Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/397

 "What orders?"

"To take you to the lockup if the Florence girl escaped us again."

"Have you a warrant?"

"I have."

"And what next?"

"What next? Nothing: the SanteSanté [sic]—the examining magistrate"

"But, hang it all, the tiger's making tracks meanwhile! Oh, rot! Is it possible to be so dense? What mugs those fellows are! Oh, dash it!"

He was fuming with rage, and when he saw that they were driving into the prison yard, he gathered all his strength, knocked the revolver out of the deputy's hand, and stunned one of the detectives with a blow of his fist.

But ten men came crowding round the doors. Resistance was useless. He understood this, and his rage increased.

"The idiots!" he shouted, while they surrounded him and searched him at the door of the office. "The rotters! The bunglers! To go mucking up a job like that! They can lay hands on the villain if they want to, and they lock up the honest man—while the villain makes himself scarce! And he'll do more murder yet! Florence! Florence …"

Under the lamp light, in the midst of the detectives holding him, he was magnificent in his helpless violence.

They dragged him away. With an unparalleled display of strength, he drew himself up, shook off the men who were hanging on to him like a pack of hounds worrying some animal at bay, got rid of Weber, and accosted Mazeroux in familiar tones. He was gloriously masterful,