who had never shrunk upon occasion from launching red rhetoric at society, should actually have shed blood seemed too startling, especially as the blood shed was not blue, but the property of a lovable young middle-class idealist, who had now literally given his life to the Cause.  But this supplementary sensation did not grow to a head, and everybody (save a few labour leaders) was relieved to hear that Tom had been released almost immediately, being merely subpoenaed to appear at the inquest.  In an interview which he accorded to the representative of a Liverpool paper the same afternoon, he stated that he put his arrest down entirely to the enmity and rancour entertained towards him by the police throughout the country.  He had come to Liverpool to trace the movements of a friend about whom he was very uneasy, and he was making anxious inquiries at the docks to discover at what times steamers left for America, when the detectives stationed there had, in accordance with instructions from headquarters, arrested him as a suspicious-looking character.  “Though,” said Tom, “they must very well have known my phiz, as I have been sketched and caricatured all over the shop.  When I told them who I was they had the decency to let me go.  They thought they’d scored off me enough, I reckon.  Yes, it certainly is a strange coincidence that I might actually have had something to do with the poor fellow’s death, which has cut me up as much as anybody; though if they had known I had just come from the ‘scene of the crime,’ and actually lived in the house, they would probably have—­let me alone.”  He laughed sarcastically.  “They are a queer lot of muddle-heads, are the police.  Their motto is, ’First catch your man, then cook the evidence.’  If you’re on the spot you’re guilty because you’re there, and if you’re elsewhere you’re guilty because you have gone away.  Oh, I know them!  If they could have seen their way to clap me in quod, they’d ha’ done it.  Luckily I know the number of the cabman who took me to Euston before five this morning.”

“If they clapped you in quod,” the interviewer reported himself as facetiously observing, “the prisoners would be on strike in a week.”

“Yes, but there would be so many blacklegs ready to take their places,” Mortlake flashed back, “that I’m afraid it ’ould be no go.  But do excuse me.  I am so upset about my friend.  I’m afraid he has left England, and I have to make inquiries; and now there’s poor Constant gone—­horrible! horrible! and I’m due in London at the inquest.  I must really run away.  Good-by.  Tell your readers it’s all a police grudge.”

“One last word, Mr. Mortlake, if you please.  Is it true that you were billed to preside at a great meeting of clerks at St. James’s Hall between one and two to-day to protest against the German invasion?”

“Whew! so I was.  But the beggars arrested me just before one, when I was going to wire, and then the news of poor Constant’s end drove it out of my head.  What a nuisance!  Lord, how troubles do come together!  Well, good-by, send me a copy of the paper.”