"What place is this?" I asked, when I saw that no more notice was going to be taken of my protest than before.
Lord Potter stared at me with high disdain on his dirty face, and Mr. Perry with a most irritating air of grieved sympathy.
"Perhaps," I said, "I can find someone I know, who will come to my assistance. I don't know in the least what town I am in."
"Come along," said the constable who had arrested me. "You'll only make it worse by being impudent. You know well enough what place you're in. Now are you coming quietly, or shall I have to take you?"
I thought it best to go quietly. I was taken through a door opposite to the one by which we had entered, and rather to my surprise found myself in a carpeted passage. We passed several other doors on either side, until we came to one which the policeman unlocked.
"By the look of your clothes," he said, as he fumbled with the key, "you ought to be better treated; but we're pretty full up, and you'll only be here till to-morrow morning. You must make the best of it. Here, take this."
He pushed half a crown into my hand, and me through the door, which he immediately shut and locked after me, leaving me for the first time in my life in a prison cell.
My surprise, at the extraordinary action of a policeman in pressing a tip upon a prisoner, was overcome by the fierce anger I felt at being locked up in a pitch dark cell, which could not have been more than five or six feet square; for as I put out my hands I found I could touch the walls on all sides. What mad piece of inhumanity was this, to add to the burlesque charge on which I was to be tried! There was not even a stool to sit down on. Was I really to be confined in this dark hole until I could be taken before a magistrate on the following morning? I turned, and banged and kicked on the door in uncontrollable rage, and shouted at the top of my voice.
But there was no answer, and presently I desisted, determined to make the best of my situation.
I began to feel round the walls, and immediately came to a little obstacle, which with an immense lift of relief I recognized as an electric switch. I turned it, and the place was flooded with light. Then I discovered that I was not in a cell at all, but in a little lobby, in all four walls of which were doors.