Adventures of Martin Hewitt, Third SeriesMorrison, Arthur
General
Adventures of Martin Hewitt, Third Series
Morrison, Arthur
Detective and mystery stories, English; Private investigators -- England -- Fiction
put my client’s husband in gaol because of what I had learnt in
course of work on her behalf. I decided to give him, and nobody else,
a sporting chance. If I could possibly get at him in the time at my
disposal, by himself, so that no accomplice should get the benefit of
my warning, I would give him a plain hint to run; then he could take
his chance. I returned to the place and began to work round the
grounds, examining the place as I went; but at the very first
outhouse I put my head into I was surprised in the rear by Mrs.
Geldard coming in hot haste to stop me and rescue her husband. She
most unmistakably gave me the sack, and so now the police may catch
Geldard or not, as their luck may be.”
They did catch him. In the next day’s papers a report of a great
capture of illicit distillers occupied a prominent place. The
prisoners were James Fuller, Henry Matthew Trennatt, Sarah Blatten, a
deaf woman, Samuel Geldard, and his wife Rebecca Geldard. The two
women were found on the premises in violent altercation when the
officers arrived, a few minutes after Hewitt and I had left the
police station on our way home. It was considered by far the greatest
haul for the revenue authorities since the seizure of the famous
ship’s boiler on a wagon in the East End stuffed full of tobacco,
after that same ship’s boiler had made about a dozen voyages to the
Continent and back “for repair.” Geldard was found dressed as a
workman, carrying out extensive alterations and repairs to the still.
And a light van was found in a shed belonging to the nursery loaded
with seventeen rolls of linoleum, each enclosing a cylinder
containing two gallons of spirits, and packed at each end with narrow
linoleum rolls. It will be remembered that seventeen was the number
of crosses at the foot of Emma Trennatt’s note.
[Illustration: THE PRISONERS.]
The subsequent raids on a number of obscure public-houses in
different parts of London, in consequence of information gathered on
the occasion of the Geldard capture, resulted in the seizure of a
large quantity of secreted spirit for which no permit could be shown.
It demonstrated also the extent of Geldard’s connection, and
indicated plainly what was done with the spirit when he had carted it
away from Crouch End. Some of the public-houses in question must have
acquired a notoriety among the neighbours for frequent purchases of
linoleum.
THE CASE OF THE LATE MR. REWSE
I
Of this case I personally saw nothing beyond the first advent in
Hewitt’s office of Mr. Horace Bowyer, who put the case in his hands,
and then I merely saw Mr. Bowyer’s back as I passed downstairs from
my rooms. But I noted the case in full detail after Hewitt’s return
from Ireland, as it seemed to me one not entirely without interest,
if only as an exemplar of the fatal ease with which a man may
unwittingly dig a pit for his own feet--a pit from which there is no
climbing out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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