“What’s the meaning of this?” cried the “cop.”
If he had realized the terrible consequence of that question he would never have asked it. For each and every person concerned sprang forward to answer it.
“There’s the burglar!” cried Mark, pointing excitedly at the original cause of all the trouble, who was wiping his fevered brow with diligence. “There’s the burglar! Arrest him!”
“Yes, yes!” roared Texas. “Grab him! I’ll tell you how it was——”
“Howly saints!” shrieked the woman, “don’t let them get away! They’ve broken me head, in faith! An’ look at me poor husband’s oi!”
“Me a burglar!” roared the person thus alluded to by Mark, shaking one fist at Mark and the other at the officer. “So it’s a burglar they call me, is it? So that’s their trick, be jabbers! An’ a foine state of affairs it is when a man can’t come into his own house without being called a burglar, bad cess to it. Bridget, git me that flat-iron there an’ soak the spalpeen! Be the saints!”
During that tirade of incoherent Irish the three cadets had suddenly collapsed. The situation had flashed over them in all its horror and awfulness. The “burglar” lived in the house! The woman was his wife! And they were the burglars!
The three gazed at each other in consternation and sprang back instinctively. The policeman took that for a move to escape and he whipped out his revolver with a suddenness that made Texas’ mouth water.
“Stop!” he cried.
His command received even more emphasis from the fact that another policeman rushed up the stairs at that moment. The three stopped.