"If Mrs. Burke will give him in charge we will take him to the station and lock him up, but we cannot take him otherwise. He's on her private property."
"That settles it then," Brennan replied. "She's Irish, sir. You know what that means."
His anticipation was correct. Mrs. Burke refused point-blank to allow her helpless retainer to be touched. He could remain where he was, she said, and she hoped the snakes and the lizards and the mosquitoes and all the other fearsome things she could mention would come and devour him—but the police were not going to touch him.
She was equally hostile when Durham suggested they should start off for the town without giving her the trouble of preparing anything for them to eat. In fact, he could not now open his lips to her that she did not snap some biting retort at him.
"She'd set the dogs on you if she were in her own country, sir," Brennan remarked, when at last they drove away from the house with a final envenomed shaft ringing in their ears. "I don't think the old man is the only one who has a taste for the drink, if you ask me, sir."
CHAPTER XIV
THE LAST STRAW
Since Mrs. Eustace returned to the township Harding had never once been to see her nor, when passing the house, had he glanced at it.