"One moment!" Eve interposed a ringing demand that halted these two before they had fairly got in motion to obey Morphew's behest. "I am the householder here, if you please—you'll arrest nobody on these premises without my sanction or a proper warrant. This gentleman has done nothing to deserve arrest—"
"Nothing?" Morphew jeered. "You call burglary nothing?"
"He has committed no burglary—"
"Didn't break into this room and bust open that safe, I suppose?"
"To the contrary," Eve asseverated, "Mr. Lanyard is here in his own right; more than that, he has prevented a burglary—"
"A likely story!" Morphew commented with a snort of grim derision. "If he didn't do it, I want to know who did!"
"But allow me to answer this honest and law-abiding citizen, madame," Lanyard lightly put in. And wittingly at risk of his life he lowered one hand to touch the woman's shoulder as he moved to one side, that she might no longer persist in shielding him with her own body. "Permit me to relieve the confusion of mind which distresses the amiable Monsieur Morphew—"
"You keep your trap shut!"
"Softly, my good Morphew! I am about to do you a service—appreciating as I do how worried you have been, and how pained, by the ungrateful behavior of your tool and accomplice, Mal—"
"Shut your mouth, d'you hear?" Morphew bellowed, swaying his huge head upon his shoulders like an infuriated animal about to charge. "Take your prisoner, Mr. Sheriff! If this woman won't charge him with the burglary he's committed here tonight, I charge him with breaking into my house in New York last night—"