"done him in one hit. If he don't pay as a canvasser I'll take him to town
and back him to fight Les Darcy. Look out for yourself;
don't you handle him!" he continued as the other approached the figure.
"Leave him to me. As like as not, if you get fooling about him,
he'll give you a clout that'll paralyse you."

So saying, he guided the automaton out of the office and into the street,
and walked straight into a policeman.

By a common impulse the Genius and his mate ran rapidly away
in different directions, leaving the figure alone with the officer.

He was a fully-ordained sergeant -- by name Aloysius O'Grady; a squat,
rosy little Irishman. He hated violent arrests and all that sort of thing,
and had a faculty of persuading drunks and disorderlies and other
fractious persons to "go quietly along wid him," that was little short
of marvellous. Excited revellers, who were being carried by their mates,
struggling violently, would break away to prance gaily along to the lock-up
with the sergeant. Obstinate drunks who had done nothing
but lie on the ground and kick their feet in the air,
would get up like birds, serpent-charmed, to go with him to durance vile.

As soon as he saw the canvasser, and noted his fixed, unearthly stare,
and listened to his hoarse, unnatural voice, the sergeant knew
what was the matter; it was a man in the horrors, a common enough spectacle
at Ninemile. He resolved to decoy him into the lock-up, and accosted him
in a friendly, free-and-easy way.

"Good day t'ye," he said.