The Just Men of Cordova. Edgar Wallace

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СКАЧАТЬ unpleasant coming. Sergeant Gurden seldom took any opportunity of speaking to him, except in admonishment. The sergeant was a wizen-faced man, with an ugly trick of showing his teeth when he was annoyed, and no greater contrast could be imagined than that which was afforded by the tall, straight-backed young man in the constable’s uniform, standing before the desk, and the shrunken figure that sat on the stool behind.

      Sergeant Gurden had a dead-white face, which a scrubby black moustache went to emphasize. In spite of the fact that he was a man of good physical development, his clothing hung upon him awkwardly, and indeed the station- sergeant was awkward in more ways than one. Now he looked at Fellowe, showing his teeth. “I have had another complaint about you,” he said, “and if this is repeated it will be a matter for the Commissioner.”

      The constable nodded his head respectfully. “I am very sorry, sergeant,” he said, “but what is the complaint?”

      “You know as well as I do,” snarled the other; “you have been annoying Colonel Black again.”

      A faint smile passed across Fellowe’s lips. He knew something of the solicitude in which the sergeant held the colonel.

      “What the devil are you smiling at?” snapped the sergeant. “I warn you,” he went on, “that you are getting very impertinent, and this may be a matter for the Commissioner.”

      “I had no intention of being disrespectful, sergeant,” said the young man. “I am as tired of these complaints as you are, but I have told you, as I will tell the Commissioner, that Colonel Black lives in a house in Serrington Gardens and is a source of some interest to me—that is my excuse.”

      “He complains that you are always watching the house,” said the sergeant, and Constable Fellowe smiled.

      “That is his conscience working,” he said. “Seriously, sergeant, I happen to know that the colonel is not too friendly disposed—”

      He stopped himself.

      “Well?” demanded the sergeant.

      “Well,” repeated Constable Fellowe, “it might be as well perhaps if I kept my thoughts to myself.”

      The sergeant nodded grimly.

      “If you get into trouble you will only have yourself to blame,” he warned. “Colonel Black is an influential man. He is a ratepayer. Don’t forget that, constable. The ratepayers pay your salary, find the coat for your back, feed you—you owe everything to the ratepayers.”

      “On the other hand,” said the young man, “Colonel Black is a ratepayer who owes me something.”

      Hitching his cape over his arm, he passed from the charge-room down the stone steps into the street without. The man on duty at the door bade him a cheery farewell.

      Fellowe was an annoying young man, more annoying by reason of the important fact that his antecedents were quite unknown to his most intimate friends. He was a man of more than ordinary education, quiet, restrained, his voice gently modulated; he had all the manners and attributes of a gentleman.

      He had a tiny little house in Somers Town where he lived alone, but no friend of his, calling casually, had ever the good fortune to find him at home when he was off duty. It was believed he had other interests.

      What those interests were could be guessed when, with exasperating unexpectedness, he appeared in the amateur boxing championship and carried off the police prize, for Fellowe was a magnificent boxer—hard-hitting, quick, reliable, scientific.

      The bad men of Somers Town were the first to discover this, and one, Grueler, who on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion had shown fight on the way to the station, testified before breathless audiences as to the skill and science of the young man.

      His breezy independence had won for him many friends, but it had made him enemies too, and as he walked thoughtfully along the street leading from the station, he realized that in the sergeant he had an enemy of more than average malignity.

      Why should this be? It puzzled him. After all, he was only doing his duty. That he was also exceeding his duty did not strike him as being sufficient justification for the resentment of his superior, for he had reached the enthusiastic age of life where only inaction was unpardonable. As to Black, Frank shrugged his shoulders. He could not understand it. He was not of a nature to suspect that the sergeant had any other motive than the perfectly natural desire which all blasé superiors have, to check their too impulsive subordinates.

      Frank admitted to himself that he was indeed a most annoying person, and in many ways he understood the sergeant’s antagonism to himself. Dismissing the matter from his mind, he made his way to his tiny house in Croome Street and let himself into his small dining-room.

      The walls were distempered, and the few articles of furniture that were within were such as are not usually met with in houses of this quality. The old print above the mantelpiece must have been worth a working-man’s annual income. The small gate-legged table in the centre of the felt-covered floor was indubitably Jacobean, and the chairs were Sheraton, as also was the sideboard. Though the periods may not have harmonized, there is harmony enough in great age. A bright fire was burning in the grate, for the night was bitterly cold. Fellowe stopped before the mantelpiece to examine two letters which stood awaiting him, replaced them from where he had taken them, and passed through the folding doors of the room into a tiny bedroom.

      He had an accommodating landlord. Property owners in Somers Town, and especially the owners of small cottages standing on fairly valuable ground, do not as a rule make such renovations as Fellowe required. The average landlord, for instance, would not have built the spacious bathroom which the cottage boasted, but then Fellowe’s landlord was no ordinary man.

      The young man bathed, changed himself into civilian clothing, made himself a cup of tea, and, slipping into a long overcoat which reached to his heels, left the house half an hour after he had entered.

      Frank Fellowe made his way West. He found a taxi-cab at King’s Cross and gave an address in Piccadilly. Before he had reached that historic thoroughfare he tapped at the window-glass and ordered the cabman to drop him.

      At eleven o’clock that night Sergeant Gurden, relieved from his duty, left the station-house. Though outwardly taciturn and calm, he was boiling internally with wrath.

      His antipathy to Fellowe was a natural one, but it had become intensified during the past few weeks by the attitude which the young man had taken up towards the sergeant’s protégé.

      Gurden was as much of a mystery to the men in his division as Fellowe, and even more so, because the secrecy which surrounded Gurden’s life had a more sinister import than the reservation of the younger man.

      Gurden was cursed with an ambition. He had hoped at the outset of his career to have secured distinction in the force, but a lack of education, coupled with an address which was apt to be uncouth and brusque, had militated against his enthusiasm.

      He had recognized the limitations placed upon his powers by the authorities over him. He had long since come to realize that hope of promotion, first to an inspectorship, and eventually to that bright star which lures every policeman onward, and which is equivalent to the baton popularly supposed to be in every soldier’s knapsack, a superintendentship, was not for him.

      Thwarted ambition had to find a new outlet, and he concentrated his attention upon acquiring money. It became a passion for him, an obsession. His parsimony, СКАЧАТЬ