“Yes.”
“Caught a burglar in there in great shape. I was coming along very quietly one night when I ran against a fellow coming out of the lane. He made some excuse and hurried away as quick as he could, and after he got some distance he gave a loud and peculiar whistle. I felt that something was wrong, and went down the lane a little piece to where there was a high board fence. Some one called out, ‘Are you there Flight?’ I answered ‘yes,’ and then he said ‘look out and catch,’ and the next moment he threw a bundle of stuff over the fence, and it fell right into my arms. He threw over another bundle, and then he climbed over himself, when I collared him. He was the most surprised burglar you ever saw. I took both him and the bundles to the station, and he got two years. I never found out who the other fellow was, but he was no good anyhow, or he would have risked himself to warn his mate in some fashion.
“Yes,” said the policeman, as he went softly up a couple of steps, tried a door, and then resumed his walk. “We have some mighty unpleasant experiences. ‘Pulling a house,’ as they call it, is not to my taste, but we’ve got to do it, all the same. We never know anything about it till we are paraded at twelve o’clock and marched away in a body. The house to be raided is then surrounded, men being placed in the rear and at all points of exit, the rest accompanying the sergeant into the house. Sometimes there is a great hullabaloo, but generally they keep mighty quiet. The last house I helped to raid was on ⸺ street. It was a mighty cold night, and they had no suspicion of what was going to happen. The house was pretty full and so were the inmates, and they were dancing and raising particular Cain. When the sergeant rang the bell they didn’t stop, but after the woman of the house had peeped out and seen the police she gave one yell, and that settled it. We pushed in, and could see them dashing up stairs and flying for the rear of the house on all sides. One young fellow took it quite philosophically, lighting a fresh cigar and awaiting further developments. Those who ran out the back way were netted easily, and were brought back looking mighty crestfallen. None of the girls tried the escape dodge—they simply broke for their rooms to secure their valuables. Two who had never been arrested before set up a most lugubrious howling. They threw themselves down on the floor, tore their hair, and cut up bad. Another girl swore a steady stream of oaths for half an hour, while the rest cut jokes with us to cover their chagrin. The sergeant found one man under the bed. He hauled him out by the heels, and the expression on that fellow’s face when the sergeant yanked him to his feet by the collar, would make a dog laugh. Another fellow had been hid his girl in a narrow closet, and when found he was bleeding at the nose. In a little while he would have been smothered. It was rather a queer procession back to the station. Some of them were singing, others crying, while the rest of them were swearing like dock-wollopers.”
A CUTE GIRL.
“One morning about two o’clock I was pacing my beat in a neighborhood where a large number of wealthy people resided. All at once I saw a female figure coming swiftly towards me, and when she reached me she proved to be a young and very handsome girl. She was all out of breath and greatly excited. She could hardly speak for a moment, and then she gasped out that some one had broken into her house and was raising a disturbance. ‘He threatened to kill me, sir; come along and arrest him.’ I never hesitated to go with the woman, and I started off. She took me away three or four blocks, and brought me into a house where a dim light was burning. There were a few dishes smashed on the floor, and some of the furniture was overturned, but that was all. We searched the house and the premises, but could find nobody, and after wasting about an hour I returned to my beat. Would you believe it? Two of them houses had been burglarized during my absence, and over $3,000 worth of stuff carried off.”
“And the woman—?”
“The woman steered me away from the spot while they went for the swag—you bet I’m not fooled like that again.”
“Did you have her arrested?”
“Pooh! what good would that do, man? She would have stuck to her story, and that would settle it. There would be simply a suspicion that her little yarn to me that night was made up, but no jury or magistrate would convict her.”