Adventures of Martin Hewitt, Third Series. Morrison Arthur

      The party turned into Colt Row, and the inspector, walking up to the door of the house with the shuttered bottom window, knocked sharply. There was no response, so he knocked again; but equally in vain.

      “All out,” said the inspector.

      “No,” I said; “I saw a woman watching me from the window above not three minutes ago.”

      “Ho, ho!” the inspector replied. “That’s so, eh? One of you—you, Johnson—step round to the back, will you? You know the courts behind.”

      One of the plain-clothes men started off, and after waiting another minute or two the inspector began a thundering cannonade of knocks that brought every available head out of the window of every inhabited room in the Row.

      The woman’s face appeared stealthily at the upper window again, but the inspector saw, and he shouted to her to open the door and save him the necessity of damaging it. At this the woman opened the window, and began abusing the inspector with a shrillness and fluency that added a street-corner audience to that already congregated at the windows.

      “Go away, you blaggards!” the lady said, among other things; “you ought to be ’orse-w’ipped, every one of ye! A-comin’ ’ere a-tryin’ to turn decent people out o’ ’ouse and ’ome! Wait till my ’usband comes ’ome—‘e’ll show yer, ye mutton-cadgin’ scoundrels! Payin’ our rent reg’lar, and good tenants as is always been—as you may ask Mrs. Green next door this blessed minute—and I’m a respectable married woman, that’s what I am, ye dirty great cow-ards!”—this last word with a low, tragic emphasis.

      Hewitt remembered what Hoker had said about the present tenants refusing to quit the house on the landlord’s notice. “She thinks we’ve come from the landlord to turn her out,” he said to the inspector.

      “We’re not here from the landlord, you old fool!” the inspector said, in as low a voice as could be trusted to reach the woman’s ears. “We don’t want to turn you out. We’re the police, with a search-warrant to look for something left here before you came; and you’d better let us in, I can tell you, or you’ll get into trouble.”

      “ ’Ark at ’im!” the woman screamed, pointing at the inspector. “ ’Ark at ’im! Thinks I was born yesterday, that feller! Go ’ome, ye dirty pie-stealer, go ’ome! ’Oo sneaked the cook’s watch, eh? Go ’ome!”

      The audience showed signs of becoming a small crowd, and the inspector’s patience gave out. “Here, Bradley,” he said, addressing the remaining plain-clothes man, “give a hand with these shutters,” and the two—both powerful men—seized the iron bar which held the shutters, and began to pull. But the garrison was undaunted, and, seizing a broom, the woman began to belabour the invaders about the shoulders and head from above. But just at this moment the woman, emitting a terrific shriek, was suddenly lifted from behind and vanished. Then the head of the plain-clothes man who had gone round the houses appeared, with the calm announcement, “There’s a winder open behind, sir. But I’ll open the front door if you like.”