Warburton sprang back, his hands applied to his stinging face. "You drunken wretch, how dare you!" "Nan, it's only I--" he stammered. "Nan!" exclaimed the young woman, as her companion joined her. The light from the corner disclosed the speaker's wrathful features, disdainful lips, palpitating nostrils, eyes darting terrible glances. "Nan! Do you think, ruffian, that you are driving serving-maids?" "Good Lord!" Warburton stepped back still farther; stepped back speechless, benumbed, terror-struck. The woman he was gazing at was anybody in the world but his sister Nancy! VII A POLICE AFFAIR "Officers, arrest this fellow!" commanded the young woman. Her gesture was Didoesque in its wrath. "That we will, ma'am!" cried one of the policemen, flinging himself from his horse. "So it's you, me gay buck? Thirty days fer you, an' mebbe more. I didn't like yer looks from th' start. You're working some kind of a trick. What complaint, ma'am?" "Drunkenness and abduction,"--rubbing the burning spot on her cheek. "That'll be rather serious. Ye'll have to appear against him in th' mornin', ma'am." "I certainly shall do so." She promptly gave her name, address and telephone number. "Bill, you drive th' ladies home an' I'll see this bucko to th' station. Here, you!"--to Warburton, who was still dumb with astonishment at the extraordinary denouement to his innocent joke. "Git on that horse, an' lively, too, or I'll rap ye with th' club." "It's all a mistake, officer--" "Close yer face an' git on that horse. Y' can tell th' judge all that in th' mornin'. _I_ ain't got no time t' listen. Bill, report just as soon as ye see th' ladies home. Now, off with ye. Th' ladies'll be wantin' somethin' t' quiet their nerves. Git on that horse, me frisky groom; hustle!" Warburton mechanically climbed into the saddle. It never occurred to him to parley, to say that he couldn't ride a horse. The inventive cells of his usually fertile brain lay passive. "Now," went on the officer, mounting his own nag, "will ye go quietly? If ye don't I'll plug ye in th' leg with a chunk o' lead. I won't stan' no nonsense." "What are you going to do with me?" asked Warburton, with a desperate effort to collect his energies. "Lock ye up; mebbe throw a pail of water on that overheated cocoanut of yours." "But if you'll only let me explain to you! It's all a joke; I got the wrong carriage--" "Marines, marines! D' ye think I was born yestiddy? Ye wanted th' ladies' sparklers, or I'm a doughhead." The police are the same all over the world; the original idea sticks to them, and truth in voice or presence is but sign of deeper cunning and villainy. "Anyhow, ye can't run around Washington like ye do in England, me cockney. Ye can't drive more'n a hundred miles an hour on these pavements."