“I did,” said Constable Cole.
“If you knew all that,” said Mr. Goddard, “what on earth was the good of your suggesting that you and the sergeant should go on bicycles? Don’t you know she’d be after you?”
“Stratagems!” said Sergeant Farrelly scornfully. “Do you call them stratagems?”
“How would it be,” said Constable Cole, “if you was to go in to her and tell her that it was Constable Moriarty that was to go with the sergeant to Rosivera?”
“I dislike telling gratuitous and entirely useless lies,” said Mr. Goddard. “She simply wouldn’t believe me.”
“She’d believe Moriarty,” said Cole. “She has a great wish for Moriarty since the day he took her for a drive on Jimmy O’Loughlin’s car. If Moriarty was to go in as soon as ever you were done telling her, and was to say he’d be glad if she’d go along with him——”
“I couldn’t say the like to a young lady,” said Moriarty. “I’d be ashamed.”
“Be quiet, Moriarty,” said Mr. Goddard. “And let’s hear the rest of the stratagem.”
“And if he was to say at the same time——” said Cole.
“If who was to say?” asked Lord Manton. “I’m getting mixed.”