To Pape’s ears the Irish accent had a familiar sound. Straightening to confront the two uniformed figures now materializing from the dusk and the hillock’s crest, he executed a signal which he hoped would be understood by his companion as a suggestion that she “slide out”—leave him to wriggle from the clutch of the law as best he might.
“Arrest? And for what, if you have time to swap me word for word?” he put demand.
“For the messing up and maltreating of Central Park in violation of enough statutes to hang and then jail you for a year. Don’t bother denying or it’ll be used again you. We been watching a whole half hour. You haven’t a chance at a get-away, so come along nice and companionable.”
The last admonition was shared with the bent old lady, who was too dim-sighted, evidently, to have seen her laborer’s telepogram and now appeared from around the misnamed white-blooming black haw.
“We wouldn’t like to be rough with a lady.”
The suggestive warning came from the second officer. At his voice, Pape sprang forward and peered into two familiar faces—into the chiseled smile of ’Donis Moore and the fat surprise of the “sparrow cop,” Pudge O’Shay. He couldn’t decide at the moment whether to be sorry or hopeful that these two friendly enemies should be the ones again to catch him at misdemeanor within the sacred oblong of the park.
Jane didn’t like, any more than they, that they should be “rough” with her, to judge by the readiness with which she gave up the possibility of escape and ranged alongside the Westerner, quite a bit less humped and helpless looking, however, than in her approach.
“I’ll say this is a pleasure—to be pinched by the only two friends I’ve got on the Force,” offered Pape with his hand. “How are you to-night, ’Donis Moore? O’Shay, greetings!”
“No shaking with prisoners!” The gruffness of the foot policeman was remindful of that previous meeting in which his whistle had been mistaken for a quail’s.
Adonis ignored proprieties and gripped the proffered hand.