“Oh, good Lord!” exclaimed the young butterman, throwing up both arms in his despair, “here’s a go!”
“Here—hullo—what the blazes are you two blokes hup to?” cried the policeman, catching us both by the collars of our coats and shaking us; “this is a nice place to begin larking, I must say.”
“It is not larking,” I exclaimed, getting on my feet, a hideous mass of egg-shells and indifferent egg-flip; “it’s highway robbery! This man is in possession of my property—proceeds of a burglary—I’m Kippen, the pawnbroker, No. 319; he’s got my clock in his pocket now. I—I give him in charge, constable, I give him in charge! Why don’t you catch hold of him?”
“our feet went from under us.”
“The man’s mad!” ejaculated Mr. Youson, “raving mad. Somebody catch hold of him.”
There was a big crowd round us—it doesn’t take long to get up a mob in Bermondsey—and the proprietor of the cheesemonger’s shop, who had emerged from his caves of double Gloucester, was wanting to make a case of his own out of it all, and run the two of us in. The policeman was bewildered, and Mr. Youson was beside himself with ungovernable rage.
“He has got the clock in his pocket,” I repeated.
“Yes, I know I have a clock in my pocket,” he spluttered, “you—you rascal—you unmitigated——”
“It’s my clock. I can swear to it,” I yelled. “I’ve plenty of witnesses to prove it’s mine.”