hoop from the audience. Swept off his balance
by the prospect of fruition for his design the plotter had technically
been guilty before witnesses of a violent assault upon the person of an
officer in the sworn discharge of his duty.

He felt himself slung violently about. One mitted hand fixed itself in
Mr. Leary's collar yoke at the rear; the other closed upon a handful of
slack material in the lower breadth of Mr. Leary's principal habiliment
just below where his buttons left off.

"So you won't come, won't you? Well then I'll show you--you pink
strawberry drop!"

Enraged at having been flaunted before a jeering audience the patrolman
pushed his prisoner ten feet along the sidewalk, imparting to the
offender's movements an involuntary gliding gait, with backward jerks
between forward shoves; this method of propulsion being known in the
vernacular of the force as "givin' a skate the bum's rush."

"Hey, Switzer, lend me your key and I'll ring for the wagon for you,"
volunteered Mr. Cassidy. His care-free companions, some of them, cheered
the suggestion, seeing in it prospect of a prolonging of this delectable
sport which providence without charge had so graciously deigned to
provide.

"Never mind about the wagon. Us two'll walk, me and him," announced the
patrolman. "'Taint so far where we're goin', and the walk'll do this
fresh guy a little good--maybe'll sober him up. And never mind about any
of the rest of you taggin' along behind us neither. This is a pinch--not
a free street parade. Go on home now, the lot of youse, before you wake
up the whole Lower West Side."

Loath to be cheated out of the last act of a comedy so unique and so
rich the whimsical McGillicuddys and their chosen mates fell reluctantly
away, with yells and gibes and quips and farewell bursts of laughter.

VII

Closely hyphenated together the deep blue figure and the bright pink one
rounded the corner and were alone. It was time to open the overtures
which would establish Patrolman Switzer upon the basis of a better
understanding of things. Mr. Leary, craning his neck in order to look
rearward into the face of his custodian, spoke in a key very different
from the one he had last employed.

"I really didn't intend, you know, to resist you, officer. I had a
private purpose in what I did. And you were quite within your rights.
And I'm very grateful to you--really I am--for driving those people
away."

"Is that so?" The inflection was gri