The kick on the knee-cap which the constable received made him assume the attitude of a meditative stork for some seconds. Then he closed with his prey.
* * * * * * *
"If you ax me what's best to be done, sorr," said Moriarty later in the night, as he stood in the sitting-room after being complimented on his work, "I'd have Mr. Dashwood go over to Hollborough in the morning, where this chap will be had before the magistrates, and pay the fine. It'll be a matther of two pounds, sure, Boiler tould me, and fetch Piper back here, and tell him to sit aisy, and the horse will be back afther the race. You see, sorr, we've got the weather gauge on the chap now. If the men that employed him knew he'd been dhrunk and gaoled, he'd lose his job. We'll keep it dark for him if he'll keep it dark about the horse.
"It's not a plisint job for Mr. Dashwood to go payin' the fines for dhrunken men, but, sure, it's all in the game. And if you plaze, sorr, I'm thinkin' it wouldn't be a bad thing if you was to sit down now and write a letther to Mr. Lewis, tellin' him the bailiff was here in possession, and that the money would be paid in a day or two. That would keep him aisy, and it would make it more natural like if you was to let a little abuse into it and say you'd been very hardly thrated.
"No, sorr, I won't go to bed to-night. I'll just sit up wid the horse. Everything's ready now for getting him in the thrain to-morrow mornin'. Thank you, sorr, just half a glass. And here's good luck to Garryowen!"
CHAPTER XXX
Mr. Giveen, on his enlargement, had returned hot-foot to London. The chicken-higgler's cart that had given him a lift on the road had deposited him at Blankmoor Station, where he had managed to get the last train up to town.
Too confused and shaken up with his adventures to do anything that night he had repaired to Swan's Temperance Hotel in the Strand, where his luggage was, told his tale to the landlady, received her commiserations, and gone to bed.