Read As Berry and I Were Saying for Free Online

jeweller’s window in the Waterloo Road. The man in the middle was a fence, and the other two were thieves. They’d brought the fence along, to have a look at the stuff which they proposed to steal – and to say what he’d pay them for it. Apparently, they were satisfied; for that night the job was done, and an hour or so later the stuff was handed over in the bar-parlour of a pub in Notting Dale.”
    “Did they go down?”
    “No action was taken – I think, by our advice. The information was full, but the evidence was too thin.”
    “What does that mean?” said my wife.
    “Evidence is information which can be given in Court. Most information can’t be, because it’s hearsay or the informer can’t be called. But it’s almost invariably true. If all information were evidence, not one defendant in fifty thousand would get off. I’m speaking of forty years ago, but, so far as indictable offences were concerned, unless the police were dead certain, they never made an arrest.”
    “Which means that no innocent man was ever sent down?”
    “Yes.”
    “What about poor Adolph Beck?”
    “That was a case of pardonably mistaken identity. Beck was the very image of the man who committed the crime. There was…one other case. But, by the grace of God, no damage was done.”
    “Proceed,” said Berry.
    I hesitated. Then – “I shall have to leave out a little.”
    “Even now?”
    “Even now. However, I’ll do my best, for it is an astonishing tale. I wasn’t in the case, but I knew rather more about it than most people did.
    “A man of means dwelt at his country place. This was known as The Grange. He kept no men-servants, though the house was solitary. He was broad and strong and courageous. One night he was sitting at dinner with his wife and his sister-in-law. The dining-room windows gave to a terrace: the windows were shut, but the curtains were not drawn, although it was dark. A shot was fired from the terrace, and the bullet went by his head. Wisely enough, he didn’t go for the windows, but, instead, rushed from the room, through the hall and down a passage. This led to the terrace from which the shot had been fired. He was out to get the man, unarmed though he was. But the man was out to get him. He must have known the house, for he was in the passage before his victim was. And he had a knife in his hand. They grappled in the passage, and staggered and swayed, still grappled, into the hall. There the women were gathered, helpless and horrified – the wife, the sister-in-law and one of the maids. And there, before their eyes, the husband was stabbed to death. His murderer turned and ran the way he had come.
    “The house had no telephone, and I don’t think the police had cars. So it was quite a long time before they arrived. Of course they did all they could, but all wheels turned more slowly in 1909. It was two nights later that a constable was walking his beat in a neighbouring town. He was passing a yard which was shut by iron-barred gates. As usual, he threw the beam of his lantern round the yard. And he saw a man. He asked him what he was doing. The man’s answers didn’t satisfy him, so he had him out of the yard and marched him off. The station-sergeant wasn’t any better satisfied than his subordinate, so the man was charged and detained. ‘Loitering on enclosed premises with intent to commit a felony.’ Early the following morning, this particular police-station received the description of the man who had murdered the master of The Grange. And when they looked again at the man they had put in a cell – well, he tallied with the description in every way.
    “It was the deadest case I ever knew. He was put up for identification and all three women instantly picked him out. It appeared that he was a cousin of the dead man, that he was a ne’er-do-well, that he knew The Grange and, by the dead man’s orders, had recently been turned from its doors. He bore such traces of the struggle as