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The pink-cheeked young patrolman, swinging back on his beat, tattooed with his ash night-stick on the gas-pipe frame and peered indifferently down at the battered and gibbeted crockery. "Hello, Batty," he said as he set the exhibit oscillating with a push of the knee. "How 's business?" "Pretty good," answered the patient and guttural voice.
Louder, please!" he called with considerable vehemence and was rewarded by a scarcely audible tapping indicative not only of timidity but of alarm as well "Say," he bawled, "you'll have to cut out that spirit rapping if you want to come in. Use your night-stick!" "Ah, the police at last," cried Mr. Yollop. "You'd better take this revolver now, Mr. Smilk," he added hastily.
Three grey-clad policemen, tough, clean-shaven men with keen eyes and square jaws, stood there, revolver in one hand, night-stick in the other. Psmith, hatless and dusty, joined them. Billy Windsor and the Kid, the latter bleeding freely from his left ear, the lobe of which had been chipped by a bullet, were the last to arrive.
To my wrath he even looked up at me and indulged in a grimace but his triumph was ill-timed, for at that very instant I beheld, strolling along the street below, humming and swinging his night-stick, as leisurely, complacent, and stalwart a representative of the law as one could wish to see. "Hi, there! Officer!" I shouted lustily.
Practically in the instant he saw all this, and while his scream still rang, the thing leaped, he flung his night-stick full at it, and threw himself to the ground. He felt its feet and shins strike against his ribs, and he bounded up and away while the thing itself hurled onward in a heavy crashing fall into the underbrush.
From the street he could see the faint green light from his mother's room, where Miss McClough was sitting. He turned and ran quickly, without stopping to think. No one was abroad but an occasional policeman, twirling his night-stick.
Servants were screaming somewhere in the house; doors slammed, a man was shouting through a telephone amid a confusion of voices that swelled continually until the four walls rang with the uproar. A little later a policeman ran through the basement into the yard beyond; another pushed his way to the pantry door and struck it heavily with his night-stick, demanding admittance.
For, even as the attackers seemed to fall back, shattered and at a loss before such fury and tremendous strength, behind Gabriel the woman rose, a laugh of malice on her lips, the policeman's long and heavy night-stick in her hand. A moment she poised it, crouching as he seeing her not swung his weapon and hurled his defiance at the baffled men in front.
Dark as the way was, he was not anxious for light. Carrying the night-stick in his hand, his finger on the button, he advanced through the darkness. The ground was velvety and springy to his feet, being carpeted with dead pine-needles and leaves and mold which evidently had been undisturbed for years. Leaves and branches brushed against his body, but so dark was it that he could not avoid them.
The officer grunted and stepped backward; then he came on, raising his night-stick. "Why, it's it's McCarthy!" exclaimed Cleggett, who had also sprung back, as the light fell on the other's face. "Mr. Cleggett, by the powers!" said the officer, pausing and lowering his lifted club. "Are ye soused, man? Or is it your way of sayin' good avenin' to your frinds?" Cleggett smiled.
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