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E-kniha A Bout with the Mildew Gang byla úspěšně přidána do košíku.
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A Bout with the Mildew Gang
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a selection from: CHAPTER I CONCERNING MURDER AT THE OLD JERSEY THE reception-clerk of the Old Jersey did not like detectives. He thought that anything beyond the most distant contacts with the police derogated from the dignity of a first-class hotel where wealthy citizens of the United States were accustomed to stay. The pavement, not the lounge, was the place for them. He recognized that when guests murder one another (as those of sufficiently good social standing to put up at the Old Jersey should not be expected to do) the intrusion of the police becomes an unavoidable evil, but it is still not one to be freely encouraged, nor to be allowed to continue indefinitely. Mrs. Houghton had now been dead for three days. Her husband, after shooting her, had had sufficient good breeding to leave the hotel immediately. The body of the dead woman had been removed. The police had been allowed to poke about the room as it was their nature to do. After that, it had been put into order, and was now eligible to be let to less violent guests. It had become time to let the past die. When he saw Inspector Cauldron enter the revolving door, and give a word of friendly greeting to the head-porter, though he had not seen him before he recognized him for what he was, with the acumen which reception clerks are expected to have, but he did not look pleased. His ""good-evening,"" as the inspector approached the counter, was cold, and his voice had no more than a minimum of civility as he stated that Miss Bingham was not in. ""Then I must wait she returns."" ""I don't think I should do that, if I were you. I don't know when she'll be back."" Inspector Cauldron was conscious of the hostility with which he was met. It was an attitude to which officers of the C.I.D. become accustomed as their years pass. It is not one to rouse their suspicions beyond the normal temperature of those who are in constant contact with violent or cunning crime. An uneasy conscience may be more anxious to please. Had he said frankly: ""I am a young officer, only recently promoted, to whom this first chance of handling an important case has unexpectedly come, and I am concealing a good deal of nervous anxiety lest I make some blunder of inexperience, such as might damn my prospects for many years,"" he might have met a more friendly reception. But official dignity and his own character were double barriers against such a confession as that. He said only: ""You don't mean that she's left the hotel?"" The clerk glanced at the key-board. ""She's taken her key with her, if she has."" Inspector Cauldron knew it to be one of the first lessons of his profession to maintain such conversational exchanges so long as there be possibility, however remote, of learning something which might prove useful at last, and his mission was to reap in a field from which an experienced senior officer had already gathered all the harvest he could. ""I suppose,"" he said, ""they sometimes do that.""Hodnocení uživatelů:
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