“Don’t speak to me like that. Keep quiet. I’ve never been spoken to like that in all my experience as a magistrate. Keep quiet.”
Michael sighed in compassion for his age and stupidity.
“Are there any previous convictions against Wearne and Palmer?” the magistrate inquired. He was told that the woman Palmer had not hitherto appeared, but that Wearne had been previously fined for disorderly conduct in Shaftesbury Avenue. “Ah!” said the magistrate. “Ah!” he repeated, looking over the rim of his glasses. “And the case against the male defendant? I will take the evidence of Constable C11254.”
“Your worship, I was on duty yesterday evening at 12.25 in Leicester Square. Hearing a noise in the direction of the Caffy Dorringe and observing a crowd collect, I moved across the road to disperse it. The defendant Wearne was using obscene language to an unknown man; and wishing to get her to move on I took hold of her arm. The male defendant, also using very obscene language, attempted to rescue her and struck me on the chest. I blew my whistle....”
The ponderous constable with his thick red neck continued a sing-song narrative.
When Michael’s turn came to refute some of the evidence against him, he merely shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s really useless, you know, for me to say anything. If ‘damn you’ is obscene, then I was obscene. If a girl is knocked down by a bully and on rising to her feet is instantly arrested by a dunderhead in a blue uniform, and if an onlooker punches this functionary, then I did assault the constable.”
“This sort of insolence won’t do,” said the magistrate trembling with a curious rarefied passion. “I have a very good mind to send you to prison without the option of a fine, but in consideration....”
Somehow or other it was made to appear a piece of extraordinary magnanimity on the part of the magistrate that Michael was only fined three guineas and costs.
“I wish to pay the fines of Miss Palmer and Miss Wearne,” he announced.