The young man wrinkled his forehead, laughed and, after a moment's thought, slipped his arms into the sleeves of his overcoat.
"Didn't Doctor Johnson say that every man had the right to express his opinion and that everyone else had the right to knock him down for it?" he drawled. Then abruptly, "Are you Colonel Grayle, by any chance?"
"I am," Grayle answered with a look of surprise.
"I thought I recognised your voice. I collect voices and I heard you last week when the National Registration Bill was in Committee. Do you think it's possible to arrive at a taxi? I live quite near here and I can take the patient home for treatment."
"But why the deuce should you bother about him?" Grayle asked.
The boy smiled to himself and shrugged his shoulders.
"If we cast him off to a hospital, there'll be all sorts of silly questions," he explained. "And I'm a bit of an Ishmaelite myself. What's the extent of the damage?"
The injured man opened his eyes again and reduced his huddled limbs to some sort of order, not without occasional twinges of pain. He seemed nothing but skin and loose bones and might well have fainted from exhaustion rather than injury.
"My left leg's done for," he announced.
The stranger nodded sympathetically.