The Second Golden Age of Mystery & Crime by Ruth Chessman

Author:Ruth Chessman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: crime, mystery detective, sleuth, murder
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

THE HARRINGTON FARTHING

Originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, April 1959.

Walter Paige was a thief. In this modern England of 1700 a man had to have his trade, else how could he live? Walter was an expert in his line, and it is no exaggeration to say that his skill as a thief was a matter of life and death, for the laws were strict and mercy was rare. Still, he might have lived out his years in peace, prosperous from robberies conceived by his daring mind, but for a mischievous turn of character that did not vanish with his boyhood.

In January of the year he was twenty-three he paused on an impulse to kiss the lovely lips of an alluring victim, and the kiss being acknowledged—and unexpectedly returned—the pause lengthened. It was truly the worst kind of luck that the husband returned in time to defend his possessions.

Walter was found guilty of the theft of her ladyship’s jewels and, discreetly, of nothing more. But this was enough-indeed, more than enough-to bring him to the edge of the gallows. On his final night he was held in a bleak cell with one other condemned man, each to share in the dubious glory, for it was to be a double hanging.

“A pretty boy you are, too,” his companion, an old man, commented, not unkindly. “The ladies will call it a pity you die.”

“I needn’t go to the ladies for that,” Walter retorted. “I call it a pity myself.”

“Do you indeed?” the old man queried in sincere surprise. “You really wish to go on living? To be hungry save when you steal for your food? To have no bed you can call your own? To turn from the filth of all you call home to—something worse? No, even had I your youth and that yellow hair of yours, even that flashing smile and that great height, still I would choose this end rather than a going on with life as I have always known it. Young man, I welcome the drop that comes at dawn! I can hardly wait for an end to all I suffer.”

“Oh, my poor old friend!” Walter exclaimed compassionately, and talked of it no more. Well he knew the picture this old man, Coogins by name, drew of the poor. It was only by a mixture of good luck and good blood that he had improved on his own lot, for he had a better heritage than most. His mother had been a dancer before her fall, and a nobleman—though which one she could not say—had been his father. In him was mingled the best blood of the kingdom with the wiliest grace imaginable, for his mother had been first not only in England but in the world. Knowing of his heritage had given him an audacity to augment his skill, and he had thought never to run afoul of the law. And in truth, it was only a moment’s amorousness that had brought him to this pass.

He

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