P.-C. Lee: Complete Series (ALL 24 Detective Stories in One Volume). Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ Poker,’ said Police Constable Sankey, ‘what have you got there?’

      “‘There, Brother Sankey?’ said Poker innocently. “Lord bless you, dear friend, I’ve only got a few bits of firewood wot I’ve picked up during the day. Times is very hard, but a Cheerful Countenance, an’ a Meek Understandin’—’

      “‘Dry up,’ said Police Constable Sankey, ‘an’ let’s have a look at that sack.’

      “‘I assure you, Brother—’ began Poker, very earnest.

      “‘Not so much of the brother,’ said Police Constable Sankey short and sharp. ‘Open the sack!’

      “‘Well, to tell you the truth,’ said Poker, very frank, ‘now that I come to think of it, the goods in this sack ain’t firewood at all. I’ve been doin’ a movin’ job, takin’ a few goods for me brotherin-law—’

      “‘Turn ’em out,’ said Sankey.

      “Poker hesitated.

      ‘‘Don’t you trust me, Brother Sankey?’ he said.

      “‘No, I don’t,’ said Brother Sankey.

      “‘Is that Christian?’ said Poker, reproachful.

      “‘The essence of Christianity,’ said Sankey cheerfully, “is common sense. Open that sack!’

      “When it was opened there was everythin’ in the sack except firewood. Little silver cruets, an’ drawing room clocks, silver inkstands, an’ a few spoons.

      “Police Constable Sankey looked at ’em in silence.

      “‘Your brotherin-law’s?’ he said,

      “‘Yes, sir,’ said Poker.

      “‘All right,’ said Sankey, ‘I’ll take you down to the station first on a charge of ‘unlawful possession’, an’ then I’ll go along an’ pinch your relation.’

      “‘Do you think I’m a thief?’ said Poker, very indignant.

      “‘I’m sure,’ said Police Constable Sankey. ‘I don’t think anythin’ at all about it.’

      “On the way to the police station Poker was very bitter.

      “‘After the time I’ve wasted,’ he said, ‘goin’ to your meetin’s when I might have been earnin’ an honest livin’. I’m surprised at you, Mr. Sankey. What about turnin’ the cheek to the smiter?’

      “‘The less of your cheek I have,’ said Police Constab Sankey, ‘the better I shall like it.’

      “Poker’s conviction got Sankey more respect than the good works he’d ever done, because it showed that you haven’t got to be soft to be good, an’ a chap can be a holy man without being an oily man. Moreover, it was a strikin’ lesson of what a little rope will do, because the more Poker got to know Sankey the more liberties he took, an’ the end of it was that he had the nerve to try to carry stolen property away under a policeman’s nose.

      “Of course, after that misguided people said that Sankey wasn’t a true Christian, an’ that he was a hypocrite an a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but somehow Sankey bore his afflictions very well.

      “Sankey was one of the few men I know who’s had to do with anarchists. Not the ones you read about who spout on Tower Hill an’ call on the police to protect ’em as soon as someone chucks a ‘92 egg at ‘em, but the re gentlemen who come out of Russia because it’s too cold to sleep there an’ don’t go back because it’s too hot to live.

      “The thing I’m telling you about occurred when I was in the ‘L’ Division, on one of the tastiest beats you can possibly imagine. It lay through some of the back streets in the vicinity of Lambeth Walk, an’ in those days Lambeth could have given Notting Dale a stone an’ a distance in the Sin Stakes. Sankey was on the next beat, an’ we were supposed to meet every hour outside a pub called the ‘Rising Moon’.

      “It was about three in the mornin’ when I turned up at the ‘Rising Moon’ as usual, but there was no Sankey — not a sign of him. I waited for about ten minutes. an’ asked one of the night birds who came along if he’d seen a constable or heard any row. I wasn’t very uneasy because in all probability Sankey was engaged in runnin’ somebody in, so after givin’ him five more minutes I walked back as far as the corner of Waterloo Road. That was a ‘point’ for me, an’ at half past three I was to meet either the sergeant or the inspector, to report.

      “They were late, too — they came together — an’ the first question the inspector put to me was ‘Have you seen Sankey?’

      “Now, much as he would like to, a policeman cannot screen a comrade, if it is a case of screenin’, because whilst by tryin’ to you may save him from a reprimand, the same time you might be endangerin’ his life; so I said at once that I hadn’t seen Sankey since the two ‘clock ‘point’.

      “‘With that the inspector ordered me to accompany him to Sankey’s beat, an’ we followed the streets he ought to pass through without findin’ him until, passing under a railway arch off a little back street, I saw a man lyin’ on the ground, an’ puttin’ my lantern over him I saw it was Sankey, his face covered with blood, an’ unconscious.

      “‘We carried him to a doctor’s, an’ rung the doctor up, an’ managed to get him round. At first he couldn’t tell us how he got the nasty wound in his head, but when we got him a little more collected, he told us what had happened.

      “He was walkin’ through Little Fisher Street — where the railway arch is — not thinkin’ of anythin’ particular, when a foreign-lookin’ chap came towards him from the opposite direction. Sankey gave him ‘Good mornin’ , an’ passed on a few yards when he heard the man stop an’ turn. Sankey did the same, an’ the man came up to him.

      “‘Oxscuse me,’ said the feller, speakin’ in very broken English, ‘to which roat does this way go?’

      “‘Lambeth Walk,’ said Sankey.

      “The foreigner stood for a bit, not sayin’ a word, an’ then Police Constable Sankey heard footsteps behind him. He turned his head an’ saw a man comin’ from the same direction as the foreigner had, an’ he carried a big bag in his hand. That was all Sankey remembered, for the next minute the first foreigner whipped out a life-preserver an’ struck the constable.

      “We took Sankey to the station an’ sent him home, an’ another man was put on his beat.

      “The whole affair was a mystery to me, but long before mornin’ came we had two of the smartest men down from the Yard an’ they gave out a theory which proved to be correct. The second man, they said, was in league with the first, an’ was carryin’ somethin’ that they didn’t want Sankey to see. What that somethin’ was, we guessed, for at three o’clock that afternoon a bomb was exploded the vicinity of the Home Office. What confirmed our suspicions was the fact that a man answerin’ to the description supplied by Police Constable Sankey had been seen in the neighbourhood before the machine blew up.

      “You may be sure that after that Lambeth was searched as thoroughly as any place can be searched, but without result. СКАЧАТЬ