nd he had the cheek to send you here and to say that I'm his first
cousin?'

'Yes, sorr.'

'Well,' said Paul, with a brief laugh, 'I don't know that I've anything
better to do. Wait downstairs whilst I dress, and have a cab ready if
you can find one. Give the officer a drink, waiter.'

In a weary fashion he was tickled by this incident; and when he had
made a hasty toilette he descended, and was driven to Bow Street, where,
after a spell of waiting, he was introduced to his 'first cousin' in a
corridor.

'What's all this, Wilder?'he asked.

'It's this, me man,' said Wilder. 'I took a fancy to declaim a favourite
little bit of Euripides in Endell Street, and a uniformed ass came along
and ran me in. And being penniless as I am----'

'Penniless!' said Paul 'You had five shillings to my certain knowledge.'

'Oh, I had,' said Wilder, 'but I met some poor devil that was harder
up than I am--at least, he said so--and I bestowed it on him with my
blessing.'

'We know your name, Mr. Armstrong,' said the officer who had the man of
genius in his charge, 'and if you'll be surety that the gentleman will be
here at ten o'clock this morning, he can go.'

'You want my word for that only?'

'That will be enough, sir.'

'Very well; he shall be here.'

'He shall be here,' said Wilder, 'and the idiot who brought him here
shall have a lesson.'

'You take my tip, sir,' said the officer. 'You was pretty fairly
full, and you was very noisy, and you cracked on pretty awful. Talk
of eloquence,' said the officer, interrupting himself to turn to Paul.
'I've heard a thing or two in my time--it comes here, you know, sir, in
the way of business--but I've never met anybody as could hold a candle
to this gentleman.'

Wilder smiled, and pulled up a dirty apology for a collar with an air of
self-applause.

'But what I want to advise is this, sir,' said the officer genially:
'Say nothing, and it's five bob and costs, and there's an end of it;
make a song about it, and it's forty shillings or a month, and it gets
into all the papers. For this is a shop, sir, where the more you say
the more you pay. And that's the truth about justice in a general way
throughout the land, and so you'll find, sir, if you'll take the trouble
to look into it. The more you say the more you pay. That's the fruit
of thirty years' experience, sir, and you'll find it pretty sound Say
nothing, and a little thing blows over. Make a talk about it, and it
lasts, as