have," piped a small voice.
"And who might youse be?"
"Orford Max Cigarmaker. I was present at the orgy so kindly given by our patron. I don't know how it affected others, but me, I couldn't sleep all last night, with dreaming about Finch's sea with its rocks and caves and things, and it made me want to go there. The worst of it is that it's all lies. I saw Finch with my own eyes yesterday morning playing tennis with the Athlete, and he couldn't have spent the day looking at the sea."
Sullivan fixed Finch with a gaze. "And what have youse to say to that, my fine singer?"
Finch grinned. "That I didn't know it was important for poets to describe something they'd seen with their own eyes. The sea is as imaginary as the authorship, since I took the liberty of burrowing a sonnet from Shelley, so he's the one you—thou really want for advertising."
Sullivan looked grim. "Who is he? If he finds out, he might make trouble for our whole House—"
"I think not. He's been dead for a long time, and as panegyric sonnets are never permanent, I don't think anything has really been lost. You've got the wrong man on this charge."
"Oh, no we haven't!" yelled Orange, bouncing to his feet, "No matter where the poem came from, youse presented it in such a way as to make a sensation—"
As he ranted on, one member of the court had tiptoed over to the window and opened it. An instant later, he mopped his brow, fidgetted restlessly in his seat, and then was out of it with a whoop, prancing behind the table in what half resembled an Indian war-dance, half a plain citizen with a bellyache.
"Seizure! He's got a seizure!" shouted someone. A woman screamed; there was a general rush toward the exits. It was a rush Finch did not join; to him the man seemed in need of succor, and as the rest recoiled, he pressed forward to lay a hand on the board member's shoulder.
"I say, old man,—" he began.
"Yeeeow!" The man turned on Finch, baring his incisors and hooking his fingers, claw-like. A rush sent Finch backward across a chair; by time he had recovered his feet, the victim of the seizure was running amok in the most thorough style, swinging a fireaxe he had pulled down from the wall.
The Board Room was now almost empty, except where two or three members were tumbling over each other at the door. But as Finch got up, he perceived that the madman had cornered Sullivan Michael Politiciar, who was standing with his back pressed against the paneling of the inner wall, gasping like a fish and making shooing motions with his hands. Before him the attacker took a stance and swung back to strike.
Finch, coming up behind the assailant, was just in time to catch the axe on the backswing. He jerked; the axe-wielder released his weapon to keep from being pulled over backwards. Finch threw the weapon slithering across the floor and turned to grapple with the man. He was horrified to feel the strength in the madly-driven muscles.
"Hey!" he gasped, "somebody help grab him!"
Nobody did. As the pair whirled round, Finch caught a glimpse of three or four people beginning to come back through the doors, watching with unhelpful interest. Someone called advice: "Grab his ankle!" "Watch out, he's trying to gouge youse!"
Just as Finch, gasping for breath, thought he could hold on no longer, his opponent was violently torn from his grasp, and three or four men in the blue pajamas of Proctors bore the madman, screeching from the room.
"Whew!" said Sullivan, mopping his forehead. "Now there's one for you. I thought Mamie Sullivan's boy was a goner that time."
He took his place at the table again, and the others flooded back into the room. Finch noticed that instead of the compliments on his struggle with the madman that might have been expected, there were whispers and sidelong glances, and it made him annoyed with the whole ridiculous proceeding.
"Why didn't one of you bear a hand while I was wrestling with this maniac?" he demanded aloud. "He was trying to throttle me."
One of the judges looked at him with disapproval. "We summoned the Proctors," he said coldly. "The court will take cognizance of your irrational expectation that youse should be assisted in your brave but irrational action of risking injury to yourself without being paid for it,"
"The court will do nothing of the sort," boomed Sullivan. "It was my own neck was being risked and I was not being paid for it, neither. Now after our little recess, let us resume the case against Finch Arthur Poet. I find the case against him for advertising not supported by the evidence, and it is dismissed. As for Orford Max Cigar-maker's longing for an imaginary sea, the court rules that it can be satisfied by contemplating an imaginary picture of the ocean for one half hour each day, and directs Orford to report to the clerk of the court daily that he has studied such a picture. Court closed."