Nor did I find him in my chambers when I got home, soon after eleven. He was a youth of many engagements. So I mixed myself a drink and whiled away three-quarters of an hour with a solitary pipe and the bundle of evening papers set out for me by Jephson, who lived out with his wife and family and retired to domestic joys at 9.30. The evening papers had let down the Silversmiths' College pretty easily on the whole. But one of them--an opposition rag which specialised in the politics, especially gutter politics, of South London and was owned by a ring of contractors--had come out with a virulent attack, headed "Vivisection in Our Midst." The article set me hoping that Travers was a strong man and would use the law of libel: it deserved the horsewhip. It left a taste in the mouth that required a second whisky-and-apollinaris before I sought my bed, sleepily promising myself that I would call on Farrell in the morning, however inconvenient it might be, and help to put an end to this nonsense. . . . I would, if the worst came to the worst, even drag the fool to Jack's laboratory and convince him of his folly. And this promise, as will be seen, I carried out to the very last letter. A rapping on my bedroom door fetched me out of my beauty sleep. I started up in bed and switched on the electric light. "That you, Jimmy?" I called. "Come in, you ass, and say what you want. If it's the corkscrew--" "If you please, Sir Roderick--sorry to disturb you--" said a voice outside which I recognised as the night-porter's. "Smithers?" I called. "What's wrong? . . . Open the door, man. . . . Is the place on fire?" The door opened and showed me Smithers with a tall policeman looming behind him. "Hallo!" said I, sitting up straighter and rubbing my eyes. "Constable, sir," explained Smithers, "with a message for you. Says he must see you personally." The constable spoke while I stared at him, my eyes blinking under the bed-light. "It's a dream," I was telling myself. "Silly kind of dream--" "Gentleman in the Ensor Street Police Court, sir. Requires bail till to-morrow--till ten-thirty this morning, I should have said. Gave your name for surety." The constable announced this in a firm bass voice, respectful but business-like. "Said he was a friend of yours." "What's his name?" I demanded. "Gave the name of James Collingwood, sir--and this same address." I gasped. "Jimmy?--Oh, I beg your pardon, Constable!--What has Mr. Collingwood been doing?" "He's _charged_, sir," the constable answered carefully, "with resisting the police in the execution of their duty." "What duty?"