"Jimmy, dearest," said Beth, "do you think he'll put you in prison?"
Mrs. Eames, finding that neither protests nor arguments affected the policeman, ended her harangue with a threat.
"Perhaps you're not aware," she said, "that my husband is the vicar of the parish, the Reverend Timothy Eames. I shall go straight to him now and tell him of your outrageous behaviour. He'll know how to deal with you."
She cannot have believed that; but she spoke with dignity and firmness, as if her husband was a masterful archdeacon and the policeman a naughty choirboy. Perhaps the policeman knew the Reverend Timothy Eames, perhaps he was a believer in the majesty of the law and held that the temporal power is greater than the might of the Church. He was quite unmoved by the threat, and when Mrs. Eames turned her back upon him and walked stiffly away he showed no sign of fear.
Mrs. Eames, very angry indeed, stalked back across the beach. Jimmy and the girls followed her, Mary puzzled, Beth anxious, Jimmy thinking deeply.
"You'd better go to the vicarage with your aunt," he said. "I must trot off and see James Hinton."
"But can't I help you?" said Beth. "I'm rather frightened. I do wish you hadn't done it, Jimmy."
Jimmy refrained from saying he was not the only person who had done it and that things would have been just as bad if there were no silk stockings in the cave for her and Mary.
A fresh surprise, exceedingly alarming and unpleasant, waited for him at the Anchor Inn. On the bench outside were two policemen. They were seated very much at their ease in the pleasant sunshine, and both of them were smoking. It was plain that they were not on duty at the moment. Jimmy's first thought was that Hinton had been already arrested, but the attitude of the policemen reassured him. It is not lolling with a pipe in his mouth that the British constable guards an important prisoner.
Jimmy passed into the inn and found Hinton in the room behind the bar packing a suit-case. He looked white and haggard and was badly frightened. But even with the fear of the vengeance of the law hanging over him his excellent manners did not fail.