"Hold on! Yez"ll not leave this room," Phelan stopped them, his suspicions again in a state of conflagration.
"But I only want----"
"I don"t care what yez want," Phelan snorted, blocking the way.
"Yez"ll stay here."
"Oh, well--just as you say," returned the young man desperately, "but I will have to ask my man to escort this lady out and put her in a taxicab. Bateato"----
"Bad Pertaters "ll stay where he is."
Phelan was visibly swelling with the majesty of the law.
"You"re very disagreeable," Gladwin charged him; then to Helen, "I"m awfully sorry I cannot go with you, but I think you can find the way yourself. Just go out through the hall, and"----
"She"ll stay right here with the rest o" yez," was Phelan"s ultimatum, as he squared himself in the doorway with the heroic bearing of a bridge-defending Horatius.
The only member of that tense little tableau who really had anything to fear from the spectre of the law embodied in the person of Officer 666 had waited for Gladwin to play his poor hand and, conceiving that this was the psychological moment, sauntered across the room and said with easy a.s.surance:
"Officer, if there"s anything further you want of me, you"ll have to be quick."
"Yez"ll wait here, too, till I can communicate with headquarters,"
Phelan gave him back, not liking the tone of command.
"Then hurry up, because it won"t go well with you if I am detained."
"Now, don"t yez threaten me!" exploded Phelan. "I"m doin" me duty by the book."
"Threaten you! Why, I can show you that you have been helping to rob my house."
This was a new current of thought--a sudden inspiration--but this peer of bluffers managed to crowd a volume of accusation in the slow emphasis with which he said it.
"Your house!" gasped Phelan, rocked clear off the firm base he had scarcely planted himself on. "What do ye mean--who are yez?"
"Who do you suppose I am? Travers Gladwin, of course."
Even the fear-numbed Helen Burton was startled into animation by this amazingly nervy declaration and half rose from the chair she had been guided to and forced into by Gladwin when she seemed on the verge of swooning at Phelan"s refusal to permit her to depart.
Phelan expressed wonder and alarm in every feature and his arms flopped limply at his side as he muttered:
"Travers Gladwin--youse!"
"Don"t listen to him, Phelan," cried Gladwin.
"Shut up!" Phelan turned on him.
"When I came home to-night," the thief pressed his advantage, "this man was here--robbing my house, dressed in your uniform--yes, and you yourself were helping him."
"But I didn"t know," whined the distressed Phelan, yielding himself utterly to the toils of the master prevaricator.
"I don"t think you did it intentionally--but why did you do it?" the thief let him down with a little less severity of emphasis.
"He said he wanted to play a joke. He--he----"
"Oh, don"t be an idiot, Phelan," interposed Gladwin, putting his foot in it at the wrong time and receiving as his reward from the policeman a savage, "Close your face!"
"Oh, playing a joke, was he?" said the thief, smiling. "And did he offer you money. Now, no evasion--you had better tell me."
"Yes, sir," gulped Phelan, with murder in one eye for the real Gladwin and craven apology in the other for the impostor.
"And you took it?" sharply.
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, officer! Shame! Shame!" in tones of shocked reproach. "Let me see what he gave you--come now, it"s your only chance."
Phelan hesitated, gulped some more, and at last produced the bill.
The thief took it from his trembling but unresisting hand, unfurled it, turned it over, held it up close to his eyes and suddenly laughed:
"Well, you certainly are easy--_counterfeit_!"
"What!" roared Phelan, and Travers Gladwin joined him in the exclamation.
"Will you swear that man gave you this bill?" cut in the thief, sharply, s.n.a.t.c.hing out a pencil and marking the gold certificate across the corner.
"I will, sorr!" shouted Phelan. "I will, an"----"
"Very well! Now you see this mark in the corner--will you be able to identify it?"
"Yes, sorr." Phelan was fairly grovelling.
"Good," said the thief, and nonchalantly shoved the bill into his waistcoat pocket.
"See here, Phelan," protested Gladwin.
"Kape your mouth shut--I"d just like to take wan punch at yez."
Phelan meant it and took a step toward Gladwin when the thief stopped him and asked:
"Now, officer, is there anything I can do for you?"
"Thank you, Mr. Gladwin--I got to get the patrol wagon here some way."
If Bateato had entered into an inflexible contract with himself not to utter another syllable before the break of day at least he might have eased Phelan"s mind on that score and informed him that something ominously like a patrol wagon was rounding the corner at that moment.
And if the art collector had not been so keenly amused at his facile conquest of the gullible bluecoat his alert ears might have warned him to say something entirely different from this:
"I"d call the wagon for you, officer, only I"m afraid these people might overpower you and get away with that trunk of pictures. You see what a nice mess they"ve been making of my picture gallery. Why, if I hadn"t happened in to-night they would have walked off with half a million dollars" worth of paintings."
"You call the wagon, Mr. Gladwin," returned Phelan, grimly. "I kin handle the lot of o" them an" ten more like them."