“Amen!” said Hinchcliffe. “Shall I stop, or shall I cut him down?” He stopped, for full in the centre of the Linghurst Road stood a person in pepper-and-salt raiment (ready-made), with a brown telegraph envelope in his hands. “Twenty-three and a half miles an hour,” he began, weighing a small beam-engine of a Waterbury in one red paw. “From the top of the hill over our measured quarter-mile—twenty-three and a half.” “You manurial gardener——” Hinchcliffe began. I prodded him warningly from behind, and laid the other hand on Pyecroft’s stiffening knee. “Also—on information received—drunk and disorderly in charge of a motor-car—to the common danger—two men like sailors in appearance,” the man went on. “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.” “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.”