Читать книгу Laugh With Leacock - Стивен Ликок - Страница 16

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The method of it is very simple. Blue Edward, or whoever is to be “it,” is duly caught. There’s no doubt of his guilt. But at the moment when the Great Detective and the Ignorant Police are examining him he develops a “hacking cough.” Indeed, as he starts to make his confession, he can hardly talk for hacks.

“‘Well,’ says the criminal, looking round at the little group of police officers, ‘the game is up—hack! hack!—and I may as well make a clean breast of it—hack, hack, hack.’”

Any trained reader when he hears these hacks knows exactly what they are to lead up to. The criminal, robust though he seemed only a chapter ago when he jumped through a three-story window after throttling Sub-Inspector Juggins half to death, is a dying man. He has got one of those terrible diseases known to fiction as a “mortal complaint.” It wouldn’t do to give it an exact name, or somebody might get busy and cure it. The symptoms are a hacking cough and a great mildness of manner, an absence of all profanity, and a tendency to call everybody “you gentlemen.” Those things spell finis.

In fact, all that is needed now is for the Great Detective himself to say, “Gentlemen” (they are all gentlemen at this stage of the story), “a higher conviction than any earthly law has, et cetera, et cetera.” With that, the curtain is dropped, and it is understood that the criminal made his exit the same night.

That’s better, decidedly better. And yet, lacking in cheerfulness, somehow.

It is just about as difficult to deal with the Thoroughly Bad woman. The general procedure is to make her raise a terrible scene. When she is at last rounded up and caught, she doesn’t “go quietly” like the criminal with the hacking cough or the repentant tramp. Not at all. She raises—in fact, she is made to raise so much that the reader will be content to waive any prejudice about the disposition of criminals, to get her out of the story.

“The woman’s face as Inspector Higginbottom snapped the handcuffs on her wrists was livid with fury.

“‘Gur-r-r-r-r-r!’ she hissed.”

(This is her favorite exclamation, and shows the high percentage of her foreign blood.)

“‘Gur-r-r-r-r! I hate you all. Do what you like with me. I would kill him again a thousand times, the old fool.’

“She turned furiously towards my friend (the Great Detective).

“‘As for you’ she said, ‘I hate you. Gur-r-r! See, I spit at you. Gur-r-r-r!’”

In that way, the Great Detective gets his, though, of course, his impassive face never showed a sign. Spitting on him doesn’t faze him. Then she turns on the Heroine and gives her what’s coming to her.

“‘And you! Gur-r-r! I despise you, with your baby face! Gur-r-r! And now you think you will marry him! I laugh at you! Ha! Ha! Hahula!’”

And after that she turns on the Nut and gives him some, and then some for Inspector Higginbottom, and thus with three “Gur-r-r’s” for everybody and a “Ha! ha!” as a tiger, off she goes.

But, take it which way you will, the ending is never satisfactory. Not even the glad news that the Heroine sank into the Poor Nut’s arms, never to leave them again, can relieve the situation. Not even the knowledge that they erected a handsome memorial to Sir Charles, or that the Great Detective played the saxophone for a week can quite compensate us.