“Oh?” she said. “When I heard your voice, I thought you were someone else.”
“No, that’s who I am. I came up here to tell you about Oliver.”
“What about him?”
I hesitated. Now that we were approaching what you might call the nub or crux of the situation a good deal of my breezy confidence seemed to have slipped from me.
“Well, it’s rather a painful tale, I must warn you.”
“Oliver isn’t ill? He hasn’t had an accident?”
She spoke anxiously, and I was pleased at this evidence of human feeling. I decided to shoot the works with no more delay.
“Oh, no, he isn’t ill,” I said, “and, as regards having accidents, it depends what you call an accident. He’s in chokey.”
“In what?”
“In prison.”
“In prison!”
“It was entirely my fault. We were strolling along on Boat Race Night, and I advised him to pinch a policeman’s helmet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, he seemed depressed, don’t you know, and rightly or wrongly I thought it might cheer him up if he stepped across the street and collared a policeman’s helmet. He thought it a good idea, too, so he started doing it, and the man made a fuss, and Oliver sloshed him.”