Death Stops the Frolic by George Bellairs

Author:George Bellairs [Bellairs, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agora Books
Published: 2020-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

10

Enter a Gangster

About nine o’clock next morning, Nankivell resumed work. He felt bleary-eyed from last night’s late sitting and his mouth was like dry blotting-paper from overmuch smoking. A day in the country would just have suited him, with something to wet his whistle on the way, and he decided to visit the searchlight camp as soon as possible. Patchett, marvellously none-the-worse, was already afield collecting alibis and hoped to save himself a journey to Moggridge’s farm at Leather Lea to confirm Burt’s statement, by catching the old farmer at the weekly cattle-market, still held in Swarebridge, although in an attenuated form.

Nankivell was just turning over the last of his morning’s post preparatory to sallying out, when a disturbance arose in the porch of the police station.

A shrill, childish voice alternating with that of an angry and bothered woman.

“You’re comin’ in, I tell you, and tellin’ Mr Nankivell wot you ’eard…”

“Aw. I don’t wanna. I ain’t a stool-pigeon.”

“You what?” The woman’s voice rose in a shrill interrogative crescendo.

“I ain’t squealin’!”

“You’d better not try squealing or yellin’. Won’t do you no good. You got to tell your tale, or I’ll set your father on you again and you know wot that’ll mean…”

“Third-degree wiv the buckle-end of his belt agen,” came the prompt, unflinching reply.

“Don’t talk none o’ your geometry to me. If this is what education does to you…”

The Superintendent opened the door just in time to receive in his arms the figure of a small, chubby, sulky-looking boy propelled by a furious maternal shove.

“There. Look wot you done you…you… Oh, put ’im in the lock-up, Mr Nankivell. I can’t do no good with ’im.”

“I ain’t goin’ in no cooler,” said the urchin, his voice pitched in a lower, less defiant key, with almost a trace of tears in the offing.

The turbulent newcomer was Cuthbert Silversides, aged nine. The name of Cuthbert was anathema to him, and among his associates he was known as Spider. Why, no one knew, except that young Silversides chose it for himself after a visit to the pictures. For Cuthbert was a gangster. He was the leading light of a small unruly crowd of Mr Hewston’s boys, whose high spirits led them into all kinds of behaviour which they imagined to be lawless and daring. To their elders, however, it was sometimes amusing, more often a nuisance, but invariably on the right side of the fence. Their education hitherto had been mainly in the hands of Mr Truscott, manager of the local picture-house, who illicitly allowed them to sneak-in to see his “A” films. Cuthbert’s boyish prattle was liberally interspersed with juicy phrases from one-time Chicago vocabulary. Theoretically, he was against the police. Standing now before Nankivell, he had his doubts.

Mrs Silversides, the tired-looking, hard-working wife of one of Pogsley’s electricians and mother of three more younger than “Spider,” was unwashed and a bit dishevelled, as though, hearing of her son’s adventures, she had risen straight from bed, flung on her garments and rushed him off to confess.

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