Hard flags received him with native impassivity: stumbling, he lost
balance and sat down with an emphasis that drove the breath from him
in one mighty "_Ooof!_"
There was a simultaneous confusion of new, strange voices on the other
side of the fence; cries of surprise, recognition, excitement:
"Feeny, by all that's holy!"
"Mike Grogan, or I'm a liar!"
"What hit the two av urn?"
"Gawd knows!"
"Thin 'tis this waay thim murdherous divvles is b'atin' ut!"
"Gimme a back up that fince!..."
P. Sybarite picked himself up with even more alacrity that if he'd
landed in a bed of nettles, tore across that terra-incognita, found a
second fence, and was beyond it in a twinkling.
Swift as he was, however, detection attended him--a voice roaring:
"There goes wan av thim now!"
Other voices chimed in spendthrift with suggestions and advice....
Blindly clearing fence after fence without even thinking to count
them, P. Sybarite hurtled onward. Noises in the rear indicated a
determined pursuit: once a voice whooped--"_Halt or I fire!_"--and a
shot, waking echoes, sped the fugitive's heels....
But in time he had of necessity to pause for breath, and pulled up in
the back-yard of a Forty-sixth Street residence, his duty--to find a
way to the street and a shift from that uniform of unhappy
inspiration--as plain as the problem it presented was obscure.
XI
BURGLARY UNDER ARMS
And there P.
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