P.-C. Lee: Complete Series (ALL 24 Detective Stories in One Volume). Edgar WallaceЧитать онлайн книгу.
got your stick?’
‘‘Yes, sergeant,’ I said, an’ showed him the little private truncheon I always carry. It was given to me by a gentleman I helped once, an’ is made of a thick, short length of rhinoceros hide. I’ve only had to use it half a dozen times in my life, an’ I’ve never struck the same man twice with it.
“‘We got to Jewey’s little house, an’ was joined by another constable.
“In a case like this, it would be a fatal mistake to knock at the door, an’ a worse to break the door down, so when Sergeant Fallow produced a bunch of skeleton keys an’ unlocked it I wasn’t very much surprised. He knew exactly where Jewey was sleeping, an’ as we made our way up the stairs as noiselessly as possible, he whispered ‘First floor front!’
“We’d got to the landing when we heard the thud of Jewey’s feet as he jumped out of bed.
‘‘Who’s there?’ he shouted, an’ I sprang at the door the room an’ burst it open.
“Just outside the house was a street lamp, an’ by its light I saw our man standin’ in the middle of the room with a revolver in his hand. He fired at me an’ missed me, an’ the next minute I caught him a welt on the head with my stick, an’ he went down like a log. We got the handcuffs on him before we started to revive him, an’ the other constable lit the lamp.
“In a dazed fashion Jewey looked round. He recognised me an’ smiled.
“‘Hullo, Lee,’ he says, ‘I wondered if it was you. Who gave me away?’
“I shook my head.
“‘Oh, I daresay,’ he sneered as we helped him to his feet, ‘you don’t know, do you? Innercent perisher! Where was you at two o’clock this mornin’, you an’ the inspector, gettin’ information? I piped you. Tell Mr. Ginger What’s-his-name to look out!’
“It wasn’t part of my business to defend Ginger — especially as I was feelin’ sore with him just about then, but I’ve often wished that I’d said a word to explain his conduct. Not that Jewey would have believed me.
“In course of time Jewey was brought up at the Old Bailey. He had two counsels, but that was to be expected because Jewey was a big man in his line an’ had hundred of pals all over London. But all the lawyers in the world couldn’t have got a verdict of ‘Not Guilty’, for in addition to the Essex case there was a new charge, ‘Shooting with intent to murder P.C. Lee’, and that was enough to put him away.
“The end of it was that the jury found him guilty, an’ the judge, after talking about the duty he owed to society, said Jewey would be kept in penal servitude for the term of his natural life.
“Jewey took it smilin’ and, when he was asked if he had anythin’ to say, leant over the dock an’ said, ‘I advise the bloke who gave me away to say his prayers.’
“That was all he said, an’ that was why the judge referred to him as a hardened ruffian.
“Now the rum thing was that Ginger didn’t suspect that he was the gentleman Jewey spoke about. Ginger was still plannin’ to get me into trouble, an’ letters kept comin’ to the station about my behaviour; how I used to get drink whilst I was on duty; how I was hand-in-glove with all the thieves of Notting Dale, an’ similar interestin’ discoveries.
Findin’ this didn’t act, he started spreadin’ disagreeable stories about my morals, an’ so when I was told off one evenin’ by the inspector to go along to Ginger’s house an’ take him on a charge of ‘stealin’ from the person’ I’d have been more than human if I hadn’t been quietly pleased.
“I got to the house an’ knocked, an’ an old woman lodger who lived in the basement let me in an’ showed me the room where Ginger lived. I tried the door an’ opened it. All was dark inside, so I struck a match.
“I don’t know how long he’d been dead, but whoever had the job must have done it quickly, for nobody in the house heard any noise. Probably it was a poker they used, but it looked to me as though he’d been throttled first an’ bludgeoned to death afterwards.
“On the table was a newspaper, an’ on the white edge of it was written in pencil: ‘For Jewey’s lagging.’
‘The coroner’s jury brought a verdict of ‘Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown’, an’ it was added to the list of mysterious crimes.
‘What struck me as being most remarkable was the mistake the murderers had made. For Jewey an’ his pals had jumped to the conclusion that Ginger was the traitor because he’d been seen talkin’ to me an’ the inspector at two o’clock in the mornin’.
“I spoke to Detective Sergeant Fallow about it an’ he rather surprised me.
“‘The man who gave Jewey away,’ he said, ‘did it in such a manner that he could never have been discovered. No writin’ passed, an’ the whole of the conversation between me an’ him was carried on by the telephone — he bein’ in South London an’ me in the North. The blood money was left under a stone on Wanstead Common an’ nobody could possibly have found out who it was.’
“‘Did you know?’ I asked, an’ he nodded.
“‘That is the curious thing about it,’ he said, ‘for it was Ginger!’”
Pear-Drops
P.C. Lee has never struck me as being a man of unusual prejudices and superstitions, and I must confess I was greatly astonished the other day when, removing my tall hat to take some papers from its interior, I found him contemplating me with a look in which alarm and disapproval were blended.
“That is one of the things I hate to see a man do, he said solemnly. “It makes me perspire.”
In proof of which he mopped his brow with a snowy handkerchief and breathed loudly in his agitation.
“Two things I can’t bear,” he said, “that’s one, an’ the other is pear drops.”
He said this with such an air of gravity that I did not laugh, for what there was in that succulent morsel to disturb him I could not guess.
He was unusually silent for a while, and appeared to be thinking deeply on some subject.
‘England,” said Police Constable Lee presently, “is the home of the free, an’ the halfway house to liberty. That’s how I size the situation. My view is a prejudiced view because I’m a policeman, but I’d like to say this: that we could do with about four penn’orth of freedom less than we’ve got.
“I used to know a gentleman once, in the writin’ line like yourself, who used to have periods of bad luck, an’ periods of rollin’ in wealth. When he was out of luck, an’ people pressed him for money, he took no more notice of ’em than you or me would take notice of a baby food advertisement.
“Used to invite the process servers to stay to breakfast an’ tossed ’em for the conduct money. If you wanted money out of him you went through a regular routine.
“First you wrote to him; then you sent him a lawyer’s letter; then you served him with a writ; then you got judgment an’ served him with a judgment summons, then you got a pay-in-ten-days-or-go-to-prison committal — an’ then, when the warrant officer came to arrest him, he paid.
“‘It saves me a lot of worry,’ he said to me, ‘to know exactly how far I can go — that’s the beauty of the English law, it gives you rope.’
“It’s a question to me how much rope a chap ought to have. There’s a constable of ours by the name of Sankey, a highly religious man that runs a class at the Ragged School when he’s off duty on Sunday. A thing like that soon gets round, an’