Macmaster said:
"The policeman you knocked down?" His eyes expressed unreasoning surprise. He added: "He knew Miss . . . eh . . . Wannop then!"
"You would not expect much intelligence from the police of Sussex," Tietjens said. "But you would be wrong. P.C. Finn is clever enough to recognise the young lady who for several years past has managed the constabulary's wives' and children's annual tea and sports. He says Miss Wannop holds the quarter-mile, half-mile, high jump, long jump and putting the weight records for East Sussex. That explains how she went over that dyke in such tidy style. . . . And precious glad the good, simple man was when I told him he was to leave the girl alone. He didn't know, he said, how he'd ever a had the face to serve the warrant on Miss Wannop. The other girl—the one that squeaked—is a stranger, a Londoner probably."
Macmaster said:
"You told the policeman . . ."
"I gave him," Tietjens said, "the Rt. Hon. Stephen Fenwick Waterhouse's compliments, and he'd be much obliged if the P.C. would hand in a 'No Can Do' report in the matter of those ladies every morning to his inspector. I gave him also a brand new fi' pun note—from the Cabinet Minister—and a couple of quid and the price of a new pair of trousers from myself. So he's the happiest constable in Sussex. A very decent fellow; he told me how to know a dog otter's spoor from a gravid bitch's. . . . But that wouldn't interest you."
He began again:
"Don't look so inexpressibly foolish. I told you I'd been dining with that swine. . . . No, I oughtn't to call him a swine after eating his dinner. Besides, he's a very decent fellow. . . ."
"You didn't tell me you'd been dining with Mr. Waterhouse," Macmaster said. "I hope you remembered that, as he's amongst other things the President of the Funded Debt Commission he's the power of life and death over the department and us."
"You didn't think," Tietjens answered, "that you are the only one to dine with the great ones of the earth! I wanted to talk to that fellow . . . about those figures their cursed crowd made me fake. I meant to give him a bit of my mind."