"Well, jown me if I know what to do!" said the constable. "You'd better all come along and charge each other, seems to me!"
"What's all this?" said a voice at the door.
Wilkins entered breathlessly.
"They rang me up from the station, and told me there was burglars in my shop. Where be they? Mr. Noakes, what have been going on? What have come to your eye?"
"You may well ask, Wilkins. I came to have a word with you about that estimate, you know——" Wilkins tried to look as if he knew—"and these fellows, one an assistant of yours, I understand, set on me and half murdered me—took me for a burglar, ha! ha!"
"He was trying his keys on this drawer, Mr. Wilkins," said Eves.
"And why not?" demanded Wilkins, indignantly. "Why not, I ask 'ee? 'Tis my drawer, I keep my papers there, and Mr. Noakes having come to see me about an estimate, of course he saves time and gets the estimate out ready."
"And Brown will take 'em in charge for an unprovoked assault," said Noakes.
"Well, now, Mr. Noakes," said Wilkins, soothingly, "I wouldn't go so far as that. Not if it was me. It do seem 'twas a mistake. They took 'ee for a burglar—a nat'ral mistake, that's what it was, and my advice to one and all is, let it bide and say no more about it. We don't want no newspapers getting a hold of things like this. Won't do none of us no good—that's what I say."
Eves was loth to let Noakes go scot free, but after a whispered consultation with Templeton, who pointed out the improbability of any magistrate being induced to believe, in face of Wilkins's explanation, that the mayor was a burglar, he grudgingly agreed to withdraw the charge. Templeton took the precaution of removing all his own papers from the drawer, and leaving Noakes with Wilkins, returned with Eves to Mrs. Pouncey's cottage.