The man began to bluster.
"What are you talking about? Who do you think you are? You rob a poor bloke like me of a whole day's work, and then won't give me so much as a ha'penny piece to make up for it! A nice sort you are to talk of robbery!"
The constable raised his hand in the orthodox official manner, which is intended to soothe.
"Now, then! now, then!" He addressed me. "Is what these persons say true--have you been hoaxing them?"
"Most distinctly not; as, if you will be so good as to rid my house of their presence, I shall have much pleasure in promptly proving to you."
The sergeant--he was a sergeant--made short work of the clearance, even managing, by dint of an assurance that he would listen to all she had to say afterwards, to dislodge "Sarah Eliza Warren." Then he turned to me.
"Now, perhaps, you will tell me what this means. If you're the householder, as you say, you yourself ought to turn anyone out of your own house you want to turn out, as a policeman has no right to come into a private house unless an actual charge is to be preferred. I don't know what you've been doing, but you seem to be responsible for something very like a riot."
I felt that it was hard, after what I had undergone, to be addressed in such a strain by a man in his position.
"When you have heard the explanation which I am about to give you, you will yourself perceive how far you are justified in adopting towards me such a tone." I paused. I seated myself--the support of a chair having become an absolute necessity. "The day before yesterday, as I was turning from Knightsbridge into Sloane Street, I saw a purse lying on the pavement. I picked it up. I inquired of several people standing about, or who were passing by, if they had dropped it. No one had. I brought it home, and yesterday I sent an advertisement to the papers. Here it is, in one of them."
I pointed it out to him in a newspaper of the day.