And as soon as it died down all four children began to explain at once, and though the squeaking and mewing were not at their very loudest, yet there was quite enough of both to make it very hard for the policeman to understand a single word of any of the four wholly different explanations now poured out to him.
"Stow it!" he said, at last. "I'm a-going into the next room in the execution of my duty. I'm a-going to use my eyes—my ears are gone off their chumps, what with you and them cats."
And he pushed Robert aside and strode through the door.
"Don't say I didn't warn you," said Robert.
"It's tigers, really," said Jane. "Father said so. I wouldn't go in if I were you."
But the policeman was quite stony; nothing anyone said seemed to make any difference to him. Some policemen are like this, I believe. He strode down the passage, and in another moment he would have been in the room with all the cats and all the rats (musk), but at that very instant a thin, sharp voice screamed from the street outside:—
"Murder! Murder! Stop thief!"
The policeman stopped, with one regulation boot heavily poised in the air.
"Eh?" he said.
And again the shrieks sounded shrilly and piercingly from the dark street outside.