Patrolman Switzer looked then where she pointed, and could scarce believe his eyes. In his case gleefulness took on a rumbling thunderous form, which shook his being as with an ague and made him to beat himself violently upon his ribs. "D'ye blame us for carryin' on, Switzer, when we seen it ourselves?" "I don't--and that's a fact," Switzer confessed between gurgles. "I wouldn't a blamed you much if you'd fell down and had a fit." And then he rocked on his heels, filled with joviality clear down to his rubber soles. Anon, though, he remembered the responsibilities of his position. "Still, at that, and even so," said he, sobering himself, "enough of a good thing's enough." He glared accusingly, yea, condemningly, at the unwitting cause of the quelled commotion. "Say, what's the idea, you carousin' round Noo York City this hour of the night diked up like a Coney Island Maudie Graw? And what's the idea, you causin' a boisterous and disorderly crowd to collect? And what's the idea, you makin' a disturbance in a vicinity full of decent hard-workin' people that's tryin' to get a little rest? What's the general idea, anyhow?" At this moment Mr. Leary having sneezed an uncountable number of times, regained the powers of coherent utterance. "It is not my fault," he said. "I assure you of that, officer. I am being misjudged; I am the victim of circumstances over which I have no control. You see, officer, I went last evening to a fancy-dress party and----" "Well, then, why didn't you go on home afterwards and behave yourself?" "I did--I started, in a taxicab. But the taxicab driver was drunk and he went to sleep on the way and the taxicab stopped and I got out of it and started to walk across town looking for another taxicab and----" "Started walkin', dressed like that?" "Certainly not. I had an overcoat on, of course. But a highwayman held me up at the point of a revolver, and he took my overcoat and what money I had and my card case and----" "Where did all this here happen--this here alleged robbery?" "Not two blocks away from here, right over in the next street to this one." "I don't believe nothin' of the kind!" Patrolman Switzer spoke with enhanced severity; his professional honour had been touched in a delicate place. The bare suggestion that a footpad might dare operate in a district under his immediate personal supervision would have been to him deeply repugnant, and here was this weirdly attired wanderer making the charge direct. "But, officer, I insist--I protest that----"