Clutch of Constables Read Online Free PDF

standing by him.
    “Have you ever done this before, Dr Natouche?” she asked. “Taken a waterways cruise?”
    “No,” he said. “Never before. It is a new experience.”
    “For me too. I came on an impulse.”
    “Indeed? You felt the need of a break perhaps after the strain of your public activities.”
    “Yes,” Troy agreed, unaccountably pleased that he did, after all, know of her show and had recognised her. Without so much as noticing that she felt none of her usual awkwardness she said: “They
are
a bit of a hurdle, these solemn affairs.”
    Dr Natouche said: “Some of your works are very beautiful. It gave me great pleasure in London to see them.”
    “Did it? I’m glad.”
    “They are casting off, if that is the right phrase. Would you like to go up?”
    Troy went up on deck. Tom, the boy, had loosed the mooring lines and laid them out smartly. The Skipper was at the wheel. The
Zodiac
’s engines throbbed. She moved astern, away from her wharf and out into the main stream.
    The motor-cyclists were still in the lane. Troy saw young Tom signal, not very openly, to them and they slightly raised their hands in return. The girl straddled her seat, the boy kicked and their engine broke out in pandemonium. The machine, curved, belched and racketed up the lane out of sight.
    Dr Natouche appeared and then Mr Lazenby. The eight passengers stood along the rails and watched the riverbanks take on a new perspective and become remote. Spires and waffle-irons, glass boxes, mansard roofs and the squat cupola of the Norminster Town Hall were now merely there to be stared at with detachment. They shifted about, very slowly, and looked over one another’s shoulders and grew smaller. The
Zodiac
, now in mid-stream, set her course for Ramsdyke Lock.

Chapter 2 – The Wapentake
    “He had been operating,” Alleyn said, “in a very big way in the Middle East. All among the drug barons with one of whom he fell out and who is thought to have grassed on him. From drugs he turned to the Old Master racket and was certainly behind several very big jobs in Paris. Getting certificates for good fakes from galleries and the widows of celebrated painters. He then crossed to New York where he worked off the fruits of this ploy until Interpol began to make interested noises. By the way, it may be noted that at this juncture he had not got beyond a Blue Circular which means of course—”
    The boots of the intelligent-looking sandy man in the second row scraped the floor. He made a slight gesture and looked eager.
    “I see you know,” Alleyn said.
    “Ay, Sir, I do. A Blue International Circular signifies that Interpol cannot place the identity of the creeminal.”
    “That’s it. However, they were getting warmer and in 1965 the Jampot found it necessary to transfer to Bolivia where for once he went too far and was put in gaol. Something to do with masquerading in female attire with criminal intent. From there, as I’ve said, he escaped, in May of last year, and sometime later arrived with an efficiently cooked-up passport in a Spanish freighter in England. At that juncture the Yard had no specific charge against him although he featured heavily in the discussions we were holding in San Francisco. He must have already been in touch with the British group he subsequently directed, and one of them booked him in for a late summer cruise in the Zodiac. The object of this manoeuvre will declare itself as we go along.
    “At this point I’d like you to take particular note of a disadvantage under which the Jampot laboured. In doing this I am indulging in hindsight. At the time we are speaking about we had no clear indication of what he looked like and our only photograph was a heavily bearded job supplied by the Bolivian police. The ears are hidden by flowing locks, the mouth by a luxuriant moustache and the jaw and chin by rich and carefully tended whiskers.
    “We now know, of course, that there was, in his appearance, something that