But Mr. Hobbs, who thought there was nobody in the world like Miriam, and would have turned an emperor out of the garden if she had asked him, laid a large hand on his shoulder, and said: "I don't know who you are, but you get out of my garden."
Sir Herbert laid his hand on the other shoulder, and between them they shifted Lord Potter towards the drive, faster than was altogether convenient to him.
He was so taken aback by this treatment that at first he could only expostulate violently. But as it continued he began to resist, and then Sir Herbert, who was an athletic young man, took him by the collar with one hand and the seat of his trousers with the other, and ran him forcibly across the lawn.
The sight was so comic that I burst out laughing. Mollie did the same, jumping and clapping her hands with delight, and Miriam was not long in following suit. I was delighted to think that Lord Potter could not possibly help hearing us. The crowning point of the scene was when Tom, who had a half-holiday that afternoon, ran out of the house with a hand camera, and succeeded in taking two snapshots of the progression before it ended at the gate.
Sir Herbert came back grinning, and said: "I have owed his lordship one for a long time. When I was a boy at school, he got me a swishing for pea-shooting at him."
As for Lord Potter, he went off down the Culbut Road, without once turning back; and if ever a man looked like making mischief, he did.
The affair with the police was soon over. I put on a dignified air, and did all that they asked me to do without making any difficulty about it. They were actually apologetic before they left, and I was not surprised when they told me that they had already found and arrested the man who had committed the burglary, and that it was only because Lord Potter had insisted that they had worried me over the matter at all. They had been quite sure all along that I could have had nothing to do with it.
"Lord Potter knew that as well as you did," I said. "I rather wonder—if I may be permitted to say so—that you should have lent yourselves to pay off his scores."
They looked a little foolish at that, and one of them said: "We shall not act on his instructions again. Lord Potter is, no doubt, a very important personage, but he must not think that he can make use of our service for his private ends."
"I have just seen him doing the frog's march out of the garden," I said, "and I expect when you get back you will find him there, wanting to have some arrests made for assault. He looked like that, as far as I could judge from his back. You might tell him that photographs were taken of him, in a position not calculated to add lustre to his name, if they came to be published. It might be worth his while not to take any further steps."