“I protest——” he said.
“Silence!” shouted the parson. “But for my timely intervention Heaven knows what would have happened. . . . Silence! You and men like you are a pest to society, impervious to decency and the call of religion. . . . Fortunately there is law in the country and you shall know it.”
With that he pulled down the chain above the windows. In a moment or two the scowling guard appeared. The parson described the horrible scene he had witnessed from the train, that was even now moving Londonward, his interference, and declared his intention of seeing that the perpetrator of so vile a deed should be hounded down. He requested the guard to telephone at the next station to the Thrigsby police. A small crowd had collected. They hummed and buzzed with excitement, and fifteen men clambered into the compartment to assist the parson in his heroic defence of the young woman against the now fully awake and furious pedagogue. He tried to speak, but was shouted down: to move toward the parson, but was thrust back into his corner. Every one else had a perfectly clear-cut idea of what had happened. He himself was so busy emerging from his state of hallucination and trying to trace back step by step everything that had happened to produce the extraordinary eruption into what had been at Bigley an empty, ordinary, rather stuffy compartment in a railway train, that he could not even begin to contemplate the consequences or to think, rather, what they might all be moving toward. It was only as the train ran into Thrigsby, and he saw the name, that he associated it with that other word which had been on the parson’s lips:
“Police!”
There was a cold sinking in the pit of his stomach. Out of his hallucination came the remembrance that he had, with the most kindly and generous and spontaneously humane motives, used the girl with violence.—Police! He was given no time for thought. There was a policeman on the platform. A crowd gathered. It absorbed Beenham, thrust him toward the policeman, who seized him by the arm and, followed by the parson and the girl, they swept swiftly along the platform, down the familiar incline, the crowd swelling as they went, along an unknown street, squalid and vibrant with the din of iron-shod wheels over stone setts, to the police station. There a shabby swing door cut off the crowd, and Beenham, parson, girl and policeman stood in the charge room waiting for the officer at the desk to look up from his ledger.
The charge was made and entered. The girl’s name was Matilda Burn, a domestic servant. She was prompted by the parson, who swept aside her reluctance to speak. Old Mole was asked to give his name, address and occupation. He burst into a passionate flow of words, but was interrupted and coldly reminded that he was only desired to give bare information on three points, and that anything he might say would be used against him in evidence. He explained his identity, and the officer at the ledger looked startled, but entered the particulars in slow writing with a scratchy pen. The parson and the girl disappeared. The officer at the ledger cleared his throat, turned to the accused, opened his mouth, but did not speak. He scratched his ear with his pen, stooped and blew a fly off the page in front of him, made a visible effort to suppress his humanity and conduct the affair in accordance with official routine, and finally blurted out:
“Do you want bail?”
Old Mole gave the name and address of his Head Master.
“You can write if you like.”
The letter was written, read by the officer, and despatched. There was a whispered consultation behind the ledger, during which the unhappy schoolmaster read through again and again a list of articles and dogs missing, and then he was led to the inspector’s room and given a newspaper to read.