The white policeman put his hands together in a prayer-like gesture on the stand. He looked at the defendant, whose face was set and whose eyes were fixed on the officer’s hands. “We was on duty on the night of July twenty-seventh driving around the Lafayette Street area when we got a call to proceed to the Lafayette Street subway station because there was a crowd gathering there and they thought it might be a riot. We proceeded there, Officer Biglow and me, and when we got there sure enough there was a crowd of colored people running up and down the street and making noise and carrying on. We didn’t pull our guns because they been telling us all summer not to do that. We got out of the car and proceeded to join the other officers there in forming a line so’s to disperse the crowd. Then we spotted that fellow in the crowd.”

“Who do you mean?”

“That fellow over there.” Officer Bergin pointed to the defendant at the table. “That soldier, Irving Williams.”

“Go on,” said the black detective, not turning to look at the defendant.

“Well, he had on this red costume and a cape, and he was wearing this big red turban. He was also carrying a big black shield right outta Tarzan and he had that big long cane waving it around in the air.”

“Where is that cane now?”

“We took it off him later. That’s it over there.”

The black detective moved over to his own table and picked up a long brown leather cane. He pressed a small button beneath its handle and then drew out from the interior of the cane a thin, silver-white rapier, three feet long.

“Is this the same cane?”

“Yes sir,” the white officer said.

“Go on, Officer.”

“Well, he was waving it around in the air and he had a whole lot of these colored people behind him and it looked to me that he was gonna charge the police line. So me and Tommy left the line and went in to grab him before he could start something big. That crowd was getting mean. They looked like they was gonna try something big pretty soon.”

“Never mind,” said the Judge. He had stopped walking now and stood at the edge of his elevated platform, just over the shoulder of the officer in the witness box. “Never mind what you thought, just get on with it.”

“Yes sir.” The officer pressed his hands together much tighter. “Well, Tommy and me, we tried to grab him and he swung the cane at me. Caught me right in the face here.” He pointed his finger to a large red and black mark under his left eye. “So then we hadda use force to subdue him.”

“What did you do, Officer?” the black detective asked.