“Now, look here, my lad!” said Gollop, raising himself on one elbow, “don’t you go for to teach me anything about the law.”
“I wasn’t going——”
“Stow your gab and hark to me! Ain’t I a constable, and therefore a man of law? Well, then, I tell you there’s nothing in the law to prevent a man, two men, forty men, bringing a box, two boxes, forty boxes, into a house at any watch o’ the night, dog-watch included.”
“But——”
“Don’t interrupt. If so be I was to run athwart the course of a man conveying a box in the middle watches it ’ud be my bounden duty to hail him and ask where he was bound for—if ’twas in the street, mind you, and I was on my rounds. But when a man has got across his own threshold—set his foot on his own deck in a manner of speaking—then I question him at my peril.”
“Couldn’t you search the house?”
“Not being an inward-bound ship, nor me a customs officer, I couldn’t, not without a warrant.”
“Why not get a warrant?” asked Martin.
“Why not? Because there’s no reason to think there’s anything contraband in them boxes; and, what’s more, because I’m dead sleepy. So just you set a course for your baker’s shop, my lad; what you can’t help, make the best of.”
Martin was by no means satisfied that the constable’s exposition of the law was sound, but it was clearly impossible to do anything more with him until he had finished his sleep.