Фредерик Браун - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 37, No. 6. Whole No. 211, June 1961

The obvious thing to do was to check with modus operandi files for that rare offender, a burglar who would not hesitate to use a cosh, and use it savagely. Dane called his Sergeant and sent him off to New Scotland Yard to deal with the chore.

Gill stepped forward, standing rigidly at attention, and cleared his throat.

“Sir, if I might make a suggestion.”

“What?” Dane turned from his contemplation of the uninteresting contents of Marshall’s pockets. “Not now, Constable. I’m busy. Talk to your Sergeant about it, and I think you’d better go back to your beat. Here, give me your book.”

Dane initialed the notebook where Gill had described his departure from routine and the reason for it.

In the hallway Gill passed the time of the day with a man from his division who was guarding the front door. The little dog was there as well and came up to be fondled, rolling on its back in an absurdly puppyish fashion. Gill gently rubbed the proffered stomach and said good night to the man at the door.

When he resumed his march along Hertford Street, he was chuckling softly. Dane had always disliked him, but that was no ordeal. Gill had all the stubborn independence of the native Londoner, so he was quite disinterested if his opinions were not welcomed, especially by a superior.

When he returned to Savile Row at 3:30 a.m., his tour of duty finished, Gill reported his round in the Night Occurrence Book, gave a cheery farewell to the Desk Sergeant, and went down the station steps, slipping off his duty armband as he headed toward his small flat at the back of Beak Street, a hundred yards away.

Mrs. Gill, as stout and kindly as her husband, stirred when he came into the bedroom to change swiftly into civilian clothes. She woke up as the door re-opened.

“Now, John! You’re not going out again, surely, man?”

Gill nodded.

“Sorry, dearie. Duty calls, as they say.” His voice was more natural and his vowels broader in his own home. “Been a murder on my perishing beat. Old Dane went all sniffy when I tried to give him a tip.”

“Him! Stuck-up pig!” Mrs. Gill shook her gray braids. “If you’re going to put him in his place, off you go, John, and good luck. But see you take care, there’s a lamb.”

The summer sky was lightening as Gill moved quickly toward Hertford Street, taking care to avoid his mates and consequent, time-wasting gossip.

There was an empty shop close to Farrar’s house, and Gill secreted himself in its sheltering doorway. He knew Dane was a slow worker, and he was not surprised when the Inspector came out thirty minutes later and drove away in a divisional car.

Gill waited patiently. At one time he was compelled to walk briskly into a neighboring street when his section relief appeared, walking his beat; but he still managed to keep the Farrar house in view.

At precisely 6:00 a.m., Farrar came out carrying a suitcase, and this initiated a problem. No matter what the story books say, it is impossible to shadow a man in deserted streets that are bright.

Gill solved it neatly by haling a milk delivery van, backing this with production of his warrant card, and appealing for help.

The driver was reluctant to abandon his round, but the romantic possibilities of a police chase overwhelmed his sense of duty.

Gill climbed to the seat beside the driver, secure in the comforting knowledge that a private car would probably have been too obvious for shadowing purposes; but tradesmen’s vans could do the most erratic things and get away with them.

Farrar had only reached the end of Hertford Street when they moved off. As they turned into Park Lane, Farrar hailed a taxi; the milk van moved up and was following close behind on a short journey that led through the clean bright streets and ended in the courtyard of Victoria Station.

Gill’s face was impassive as he left his temporary assistant and followed Farrar into the main waiting room of the great terminus. He watched the man buy a ticket and walk toward the departure platforms.

According to the time indicator before which Farrar paused, there was a train leaving for the coast in exactly ten minutes. Gill moved a little more quickly toward the entrance barrier, but it was no good taking foolish chances. Not until Farrar’s ticket was actually held out to the collector did Gill’s large hand grip the man’s arm.

“Mind coming over here, sir? I’d like a word with you.”

Farrar started violently and began to protest, then became curiously silent as he recognized the calm, bovine face, even though it looked startlingly commonplace without the distinguishing helmet.

Beyond the hearing of the interested ticket collector, Gill recited the formula of arrest, producing his warrant card at the same time.

Farrar’s “All right, it’s a cop” was reassuring to Gill, but the constable spent a miserable fifteen minutes on the way back to Savile Row. He was taking a very long chance indeed, and if he had made a mistake, dismissal and damnation would be his inevitable reward; nor was it any consolation to know that he had added to his probable enormities by making an arrest on railway property, which is private, and without seeking the cooperation of the Railway Police.

The Desk Sergeant at Savile Row station gasped audibly as Gill brought in the white-faced Farrar. Like a good policeman he listened unemotionally to the charge, writing stolidly in the Day Occurrence Book, but becoming human after the prisoner had been sent to the detention cells.

“You haven’t half been up to something, Gill — in civvies and all!”

“Yes, Sergeant. But I’ve got my uniform trousers on.” He pointed hopefully to his legs, and the Sergeant groaned aloud.

“Wearing your uniform for your private pleasures! You’ll get it in the neck all right, particularly if you’ve made a bloomer and pinched a respectable citizen. You’re out of your mind, Gill!” He sucked a hollow tooth with a sound of enjoyment. “Probably burn you at the stake, they will, chum!”

The station Inspector was informed, and, grave-faced, he telephoned Inspector Dane, who arrived forty minutes later, torn between fury at his lost sleep and rage at the apparent madness of Constable Gill.

He listened without comment to the story, then went to see Farrar, leaving Gill in a state of morbid depression which did not lift, even when Dane returned in a baffled mood.

“So you were right!” His voice rasped like a file on metal. “Farrar’s fingerprints check. Central’s just phoned verification that he’s Markey Bankan!”

Bankan? Something seemed to snap in Gill’s anxious mind: Bankan, one of the cleverest rogues in the business who was also that rarity among criminals, an educated man with a brain and a sense of humor, who took a special delight in cat-and-mouse games with the police.

“So-o, you’re a detective, eh?” Dane’s tones were acrimonious. “Perhaps you’ll enlighten me how you deduced all this so brilliantly, Gill, and without sanction of Police Law which, I imagine, you may have heard of a bit in your time?”

“Yes, sir.” The big constable writhed, but discipline held back the obvious retort. “I was a bit curious and took а look at the dead man when you were out of the room, sir. He’d fallen on the table — but the bottle of beer close to his head wasn’t disturbed.”

“Well?”

“It was a flimsy sort of table, sir. The beer ought to have...” Gill paused.

Dane glanced across the room at the silent station Inspector, present as routine required in such cases.

“That seems remarkably casual evidence — which I had noticed myself.” And then Dane added in a withering voice, “Not that it was important, considering the fact that Farrar, as he calls himself, admitted he went for the beer and found the man dead when he returned with it.”