Long Spoon Lane by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online

the gun battle that had ended the siege. The injured policeman was mentioned as well, with commendation for his courage.
    It was the last newspaper that troubled her. It was edited by the highly respected and influential Edward Denoon, and he had written the leading article himself. She read it with an increasing sense of unease.
     
Yesterday morning while the residents of Myrdle Street were preparing for another day of labor, the police interrupted their meager breakfast to tell them that anarchist bombers were about to strike. Old men shuffled out into the street, women with frightened children at their skirts grasped the few belongings they could carry, and fled.
    Minutes later the shabby row of houses erupted in flames. Bricks and slates flew like missiles, crashing into the windows and through the roofs of neighbors streets away. Black smoke gushed into the morning air and terror and destruction struck scores of ordinary people, ruining homes, lives, and the peace that citizens of England have a right to expect.
    The men responsible were pursued and hunted down and cornered in a tenement in Long Spoon Lane. Police laid siege to them and there was a gun battle in which twenty-two-year-old Constable Field, of Mile End, was shot down, but owing to the courage of his comrades was rescued from death.
    Magnus Landsborough, the only son of Lord Sheridan Landsborough, was less fortunate. His dead body was found in an upper room. It is not known at present what he was doing there, whether taken as hostage, or with the anarchists of his own will.
    Then we must ask ourselves what manner of barbarian commits such atrocities? Who are they, and what conceivable purpose do they imagine it may serve? Surely it can only be intended to terrorize us into submission to some dreadful rule, which we would not submit to otherwise? Does this act of violence stem from foreign soil, the first wave of conquest from another country?
    This newspaper does not believe so. We are at peace with our neighbors near and far. There is no intelligence, however discreet, to implicate any other nation. Rather, we fear it is a political ideal of such a twisted nature that men would impose their ideal of society by destroying all that we have worked for through centuries of growth and labor, through the civilizing arts and sciences and the inventions that improve the comfort and welfare of mankind. Then on the ashes of our lives they hope to build their own order, as they think it should be. They may call themselves socialists, or anarchists, or whatever they will. They are savages, by any name, criminals who must be hunted down, arrested, tried, and hanged. That is the law, and it is there to protect us all, the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor alike.
    But these madmen who would destroy our lives are powerful, and all too obviously they are well-armed. Our police, who are the soldiers of this civil army, to defend us, must be well-armed also. It is they who risk their lives, and sometimes lose them, to form the shield between us and the chaos of violence and anarchy. We cannot afford to send them into battle without weapons, and it would be morally indefensible for us to try.
    Not only must we provide them with adequate guns in their hands, but also we must legislate to give them the weapons of law they need in order to find among us the wicked and the mad who wish our destruction. The law requires proof of crime, as it should. That is the defense of the innocent. But a policeman who is prevented from searching the person or the property of someone he suspects of criminal intent can only wait helplessly until the act is committed, and then avenge the victim. We need more than that. We deserve, we must have, a prevention of the crime before it occurs.
     
    She put the paper down and stared across the kitchen in disquiet.
    Gracie came in from the back step and looked at her. “Wot’s ’appened?” she said anxiously. “Summink bad?” When she had