“What’s the matter with you, Phelan,” the captain jumped on him. “Have you been drunk to-day?”
“No, sorr,” gurgled Phelan, “I”–––
“Don’t try to stop me, officer, I’ve come for my niece,” crashed the shrill voice of Mrs. Elvira Burton. She had seized a dramatic moment for her re-entry.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
PILING ON PHELAN’S AGONY.
Mrs. Burton would have arrived much earlier into the midst of the maelstrom of events at the Gladwin mansion had not Fate in the shape of a tire-blowout intervened.
She had set out from Police Headquarters with Detective Kearney as a passenger and she had urged her red-headed chauffeur to pay not the slightest heed to speed laws or any other laws. He had obeyed with such enthusiasm that the blowout had occurred at the intersection of Fifth avenue and Forty-second street.
Late as the hour was there was a large crowd gathered to hear the society leader of Omaha deliver a lecture in strange French and caustic English.