"Those are my orders, sir. Very sorry. If the car is ready"—turning to Miss Vi Vassity—"I'll drive her, I'll take these ladies now."
"All alone, with you? Faith, and that you won't," declared the Honourable Jim Burke, stepping forward from where he had been standing, hastily finishing the drink that had been poured out for him by the handsome white hands of Marmora, the Breathing Statue. "I'll go up with you, and see where you're taking the ladies——"
"And I'll accompany you, if you'll permit me," from Mr. Hiram P. Jessop.
"Room in the car for six. Pity I can't leave Maudie, or I'd come. But young Olive must get her night's rest to-night, so I'm doing nurse and attending to the midget ventriloquist myself," declared the cheerful voice of England's Premier Comedienne.
"See you to-morrow in court, girls. Don't look like that, Nellie! You've got a face on you like a blessed bridegroom; there's nothing to get scared about. Lor'! No need to fret like that if you'd just been given ten years!... Got plenty o' rugs, Miss Smith? I'd lend one of you my best air-cushion to sleep on, full of the sighs of me first love. But if I did they'd only pinch it at the station. I know their tricks at that hole. So long, Ah-Sayn Lupang!" Again to the detective: "You ought to be at the top of your profession, you ought; got such an eye for character. Cheery-Ho!"
And we were off; the detective, the two arrested criminals (ourselves), the cousin of one of the "criminals" and the Honourable Jim Burke. In what character this young man was supposed to be travelling with us I'm sure I don't know.
I only know that but for him that motor drive through Sussex up to the London police court would have been a nightmare. It was the Honourable Jim who managed to turn it into something of a joke.
For all the way along the gleaming white roads, with our headlights casting brilliant moving moons upon the hedges, the persuasive, mocking Irish voice of the Honourable Jim laughed and talked to the detective who was driving us to our fate. And the conversation of the Honourable Jim ran incessantly upon just one theme. The mistakes that have been made by the police in tracking down those suspected of some breach of the law!
As thus. "Were you in that celebrated case, officer, of the Downshire diamonds? Another jewel robbery, Miss Smith! Curious how history repeats itself. They'd got every bit of circumstantial evidence to show that the tiara had been stolen and broken up by a young maid-servant in the house. The 'tecs were hanging themselves all over with whatever's their equivalent for the D.S.O., for having got her, when the butler owned up and showed where he'd put the thing, untouched and wrapped up in a workman's red handkerchief, in an old dhry well in the grounds. Mustn't it make a man feel he ought to sing very small when he's been caught out in a little thing like that?"
"That's so," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, with a tone in his voice of positive gratitude. Gratitude, to the man whom he'd been blackening and showing up, this very afternoon! Together they seemed to be making common cause against the detective, who was rushing Miss Million up to town and to durance vile!