At first, the rattle of the stones had no effect upon the sleeping officer of the Law; but Philip’s second attempt roused him from sleep, and drove him to the unwelcome thought that some one was playing practical jokes upon him, as a form of rustic humour. Not at all relishing this, he sprang out of bed, just as a third handful pattered against the panes.
The indignant Tokely dashed to the window, and drew up the blind; then, unable to see anything, he flung up the window-sash, and poked out his head.
“Who’s down there?” he cried out. “You’d better come out—because I know who you are, and I’ll lay you by the heels to-morrow morning, as sure as a gun. Now then—are you coming out of it?”
Philip, who had drawn himself up in the darkest corner of the yard, horror-struck at his blunder, very naturally declining to obey the Inspector’s bidding, that indignant man continued to shout various threats of future punishment into the darkness, until he contrived to rouse his host and hostess; so that, in a minute or two, the second lighted window was raised, and old Toby Siggs put his head out, with a most prodigious nightcap upon it, and looked round at Tokely.
“Wot’s all this?” he asked, in his slow heavy fashion. “If so be as you ’ave a pain anywheres, the Missis ’ll be on’y too glad to git up, an’ make a poultice, or anythink of that kind, double quick; on’y don’t go a ’owlin’ at the moon like that there—jist like a lost dorg—’cos it ain’t restful at this time o’ night.”
“I’m not howling at the moon—or at anything else,” retorted Tokely, savagely. “And I’m not in pain, you idiot. Only some yokel has had the impudence to keep on shying pebbles at my window, this half hour past—by way of a joke, I suppose. I wish they’d try any one else’s window, for a change.”
“Wot did you ’ave for supper?” was the extraordinary query propounded by Toby, after a thoughtful pause.
“What the deuce has that got to do with it?” snapped out the Inspector.
“Oh—nothink,” replied Toby, innocently. “On’y I thought you might p’raps ’ave bin dreaming’—that’s all.”
Tokely muttered something decidedly uncomplimentary under his breath, and jerked down the blind—quite forgetting, in his rage, about the window. Moreover, being thoroughly roused from any sleep, or thoughts of it, he sat down near his bedstead, to think about the matter, and to decide how best he could visit his wrath upon some one for the offence on the morrow.