Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/143

 answer struck Don Luis Perenna as so comical, that he burst out laughing.

"You have no warrant? Poor little chap! Well, I'll soon show you if I need a warrant!"

"You'll show me nothing," cried Mazeroux, hanging on to his companion's arm. "You shan't touch the man."

"One would think he was your mother!"

"Come, Chief."

"But, you stick-in-the-mud of an honest man," shouted Don Luis, angrily, "if we let this opportunity slip shall we ever find another?"

"Easily. He's going home. I'll inform the commissary of police. He will telephone to headquarters; and to-morrow morning"

"And suppose the bird has flown?"

"I have no warrant."

"Do you want me to sign you one, idiot?"

But Don Luis mastered his rage. He felt that all his arguments would be shattered to pieces against the sergeant's obstinacy, and that, if necessary, Mazeroux would go to the length of defending the enemy against him. He simply said in a sententious tone:

"One ass and you make a pair of asses; and there are as many asses as there are people who try to do police work with bits of paper, signatures, warrants, and other gammon. Police work, my lad, is done with one's fists. When you come upon the enemy, hit him. Otherwise, you stand a chance of hitting the air. With that, good-night. I'm going to bed. Telephone to me when the job is done."

He went home, furious, sick of an adventure in which he had not had elbow room, and in which he had had