Nine Buck's Row Read Online Free PDF Page B

puddles of muddy water. The sky was a soggy gray. Everything looked dismal and sordid, all brown and gray and black, no color to be seen.
    â€œWho am I going to talk to this time?” I asked.
    â€œSir Charles Warren himself,” Caine said, brushing aside the mop of blond waves on his forehead. “He wants to speak to you, Miss Susannah. It isn’t everyone gets a chance to see sir Charles himself. You should feel honored.”
    â€œIndeed? Everything I’ve read about him would indicate that the man’s a fool.”
    â€œHold on, Miss! You shouldn’t talk that way about Sir Charles. He’s Her Majesty’s Police Commissioner, appointed by the Queen herself. A mighty important man, he is.”
    Sir Charles had been a general in the Royal Engineers before Queen Victoria elevated him to his present post, and he was primarily a military man. He had appointed several army officers to executive posts in the police force, and he ran Scotland Yard as though commandeering his own private army. Many people felt it was a less effective organization since his appointment. The public lacked confidence in him, and there was a great dissatisfaction with his methods of enforcing the law, even among the ranks of his own men.
    The way he had handled the demonstration last year was a prime example of his methods. Over twenty thousand unemployed men had staged a peaceful demonstration in Trafalgar Square on November third, and Sir Charles had quickly put an end to it with his regiments of guards. Swinging their clubs, the guards had swooped down on the demonstrators as though they were a band of mutinous natives, bashing heads, breaking arms, quelling the “riot.” Two hundred of the demonstrators were badly injured, and two men died of wounds inflicted by Sir Charles’s men. The newly appointed commissioner claimed he had merely been keeping the peace, but many Londoners felt otherwise. Millie’s father, for one, claimed he should be hung from the highest gallows as a traitor to England.
    This was the man I was going to see.
    Sergeant Caine left me at Scotland Yard, and I was escorted down endless corridors by a pinch-faced clerk with myopic eyes and a poorly fitting green jacket. He set me down in a drafty waiting room and disappeared. I sat on the uncomfortable chair, waiting. The corridors swarmed with activity: bobbies clomping down the halls with grim faces, clerks rushing here and there with sheaves of papers, important-looking officials moving with ponderous steps, exchanging grave comments. No one paid the least attention to me. I watched the pigeons outside fluttering about the window ledges. An hour passed.
    I grew more and more impatient. I had been here for an hour and a half now, and no one had so much as offered me a cup of tea. Thinking about the way I had been treated this week, how my story had been either ignored or laughed at, I fumed all the more, determined to leave if I wasn’t summoned within the next five minutes. I had suffered a great shock, the loss of a relative, yet I had been shuffled about like a piece of useless baggage. It wasn’t right. If no one would listen to me anyway, why should I sit here at the disposal of a man I already disliked? I wasn’t a criminal to be kept on tenterhooks.…
    The clerk with the myopic eyes coughed discreetly, standing in front of me. I had been so engrossed in my rebellious thoughts that I hadn’t seen him approaching.
    â€œThis way, Miss Hunt,” he said. “Sir Charles will see you now.” He spoke the name with terrified reverence.
    He led me down a short hall, showed me into the office and closed the door behind me. The office was very large and beautifully appointed, with deep maroon carpet and walls panelled in mahogany. A fire burned cheerfully in a gray marble fireplace, swords crossed over it, and there were various military items on display: a scarlet uniform in a glass case, on the walls