"Now I'm ready for him," he grinned. "Put my coat inside, boy, and stand at the door yourself with the candle in your hand. If you see anything, yell out to me."
Philip obeyed. These preparations for a deadly struggle appealed to his very soul, for your healthy-minded boy of fifteen has generally ceased to be a highwayman or a pirate in imagination, and aims rather at planting the Union Jack on a glacis bristling with hostile cannon.
The policeman, feeling for the loose strap of his truncheon, commenced a careful survey of the mews. He had not gone five yards when there was a loud crash of broken glass. The building at the other end of the yard possessed a couple of windows facing into another inclosure at the back. Obviously, the broken-nosed "Jocky," unseen himself, had observed the constable's movements.
Realizing that discovery was imminent, he was effecting a strategic movement to the rear.
The policeman instantly abandoned his cautious tactics. He ran toward the door of the house whence the sound came. It resisted somewhat, but yielded to his shoulder. He disappeared inside. Philip, after closing his own door, also ran to the new center of interest, shielding the candle with one hand lest it should blow out.
Quick as he was, he missed the first phase of a Homeric combat. The violent "Jocky," foiled by an unnoticed iron bar in his attempt to escape, turned like a madman on the policeman. There was no sort of parley between them. Cursing the luck that had revealed his hiding place, the man, an ex-convict, with the frame of a giant, sprang at his pursuer suddenly from an inner room.
The policeman had a second's warning. It was something, but not enough to give him an advantage. He got his truncheon out, but simultaneously his assailant was on him with the ferocity of a catamount. They closed in bone-breaking endeavor, and before they were locked together for ten fearful seconds the officer of the law bitterly regretted the professional pride which sent him single-handed into this unequal strife.
For he was physically outclassed, and he knew it, and there is no more unnerving knowledge can come to a man in such a supreme moment. Nevertheless, he was a brave man, and he fought with all the resolution that is born of the consciousness of justice and moral right. But Providence is on the side of big battalions, and "Jocky" was taller, heavier, very much more active. Moreover, liberty is as potent an incentive as law any day, and law was being steadily throttled when the pale gleam of Philip's candle lit up the confines of the ruinous hovel about which the two men stamped and lurched and wrestled.
At the precise moment of the boy's entrance the policeman's knees yielded and he fell, with his remorseless antagonist uppermost. Philip, gazing at them wide-eyed, almost fell too, for his left foot rolled on the constable's staff.
Being fashioned of the stuff which founds empires—on the principle that instant action is worth a century of diplomacy—he picked up the truncheon and brought it down on "Jocky's" hard skull with such emphasis that the convict emitted a queer sort of cough, and collapsed limply on top of his conquered adversary.