Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City Detective — John Shaqi
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
Well, as I have told the reader already, I saw the opportunity for
getting an engagement, so I went to somebody, who put himself into
communication with somebody else--this gentleman, who for the present
may be called Mr. Somebodyelse, having made a fortune in trade, and
having a wife who had persuaded him that he was a remarkably clever
fellow, and that he ought to go into Parliament.
Mr. Somebodyelse had no political principles. He had himself always
voted, as an elector, just in the way that his largest customer had
recommended; which largest customer, as if events happened by chance,
had always been a Liberal. Somehow or other, Mrs. Somebodyelse got into
her feminine head that her spouse had herein gone on the wrong tack;
that it was "not respectable" to be a Liberal; that the "highly genteel
thing" was to stand by the Tories; and she therefore determined that,
whenever her spouse went into Parliament, he should be a stanch
Conservative: to which he, like a fond husband, said, "I will." This
did not much matter to me. Mr. Somebodyelse would do for N---- and for
me as well as any other man. I was not careful about political opinions,
and therefore made no hesitation about rendering my services to him.
It is always desirable to go through the usual forms. Occasionally,
forms useless in themselves are made essential by custom. A man who
could write was therefore employed to write an Address for our
candidate, and one or two fellows were also engaged to "cram" or "coach"
him with speeches that he was to re-deliver. They were not very fine
speeches. The oratory was, in my opinion, gassy, flowery, nonsensical;
or, as the great Mr. Barnum would say, and I shall take the liberty of
saying, they were "humbugeous."
We went down from London direct to the borough. The party consisted of
myself, my associate (who was the agent), an attorney, and the
candidate, whose name, address, and quality I had now ascertained. The
reader may now know this gentleman as Mr. Jollefat, a retired
tallow-melter or chandler, then residing at Melpomene Lodge, Clapham,
and supposed to be a sleeping partner of "the old house" in which he had
skimmed the cauldrons of boiling tallow admirably for more than thirty
years.
On our arrival, we put out the address of our candidate. We started a
personal canvass. We did all that was usual except bribe--and the time
had hardly come for that--but all that we did only served to discourage
every body but me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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