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
been not very serviceable to prisoners, because if the hole is but a
small one, and unless the bench can be satisfied that the indictment, as
it stands, describes a different offence to that which a prisoner has
been arrested upon, or has come prepared to meet, it is amended in court
so as to cure the defect which Mr. Noxious Sound's not miraculous
penetration has discovered. Or Mr. Sound may raise what thieves call a
"pint of law" for the Court of Criminal Appeal, about which it is
needless to say any thing, except that the case then easily glides from
the lower to higher tribunal and that in its course Messrs. Levy Levy
and kindred get another considerable lump of money out of it. While they
thus realise enormous incomes by a process so facile, and one which
involves no responsibility and taxes no intellect--a thing, by the way,
nearly impossible, for the Levys have not much of the latter article
among the lot of them--they are not disposed, even under what would to
the ordinary solicitor be a temptation of liberal costs, to take a vast
deal of trouble, or, as one of them would observe, "put themselves far
out of the way."
Messrs. Levy Levy and family wrote to Messrs. Newton Brothers a letter,
which stated that they had been called upon and consulted by a client on
a matter in which they (Messrs. Newton Brothers) were concerned; and
that they (Messrs. Levy Levy and kindred) would be glad to see them
(Messrs. Newton Brothers).
Mr. Albert Newton received this letter and opened it. When he
communicated it to his brother, that gentleman elegantly observed that
he thought he "smelt a rat;" but I do not think he exactly comprehended
who the rat was, or its location. However, the firm also thought it
desirable to consult attorneys. Newtons would have gone to Messrs. Levy
Levy and family; but as the professional services of these renowned
pettifoggers were forestalled, Newton Brothers put themselves into
communication with another Levy, who is an attorney, and may or may not
be, for any thing I know, a kinsman of the members of the great Old
Bailey house. He called upon Messrs. Levy Levy and family, and the
result was, that Mrs. Paterson, when she next waited upon them, was
told it was "an ugly affair," and that they "did not see how to move in
it without peril." They talked to her in the language of professional
wisdom--and slang. They said something about stinks that were stirred
smelling all the more because of the operation, and used other unequally
sage observations. The widow was not broken-hearted, but certainly
crest-fallen, and eminently, although silently, indignant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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