hing his
helmet.

"Can your Worship step across the way?" he asked. "They've brought
Harborough down, and the Super wants a word with you."

CHAPTER VIII

RETAINED FOR THE DEFENCE

Instead of replying to the policeman by word or movement, Mallalieu
glanced at Cotherstone. There was a curious suggestion in that glance
which Cotherstone did not like. He was already angry; Mallalieu's
inquiring look made him still angrier.

"Like to come?" asked Mallalieu, laconically.

"No!" answered Cotherstone, turning towards the office. "It's naught to
me."

He disappeared within doors, and Mallalieu walked out of the yard into
the High Street--to run against Bent and Brereton, who were hurrying in
the direction of the police-station, in company with another constable.

"Ah!" said Mallalieu as they met. "So you've heard, too, I suppose?
Heard that Harborough's been taken, I mean. Now, how was he taken?" he
went on, turning to the policeman who had summoned him. "And when, and
where?--let's be knowing about it."

"He wasn't taken, your Worship," replied the man. "Leastways, not in
what you'd call the proper way. He came back to his house half an hour
or so ago--when it was just getting nicely light--and two of our men
that were there told him what was going on, and he appeared to come
straight down with them. He says he knows naught, your Worship."

"That's what you'd expect," remarked Mallalieu, drily. "He'd be a fool
if he said aught else."

He put his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and, followed by the
others, strolled into the police-station as if he were dropping in on
business of trifling importance. And there was nothing to be seen there
which betokened that a drama of life and death was being constructed in
that formal-looking place of neutral-coloured walls, precise furniture,
and atmosphere of repression. Three or four men stood near the
superintendent's desk; a policeman was writing slowly and laboriously on
a big sheet of blue paper at a side-table, a woman was coaxing a
sluggish fire to burn.

"The whole thing's ridiculous!" said a man's scornful voice. "It
shouldn't take five seconds to see that."

Brereton instinctively picked out the speaker. That was Harborough, of
course--the tall man who stood facing the others and looking at them as
if he wondered how they could be as foolish as he evidently considered
them to be. He looked at this man with great curiosity. There was
certainly som