They followed up hill to the village street. Here in the moonlight, before the highly respectable cottage bearing the tin sign inscribed "County Police," the trio stopped, Moriarty clinging to his charge while Andy rang the bell.
Mr. Boiler, the Crowsnest constable, had not yet started on his night rounds. He was drinking a cup of coffee in the bedroom upstairs when the summons came. Opening the window, he put his head out.
"Dhrunken man," said Moriarty from the road. "I've got him here. He called at The Martens, dead dhrunk, and 'saulted me. Look at me face. Come down wid you and gaol him, or he'll tear the village to pieces, bad luck to him!"
"One minute," said Mr. Boiler, "and I'll attend to his business for him."
Next moment he was in the street, where Moriarty, with a deft touch on the adductor tendons, had deposited Mr. Piper on his back.
"Now then, now then! What's all this?" asked the constable, approaching the disciple of La Savate.
The kick on the knee-cap which the constable received made him assume the attitude of a meditative stork for some seconds. Then he closed with his prey.
"If you ax me what's best to be done, sorr," said Moriarty later in the night, as he stood in the sitting-room after being complimented on his work, "I'd have Mr. Dashwood go over to Hollborough in the morning, where this chap will be had before the magistrates, and pay the fine. It'll be a matther of two pounds, sure, Boiler tould me, and fetch Piper back here, and tell him to sit aisy, and the horse will be back afther the race. You see, sorr, we've got the weather gauge on the chap now. If the men that employed him knew he'd been dhrunk and gaoled, he'd lose his job. We'll keep it dark for him if he'll keep it dark about the horse.
"It's not a plisint job for Mr. Dashwood to go payin' the fines for dhrunken men, but, sure, it's all in the game. And if you plaze, sorr, I'm thinkin' it wouldn't be a bad thing if you was to sit down now and write a letther to Mr. Lewis, tellin' him the bailiff was here in possession, and that the money would be paid in a day or two. That would keep him aisy, and it would make it more natural like if you was to let a little abuse into it and say you'd been very hardly thrated.