Ward had of getting into the restaurant ended abruptly;
a bevy of policemen who seemed to drop out of the skies simply pounced
upon him, and if he had been guilty of some real crime he could not
have been treated more severely. It was my first experience of
policemen, and unless some one had very kindly caught hold of me, my
first impulse was to go for the men who had seized Ward.

"You had better keep quiet, or you will be taken to the station as
well," one policeman said to me, but I went on talking until some one I
did not know touched me on the arm.

"Was the man they collared a friend of yours?" he asked.

"Yes, and it is a most wretched swindle," I said.

"I don't think he did anything to speak of," Foster added.

"I was just coming out of the door as it happened," our friend said,
"and I have never seen a more unfair thing in my life. If you will
come to the police-station to-morrow to give evidence, I will come too.
You had better go now and see if you can do anything for him."

We assured him that we would turn up the next morning, and then Foster
and I made our way to the police-station. I cannot say that the
Inspector, or whoever the official was who talked to us, took much
notice of what we said, but we found a more sympathetic man outside the
station who asked us if we wanted to bail out our friend. The official
had told us that Jack Ward would be quite comfortable during the night,
but when I saw another person brought in by the police we doubted this
statement very much, and we discussed things with our sympathetic
friend, who was a shabby-looking man when he happened to get near the
light, and he gave us much advice in exchange for half-a-sovereign. I
gave him the half-sovereign, though what prompted me to do so I cannot
remember, but I had met so many aggressive people during that evening
that a kind man appealed to me strongly. He was, I heard afterwards, a
professional bailer-out, and I do not think he could have been a very
good one, for although Fred and I went about with him for over an hour,
and rang up various people who treated us with unvarying rudeness, in
the end we had to leave Jack Ward where he was.

It was no easy matter to escape from my people in the morning, but we
got to the place all right, and soon after we got there Jack Ward
appeared, and was charged with creating a disturbance in Piccadilly.
Policemen gave evidence, and the man who had told us that he would come
and