“It would be as well,” said the sergeant; “I’d be glad he’d see that note too. But it’s the young lady has it and not me. Did you happen to think now of e’er a way that it could be got from her?” “Would you ask her for it?” said Constable Moriarty. “I might ask her for it, and I might ask the King if he’d lend me the loan of his crown to go courting in. I’d be as likely to get the one as the other by asking. If you can think of no better way of getting it than that, Constable Moriarty, you may go and ask for it yourself; and you can come back here and let us have a look at you, when she smacks your face.” “We might try a stratagem with her,” said Constable Cole, who had made a similar suggestion the day before. “I was reading a book one time about a man that was great on stratagems. There wasn’t a thing would happen but he’d---- I’m sorry now I haven’t the book by me.” “Stratagems be damned,” said Sergeant Farrelly. “What stratagem would you be proposing to try? Maybe you’d like me to send for Jimmy O’Loughlin and him to tell the young lady that his wife was wanting the note the way she could use it for lighting the kitchen fire to boil the kettle for tea. Is that your stratagem? Tell me now.” “It is not,” said Constable Cole, with dignity, “nor it isn’t like it. If I was the sergeant here, I’d go to the young lady and I’d tell her, speaking civil and pleasant, that the District Inspector beyond in Ballymoy had sent a man over for the note, so as he could set the police all over the country looking for Dr. O’Grady, and that he wouldn’t be able to do that same without he got the note, on account of the way the law does be at the present time.” “Is that what you call a stratagem?” said the sergeant. “It’s a lie I’d call it myself, a whole pack of lies, and it’s just what they might take the stripes off me for saying, if so be I was fool enough to say it. Is it looking to be sergeant yourself in the place of me you are, that you’d suggest the like of that?” “All stratagems is lies,” said Constable Cole soothingly. “The one I’m suggesting is no worse than another.” “Go and try her with it yourself, then,” said the sergeant, “and see what you’ll get out of it.” Constable Cole, pursued by the sniggering laugh of Moriarty, left the kitchen and went into the day room. Miss Blow had made herself quite at home. On the iron-legged table with which the police barrack was provided lay her hat, her jacket, and her gloves. She was knitting a silk tie, meant perhaps as a present for her father, perhaps as an adornment for the corpse of Dr. O’Grady when she found it. Constable Cole drew himself up stiffly to attention and addressed her-- “I beg your pardon, miss, but Sergeant Farrelly will be obliged to you if you’ll lend him the loan of the note that Lord Manton gave you. He’s thinking of sending a man over to Ballymoy to the D. I.” “What’s a D. I.?” asked Miss Blow. “He’s an officer, miss, a gentleman by the name of Mr. Goddard.”