“Listen!” said Sam. “If you aren’t out of this house in two seconds, I’ll take those trousers back.”
Every Achilles has his heel. Of all the possible threats that Sam could have used, this was probably the only one to which Lord Tilbury, in his dangerously elevated and hostile frame of mind, would have paid heed. For one moment he stood swelling like a toy balloon, then he slid out and the door banged behind him.
A dark shape loomed up before Lord Tilbury as he stood upon the gravel outside the portal of Mon Repos. Beside this shape there frolicked another and a darker one.
“’Evening, sir.”
Lord Tilbury perceived through the gloom that he was being addressed by a member of the force. He made no reply. He was not in the mood for conversation with policemen.
“Bringing your dog back,” said the officer genially. “Found ’er roaming about at the top of the street.”
“It is not my dog,” said Lord Tilbury between set teeth, repelling Amy as she endeavoured in her affable way to climb on to his neck.
“Not a member of the ’ousehold, sir? Just a neighbour making a friendly call? I see. Now I wonder,” said the policeman, “if any of my mates ’ave approached you on the matter of this concert in aid of a charitubulorganisation which is not only most deserving in itself but is connected with a body of men to ’oom you as a nouse’older will——”
“G-r-r-h!” said Lord Tilbury.
He bounded out of the gate. Dimly, as he waddled down Burberry Road, the grey flannel trousers brushing the pavement with a musical swishing sound, there came to him, faint but pursuing, the voice of the indefatigable policeman: