The Detective Wore Silk Drawers Read Free Page B

anchorage, a body could wait until a sufficiently generous reward was advertised by relatives. A patient professional would watch the papers day by day and make his discovery only when the premium was right.
    “How do we begin, then, Sergeant?”
    Cribb was rarely at a loss. “You begin at once, Constable. Take a walk across the bridge to Fleet Street. See the boxing reporters. Bell’s will be the first. Then the Referee and The Sporting Life. Extract anything you can about pugilism in London, on any scale at all. Make it quite plain you’re not implicating them. That clear?”
    “Yes, Sergeant. Entirely clear.” Cribb, as usual, keeping his subordinate occupied.
    “And Thackeray.”
    “Sergeant?”
    “You might try the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic office as well.”
    ¦ For the second time in two days Cribb appeared that afternoon at Scotland Yard in the office of his inspector. As initiator of this interview, the sergeant was in a buoyant mood. Jowett was plainly ill at ease. He had consented to seeing Cribb when an urgent appointment was requested.
    His subordinates rarely visited him voluntarily.
    “Well, Sergeant. What’s your business? Have you had second thoughts?”
    Cribb enjoyed a moment’s hesitation while the Inspector fumbled, lighting his pipe.
    “Not really, sir. It does relate to our conversation yesterday.”
    “It does? You challenge my figures, perhaps?”
    “Oh, no,” Cribb reassured him. “All quite accurate.”
    “What is the problem, then?”
    In the cab between Waterloo Road and Great Scotland Yard, Cribb had rehearsed this conversation.
    “No problem, sir. Merely seeking confirmation.”
    “Are you, then? Confirmation of what?” The pipe was defying ignition.
    “Something you told me yesterday. I want to put it into practical effect, sir.”
    “Very good, Sergeant. I’m glad to hear that. But you need not refer everything to me, you know. My intention was to encourage initiative, not extinguish it.” Pleased at this pithy rejoinder, the Inspector relaxed a little and propped the pipe on its stand in front of him. “Since you’re here, though, you may as well explain what is bothering you.”
    “Bothering isn’t quite the word, sir. You asked me to reexamine my methods of investigation.”
    “Quite so. And you have?”
    “In a manner of speaking, sir. Intuition, you said.”
    “I most certainly did. And inspiration.”
    “And flair, sir.”
    “Good! And now you have a case, and you require guidance on the appropriate method of investigation.” Jowett intoned his words like a schoolmaster who has recognized a glimmer of intelligence in the class dunce.
    “No, sir.”
    The Inspector reached for his pipe.
    “All I require from you, sir,” continued Cribb, “is your agreement to a novel method of investigating a murder.”
    “Novel . . . ? What exactly have you in mind, Sergeant?”
    “I’ve reason for thinking a corpse found in my division is that of a pugilist.”
    “A boxer, you mean? That is the modern term, I believe.”
    “No, sir. I mean a knuckle fighter.”
    Jowett frowned. “But I don’t understand you—”
    “London Prize-Ring rules,” explained Cribb. “No gloves. Supposed to have been stopped ten or more years ago. It goes on, though. Not in my division. Other parts of the city.”
    “You’re sure of this?”
    “Can’t ignore the evidence of a headless pug, sir. Clear signs of having scrapped in the last week or so. Without the mittens.” Cribb put his hands on the edge of the Inspector’s desk and leaned forward confidentially. “I’m taking this corpse very seriously, sir; very seriously indeed.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Cribb straightened and walked nonchalantly to the window. “Passed an hour with the ‘Dead Persons Foul Play Suspected’ lists this morning, sir. My dinner hour. Thought I’d remembered another headless one last January. I found it, and one more last year for the set, if you’ll excuse a card-player’s