“So you think it was queer?”
The chauffeur nodded.
“The fact is, sir,” he blurted out, “I’ve seen the papers.”
The other nodded thoughtfully.
“I presume you mean the newspapers. And what is there in the newspapers that interests you?”
Mr. Holland took a gold case from his pocket, opened it languidly, and selected a cigarette. He was closing it when he caught the chauffeur’s eye and tossed a cigarette to him.
“Thank you, sir,” said the man.
“What was it you didn’t like?” asked Mr. Holland again, passing a match.
“Well, sir, I’ve been in all sorts of queer places,” said Feltham doggedly, as he puffed away at the cigarette, “but I’ve always managed to keep clear of anything—funny. Do you see what I mean?”
“By funny I presume you don’t mean comic,” said Mr. Rex Holland cheerfully. “You mean dishonest, I suppose?”
“That’s right, sir, and there’s no doubt that I have been in a swindle, and it’s worrying me—that bank-forgery case. Why, I read my own description in the paper!”
Beads of perspiration stood upon the little man’s forehead, and there was a pathetic droop to his mouth.
“That is a distinction which falls to few of us,” said his employer suavely. “You ought to feel highly honored. And what are you going to do about it, Feltham?”
The man looked to left and right as though seeking some friend in need who would step forth with ready-made advice.
“The only thing I can do, sir,” he said, “is to give myself up.”
“And give me up, too,” said the other, with a little laugh. “Oh, no, my dear Feltham. Listen; I will tell you something. A few weeks ago I had a very promising valet chauffeur just like you. He was an admirable man, and he was also a foreigner. I believe he was a Swede. He came to me under exactly the same circumstances as you arrived, and he received exactly the same instructions as you have received, which unfortunately he did not carry out to the letter. I caught him pilfering from me—a few trinkets of no great value—and, instead of the foolish fellow repenting, he blurted out the one fact which I did not wish him to know, and incidentally which I did not wish anybody in the world to know.
“He knew who I was. He had seen me in the West End and had discovered my identity. He even sought an interview with someone to whom it would have been inconvenient to have made known my—character. I promised to find him another job, but he had already decided upon changing and had cut out an advertisement from a newspaper. I parted friendly with him, wished him luck, and he went off to interview his possible employer, smoking one of my cigarettes just as you are smoking—and he threw it away, I have no doubt, just as you have thrown it away when it began to taste a little bitter.”
“Look here!” said the chauffeur, and scrambled to his feet. “If you try any monkey tricks with me—”
Mr. Holland eyed him with interest.
“If you try any monkey tricks with me,” said the chauffeur thickly, “I’ll—”
He pitched forward on his face and lay still.
Mr. Holland waited long enough to search his pockets, and then, stepping cautiously into the road, donned the chauffeur’s cap and goggles and set his car running swiftly southward.
X
A Murder
Constable Wiseman lived in the bosom of his admiring family in a small cottage on the Bexhill Road. That “my father was a policeman” was the proud boast of two small boys, a boast which entitled them to no small amount of respect, because P.C. Wiseman was not only honored in his own circle but throughout the village in which he dwelt.
He was, in the first place, a town policeman, as distinct from a county policeman, though he wore the badge and uniform of the Sussex constabulary. It was felt that a town policeman had more in common with crime, had a vaster experience, and was in consequence a more helpful adviser than a man whose duties began and ended in the patrolling of country lanes and law-abiding villages where nothing more exciting than an occasional dog fight or a charge of poaching served to fill the hiatus of constabulary life.
Constable Wiseman was looked upon as a shrewd fellow, a man to whom might be brought the delicate problems which occasionally perplexed and confused the bucolic mind. He had settled the vexed question as to whether a policeman could or could not enter a house where a man was beating his wife, and had decided that such a trespass could only be committed if the lady involved should utter piercing cries of “Murder!”
He added significantly that the constable who was called upon must be the constable on duty, and not an ornament of the force who by accident was a resident in their midst.
The problem of the straying chicken and the egg that is laid on alien property, the point of law involved in the question as to when a servant should give notice and the date from which her notice should count—all these matters came within Constable Wiseman’s purview, and were solved to the satisfaction of all who brought their little obscurities for solution.
But it was in his own domestic circle that Constable Wiseman—appropriately named, as all agreed—shone with an effulgence that was almost dazzling, and was a source of irritation to the male relatives on his wife’s side, one of whom had unfortunately come within the grasp of the law over a matter of a snared rabbit and was in consequence predisposed to anarchy in so far as the abolition of law and order affected the police force.
Constable Wiseman sat at tea one summer evening, and about the spotless white cloth which covered the table was grouped all that Constable Wiseman might legally call his. Tea was a function, and to the younger members of the family meant just
