“Then I’m afraid,” said Lord Manton, “that you’ll have to arrest the man Red without a warrant.”
“I won’t,” said Mr. Goddard.
“Send the sergeant, then.”
“I won’t.”
“Couldn’t you send the sergeant and a constable and tell them to inquire civilly of Mr. Red whether he’d seen anything of the Members of Parliament? It’s quite a natural thing to ask. They passed his gate yesterday, and he might have seen them. We could give the sergeant some sort of a blue paper in the presence of Miss Blow and pretend that he was going to make the arrest.”
“That’s no good,” said Mr. Goddard. “She said she’d go and see the arrest made herself, and she’ll do it.”
“Send the men on bicycles,” said Lord Manton, “then she won’t be able to keep up with them.”
“The objection to that is that she has a bicycle herself. I don’t know how she got it, but she rode over on it from Ballymoy this morning. Moriarty might get ahead of her, but she’d knock spots out of the sergeant in a race; he’s fat.”
“Jimmy O’Loughlin,” said Lord Manton, “come here.”
Jimmy was leaning in a careless attitude against the doorpost of his hotel. He appeared to be entirely uninterested in what was going on, and was surprised when Lord Manton called him.