"I am sorry to see you here, Mortimer," he said, "because a man of your position, by acting as you have done, not only sets a bad example, but runs the risk of imperilling the success of his future career. You have rendered yourself liable to a term of imprisonment, and you know well that if I were to inflict such a punishment on you the fact would act as a serious obstacle to you hereafter, as you would not be allowed to fill any responsible medical post were it known that you had been in prison. It appears from the evidence that you were the worse for drink at the time you resisted the police. I need hardly remind you of the view the public take of a medical man who gives way to such habits. It means, in the long run, utter ruin to him. As I said before, I should be acting within my rights by sending you to prison, but as I understand that after you had been taken into custody you gave the police no further trouble, I shall only inflict a fine upon you. You will pay forty shillings--and take care I don't see you here again."
Jim bowed. "I am greatly obliged to your worship," he said. Then, at a sign from a policeman stationed near by, he quitted the dock, and, having paid his fine, joined Koko in the corridor.
They lose no time in London police-courts. Hardly had Jim left the dock than the name of "Hodgkins" was uttered by the magistrate's clerk, repeated by the sergeant, bawled down the corridor by the constable at the door, and echoed by other policemen lounging in the outer precincts of the court.
"Hodgkins!"
"Hodgkins!"
"HODGKINS!"
As Jim joined Koko, a blear-eyed, decrepit old dame brushed past him at a rapid hobble. She had to answer a summons for assaulting a neighbour by striking her over the head with a fire-shovel. This, in fact, was "Hodgkins."
As Jim glanced at the old creature he realised that this quarrelsome, ill-favoured hag and he were companions in distress--united by a law-breaking bond! He, inflamed by whisky, had fought six policemen; she, supping cheap gin, had burst into a senile frenzy and set upon some other hag with her claw-like nails and the weapon that came first to hand. The same law applied to both of them--she, a rag-picker, and he, the heir to a bountiful fortune and many smiling acres in Eastfolkshire.
"Pah!" he exclaimed, as he hastened to reach cleaner air, "let's get out of this! Thank goodness that's over!"
"No harm done," said Koko, cheerily. "I know the two men in the reporters' box, and they both promised not to write a word about you."