Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City DetectiveForrester, Andrew
General
Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City Detective
Forrester, Andrew
Detective and mystery stories, English; Fiction; Short stories
That night a row took place in one of the haunts of pleasure and vice at
the West End of the metropolis. A robbery was committed upon a young man
from the country in one of the night-houses of the Haymarket, during a
squabble between some "social evils" and fast men who had there
congregated. The police, on being called in, seized two men on suspicion
of having perpetrated the offence. One of them next morning was
liberated by the sitting magistrate. His pocket-book, his card-case, and
his own explanations, warranted his declaration that he was "a
gentleman," and innocent of the robbery. Another, and a young man, was
not so fortunate. Having, he said, the fear of the reporter and the
newspapers before his eyes; being, he added, unwilling to disgrace his
respectable friends; and being withal sure to lose his situation if it
transpired that he had spent an evening in such disreputable
society,--he refused to give his name and address. The victim of the
affray could not identify the reticent person as the thief, and was
ready to admit the reasonableness of his excuse for secrecy; but the
magistrate thought the police ought to know something more than they did
about him before he was set at large. "It was," the learned gentleman
said, "very strange that a young man should have about him, in such a
place, in bank-notes and gold, about three-and-twenty pounds."
Notwithstanding his appeals and protestations, and in despite the air of
injured innocence he put on, and although the police knew nothing to his
disadvantage except his presence at the scene of the robbery and the
possession of this money, he was remanded, in order that further
inquiries might be made about him.
Sergeant Downey paid a visit to the house of detention, and was allowed
to see the reticent prisoner. The sergeant asked him if his name was not
Thinshanks? The prisoner said, "No, it wasn't." The officer shook his
head in token of doubt about the truthfulness of that denial, and
grinned sardonically. He went direct from the house of detention to the
abode of Mr. Crapp. Both afterwards visited the temporary prison. The
plausible sufferer was at once identified by the tradesman as his
absconded clerk. Mr. Thinshanks, although sullen and as reticent as
ever, was humiliated and crushed by the terrible eye of his late master.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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