Sergeant." " Good night, sir." Well, you know how it is when someone butts in on you just as you are shaping for the beauty sleep. It breaks the spell, if you know what I mean. I curled up again, but I soon saw that all efforts in the direction of the restful night in my present environment would be fruitless. I counted about five more medium-sized flocks, but it was no good. Steps, I realized, would have to be taken through other channels. I hadn't done a great deal of exploring in these grounds of mine, but it so happened that one morning a sharp shower had driven me to the shelter of a species of shed or outhouse down in the south-west corner of the estate where the gardener-by-the-day stacked his tools and flower-pots and what not. And, unless memory deceived me, there had been in that outhouse or shed a pile of sacking on the floor.
Well, you may say that sacking, considered in the light of a bed, isn't everybody's money, and in saying so you would be perfectly correct. But after half an hour in the seat of a Widgeon Seven, even sacking begins to look pretty good to you. It may be a little hardish on the frame, and it may smell a good deal of mice and the deep-delved earth, but there remains just one point to be put forward in its favour -viz. that it enables one to stretch the limbs. And stretching the limbs was the thing I felt now that I wanted to do most. In addition to smelling of mice and mould, the particular segment of sacking on which some two minutes later I was reclining had a marked aroma of by-the-day gardener : and there was a moment when I had to ask myself if the mixture wasn't a shade too rich. But these things grow on one in time, and at the end of about a quarter of an hour I was rather enjoying the blend of scents than otherwise. I can recall inflating the lungs and more or less drinking it in. At the end of about half an hour a soothing drowsiness had begun to steal over me. And at the end of about thirty-five minutes the door flew open and there was the old, familiar lantern shining in again. " Ah I " said Sergeant Voules. And Constable Dobson said the same. I realized that the time had come to strike a forceful note with these two pests. I am all for not shackling the police, but what I maintainis that if the police come dodging about a householder's garden all night, routing him out every time he is on the point of snatching a little repose, they have jolly well got to be shackled. " Yes ? " I said, and there was a touch of the imperious old aristocrat in my manner. " What is it now ? "
Constable Dobson had been saying something in a pretty self-satisfied sort of way about having seen me creeping through the darkness and tracking me like a leopard, and Sergeant Voules, who was a man who believed in keeping nephews in their place, was remarking that he had seen me first and had tracked me just as much like a leopard as Constable Dobson : but at these crisp words a sudden silence fell upon them. " Is that you again, sir ? " inquired the sergeant in rather an awed voice. " Yes, it is, dash it! What, may I ask, is the meaning of this incessant chivying ? Sleep under these conditions becomes impossible." " Very sorry, sir. It never occurred to me that it could be you." " And why not ? " " Well, sleeping in a shed, sir . . ." " You do not dispute the fact that it is my shed ? " " No, sir. But it sort of seems funny." " I see nothing funny in it whatsoever." " Uncle Ted means ' odd,' sir."
" Not so much of what Uncle Ted means. And don't call me Uncle Ted. What it sort of seemed to us, sir, was peculiar." " I cannot subscribe to your opinion. Sergeant," I said stiffly. " I have a perfect right, have I not, to sleep where I please ? " " Yes, sir." " Exactly. It might be the coal cellar. It might be the front-door steps. It happens to be this shed. I will now thank you. Sergeant, to withdraw. At this rate, I shall't drop off till daybreak." " Are you intending to remain here the rest of the night, sir ? " "Certainly. Why not ?" I had got him. He was at a loss. " Well, I suppose there's no reason why you shouldn't, if you want to, sir. But it seems . . ." " Odd," said Constable Dobson. "
Peculiar," said Sergeant Voules. " It seems peculiar, having a bed of your own, sir, if I might say so . . ." I had had enough of this. " I hate beds," I said curtly. " Can't stand them. Never could." " Very good, sir." He paused a moment. " Quite a warm day to-day, sir." "
Quite." "My young nephew here pretty near got a touch of the sun. Didn't you. Constable ? "
