When he came to, he found himself propped up in a court answering to the law, with a dishevelled Alastair hanging on the rail beside him, facing the unsympathetic eye of a magistrate.
“What are the defendants’ names?” he heard the magistrate asking sternly, his eyes boring into them as if already deciding on the severity of the sentence. Arthur looked around in a daze to see who he was talking to and realised with a shock that he meant Alastair and himself.
Waking up with a jerk, Alastair answered automatically, after sifting his memory and coming up with a convenient alias. “Tom Brown, your worship.” Before Arthur could collect his wits together, Alastair went on hurriedly, giving him no opportunity to answer. “And my friend here is Albert Smith.”
“Really? That name sounds familiar fro
