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“I can’t stay here all day,” said the constable.

Pyecroft raised his head. Then was seen with what majesty the British sailor-man envisages a new situation.

“Met gennelman heavy sheeway,” said he. “Do tell me British gelman can’t give ‘ole Brish Navy lif’ own blighted ste’ cart. Have another drink!”

“I didn’t know they were as drunk as all that when they stopped me,” I explained.

“You can say all that at Linghurst,” was the answer. “Come on.”

“Quite right,” I said. “But the question is, if you take these two out on the road, they’ll fall down or start killing you.”

“Then I’d call on you to assist me in the execution o’ my duty.”

“But I’d see you further first. You’d better come with us in the car. I’ll turn this passenger out.” (This was my engineer, sitting quite silent.) “You don’t want him, and, anyhow, he’d only be a witness for the defence.”

“That’s true,” said the constable. “But it wouldn’t make any odds–at Linghurst.”

My engineer skipped into the bracken like a rabbit. I bade him cut across Sir Michael Gregory’s park, and if he caught my friend, to tell him I should probably be rather late for lunch.

“I ain’t going to be driven by him.” Our destined prey pointed at Hinchcliffe with apprehension.

“Of course not. You sake my seat and keep the big sailor in order. He’s too drunk to do much. I’ll change places with the other one. Only be quick; I want to pay my fine and get it over.”

“That’s the way to look at it,” he said, dropping into the left rear seat. “We’re making quite a lot out o’ you motor gentry.” He folded his arms judicially as the car gathered way under Hinchcliffe’s stealthy hand.

“But you aren’t driving?” he cried, half rising.

“You’ve noticed it?” said Pyecroft, and embraced him with one anaconda- like left arm.

“Don’t kill him,” said Hinchcliffe briefly. “I want to show him what twenty-three and a quarter is.” We were going a fair twelve, which was about the car’s limit.

Our passenger swore something and then groaned.

“Hush, darling!” said Pyecroft, “or I’ll have to hug you.”

The main road, white under the noon sun, lay broad before us, running north to Linghurst. We slowed and looked anxiously for a side track.

“And now,” said I, “I want to see your authority.”

“The badge of your ratin’?” Pyecroft added.

“I’m a constable,” he said, and kicked. Indeed, his boots would have bewrayed him across half a county’s plough; but boots are not legal evidence.

“I want your authority,” I repeated coldly; “some evidence that you are not a common drunken tramp.”

It was as I had expected. He had forgotten or mislaid his badge. He had neglected to learn the outlines of the work for which he received money and consideration; and he expected me, the tax-payer, to go to infinite trouble to supplement his deficiencies.

“If you don’t believe me, come to Linghurst,” was the burden of his almost national anthem.

“But I can’t run all over Sussex every time a blackmailer jumps up and says he is a policeman.”

“Why, it’s quite close,” he persisted.

“‘Twon’t be–soon,” said Hinchcliffe.

“None of the other people ever made any trouble. To be sure, they was gentlemen,” he cried. “All I can say is, it may be very funny, but it ain’t fair.”

I laboured with him in this dense fog, but to no end. He had forgotten his badge, and we were villains for that we did not cart him to the pub or barracks where he had left it.

Pyecroft listened critically as we spun along the hard road.

“If he was a concentrated Boer, he couldn’t expect much more,” he observed. “Now, suppose I’d been a lady in a delicate state o’ health– you’d ha’ made me very ill with your doings.”

“I wish I ‘ad. ‘Ere! ‘Elp! ‘Elp! Hi!”

The man had seen a constable in uniform fifty yards ahead, where a lane ran into the road, and would have said more but that Hinchcliffe jerked her up that lane with a wrench that nearly capsized us as the constable came running heavily.