Chick by Edgar Wallace

Author:Edgar Wallace [Wallace, Edgar]
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Humour
Publisher: B. Tauchnitz
Published: 1923-06-15T13:21:07.187000+00:00

VII - THE FIRST DISPATCH

The Marquis of Pelborough was not a very earnest student of the newspapers, except of those pages devoted to sport, and more especially to the fistic art. There was probably no greater authority in England on the relative merits of light- and feather-weights than this mild young man, of whom the great "Kid" Steel had said, in his own simple way: "Dat guy's gotta foot like a fairy an' a punch like de kick of a broncho."Chick, as a rule, merely glimpsed the pages containing the troubles of the hour (and "news," as it is understood in Fleet Street, is only trouble in some form or other), but one morning his attention was arrested by a "scareline" to a long paragraph, and he read:

"Following upon the arrest by Inspector Fuller of a number of men who are believed to be a dangerous gang of international burglars, a widespread conspiracy, having as its object the issue of forged French and Belgian bank-notes, has been brought to light.

"The head-quarters of the forgers is in Brussels, and the police have forwarded to the Foreign Office a number of original documents which leave no doubt as to the existence of the plot. The names of the chief movers in this conspiracy are not the least important of the discoveries made by Inspector Fuller."

"Gosh!" said Chick. "I wonder who they are?"

He was beginning to identify himself with the Foreign Office, and the fact that the incriminating documents were actually within the walls of that building gave the news vital importance in his eyes. Did he but know, he was to be almost as interesting a figure to the leaders of this easy-money movement as they were to him.

There are certain features of English public life which have been for all time an insoluble mystery to the foreigner. Few, indeed, are they who can appreciate the subtle difference between the accolade of knighthood and the patent of baronetcy. The older titles of the aristocracy have their exact significance, however. A marquis is a marquis all the world over, as a certain M. Lihnfelt knew.

There is a pretty little hotel situated on the boulevard of the Botanical Gardens (to Anglicize the cumbersome title of that thoroughfare) and very near to the Rue Pierre, and in this hotel lived, in comfort, this same M. August Lihnfelt. He had no apparent occupation, and was associated with one of those Government services which President Lincoln once described as "livings for which one does not work."

He was a tall, broad man, with a large bushy beard, and he wore in the lapel of his invariable frock-coat a splurge of crimson which was generally believed to indicate his possession of the Order of Leopold, but which, in point of fact, suggested no more than that he had at one period of his chequered career earned the gratitude of a Balkan Prime Minister, who had bestowed upon him the most minor of the least considerable decorations which the Bulgarian Government award for small services rendered.

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