They Never Looked Inside Read Online Free PDF

ring – a precision of the cheap palais de danse.
    The Major, wondering for the moment whether he was arresting a malefactor or assisting the victim of an accident, laid hold of the man’s coat.
    A white weasel face looked up at him.
    There was a barely perceptible movement, the slurring sound of the parting of rotten cloth, and the Major was standing once more alone in the moonlit road.
    In his hand he held the remains of a jacket pocket.
    A black saloon car slid up. A gleam of silver along the roof showed the tell-tale wireless mast.
    “Excuse me,” said an offensively polite voice, “but perhaps you can assist us. We are looking for a youth in connection with a burglary . . .”
    “Aye,” said the Major. “A young keelie.”
    “I beg your pardon.”
    “A young hooligan. I heard him running and tried to stop him. Here’s some of his jacket.”
    “Thank you,” said the voice gravely. “Straight ahead?”
    “Aye, straight ahead.”
    The car shot on.
    The excitements of the night were not yet quite over. When McCann got back to his Hampstead flat he found a note from his sister propped against the clock.
     
    “Inspector Hazlerigg rang up this evening. He will ring you again tomorrow.”

 
3
The Strings Of A Racket
     
    “I expect,” said Inspector Hazlerigg, “that you find London a bit noisy after the peacefulness of occupied Germany.”
    “Quite so,” agreed Major McCann shortly. He was not feeling at his happiest, nor was he a man who disguised his feelings easily. “I’ve been in Austria, not Germany,” he added.
    “A charming country. The Tyrol especially, and Carinthia. It always seemed to me to combine the best of Germany and the best of Switzerland.”
    “No doubt,” said the Major. “I was in Vienna.”
    In addition to a very healthy hang-over – not so much the result of excess as of a too cordial mingling of the grain and the grape – he was suffering from that slight feeling of wariness which comes over even the most law-abiding the first time they make contact with the police machine.
    Absurd, of course.
    Hazlerigg seemed anxious to put his visitor’s mind at rest. “I am sorry to drag you down here so soon after your return,” he went on, “but what I have to ask you is highly confidential and even slightly irregular – it is emphatically not the sort of thing which could have been said over the telephone. Have a cigarette? They are part of the office props. I don’t have to pay for them.”
    McCann accepted a cigarette and relaxed provisionally.
    “I got your name,” went on the Inspector, “from your Regimental Association. They told me you were due back this weekend, so I took a chance and rang you up—spoke to your sister.” Hazlerigg hitched himself closer and leaned forward across the desk. “I expect you’re wondering what it’s all about.”
    McCann agreed.
    “Well, it’s like this. You may have read in the papers that we’ve been suffering recently from what is popularly known as a crimewave.”
    “We didn’t get many papers in Vienna,” said McCann. “I seem to remember something about it. Has it abated yet?” he added politely.
    “Not so’s you’d notice it. Rather the contrary. The tide is coming in. A few days ago, on Sunday evening, or, to be precise, very early on Monday morning, two jewellers’ shops in New Oxford Street were broken into. In one of them the thieves got nothing much for their pains, and made a safe, but comparatively inexpensive get-away.”
    “Too bad.”
    “In the other, however, a considerable haul of watches and jewellery was made.”
    “I read about it,” said McCann. “Wasn’t that where the swine killed the watchman’s terrier?”
    “That’s correct – and got away with over a thousand pounds’ worth of stuff.”
    “I hope you catch them,” said McCann, “and have them flogged. You can still flog for robbery with violence, can’t you?”
    “We have caught them,” said Hazlerigg, “or rather, we’ve