"How you get in here?" retorted the Jap in the same sharp, emotionless tones.
"I saw ye snakin' in an' ye didn't latch the door after yez," blurted Phelan, taking a step nearer the Jap and still watching him with profound suspicion.
"What you want?" asked the Jap with a slight tremor of apprehension.
"Information!" cried Phelan. "What are yez doin' in here?" Phelan's eye swept the room for some evidence of an attempt to despoil. Though he saw none he did not relinquish his attitude of suspicion. The Jap seemed about to speak and then stopped. As Phelan continued to glower at him, he snapped out:
Triumph blazed in Phelan's eyes. Now he was sure he had a thief and he determined to handle the situation with all the majesty of his official person.
"So yez can't tell what yez're doin' in this house," he said with fine sarcasm.
The Jap shook his head emphatically and returned a positive, "No tell!"
Phelan balanced his club for a moment and strode toward the Jap.
"Yez better come with me," he said through compressed lips.
The Jap started back with a frightened exclamation.
"You no take me to jail?" he uttered, while his yellow features twitched with fear.
"In a minute," replied the elated officer, "if yez don't tell me what yez're doin' here. I've been lookin' out for this place while Mr. Gladwin was in foreign parts, and"----
"You know Mr. Gladwin?" broke in the Jap, excitedly.
"No, I ain't never seen him," said Phelan, "but I know this is his house an' I been keepin' my eye on it fer him."
"Mr. Gladwin--he my boss!" and the Jap grinned from ear to ear.
This solution of the mystery never entered the policeman's head and he resented the surprise.
"Do yez mean yez're his valley?" he asked vindictively, refusing to relinquish his suspicion.
Phelan read the grin as a distinct insult to his intelligence and he pounced upon the little brown man in an even more caustic tone:
"If yez're are Mr. Gladwin's valley, what are ye doin' here an' him thousands o' miles away across the ocean in Agypt an' Jerusalem an' the like?"
Now it was Phelan's turn to grin as he saw the Jap shrink and turn upon him a pair of wildly alarmed eyes.
"Come! Come! I'm waitin' fer an answer," The cat had his mouse backed into a corner and mentally licked his chops.