“Comrade Brady,” said Psmith, “touches the spot. He–”
“Say, are you Kid Brady?” inquired one of the officers. For the first time the constabulary had begun to display any real animation.
“Reckoned I’d seen you somewhere!” said another. “You licked Cyclone Al. all right, Kid, I hear.”
“And who but a bone-head thought he wouldn’t?” demanded the third warmly. “He could whip a dozen Cyclone Al.’s in the same evening with his eyes shut.”
“He’s the next champeen,” admitted the first speaker.
“If he puts it over Jimmy Garvin,” argued the second.
“Jimmy Garvin!” cried the third. “He can whip twenty Jimmy Garvins with his feet tied. I tell you–”
“I am loath,” observed Psmith, “to interrupt this very impressive brain-barbecue, but, trivial as it may seem to you, to me there is a certain interest in this other little matter of my ruined hat. I know that it may strike you as hypersensitive of us to protest against being riddled with bullets, but–”
“Well, what’s bin doin’?” inquired the Force. It was a nuisance, this perpetual harping on trifles when the deep question of the light-weight Championship of the World was under discussion, but the sooner it was attended to, the sooner it would be over.
Billy Windsor undertook to explain.
“The Three Points laid for us,” he said. “Jack Repetto was bossing the crowd. I don’t know who the rest were. The Kid put one over on to Jack Repetto’s chin, and we were asking him a few questions when the rest came back, and started into shooting. Then we got to cover quick, and you came up and they beat it.”
“That,” said Psmith, nodding, “is a very fair precis of the evening’s events. We should like you, if you will be so good, to corral this Comrade Repetto, and see that he buys me a new hat.”
“We’ll round Jack up,” said one of the policemen indulgently.
“Do it nicely,” urged Psmith. “Don’t go hurting his feelings.”
The second policeman gave it as his opinion that Jack was getting too gay. The third policeman conceded this. Jack, he said, had shown signs for some time past of asking for it in the neck. It was an error on Jack’s part, he gave his hearers to understand, to assume that the lid was completely off the great city of New York.
“Too blamed fresh he’s gettin’,” the trio agreed. They could not have been more disapproving if they had been prefects at Haileybury and Mr. Repetto a first-termer who had been detected in the act of wearing his cap on the back of his head.
They seemed to think it was too bad of Jack.
“The wrath of the Law,” said Psmith, “is very terrible. We will leave the matter, then, in your hands. In the meantime, we should be glad if you would direct us to the nearest Subway station. Just at the moment, the cheerful lights of the Great White Way are what I seem to chiefly need.”
CHAPTER XVII
GUERILLA WARFARE
Thus ended the opening engagement of the campaign, seemingly in a victory for the Cosy Moments army. Billy Windsor, however, shook his head.
“We’ve got mighty little out of it,” he said.
“The victory,” said Psmith, “was not bloodless. Comrade Brady’s ear, my hat–these are not slight casualties. On the other hand, surely we are one up? Surely we have gained ground? The elimination of Comrade Repetto from the scheme of things in itself is something. I know few men I would not rather meet in a lonely road than Comrade Repetto. He is one of Nature’s sand-baggers. Probably the thing crept upon him slowly. He started, possibly, in a merely tentative way by slugging one of the family circle. His nurse, let us say, or his young brother. But, once started, he is unable to resist the craving. The thing grips him like dram-drinking. He sandbags now not because he really wants to, but because he cannot help himself. To me there is something consoling in the thought that Comrade Repetto will no longer be among those present.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I should imagine that a benevolent Law will put away in his little cell for at least a brief spell.”