P.-C. Lee: Complete Series (ALL 24 Detective Stories in One Volume). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
in, for he’d collapsed in the last hundred yards, an’ as they laid him on the floor of the charge room I recognised him. It was Nick. I thought at first he was dead, but he was only dead drunk.
“‘Search him, Lee.’ says the Inspector, an’ I put l hands over him. Besides his jewellery he had nearly twenty pounds in gold an’ notes an’ a print, an’ I couldn’t read it, but the moment Toil saw it he snatched it from my hand.
“‘A hundred rouble note — and new!’ he cried.
“‘M’sieur,’ he says to the foreign looking gentleman, ‘what is this?’
“He hands it to the foreigner, an’ he feels it carefully, then walks with it to the light.
“‘This is a forgery,’ he says, ‘like the others!’
“And then it came out that hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of forged Russian notes had been put in circulation, an’ that they had been traced to this district.
“After they had taken Nick Moss away to the cells a light suddenly dawned on me, an’ I went into the Inspector’s room an’ told him all I knew about Albert Walker.
“‘A printer!’ he says thoughtfully, ‘that theory fits very well. You may be sure if he is the man he’d do his printing at home. A burglar breaks into his house an’ discovers his secret, is bribed to keep silence an’—’
“‘He jumped up. ‘We haven’t time to lose,’ he says.
“‘Give me another man, Inspector, an’ the car shall drive us to the house.’
“But we were too late.
‘The house had no tenant when we got there except for an old woman who acted as servant. She told us Nick was a frequent visitor, an’ had called that evenin’ a little the worse for drink.
“‘She heard Nick threatenin’ Walker, but afterwards they must have parted good friends, for Walker rung for wine glasses.
“Her master had left a few minutes after Nick an’ that’s the last she saw of him.
“It was the last anybody else ever saw of him. For though we searched England, we never discovered Mr. Albert Walker. Nick got seven years as an accomplice after an’ Copper got three years for nothin’.
“About five years later a Mr. Sangarro, a very wealthy Spanish gentleman, died an’ left a quarter of a million to found an educational establishment for poor boys of London. A part of his will directed that great attention should be given to teachin’ the Spanish language; ‘a language,’ says the will — I’ve got a copy of it cut from the newspapers somewhere—’which is likely to be of considerable value to the hasty traveller.’
“I discovered who ‘Mr. Sangarro’ was when I got a legacy from his executors in the shape of a little book.
“I recognised it as one I’d once given as a present, although he’d altered the title with an ink mark into ‘A Man of Notes’.”
For Jewey's Laggin'
“People get queer notions about the police,” said P.C. Lee philosophically, “but what people think doesn’t matter very much. There’s a gentleman who lives in Ladbroke Grove — gentleman in the auctioneerin’ line of business — who was once summoned for his rates, an’ has been very bitter since about police methods. He was talkin’ to me the other night about undiscovered crimes.”
“‘There’s a murder here,’ said he, ‘an’ a murder there. an’ the police go walkin’ about with their mouths open catchin’ flies whilst ratepayers are shakin’ in their beds — what’s the remedy for that?’ he said.
“‘Sleep on the floor,’ I said. ‘I put it to you, Mr. Sliggly, that you’re a fairly ‘cute gentleman?’
“‘I am,’ he admitted.
“‘An’ you walk about with your eyes open?’
“‘I do,’ he said, ‘except when I’m walkin’ in me sleep.’
“‘Now,’ I said, ‘how often have you, in the course of your life, seen a man commit a felony — actually seen it, not heard about it or read about it? How often have you seen a man pick a pocket, or smash a jeweller’s window, or comin’ from the scene of a murder?’
“‘Never,’ he said, after a bit.
“‘An’ very few have,’ said I. ‘You talk about undiscovered crime! Why, the wonder is, in a big city like London or Manchester or Southampton, how so much crime is detected, not how so much remains a mystery. Policemen have only got one pair of eyes, like you, an’ they can only see just as much as you can see. The difference between the average policeman an’ the average citizen is that the constable only believes a quarter of what he is told, an’ the average citizen believes everythin’.
“An so it is,” continued P.C. Lee. “There was a young feller who used to live in this neighbourhood who was always gettin’ into trouble with the authorities. An’ one day he was taken by a plain clothes man whilst in possession of a number of articles that it didn’t seem natural somehow for him to have. Fancy soaps an’ toothbrushes, an’ things of that description. He was pulled in, as I say, into the local police station an’ charged with ‘unlawful possession’. To everybody’s surprise he proved he’d bought these things at a sale. It came out when the case was before the magistrate, an’ the auctioneer was called to prove his statement — it was this same Mr. Sliggly I was tellin’ you about. Sure enough he had bought the things an’ he was discharged.
“There would have been the end of it only Sliggly started the idea that this young feller — Tom Coop was his name — was the victim of a police persecution, an’ persuaded Coop to bring an action for false imprisonment. In addition to this one of the evenin’ newspapers got hold of the story an’ started agitatin’ for a Royal Commission.
“In the thick of it I happened to see Mr. Sliggly. He Stopped me one mornin’, laughin’ an’ rubbin’ his hands.
“‘Ah, ha!’ said he, ‘I think we’ll give the police a tyin’ up this time! What do you think of your friends now?’ he asked.
“‘The same as ever,’ I said, ‘they’re few an’ far between.’
“He went off that night to address a meetin’ in Nottingham, called by the Anti-Police Persecution Association or somethin’ of the sort, an’ the reception he got gave him a bit of a swelled head, because when I saw him on his way back the next mornin’ he only gave me a haughty nod an’ was passin’ on when I stopped him.
“‘Do you wish to see me, constable?’ he said coldly.
“‘About Tom Coop,’ said I, but he lifted up his hand.
“‘Nothin’ you can say,’ said he warningly, ‘can alter my opinion. You have hounded this unfortunate man from pillar to post, you have hounded him from society, an’ hounded him to—’
“‘What I was goin’ to say, sir,’ said I, ‘is that last night I hounded him into the station, having caught him houndin’ hisself out of your kitchen winder with a bagful of silver.’
“It dried up Mr. Sliggly in two twinks, an’ next time I saw him was at the Police Fete at the Crystal Palace standin’ drinks to our inspector. It’s very rum how criminal the general public is — they’re always in sympathy with the wrong ‘un, an’ it’s quite usual when I’m takin’ an obstreperous rough to the station to hear some mild old gentleman on the edge of the pavement shout ‘Let the man alone, you brute!’ without his knowin’ anythin’ of the reasons for the man’s arrest.
“I’ve