Читать книгу The Man Who Changed His Plea - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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Inspector Charlesworth held a card which his orderly had just presented to him between his thumb and first finger and eyed it disparagingly. There was nothing about it with which he could find fault, but he had an instinctive dislike of it.

"Who is this?" he asked gruffly. "What does he want?"

"Five minutes' interview was all he asked for, sir," the constable replied. "His face seems sort of familiar, but I have never seen him before that I know of. He said nothing about his business."

"Show him up," was the brief command. "I don't want to see him really; I'm busy. Telephone me about anything you like in five minutes."

"Very good, sir."

The visitor was duly ushered in a few minutes later. He turned out to be a young man of medium height, slim build, excellent carriage, blue-grey eyes of good quality, clean-shaven, a few freckles, and a touch of sunburn. He was dressed quietly but with exceedingly good taste. The Inspector grudgingly motioned towards a chair. His visitor, he decided, was not a person to be ignored.

"Mr. Martin Campbell Brockenhurst," he said. "What can I do for you, sir?"

"That's quite a long story," the other replied.

"Then you'd better go and tell it to someone else," was the caustic answer. "This is the busiest department of Scotland Yard just now and I've no time to give to strangers."

"I," the visitor observed, "am not a stranger."

The Inspector looked at him shrewdly.

"Have we ever met before?"

"Once. You are not likely to remember it. It doesn't matter, anyway. I want a job and I can be very useful to you."

"God bless my soul!" the Inspector exclaimed. "Are you crazy, man, to walk in here and ask an Inspector at Scotland Yard for a job? Do you know what a policeman, even, has to go through before he can commence regular work here? What sort of a job you might be wanting I can't tell. We have a first-class Chief Commissioner at present," he concluded, with a very obvious note of sarcasm.

"I wasn't thinking of anything so important just for the moment," the other replied with an unexpectedly humorous smile. "Have to work your way up here, as I know, Inspector—and you can work as hard as you damn well please sometimes, and you don't get up."

The Inspector stared at his visitor.

"What do you know about it?" he demanded. "You come here as a stranger."

"Not I," was the prompt retort.

"You said you came here looking for a job."

"So I did, and I hope I'll get it. I've more chance now that you say you don't know me."

The Inspector leaned a little forward in his chair.

He studied his visitor more carefully. The other met his scrutiny without flinching. The Inspector would have hated to admit it, but he was puzzled. There was something familiar about this young man, so debonair in appearance, with an air of such confidence, but beyond that his memory failed him. The telephone bell rang, according to orders. He lifted the receiver with an irritable gesture.

"Another five minutes, constable," he said. "I shall be through by then."

"Five minutes is a very short time," the visitor said.

"Get on with it, please," the Inspector begged. "I've seen you before somewhere. If you wanted to puzzle me, you've succeeded. I don't remember where. Your card tells me that you are Mr. Martin Campbell Brockenhurst, of Albany, Piccadilly. The name of your club may, of course, mean nothing, but if it is genuine it is, I believe, a very good club. What have you come here for, what do you want from me, and where did I see you before?"

"I came to the Yard—not this department—seven years ago," the young man replied. "I had one ambition only in life: I wanted to be a detective. I found that I could only arrive at that position by serving my time in the ordinary Force. I served it, but when I had finished I applied for a job as a detective. I was put on a waiting list—I stayed on it for two years—then I resigned. I came into a little money and changed my name according to the will of the relation who left it to me. I travelled, returned to London, watched some of your detectives at work, and I came to the conclusion that, however obstinate you and your colleagues may be down here, you are still clever enough not to refuse a good thing. I am a good thing. I speak four languages, I can make myself up in seventy different ways, and if I am not a gentleman I have learnt to look and behave like one. I can wear dinner clothes, which very few of your detectives can, or I can wear sports clothes, which none of them can. I want to remind you also, sir, that I have done five years' service in the Force. You can look up my record and you will find it faultless. I am made up this morning so that not a soul here recognized me—and even you could not remember that I have sat in this room before. Put me on the staff."

The Inspector smiled thoughtfully.

"Campbell—P. C. Campbell you used to be. Jove, you were a sergeant, weren't you?"

"Could have been," the young man replied, "but it wasn't what I wanted."

The Inspector nodded.

"I remember. You were a little hot-headed about this matter. I wonder, do you think you really have any gifts which would help you to compete with my trained men, beyond the fact that you can wear your clothes and have the tricks of better birth and education?"

