A tragedy was being enacted before their eyes. There was a light burning inside the room, and on the drawn blind were silhouetted the figures of two men furiously struggling. Presently the blind was torn aside, and one of the combatants, a big, strong fellow, threw the other bodily out of the window. A shriek of horror burst from the crowd, and the policemen on duty below rushed forward to try and break his expected fall.
However, the man who had been thrown out did not drop immediately, but grasped the window-sill with his hands. His assailant, bent apparently on killing him outright, started to beat him about the head and shoulders with what looked like a heavy iron bar. The next instant four or five policemen rushed into the room, having darted upstairs and burst the door open.
Then they discovered that the man who was hanging out of the window was in no danger of falling, being secured by a strong thin line. The “iron” bar, with which he was being belaboured, was a “property” one of soft rubber.
“Why, what’s the meaning of all this?” asked the puzzled inspector.
“Oh,” replied the man inside the room, as he assisted his chum to clamber back through the window, “we’re just rehearsing a scene for next year’s pantomime; the one in the harlequinade, you know, where the Bobby comes in.”
One of the constables who climbed the three flights of stairs to the room on this occasion was fat and somewhat wheezy, and he naturally felt hurt. A few nights later he tried his best to get a bit of his own back. A friend and myself were bidding one another good-bye outside the theatre after the performance, when he thrust himself roughly between us and told us to “move on there.”
Knowing that expostulation on our part would only lead to our being locked up on a charge of loitering and obstructing the police, we said nothing, but promptly did as we were bid. The next morning, however, we shadowed our tormentor from a distance, and discovered that he was stationed on point duty of an afternoon not far from a big fishmonger’s shop in one of the main streets.
On the day following, in the middle of the afternoon, my friend sidled furtively up to the shop. A fine lobster was prominently displayed in the centre of the marble slab. The fat policeman was there.
Suddenly my friend put out his hand, seized the lobster, and took to his heels. The policeman took after him. There was an exciting chase of a mile or more, but eventually my friend allowed himself to be caught, and haled back in triumph to the shop.
“What’s the matter?” cried the fishmonger, coming out on to the pavement.