The sergeant jumped to his feet, upsetting his chair with a deafening clatter. "Here, now!" he yelled. "Stop that!"
"Stop what?" Toffee asked innocently.
"Stop talking to me, now!" Sergeant Feeney gasped. "I'm a sober upright minion of the law, and it's not right that the likes of you should come jabberin' around so's I can hear it."
"Well, I don't see why not," Toffee said bewilderedly. "How am I going to get the key, if I don't ask you for it?"
"There you go again!" the sergeant wailed. Trembling in every fiber of his great hulking being, he turned away from her. "If you don't stop it, now," he said, "I'm going to close my eyes, and then you won't be there."
"But I have to have the key," Toffee protested.
"That does it!" the sergeant said woundedly. He closed his eyes so tightly they might never have existed. "There, now!"
"Where?" Toffee said.
The sergeant visibly flinched. "Where what?" he asked faintly.