Daredevil – Leslie Charteris

Six of the constables were killed, and a number were more or less seriously wounded. Then he went along to the room where the thirteen unlucky ones were under guard awaiting the arrival of a van. Their spirit left nothing to be desired. “You might as well let us go, guvnor,” said one hefty specimen. “It’ll only mean trouble if you take us to the station.”

“Yeh!” agreed Storm ironically. “And the trouble will be right up under your hats!” The man looked at him queerly. “D’you really think you’ll get us to the station?” he asked, and Storm showed his teeth. “I’ll think more than that, for your benefit,” he said unpleasantly. “I think in about two months’ time you will all hang by your necks until you are dead!” Teal, on a round of inspection, stopped Storm to air a theory.

The detective was taking the set-back with great patience. He stripped the wrapping from a wafer of chewing-gum and inserted the sweet in his mouth with care. “Has it occurred to you,” he said, “that even a lot of thugs like that bunch wouldn’t be armed to the teeth, every man of ’em, in the ordinary way, if they’d thought they were all snug and chummy?” This was a far-fetched suggestion, Storm opined, but Teal’s confidence was undamped.

He went to the telephone in the hall and called Exchange. “Central-Inspector Teal,” he introduced himself. “Has this number been called in the last hour?… Thank you.… Ah!… public call box at Monument Station you said?… Thanks.” “Three bluffs were put over in this shack to-night,” Storm murmured thoughtfully as Teal replaced the receiver. “I don’t think it matters which one that call gave away.” He looked at the detective sombrely. “Teal! This is Hell’s own song and dance act! They were waiting for us, and they guessed they could make a slick enough getaway when the time came; they just stayed on to liven things up a bit for us.

That’s nerve! I wish the swine didn’t seem so damned sure of themselves.” “You surprise me—after that speech of yours at the Enquiry,” Teal said drily. Shortly afterwards one of the Flying Squad’s vans arrived with the detachment which had guarded the Bank Station. The officers were unloaded, and the captured members of the Triangle shipped instead, with two armed men for company. A third armed man rode beside the driver.

Probably Susan Hawthorne got a lot of her courage and independence from her father, old Smiler Hawthorne, who in his time had been nearly everything and nearly everywhere—a tall, grizzled man who was generally broke but always unbeatable. Anyway, wherever she got it from, she needed it all; for old Hawthorne crossed the Divide one night with the same reckless optimism as he had gone through life. He left her his name and thirty pounds, the rest of his fortune having disappeared only a week before, together with the promoter of a company whose sole asset was a diamond field wherein no diamonds were.

And Susan Hawthorne faced a blank future with a smile that was reminiscent of old Smiler’s cheeriest effort, which you only saw when things were very black and the proposition to be tackled was exceeding tough. He was that sort of man, and she was his daughter. She felt very much alone in the world. She had lost touch with her own friends in the accompanying of her father in his happy-go-lucky aimless globe-trotting; and most of the friends he had picked up himself—and they were legion—were scattered in odd corners of the earth.

In any case, she was not one to look for charity. Wherefore she went to Lord Hannassay, because he seemed to be the only friend of her father’s who was in England. She went with some trepidation, and was not unpleasantly surprised, and more than a little nervous, when she found that he was not so inaccessible as his name and position seemed to indicate. “I remember you—sixteen, weren’t you?—queer kid—all eyes and legs.

And your father?” He had a curiously disjointed manner of speaking, conveying the impression that his thoughts moved faster than his mouth could frame them. “My father died a month ago,” she said. His grim face softened for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Your father was one of the few men I have ever really liked.” After a while she broached the subject of her visit. It was not a task she relished, for she was desperately afraid he would misunderstand. His face remained inscrutable, but the blue eyes searched her face.

The fingers of his right hand drummed on the table. She learnt afterwards that this was a trick of his when he was embarrassed. “What can you do?” he asked. “Shorthand—book-keeping—type-writing —anything?” “Nothing, I’m afraid.”

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 04318903ca290573
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 3,916,682 bytes (3.735 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 338
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 484.99 minutes
• Total Words: 96,997
• Total Characters: 552,990
• Average Words per Page: 286.97
• Average Characters per Page: 1636.07

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