He waited while Chris got her coat and hat and left the house to look after itself. At Windmill Brae they found a tram and were down at the court by ten o’clock.

Outside were already a birn of men, down-at-heels, unshaven, they cried Hello, Jim, and stared at Chris and came drifting around Trease, unwashed, their stink awful, their faces worm-white, Chris stared at them with a sinking heart. Were these the awful folk that Ewan had ta’en up with?

Bobbies all about the entrance door, one or two had come down in the street, big-footed, and were pushing about, beefy and confident, truncheons out and shoulders squared. Trease stroked his chin and twinkled at the Broo men and strikers: We’ll demonstrate later, lads. You’d better disperse and not raise a row.

So the two got into the court at last, Chris had never been in one before, panelled in dark wood, with a witness box with a curling bit of wood above it that vexed her because the thing looked so daft. She whispered to Trease, asking what it was, and he twinkled back ’twas the sounding-board, and then leaned back in his bench and yawned, they’d not have her Ewan on for a while, they’d wait till the Bailie got hot up a bit.

They finished at last with the street queans ta’en up, a soldier who’d stolen cigarettes from a stall, a man who’d knocked over a boy with a lorry. But there wasn’t much in any of the cases, Bailie Brown, the leader of Duncairn Labour, rapped out his sentences snell and smart, fair a favourite with all the bobbies and giving double the sentences a Tory would have given—to show that he was impartial, like. Then Chris saw an inspector go whisper to him and the Bailie look at his watch and nod; and the far door opened and some body in a bandage came in unsteadily between two bobbies, Chris knew one, Sergeant Sim Leslie of Segget.

And then she knew Εwan, and some body cried Order! and Trease gripped her knee so hard that it hurt, left her breathless and she couldn’t cry again, couldn’t do anything but stare and stare at the bandaged figure pass in front of her and stand in the dock, the bobbies all a-glower. A little neat man got up with a paper, and hitched his gown and gave a quick gabble, talking down his shirt-front low and confidential. Then he asked for a remand … death of John Edwards … brutal assault on police at Docks … incriminating evidence…. Violently resisting arrest—

The Bailie nodded and looked up at the clock, Remanded till Friday, and then stood up, every body stood, and a bobby grabbed the bandaged figure.

As the bobbies passed by below Trease leaned forward: Okay, Ewan?

—I’m all right. They’ve got nothing out of me. Hello, Chris. Don’t worry.

Neil Quaritch said he was damnably sorry but he couldn’t do anything with the papers about it, he was only sub-ed and book-hound on the Runner. Besides, the Runner daren’t make a comment on a case sub judice. Not that it would make it if it could. Oh, the police were a pretty low set of brutes, but he couldn’t believe this tripe about Ewan being tortured—this was Duncairn, not Chicago; just Red blah Mrs Colquohoun could discount. Pity Ewan had been led away by the Reds, if he wanted social change there was Douglasism. Financial Credit operated as Social Credit would ensure that the products of Real Credit, though privately owned, were not malaccredited—