“He more or less talked business the whole time, though at first I didn’t know quite what he was at. He gassed a lot about my having knocked down those two policemen. You remember that I knocked down two, don’t you? I would have got a third only that they collared me from behind. Well, Hazlewood, or Cassidy, or whatever his name was, had seen the scrap, and seemed to think no end of a lot of me for the fight I put up.”
“The magistrate took a serious view of it, too,” I said.
“There wasn’t much in it,” said Sam modestly. “As I told Hazlewood, any fool can knock down a policeman. They’re so darned fat. He asked me if I liked fighting policemen. I said I did.”
“Of course.”
Sam caught some note of sarcasm in my voice. He felt it necessary to modify his statement.
“Well, not policemen in particular. I haven’t a special down on policemen. I like a scrap with anyone. Then he said—Hazlewood, that is—that he admired the way I drove that car down Grafton Street. He said he liked a man who wasn’t afraid to take risks; which was rot. There wasn’t any real risk.”
“The police swore that you went at thirty miles an hour,” I said. “And that street is simply crowded in the middle of the day.”
“I don’t believe I was doing anything like thirty miles an hour,” said Sam. “I should say twenty-seven at the outside. And there was no risk because everybody cleared out of my way. I had the street practically to myself. It was rather fun seeing all the other cars and carts and things piled up upon the footpaths at either side and the people bolting into the shops like rabbits. But there wasn’t any risk. However, old Hazlewood evidently thought there was, and seemed frightfully pleased about it. He said he had a car of his own, a sixty h.p. Daimler, and that he’d like to see me drive it. I said I’d take him for a spin any time he liked. I gave him a hint that we might start immediately after lunch and run up to Belfast in time for dinner. With a car like that I could have done it easy. However, he wasn’t on.”
“Do you think he really had the car?”
“Oh, he had her all right. I drove her afterwards. Great Scott, such a drive! The next thing he said was that he believed I was a pretty good man in a boat. I said I knew something about boats, though not much.”