Tales of Thubway Tham by Johnston McCulley

Author:Johnston McCulley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, crime, suspense, thief, short stories
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2014-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

THUBWAY THAM’S CHRITHTMATH

There was a flurry of fine snow in the stinging air as Thubway Tham came to a stop at a corner of Madison Square, the collar of his overcoat turned up and his gloved hands thrust deep down into the pockets.

It was a little after seven o’clock on Christmas Eve, and Thubway Tham had been purchasing presents. He had them in his pockets now—a new pipe for “Nosey” Moore, who conducted the lodging house where Tham had a room he called home, and a duplicate of it for Detective Craddock.

Thubway Tham chuckled at the thought of a pickpocket of the professional variety giving a Christmas present to the detective assigned to watch him and capture him if he could. But the relationship between himself and Detective Craddock was peculiar in many ways. Each considered the other a foe-man worthy of his steel. For almost two years Detective Craddock had been trying to catch Thubway Tham “with the goods,” that being the only way in which he could land the little dip in the big gray prison up the river, but the detective’s efforts had availed him nothing.

And now Thubway Tham stood back against a building and watched the happy, jostling crowd. Men rushed here and there, their arms filled with bundles of odd shapes and sizes. Women chatted gayly as they hurried toward the nearest subway entrances. The people seemed happy, and the weather was just right. Tham felt that it was going to be a good Christmas.

He watched the throng for a time, and then lighted a cigarette, took half a dozen puffs at it to get it going properly, bent his head against the force of the stinging wind, and crossed the street to enter Madison Square.

Though it was far too cold to sit on a bench, Thubway Tham wandered from force of habit to the corner where he did sit on pleasant afternoons. He was hoping that he might run across Detective Craddock—and he did.

Just then the big officer came slowly along the walk, chewing at a cigar and watching those who passed. As they met, Craddock grinned.

“Tho I thee your ugly fathe again, do I?” Thubway Tham said by way of greeting.

“Even so, Tham! This is indeed an unexpected pleasure,” Detective Craddock told him. “I little expected to run across you in this part of our fair city at this hour of the evening. I had a lurking suspicion that you traveled toward the south when dusk came and remained in that section about which the least said the better.”

“Ith that tho?” Tham wanted to know. “And what ith the matter with the part of town in which I live?”

“There is nothing the matter with that part of town, Tham, but some of the people there are under suspicion.”

“Uh-huh! Everybody ith under thuthpithion if we leave it to thome of you withe copperth,” Tham said. “I wath jutht thtandin’ here watchin’ the crowd.”

“It’ll bear watching—in spots,” Detective Craddock re­torted, grinning again.

“Tho?”

“So! It certainly gratifies me, Tham, to find you out in the open like this.

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