"We must go an" look for it. There isn"t another."
"Not me," said Pyecroft from his seat. "Out pinnace, Hinch, an" creep for it. It won"t be more than five miles back."
The two men, with bowed heads, moved up the road.
"Look like etymologists, don"t they? Does she decant her innards often, so to speak?" Pyecroft asked.
I told him the true tale of a race-full of ball bearings strewn four miles along a Hampshire road, and by me recovered in detail. He was profoundly touched.
"Poor Hinch! Poor--poor Hinch!" he said. "And that"s only one of her little games, is it? He"ll be homesick for the Navy by night."
When the search-party doubled back with the missing screw, it was Hinchcliffe who replaced it in less than five minutes, while my engineer looked on admiringly.
"Your boiler"s only seated on four little paperclips," he said, crawling from beneath her. "She"s a wicker-willow lunch-basket below. She"s a runnin" miracle. Have you had this combustible spirit-lamp long?"
I told him.
"And yet you were afraid to come into the _Nightmare"s_ engine-room when we were runnin" trials!"
"It"s all a matter of taste," Pyecroft volunteered. "But I will say for you, Hinch, you"ve certainly got the hang of her steamin" gadgets in quick time."
He was driving her very sweetly, but with a worried look in his eye and a tremor in his arm.
"She don"t seem so answer her helm somehow," he said.
"There"s a lot of play to the steering-gear," said my engineer. "We generally tighten it up every few miles."
""Like me to stop now? We"ve run as much as one mile and a half without incident," he replied tartly.
"Then you"re lucky," said my engineer, bristling in turn.
"They"ll wreck the whole turret out o" nasty professional spite in a minute," said Pyecroft. "That"s the worst o" machinery. Man dead ahead, Hinch--semaphorin" like the flagship in a fit!"
"Amen!" said Hinchcliffe. "Shall I stop, or shall I cut him down?"
He stopped, for full in the centre of the Linghurst Road stood a person in pepper-and-salt raiment (ready-made), with a brown telegraph envelope in his hands.
"Twenty-three and a half miles an hour," he began, weighing a small beam- engine of a Waterbury in one red paw. "From the top of the hill over our measured quarter-mile--twenty-three and a half."
"You manurial gardener----" Hinchcliffe began. I prodded him warningly from behind, and laid the other hand on Pyecroft"s stiffening knee.
"Also--on information received--drunk and disorderly in charge of a motor-car--to the common danger--two men like sailors in appearance,"
the man went on.
"Like sailors! ... That"s Agg"s little _roose_. No wonder he smiled at us," said Pyecroft.
"I"ve been waiting for you some time," the man concluded, folding up the telegram.
"Who"s the owner?"
I indicated myself.
"Then I want you as well as the two seafaring men. Drunk and disorderly can be treated summary. You come on."
My relations with the Suss.e.x constabulary have, so far, been of the best, but I could not love this person.
"Of course you have your authority to show?" I hinted.
"I"ll show it you at Linghurst," he retorted hotly----"all the authority you want."
"I only want the badge, or warrant, or whatever it is a plain-clothes man has to show."
He made as though to produce it, but checked himself, repeating less politely the invitation to Linghurst. The action and the tone confirmed my many-times tested theory that the bulk of English sh.o.r.egoing inst.i.tutions are based on conformable strata of absolutely impervious inaccuracy. I reflected and became aware of a drumming on the back of the front seat that Pyecroft, bowed forward and relaxed, was tapping with his knuckles.
The hardly-checked fury on Hinchcliffe"s brow had given place to a greasy imbecility, and he nodded over the steering-bar. In longs and shorts, as laid down by the pious and immortal Mr. Morse, Pyecroft tapped out, "Sham drunk. Get him in the car."
"I can"t stay here all day," said the constable.
Pyecroft raised his head. Then was seen with what majesty the British sailor-man envisages a new situation.
"Met gennelman heavy sheeway," said he. "Do tell me British gelman can"t give "ole Brish Navy lif" own blighted ste" cart. Have another drink!"
"I didn"t know they were as drunk as all that when they stopped me," I explained.
"You can say all that at Linghurst," was the answer. "Come on."
"Quite right," I said. "But the question is, if you take these two out on the road, they"ll fall down or start killing you."
"Then I"d call on you to a.s.sist me in the execution o" my duty."
"But I"d see you further first. You"d better come with us in the car. I"ll turn this pa.s.senger out." (This was my engineer, sitting quite silent.) "You don"t want him, and, anyhow, he"d only be a witness for the defence."
"That"s true," said the constable. "But it wouldn"t make any odds--at Linghurst."
My engineer skipped into the bracken like a rabbit. I bade him cut across Sir Michael Gregory"s park, and if he caught my friend, to tell him I should probably be rather late for lunch.
"I ain"t going to be driven by _him_." Our destined prey pointed at Hinchcliffe with apprehension.
"Of course not. You sake my seat and keep the big sailor in order. He"s too drunk to do much. I"ll change places with the other one. Only be quick; I want to pay my fine and get it over."
"That"s the way to look at it," he said, dropping into the left rear seat.
"We"re making quite a lot out o" you motor gentry." He folded his arms judicially as the car gathered way under Hinchcliffe"s stealthy hand.
"But _you_ aren"t driving?" he cried, half rising.
"You"ve noticed it?" said Pyecroft, and embraced him with one anaconda- like left arm.
"Don"t kill him," said Hinchcliffe briefly. "I want to show him what twenty-three and a quarter is." We were going a fair twelve, which was about the car"s limit.