Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 43).djvu/11

ne of the few cases in which I had any association with the police was in connection with the affair of the shooting in Great Glenn Street.

There was, about that time, an epidemic of shooting in that part of London in which the inhabitants, for the most part, are certainly not natives of the great city. The police had made a raid upon a club which they had reason to believe was in reality nothing but a gambling house. On their gaining entrance the lights had been extinguished and firearms had been used by persons who, in the darkness, had been invisible. Three of the constables had been shot—one of them had been killed on the spot, the two others seriously wounded. In the confusion the assassins had escaped. My connection with the matter began on a Tuesday morning, some three weeks after the tragedy had taken place. On the preceding afternoon an arrest had been made in a house in Park Street. The man had made a desperate resistance; there had been shooting on both sides. He had actually killed two officers before he himself was rendered helpless. On the Tuesday morning of which I speak I had business in the City. I learnt, casually, that Park Street was quite close to the spot to which my business took me. I thought I would go and see what sort of place it was; but only persons who could prove that they had business there were allowed to pass into it.

When I saw the crowds which thronged the approaches I wished to go no farther. I never saw such faces. Seldom has that gift of mine for reading what people are saving merely by watching their lips had on me a more curious effect.

On the fringe of the crowd on my right was a thin, undersized, yet intellectual-looking man, on whose sallow cheeks the blue beginnings of a beard lent him an appearance which was almost ghastly. There could be