The captain thought a moment and then burst into action:
“Call the reserves and get the patrol wagon,” he shouted. “I remember that Jap. I guess there’s something doing. I’ll go myself.”
As the reserves were all asleep and the horses had to be hitched to the patrol wagon Bateato had a big start of his big much pleece.
Notwithstanding the breathless condition in which he had arrived at the station house, his return journey was accomplished at his dizziest speed. Also he arrived back at the house way in advance of Whitney Barnes. There was a reason.
Wearing a frock coat and a silk hat and carrying a cane (of course he called it stick) one is hardly equipped for marathoning. And if you must know more, Whitney’s small clothes were too fashionably tight to permit of more than a swift heel and toe action. At this he was doing admirably in his passionate haste to return and warn his friend Gladwin when another woman came into his life and appealed for succor.
Three in one evening, when he was perfectly satisfied to stop at one––the bewitching Sadie.
No. 3 was of an entirely different type from No. 1 and No. 2, and, happily for Whitney, there was no yowling bundle this time––merely a cat, and a silent cat at that.
She was a plump little woman and rather comely and she was intensely excited, for the cat in the case was hers and the cat was up the only tree on that street east of Central Park. At the foot of the tree sat a large bulldog gazing fixedly up at the cat.
Whitney Barnes was so occupied with his heel and toe pace that he did not descry the woman or the dog or the tree or the cat until the woman seized him by the arm and cried: