A WOODEN COLT.

Observer, Volume 7, Issue 225, 3 January 1885, Page 3

A WOODEN COLT.

The detectives have a buck-jumping stool in their office, and, you "bet, thej r have some good fun with it. The simplicity of its build and demeanour is what catches the public taste ; it looks as harmless as an officer in the Salvation Swashbucklers ; it has a legat one end and another in the middle, and it 1= is entirely to' the end with no log under it that they look for sport. It never deceives them. and they know to a minute when the circus begxus. Say, for instance, they are all seated at their desks at 2 a.m., and posing seriously over the reports of crimes committed during the night received from the Superintendent's office. Well, they are looking pretty dull, and you hear nothing but the muttered swears at the fellow who was fool enough to get drunk with £50 in his pocket and the other fellow that met a girl and doesn't know the number of the watch. But this wave of depression rolls away. A clerk in a drygoods store, furnished. Avibh a feeble moustache, a pair of. canary gloves, and a cane, comes in to say tli at a blue-ribbed paget coat was stolen from the exhibits outside v his master's shop. Twohey politely asks him to take a seat. He looks now upon Twohey as the only gentleman in the office, and moves up to him. The stool is always placed with the' overhanging end next to Twohey's desk, so that he can catch them as they come down, and of course the soft-goods ' man gets into j>osition to give Twohey the o-tfery fullest information on the subject. But does he unburden his mind to the detective ? ! No ; he is only a light-weight, and- the stool merely slips away from him. Twohey at once « picks him up, and gives him time, while brush-., ing the dust off his coa% to take t a half -yearly stock of the stool, now settled back into its primitive innocent position. He says he will

call again, and rubs the pain away out of his left shin with his canary-gloved hand. Hughes and Walker are diverted for a moment, but only for a moment, because they know it is the overture and there are better things to come.

. Your next is a very fat old girl, from Chancery Lane, who has been enjoying Christmas and wants to know how she got her face lacerated so badly, and if they will run someone in for it. She sits down near Twohey without being asked, and is sorry for it, quite early. Her weight sends the off leg of the stool into the air, and, as it comes to rest on the top of an adjacent table, she mops the floor with her bedraggled skirts, and bounces out of the _ door, with an oath that makes Walker's hair stand at attention. Twohey apologises for the stool, and Hughes begins to take an interest in the play.

_ The next act is where two come in together. One is a soiled dove of the subburbs, who wants to bo excused from visiting the Lock, and the other is the man who is going to rob the public by keeping her all to himself. Those are Hughes' clients ; but they've gofc to take a part in the performance all the same. Twohoy says, *' Take a seat, please," and the man drops on to the solid end of the stool, with unlimited confidence. He is safe there, and so is the girl, who demurely Aops down on the other end, so long us ho stays ; but he is a bad stayer for this heat. Hughes takes pencil notes of their protest and promises to see to it. The man who is going to reform the girl rises, and his end of the seat flies up and knocks him against a map of Ponsonby stuck on the wall, while the girl strikes the floor like a pile-driver behind time. Now, in this act the stool does not return to its former state of repose and easy grace ; it seems to know that there is something on the programme that gives it a loading part, and that the bill has not been filled. It just rests for a single moment on both feet, ai-id then, as the girl places her ' hand on its head, so to speak, in order to

raise herself from the floor, it exhibits all the vice in its anatomy. You should see it —think it helped, her a little bit to regain her feet ? No, that would spoil the entertainment, and make the detectives sad throughput the New Year. It first struck the ceiling, after disposing of the bloke, and started a topic on earthquakes among the clerks in the Superintendent's office overhead, then it returned to earth by the force of gravitation wrong* side iip, and landed with crushing energy upon the prostrate form, of the unhappy girl, who was meanwhile employed tucking her skirts close round her ankles and retrieving the debris of her chignon from the eyelet holes of Twohy's boots. This unbroken stool might have run its -wild career for another decade, and wrecked a large number of people, had not Mitchell and. Walker stopped its gambols by weighting it down with a heavy bookcase, and placing it under immediate supervision.