Alban knew in an instant--his long experience taught him--that he had fallen into the hands of the police, and his first alarms were very real.
"What right have you to question me?"
"Oh, we'll show our right sharp enough. Now, you be brisk--what's your name and what are you doing here?"
"I am the son of Mr. Richard Gessner of Hampstead and I used to know this place. I came down to have a look at it before the building is finished. If you doubt me, let us go to Mr. Gessner's house together and he will tell you who I am."
It was a proud thing to say and he said it with pride. That thrill of satisfaction which attends a fine declaration of identity came to Alban then as it has done to many a great man in the hour of his vanity. The son of Richard Gessner--yes, his patron would acknowledge him for that! The police themselves admitted the title by almost instant capitulation.
"Well, sir, it's a queer place to come to, I must say, and not very safe either for a gentleman in your position. Why didn't you ask one of us to bring you down? We'd have done it right enough, though not to-night perhaps."
"Then you're out on business?"
"You couldn't have guessed better, sir. We're here with the nets and there will be herrings to salt in the morning. If you care to wait five minutes, you may look into the bundle. Here's two or three of them coming along now and fine music they're making, I must say. Just step aside a minute, sir, while we give a hand. That's a woman's voice and she's not been to the Tabernacle. I shouldn't wonder if it was the flower girl that hobnobs with the parson--oh, by no means, oh dear, no."
He raised his lantern and turned the light of it full on the passage, disclosing a spectacle which brought a flush of warm blood to Alban's cheeks and filled him with a certain sense of shame he could not defend. For there were three of his old friends, no others than Sarah and the Archbishop of Bloomsbury with the boy "Betty," the latter close in the custody of the police who dragged him headlong, regardless of the girl's shrieks and the ex-clergyman's protests upon their cruelty. For an instant Alban was tempted to flee the place, to deny his old friends and to surrender to a base impulse of his pride; but a better instinct saving him, he intervened boldly and immediately declared himself to the astonished company.
"These people are friends of mine," he said, to the complete bewilderment of the constables, "please to tell me why you are charging them?"