33 лучших юмористических рассказа на английском / 33 Best Humorous Short Stories

“Is the motion siconded?”

�“Oh, come now!” cried my captor. “Stop this nonsense, or I’ll report you to the department. This is my house, and has been for twenty years. I want this man searched.”

�“Oi hov no warrant permithin’ me to invistigate the contints ov dthe gintlemon’s clothes,” returned the intelligent member of the force. “But av yez �ll take yer solemn alibi dthat yez hov rayson t’ belave the gintlemon has worked ony habeas corpush business on yure propherty, oi’ll jug dthe blag-yard.

’

�“I’ll be responsible,” said the alleged owner of the house. “Take him to the station.”

�“I refuse to move,” I said.

�“Oi’ll not carry yez,” said the policeman, “and oi’d advoise ye to furnish yure own locomotion. Av ye don’t, oi’ll use me club. Dthot’s th’ ounly waa yez �ll git dthe ambulanch.”

�“Oh, well, if you insist,” I replied, “of course I’ll go. I have nothing to fear.”

�You see,’ added 5010 to me, in parenthesis, �the thought suddenly flashed across my mind that if all was as my captor said, if the house was really his and not the Ghost Club’s, and if the whole thing was only my fancy, the spoons themselves would turn out to be entirely fanciful; so I was all right – or at least I thought I was.

So we trotted along to the police station. On the way I told the policeman the whole story, which impressed him so that he crossed himself a half-dozen times, and uttered numerous ejaculatory prayers – “Maa dthe shaints presharve us,” and “Hivin hov mershy,” and others of a like import.

�“Waz dthe ghosht ov Dan O’Connell dthere?” he asked.

�“Yes,” I replied. “I shook hands with it.”

�“Let me shaak dthot hand,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion, and then he whispered in my ear: “Oi belave yez to be innoshunt; but av yez ain’t, for the love of Dan, oi’ll let yez eshcape.

”

�“Thanks, old fellow,” I replied. “But I am innocent of wrong-doing, as I can prove.”

�Alas!’ sighed the convict, �it was not to be so. When I arrived at the station-house, I was dumfounded to learn that the spoons were all too real. I told my story to the sergeant, and pointed to the monogram, “G.C.,” on the spoons as evidence that my story was correct; but even that told against me, for the alleged owner’s initials were G.C.