He looked at Sergeant Farrelly as he spoke. The sergeant scratched his head.
“Tell me this now,” he said to Dr. O’Grady; “is this any kind of League work?”
“It is not,” said the doctor. “I don’t suppose the Emperor ever heard of the League till I mentioned to him the other day that Patsy was a member of it.”
“If it’s not the League,” said the sergeant, “and if the doctor will answer for it that the man’s a respectable man——”
“He is,” said the doctor. “Why, my goodness, sergeant, he owns a motor-car. You’ve seen it yourself, a remarkably fine motor-car; one that couldn’t have cost less than eight hundred pounds.”
“I don’t know,” said the sergeant, “that there’s any call for me to interfere with the doctor in the matter. It would be a queer thing now, and a thing that wouldn’t suit me at all, if I was to be preventing the doctor from speaking to a friend of his anyway that pleases him.”
“He attacked you,” said Mr. Sanders; “he knocked you down. He has imprisoned you, and yet you say——”
“If he’s brought up before the Petty Sessions,” said the sergeant, “I’ll tell what he’s done; but till he is I don’t see what right I have to put the handcuffs on the doctor on account of what might be no more than some kind of a joke that’s passing between him and another gentleman....”