Dark Side of the Street - Simon Vaughn 01 (v5) Read Online Free PDF

the money was never recovered?"
    "Not one farthing." Black handed across another photo. "That's George Saxton. He escaped from Grange End last year. It was a carbon copy of the Wilson affair. Half a dozen men broke-in under cover of darkness and actually brought him out. Not a word of him since then. As far as we're concerned he might as well have ceased to exist."
    "Which leaves Youngblood presumably?"
    "Only just or I miss my guess," Black said grimly and pushed another file across.
    The face that stared up from the photo was full of intelligence and a restless animal vitality, one corner of the mouth lifted in a slight mocking smile. Mallory was immediately interested and quickly read through the details on the attached sheet.
    Harry Youngblood was forty-two years of age and had joined the Navy in 1941 at the age of seventeen, finishing the war as a petty officer in motor torpedo boats. After the war he had continued in the same line of work, but on more unorthodox lines and in 1949 was sentenced to eighteen months imprisonment for smuggling. A charge of conspiracy to rob the mails had been dropped for lack of evidence in 1952. Between then and his final conviction in May 1961 he had served no further terms of imprisonment, but had been questioned by the police on no fewer than thirty-one occasions in connection with indictable offences.
    "Quite a character," Mallory said. "He seems to have tried his hand at just about everything in the book."
    "To be honest with you, I always had a sneaking regard for him myself and I don't usually have much time for sentimentality where villains are concerned. If he'd taken another turning after the war instead of that smuggling caper, things might have been very different."
    "And now he's doing twenty years?"
    "That's the theory. We're not too happy about what might happen considering the way his two confederates have gone. He's at Fridaythorpe now under maximum security, but there's a limit to how harshly he can be treated anyway. He had a slight stroke about three months ago."
    Mallory glanced at the photo again. "I must say he looks healthy enough to me. Are you sure it was genuine?"
    "An electroencephalograph can't lie," Black said. "And it definitely indicated severe disturbance to wave patterns in the brain. Another thing--you can apparently simulate a heart attack by using drugs, but not a stroke. He was very thoroughly checked. They had him in Manningham General Infirmary for three days."
    "Wasn't that dangerous? I should have thought it a perfect situation for someone to break him out."
    Black shook his head. "He was unconscious most of the time. They had him in the enclosed ward with two prison officers at his side night and day."
    "Couldn't he be treated at the prison?"
    "They haven't the facilities. Like most gaols, Fridaythorpe has a sick bay and a visiting doctor. Anything serious is treated in the enclosed ward of the local hospital. If a prisoner is likely to be ill for an extended period he's transferred to the prison hospital at Wormwood Scrubs. That doesn't apply to Youngblood with a complaint like his. In any case the Home Office would never sanction his transfer. The very fact that it's a hospital means that it can't possibly offer maximum security. They'd be frightened to death that one of the London gangs might seize their opportunity to try to break him out."
    Mallory lit another cigarette, got to his feet and walked to the window. "All very interesting. Of course the Commissioner sent me a very full report, but I must say your personal account has clarified one or two things." He turned, frowning reflectively. "As I see it, it all boils down to one thing. You want us to supply you with an operative. Someone who could be introduced into prison in the normal way and who, at least in theory, might be able to win Youngblood's confidence. Why can't you use one of your own men?"
    "Most crooks can spot a copper a mile away--just one of those things and it works both