"Come and shew yer ticket o' leave," urged Culling with derisory finger outstretched to indicate the forces of law and order.
"No bloody peelers for this child," Michael answered in a voice discreetly lowered to keep the offending epithet from his sister's ears.
I noticed an exchange of glances between Culling and himself, but was too busy to think much of it at the time. Eleven minutes later, however, the majesty of Scotland Yard had been incarcerated in its own stronghold. Culling sat outside their door improvising an oratorio on an accordion. "The Philistines are upon thee," I heard him thunder as I passed that way. Michael was lying prone on the deck of the house-boat, dangling at safe distance the key of the cabin at the end of a Japanese umbrella.
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" he asked, as an official hand shot impotently out of the cabin window. The question may have been imperfectly understood.
"Sanguineos quis custodes custodiet ipsos?" he ventured.
As there was still no answer, common humanity ordained that I should possess myself of the key and hold a gaol delivery. The detectives were near weeping with humiliation, but I comforted them in some measure, won a friendship that was to serve me in good stead, and was at length free to resume my duties as host.
From time to time perfunctory racing took place, without arousing either interest or resentment. We all had our own ways of passing the time between meal and meal; one would study the teeth and smile of a musical-comedy star, another would watch Culling at the Three Card Trick, a third would count the Jews on a neighbouring house-boat.... There was no sign of Elsie or the Seraph, but that was only to be expected. He was to provide her with luncheon and publicity at Phyllis Court, and give the "Desdemona" a wide berth. Those, at least, were his sailing orders if he came; but Elsie had been over-tired and over-excited for some weeks past, and I should not have been surprised to hear she had stayed in town at the last moment.
It is one thing to set a course, and another to steer it—of Henley this is probably truer than of any other stretch of water in the world. When half the punts are returning from island to post after luncheon, and the other half paddle down stream to look at the house-boats, the narrow water midway between start and finish becomes hopelessly, chaotically congested. One or two skiffs and dinghies—which should never be allowed at any regatta—make confusion worse confounded till a timely collision breaks their sculls, or the nose of a racing punt turns them turtle; and with the closing of the booms, three boats begin to sprout where only one was before.
Through a forest of dripping paddles, I watched punt, dinghy and canoe fighting, pressing, yielding; up-stream, down-stream, broad side on, they slid and trembled like a tesselated pavement in an earthquake. The fatalists shipped their poles and paddles, and abandoned themselves to the line of least resistance. Faces grew flushed, but tempers remained creditably even....