Читать книгу Laugh With Leacock - Стивен Ликок - Страница 14

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According to this explanation of the mysterious crime, it turns out, right at the end of the story, that the murder was not done by any of the people suspected—neither by the Butler, nor the Half Hero, nor the Tramp, nor the Dangerous Woman. Not at all. It was the work of one of the most audacious criminals ever heard of (except that the reader never heard of him till this second), the head and brain of a whole gang of criminals, ramifying all over Hades.

This head criminal generally goes under some such terrible name as Black Pete, or Yellow Charlie, or Blue Edward. As soon as his name is mentioned, then at once not only the Great Detective but everybody else knows all about him—except only the reader and the Nut, who is always used as a proxy for the reader in matters of astonishment or simplicity of mind.

At the very height of the chase, a new murder, that of a deputy police inspector (they come cheap; it’s not like killing one of the regular characters), is added to the main crime of killing Sir Charles. The manner of the murder—by means of a dropping bullet fired three miles away with its trajectory computed by algebra—has led to the arrest. The Great Detective, calculating back the path of the bullet, has ordered by telephone the arrest of a man three miles away. As the Detective, the Nut, and the police stand looking at the body of the murdered policeman, word comes from Scotland Yard that the arrest is made:

“The Great Detective stood looking about him, quietly shaking his head. His eye rested a moment on the pros-trate body of Sub-Inspector Bradshaw, then turned to scrutinize the neat hole drilled in the glass of the window.

“‘I see it all now,’ he murmured. ‘I should have guessed it sooner. There is no doubt whose work this is.’

“‘Who is it?’ I asked.

“‘Blue Edward,’ he announced quietly.

“‘Blue Edward!’ I exclaimed.

“‘Blue Edward,’ he repeated.

“‘Blue Edward!’ I reiterated, ‘but who then is Blue Edward?’”

This, of course, is the very question that the reader is wanting to ask. Who on earth is Blue Edward? The question is answered at once by the Great Detective himself.

“‘The fact that you have never heard of Blue Edward merely shows the world that you have lived in. As a matter of fact, Blue Edward is the terror of four continents. We have traced him to Shanghai, only to find him in Madagascar. It was he who organized the terrible robbery at Irkutsk in which ten mujiks were blown up with a bottle of Epsom salts.

“‘It was Blue Edward who for years held the whole of Philadelphia in abject terror, and kept Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on the jump for even longer. At the head of a gang of criminals that ramifies all over the known globe, equipped with a scientific education that enables him to read and write and use a typewriter with the greatest ease, Blue Edward has practically held the police of the world at bay for years.

“‘I suspected his hand in this from the start. From the very outset, certain evidences pointed to the work of Blue Edward.’”

After which all the police inspectors and spectators keep shaking their heads and murmuring, “Blue Edward, Blue Edward,” until the reader is sufficiently impressed.