“A lawyer’s safe?” suggested the interested detective.
The other shook his head. He turned the subject abruptly; spoke of his plans—he was leaving for the United States, to join his brother, who was an honest builder.
“We’re both going out of the game together, Martin,” he smiled. “You’re too good a man for a policeman, and I’m too much of a gentleman to be on the crook. I shouldn’t be surprised if we met one of these days.”
Dick went back to the Yard to make, as he thought, a final report to his immediate chief.
Captain Sneed sniffed.
“That Lew Pheeney couldn’t fall straight,” he said; “if you dropped him down a well, he’d wear away the brickwork. Honest robber! He’s got that out of a book. You think you’ve finished work, I suppose?”
Dick nodded.
“Going to buy a country house and be a gentleman. Ride to hounds and take duchesses into dinner—what a hell of a life for a grown man!”
Dick Martin grinned at the sneer. He wanted very little persuasion to withdraw his resignation; already he was repenting—and, despite the attraction of authorship which beckoned ahead, he would have given a lot of money to recall the letter he had sent to the commissioner.
“It’s a queer thing how money ruins a man,” said Captain Sneed sadly. “Now if I had a six-figure legacy I should want to do nothing.”
His assistant might sneer in turn.
“You want to do nothing, anyway,” he said; “you’re lazy, Sneed—the laziest man who ever filled a chair at Scotland Yard.”
The fat man, who literally filled and overflowed the padded office chair in which he half sat and half lay, a picture of inertia, raised his reproachful eyes to his companion.
“Insubordination,” he murmured. “You’re not out of the force till tomorrow—call me ‘sir’ and be respectful. I hate reminding you that you’re a paltry sub-inspector and that I’m as near being a superintendent as makes no difference. It would sound snobbish. I’m not lazy, I’m lethargic. It’s a sort of disease.”
“You’re fat because you’re lazy, and you’re lazy because you’re fat,” insisted the lean-faced young man. “It’s a sort of vicious circle. Besides, you’re rich enough to retire if you wanted.”
Captain Sneed stroked his chin reflectively. He was a giant of a man, with shoulders of an ox and the height of a Grenadier, but he was admittedly inert. He sighed heavily, and, groping in a desk basket, produced a blue paper.
“You’re a common civilian tomorrow—but my slave today. Go along to Bellingham Library; there has been a complaint about stolen books.”
Sub-Inspector Dick Martin groaned.
“It’s not romantic, I admit,” said his superior with a slow, broad smile; “kleptomania belongs to the dust and debris of detective work, but it is good for your soul. It will remind you, whilst you’re loafing on the money you didn’t earn, that there are a few thousand of your poor comrades wearin’ their feet into ankles with fool inquiries like this!”
Dick (or “Slick” as he was called for certain reasons) wondered as he walked slowly down the long corridor whether he was glad or sorry that police work lay behind him and that on the morrow he might pass the most exalted official without saluting. He was a “larceny man,” the cleverest taker of thieves the Yard had known. Sneed often said that he had the mind of a thief, and meant this as a compliment. He certainly had the skill. There was a memorable night when, urged thereto by the highest police official in London, he had picked the pocket of a Secretary of State, taken his watch, his pocketbook and his private papers, and not even the expert watchers saw him perform the fell deed.
Dick Martin came to the Yard from Canada, where his father had been governor of a prison. He was neither a good guardian of criminals or youth. Dick had the run of the prison, and could take a stick pin from a man’s cravat before he had mastered the mysteries of algebra. Peter du Bois, a lifer, taught him to open almost any kind of door with a bent hairpin; Lew Andrevski, a frequent visitor to Fort Stuart, made a specially small pack of cards out of the covers of the chapel prayer books, in order that the lad should be taught to conceal three cards in each tiny palm. If he had not been innately honest, the tuition might easily have ruined him.
“Dicky’s all right—he can’t know too much of that crook stuff,” said the indolent Captain Martin, when his horrified relatives expostulated at the corruption of the motherless boy. “The boy’s like him—he’s going into the police and the education’s worth a million!”
Straight of body, clear-eyed, immensely sane, Dick Martin came happily through a unique period of test to the office. The war brought him to England, a stripling with a record of good work behind him. Scotland Yard claimed him, and he had the distinction of being the only member of the Criminal Investigation Department who had been appointed without going through a probationary period of patrol work.
As he went down the stone stairs, he was overtaken by the third commissioner.
“Hello, Martin! You’re leaving us tomorrow? Bad luck! It is a thousand pities you have money. We’re losing a good man. What are you going to do?”
Dick smiled ruefully.
“I don’t know—I’m beginning to think I’ve made a
