The Catherine Wheel by Patricia Wentworth Read Free Book Online Page B

don’t know that outside of two or three people there’s been anything that would make you, so to speak, a suspected character so far as the criminal classes are concerned. In other words, speaking generally, I don’t think they’d be on to you.”
    He was watching her all the time he spoke, wondering if she would take the job or not. Behind a massive façade his mind worked shrewdly. He leaned back in his chair, hands folded at his considerable waistline—heavy, square hands with capable fingers. The overhead light picked out the thinning patch in the strong black hair, and showed up the florid colour in the broad face. The brown eyes bulged a little. Frank Abbott in his irreverence allowed himself to be reminded of peppermint bulls-eyes.
    Miss Silver said, “Yes?” on an enquiring note.
    Lamb brought himself forward with a jerk, leaned across the table, and said,
    “Smuggling.”
    Miss Silver looked reproof. During her youth she had been engaged in what she herself called the scholastic profession. It had often stood her in good stead that she looked and talked like an old-fashioned governess. She said,
    “Indeed?”
    “There’s a lot of it going on, you know—bound to be with the customs so high—and in the ordinary way it wouldn’t come to us. No, there’s more in it than that. First of all there’s drugs. Of course we’re always up against that, because as long as people will pay a fancy price for their stuff the drug-runner will stick at nothing to get it to them. Now there’s a place we’ve had our eye on for some time—an old inn on the coast road beyond Ledlington. March—let me see, you know March, don’t you? He’s the Chief Constable down there now. Used to be a pupil of yours, didn’t he?”
    Miss Silver coughed and smiled.
    “A long time ago, Chief Inspector.”
    “Oh well, we don’t any of us get any younger. He’s done pretty well for himself, hasn’t he? Does you credit. Well, as I was saying, March has had his eye on this place for some time. It’s got an old smuggling history. Then it changed hands. Recently it’s changed again—come back to the family that used to own it. But the manager has stayed on. Nothing in that, you may say—nothing against the man, except that he’s half Irish, half Portuguese.”
    Frank Abbott gazed down into the fire. Lamb’s dislike of foreigners never failed to amuse.
    The Chief Inspector allowed a bulging gaze to rest for a moment upon his profile, and continued in a louder voice and with a quite portentous frown.
    “That’s not his fault, of course, and nothing against him so long as he behaves himself. He’s a British subject, and he’s got an English wife. Nothing against either of them. That’s the trouble. There’s nothing March can get his hands on to anywhere, but there’s a kind of feeling about the place—it may be just the old smuggling history, or it may be something new. Well, that’s as far as the drug business goes, but now there’s something more. All these jewel robberies—you’ll have seen about them in the papers—it’s not so easy for them to get the stuff out of the country, because everything’s being watched. We got just one small shred of a clue after the Cohen affair the other day. You remember old Cohen woke up and fired at the men. He hit one of them, and the others carried him off. We were pretty hot on their trail, and they left him for dead by the side of a country road. We picked him up, and he wasn’t dead—not then—but he died before we could get him to the hospital. He was muttering to himself. One of the constables had his wits about him and listened. He couldn’t make head or tail of most of it, but he did get two words, and he had the sense to report them. They were ‘old Catherine.’ Well, the inn on the Ledlington road is called the old Catherine-Wheel.”
    There was a silence. Miss Silver looked thoughtful.
    Frank Abbott had not sat down. He stood against the mantelpiece, tall, slim,