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 outlines of the work for which he received money and consideration; and he expected me, the taxpayer, 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.

It seemed to me that both our guest and his fellow-villain in uniform smiled as we fled down the road easterly betwixt the narrowing hedges.