"We'll get pinched, all the same," the man objected stupidly.

"Well, if we do, it only means a trip to the Night Court, and a fine of five or ten dollars. You'll be up to-morrow for absence from post, of course, but that's better than being caught half-drunk in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a gambling house on your beat."

Impressed, the officer started to unb.u.t.ton his tunic, but hesitated.

"S'pose some of the boys recognise me?"

"Where are your wits?" demanded P. Sybarite in exasperation. "This isn't a precinct raid! You ought to know that. This is Whitman, going over everybody's head. Anyhow, it can't be worse for you than it is--and my way gives you a fighting chance to get off."

"Guess you 're right," mumbled the other thickly, shrugging out of his coat and surrendering it.

Several white jackets hung from hooks on the wall near the door.

Seizing one of these, the policeman had it on in a jiffy.

"Now what'll I do?" he pursued, as P. Sybarite, the blue coat over his arm, grabbed the police cap and started for the door.

"Do? How do I know? Use your own head for a while. Pull yourself together--cut some bread--do something useful--make a noise like a steward--"

With this the little man shot out into the hallway, slammed the door behind him, and darted into the adjoining bedroom. Once there, he lost no time changing coats--not forgetting to shift his money as well--c.o.c.ked the cap jauntily on one side of his head (a bit too big, it fitted better that way, anyhow) b.u.t.toned up, and left the room on the run. For by this time the front doors had fallen in and the upper floor was echoing with deep, excited voices and heavy, hurrying footsteps. In another moment or so they would be drawing the bas.e.m.e.nt for fugitives.

He had planned--vaguely, inconclusively--to leave by the area door when the raiders turned their attention to the bas.e.m.e.nt, presenting himself to the crowd in the street in the guise of an officer, and so make off. But now--with his fingers on the bolts--misgivings a.s.sailed him. He was physically not much like any policeman he had ever seen; and the blue tunic with its bra.s.s b.u.t.tons was a wretched misfit on his slight body. He doubted whether his disguise would pa.s.s unchallenged--doubted so strongly that he doubled suddenly to the back door, flung it open, and threw himself out into the black strangeness of the night--and at the same time into the arms of two burly plain-clothes men posted there to forestall precisely such an attempt at escape.

Strong arms clipping him, he struggled violently for an instant.

"Here!" a voice warned him roughly. "It ain't goin' to do you no good--"

Another interrupted with an accent of deep disgust, in patent recognition of his borrowed plumage: "d.a.m.ned if it ain't a patrolman!"

"Why the h.e.l.l didn't you say so?" demanded the first as P. Sybarite fell back, free.

"Didn't--have--time. Here--gimme a leg over this fence, will you?"

"What the devil--!"

"They've got a door through to the next house--getting out that way.

That's what I'm after--to stop 'em. Shut up!" P. Sybarite insisted savagely--"and give me a leg."

"Oh, well!" said one of the plain-clothes men in a slightly mollified voice--"if that's the way of it--all right."

"Come along, then," brusquely insisted the impostor, leading the way to the eastern wall of boards enclosing the back yard.

Curiously complaisant for one of his breed, the detective bent his back and made a stirrup of his clasped hands, but no sooner had P.

Sybarite fitted foot to that same than the man started and, straightening up abruptly, threw him flat on his back.

"Patrolman, h.e.l.l! Whatcha doin' in them pants and shoes if you're a patrol--"

"Hel-_lo_!" exclaimed the other indignantly. "Impersonatin' an officer--eh?"

With this he dived at P. Sybarite; who, having bounced up from a supine to a sitting position, promptly and peevishly swore, rolled to one side (barely eluding clutches that meant to him all those frightful and humiliating consequences that arrest means to the average man) and scrambled to his feet.

Immediately the others closed in upon him, supremely confident of overcoming by concerted action that smallish, pale, and terrified body. Whereupon P. Sybarite' stepped quickly to one side and, avoiding the rush of one, directly engaged the other. Ducking beneath a windmill play of arms, he shot an accurate fist at this aggressor's jaw; there was a click of teeth, the man's head snapped back, and folding up like a tripod, he subsided at length.

Then swinging on a heel, P. Sybarite met a second onset made more dangerous by the cooler calculations of a more sophisticated antagonist. Nevertheless, deftly blocking a rain of blows, he closed in as if eager to escape punishment, and planted a lifted knee in the large of the detective's stomach so neatly that he, too, collapsed like a punctured presidential boom and lay him down at rest.

Success so egregious momentarily stupefied even P. Sybarite. Gazing down upon those two still shapes, so mighty and formidable when sentient, he caught his breath in sharp amazement.

"Great Heavens! Is it possible _I_ did that?" he cried aloud--and the next moment, spurred by alert discretion, was scaling the fence with the readiness of an alley-cat.

Instantaneously, as he poised above the abyss of Stygian blackness on the other side, not a little daunted by its imperturbable mystery, a quick backward glance showed him figures moving in the bas.e.m.e.nt hallway of the gambling house; and easing over, he dropped.

Hard flags received him with native impa.s.sivity: stumbling, he lost balance and sat down with an emphasis that drove the breath from him in one mighty "_Ooof!_"

There was a simultaneous confusion of new, strange voices on the other side of the fence; cries of surprise, recognition, excitement:

"Feeny, by all that's holy!"

"Mike Grogan, or I'm a liar!"

"What hit the two av urn?"

"Gawd knows!"

"Thin 'tis this waay thim murdherous divvles is b'atin' ut!"

"Gimme a back up that fince!..."

P. Sybarite picked himself up with even more alacrity that if he'd landed in a bed of nettles, tore across that terra-incognita, found a second fence, and was beyond it in a twinkling.

Swift as he was, however, detection attended him--a voice roaring: "There goes wan av thim now!"

Other voices chimed in spendthrift with suggestions and advice....

Blindly clearing fence after fence without even thinking to count them, P. Sybarite hurtled onward. Noises in the rear indicated a determined pursuit: once a voice whooped--"_Halt or I fire!_"--and a shot, waking echoes, sped the fugitive's heels....

But in time he had of necessity to pause for breath, and pulled up in the back-yard of a Forty-sixth Street residence, his duty--to find a way to the street and a shift from that uniform of unhappy inspiration--as plain as the problem it presented was obscure.

XI

BURGLARY UNDER ARMS

And there P. Sybarite stood, near the middle of a fence-enclosed area of earth and flagstones; winded and weary; looking up and all around him in distressed perplexity; in a stolen coat (to be honest about it) and with six months' income from a million dollars unlawfully procured and secreted upon his person; wanted for resisting arrest and a.s.saulting the minions of the law; hounded by a vengeful and determined posse; unacquainted with his whereabouts, ignorant of any way of escape from that hollow square, round whose sides window after excitable window was lighting up in his honour; all in all, as distressful a figure of a fugitive from justice as ever was on land or sea....

Conceiving the block as a well a-brim with blackness and clamorous with violent sound, studded on high with inaccessible, yellow-bright loopholes wherefrom hostile eyes spied upon his every secret movement, and haunted below by vicious perils both animate and still: he found himself possessed of an overpowering desire to go away from there quickly.