which is less unpleasant, I take the less unpleasant of the two.
It is less unpleasant to pay Sergeant Smith a weekly stipend than it is
to be annoyed, and I should most certainly be annoyed if I did not pay
him."

He rose up slowly from the chair and stretched himself.

"Sergeant Smith," he said again, "is a pretty tough proposition. I know,
and I have known him for years. In my business, Jasper, I have had to
know some queer people, and I've had to do some queer things. I am not
so sure that they would look well in print, though I am not sensitive as
to what newspapers say about me or I should have been in my grave years
ago; but Sergeant Smith and his knowledge touches me at a raw place. You
are always messing about with narcotics and muck of all kinds, and you
will understand when I tell you that the money I give Sergeant Smith
every week serves a double purpose. It is an opiate and a prophy--"

"Prophylactic," suggested the other.

"That's the word," said John Minute. "I was never a whale at the long
uns; when I was twelve I couldn't write my own name, and when I was
nineteen I used to spell it with two n's."

He chuckled again.

"Opiate and prophylactic," he repeated, nodding his head. "That's
Sergeant Smith. He is a dangerous devil because he is a rascal."

"Constable Wiseman--" began Jasper.

"Constable Wiseman," snapped John Minute, rubbing his hand through his
rumpled gray hair, "is a dangerous devil because he's a fool. What has
Constable Wiseman been here about?"

"He didn't come here," smiled Jasper. "I met him on the road and had a
little talk with him."

"You might have been better employed," said John Minute gruffly. "That
silly ass has summoned me three times. One of these days I'll get him
thrown out of the force."

"He's not a bad sort of fellow," soothed Jasper Cole. "He's rather
stupid, but otherwise he is a decent, well-conducted man with a sense of
the law."

"Did he say anything worth repeating?" asked John Minute.

"He was saying that Sergeant Smith is a disciplinarian."

"I know of nobody more of a disciplinarian than Sergeant Smith," said
the other sarcastically, "particularly when he is getting over a jag.
The keenest sense of duty is that possessed by a man who has broken the
law and has not been found out. I think I will go to bed," he added,
looking at the clock on the mantelpiece. "I am going up to town
to-morrow. I want to see May."

"Is anything worrying you?" asked