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"Like sailors! . . . That’s Agg’s little roose. No wonder he smiled at us," said Pyecroft.

"I’ve been waiting for you some time," the man concluded, folding up the telegram.

"Who’s the owner?"

I indicated myself.

"Then I want you as well as the two seafaring men. Drunk and disorderly can be treated summary. You come on."

My relations with the Sussex constabulary have, so far, been of the best, but I could not love this person.

"Of course you have your authority to show?" I hinted.

"I’ll show it you at Linghurst," he retorted hotly—"all the authority you want."

"I only want the badge, or warrant, or whatever it is a plain-clothes man has to show."

He made as though to produce it, but checked himself, repeating less politely the invitation to Linghurst. The action and the tone confirmed my many-times-tested theory that the bulk of English shoregoing institutions are based on conformable strata of absolutely impervious inaccuracy. I reflected and became aware of a drumming on the back of the front seat that Pyecroft, bowed forward and relaxed, was tapping with his knuckles. The hardly checked fury on Hinchcliffe’s brow had given place to a greasy imbecility, and he nodded over the steering-bar. In longs and shorts, as laid down by the pious and immortal Mr. Morse, Pyecroft tapped out, "Sham drunk. Get him in the car."