"Silence!"
He motioned for Hickey to continue.
"As I was saying, we were walking along Bologna Avenue——"
"Bois de Boulogne," again corrected Dan.
"Yes; something of that sort. We were talking, when, all at once, my friend here heard a woman scream. Then two women screamed. We didn't know what they were screaming about, because they were screaming in some language we didn't understand. Maybe they were talking in French. I guess they were. Well, we didn't know what kind of trouble it was, but we knew it was a woman in trouble, and that was enough."
"Proceed!"
"We sailed in. There were a lot of fellows attempting to rob a couple of ladies beside a cab. We thought so, anyway, and we mixed it up right away. I gave the fellow who was holding the horses a short arm punch over the eye with my left, and hooked his jaw with my right. You ought to have seen him curl up and go to sleep," added Hickey, with a laugh.
"Never mind that; tell me what happened."
"That's what I'm trying to do, if you will let me alone. While I was doing that, my friend Dan had fired himself right into the bunch. He put several of them out and by the time I mixed in everybody was fighting. Some of the fellows tried to stick us with knives, and one miserable coward fired a shot at me. I guess he came pretty near winging me. His bullet nearly clipped a lock of hair from my head. Well, anyway, we had them pretty well thrashed when, all of a sudden, one of the robbers let out a yell and in a minute they had hit the trail for the bushes, with Dan and myself after them. If I hadn't fallen over a curbstone maybe we would have caught them. About that time the police jumped on us, and I don't remember very much after that, until we were taking a ride in the automobile."
"Your story is well told, but it is not in accordance with the facts."