"I am dead certain of it," was the calm reply. "Put me on the staff, give me a somewhat roving commission, such as Nicky Grant used to have. Put me on a case when you want to, but if there is nothing doing, let me go and find a case of my own and work it up for you. I can't do any harm and I shall probably denude the criminal world of at least one malefactor."

"If you go looking for them and talking like that," the Inspector commented, "you'll probably end in the Thames with a stone tied round your ankle."

Again the caller smiled.

"I know other languages besides those that are spoken amongst the criminals here or the dockside loiterers or any of those gallant strivers after a dishonest living," he remarked. "Would you like a little Cockney slang? Here goes."

The Inspector stood thirty seconds of it, then he banged his fist upon the desk.

"Shut up," he implored. "Have you ever been on the stage?"

"No; but I could be any time I liked."

"I believe it," the Inspector observed.

The telephone rang again.

"Two minutes only," the Inspector replied rather shamefacedly, hanging up at once.

"Does that mean that you're not going to employ me?" the young man asked.

"Not at all," the Inspector replied. "You're hired."

The visitor rose to his feet. A faint smile was his only sign of satisfaction. He gathered together his doeskin gloves, his malacca cane, and his obviously Scott's hat. The Inspector, who was about the age of his visitor and had social ambitions, made up his mind that before long he would obtain from this young man the knowledge of where he purchased these sartorial accessories. That air of calm and easy assurance was an unpurchasable heritage which he knew he could never acquire.

"Be here at four o'clock this afternoon," he directed his caller. "Ask for Inspector Mulliner, room 13 c. He will go through all your records and I shall also have looked you up properly by that time. I will have a talk with Mulliner and we will either put you on a job at once or let you do as you suggest—go off on your own. Before you do that I shall have a few words to say to you."

"Delighted to look in for a chat at any time, Inspector," was the civil rejoinder.

The Inspector scowled.

"You will have to remember," he pointed out, "that there is discipline to be observed—discipline and nothing else around here."

The young man's deportment seemed suddenly to stiffen.

"You will have no fault to find with me on that score, sir," he declared as he prepared to take his leave.

At the last moment he hesitated. He turned back to confront once more the Inspector's frown.

"I'm sorry, sir," he confided, "but there is one thing I think I should tell you."

"Be quick about it then."

"During the short period that I spent in the Service as an ordinary P. C.," he went on, "I had just a little to do with one case which interested me enormously. I have never forgotten it, and I shall always remember assisting at the arrest of the guilty man and being in court at the time of the trial. This is not gossip, sir; I am telling you for a reason."

"Whose case was it?" the Inspector asked with faint curiosity.

"It was the case, rather famous in those days, of Simon Lebur's son, Richard. He was tried at the Old Bailey for the murder of a man called David Culpepper."

"Yes, that was quite a famous case," the Inspector acknowledged. "I remember it perfectly. The criminal changed his plea at the last moment—a most unusual thing in an important case."

"I felt a curiosity about certain points in that case," Martin Brockenhurst confided, "which has kept me guessing all this time. Then it happens," he went on, with a little less assurance than he had previously displayed, "that during my years of travel, after I came in for my money, I ran across one of the principal people concerned in it."

"Why are you telling me this?" the Inspector asked.

"Because in my spare time," Brockenhurst explained, "I should like, with your permission, to work on this case a little."

"What earthly good could you do?" the Inspector asked. "Lebur has got penal servitude for life—and serve him jolly well right, I should think. The two men had the misfortune to share a mistress and the retreating lover shot his rival in the hallway of her house with his own revolver. The case was proved up to the hilt."

"Yes, I know all about that," Martin agreed. "The circumstantial evidence, of course, was irresistible. On the other hand, there are certain very curious points I should like to look into, and, if I didn't allow it to interfere with any other case I might be working on, I thought you wouldn't mind my trying to solve one problem in particular."

"Waste of time, I should think," the Inspector remarked. "But provided you aren't too official about it and work in your own time, I don't know that I should have any objection. I should require a report from you, though, to be completed and filed with the others. I can't allow you to go working upon a case, even if it is one we've abandoned, entirely on your own."

"That's quite understood, sir," Martin promised with a little sigh of relief. "I'll start work next Monday, if you're agreeable."

"Whenever you like," the Inspector agreed. "Of course, I shall look upon you to a certain extent as a free lance, and your pay will not be on a very large scale."

"Whatever it is, sir," Martin replied, "it will go to the Police Orphanage. I'm ashamed to say so, but I'm afraid I should be considered almost a wealthy man."

"Get out, you rascal," growled the Inspector, who had not paid his income tax.