ruffin!' My hat! won't your missis be proud when you take her to see
that bloomin' film?"

"Move on, now, move on!" said Collins, recovering his dignity, and
asserting it with a vim. "Look here, cabby, I don't take it kind of you
to laugh like that; they had you just as bad as they had me. Blow that
Frenchy! She might have tipped me off before I made such an ass of
myself. I don't say that I'd have done it so natural if I had known,
but--Hullo! What's that? Blowed if it ain't that blessed whistle again,
and another crowd a-pelting this way; and--no!--yes, by Jupiter!--a
couple of Scotland Yard chaps with 'em. My hat! what do you suppose that
means?"

He knew in the next moment. Panting and puffing, a crowd at their heels,
and people from all sides stringing out from the pavement and trooping
after them, the two "plain-clothes" men came racing through the grinning
gathering and bore down on P.C. Collins.

"Hullo, Smathers, you in this, too?" began he, his feelings softened by
the knowledge that other arms of the law would figure on that film with
him at the Alhambra to-night. "Now, what are you after, you goat? That
French lady, or the red-headed party in the grey suit?"

"Yes, yes, of course I am. You heard me signal you to head him off,
didn't you?" replied Smathers, looking round and growing suddenly
excited when he realized that Collins was empty-handed, and that the
red-headed man was not there. "Heavens! you never let him get away, did
you? You grabbed him, didn't you--eh?"

"Of course I grabbed him. Come out of it. What are you giving me, you