"She don't seem so answer her helm somehow," he said.
"There's a lot of play to the steering-gear," said my engineer. "We
generally tighten it up every few miles."
"'Like me to stop now? We've run as much as one mile and a half without
incident," he replied tartly.
"Then you're lucky," said my engineer, bristling in turn.
"They'll wreck the whole turret out o' nasty professional spite in a
minute," said Pyecroft. "That's the worst o' machinery. Man dead ahead,
Hinch--semaphorin' like the flagship in a fit!"
"Amen!" said Hinchcliffe. "Shall I stop, or shall I cut him down?"
He stopped, for full in the centre of the Linghurst Road stood a person in
pepper-and-salt raiment (ready-made), with a brown telegraph envelope in
his hands.
"Twenty-three and a half miles an hour," he began, weighing a small beam-
engine of a Waterbury in one red paw. "From the top of the hill over our
measured quarter-mile--twenty-three and a half."
"You manurial gardener----" Hinchcliffe began. I prodded him warningly
from behind, and laid the other hand on Pyecroft's stiffening knee.
"Also--on information received--drunk and disorderly in charge of a
motor-car--to the common danger--two men like sailors in appearance,"
the man went on.
"Like sailors! ... That's Agg's little _roose_. No wonder he smiled at
us," said Pyecroft.
"I've been waiting for you some time," the man concluded, folding up the
telegram.
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