“Baffled!” hissed the constable dramatically. “Dorsett, they’ve got the drop on you. No, no,” continued the official, lifting his hand as the infuriated Dorsett seemed about to dash out of the office bent on any destruction, so long as he carried out his evil designs, “law is law.”
“And you’ve got a writ to execute it, haven’t you?” yelled Dorsett.
“Not with violence, my dear sir--not with violence,” mildly intimated the constable. “I fear we have proceeded with undue haste. I assumed that the plant would be inactive.”
“It was, up to last evening.”
“On that hypothesis we took out a writ for immediate seizure of certain specified chattels. You may enter, seize, and distrain. You may stretch a point and force a door or smash a window, but you have no warrant to batter down a wall. If you did--red hot, see?” and with a rather sickly smile the speaker went through a pantomime of seizing and briskly dropping an overheated object.
“Then take possession,” commanded Dorsett stormily. “Get this young marplot out of here and let no more of his ilk in again.”
“Sorry,” retorted the constable, “but there again we have checkmated ourselves. Relying to your statements we took extreme measures to tear out the tanks and later put a custodian in charge. We cannot now legally enter here or remain here except on a new writ of possession.”
Now was Ralph’s hour of triumph and he could not refrain from smiling to himself. Dorsett noticed it and thrashed about like a madman. He did not assault the quiet unpretentious lad who held him and his scowling myrmidons at bay, but he looked as if he would like to have done so.
Finally Dorsett quieted down. He drew the constable to one side of the room and they held a rapid consultation. Then the constable’s assistant was beckoned to join them, and later two of Dorsett’s allies.
This trio left the office instructed by the constable to hasten to the magistrate in the next township who had issued the replevin writ, and secure a broader document for possession of the premises.