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How dear and kind! cried the lady gratefully, and with amazing disregard of her husband's presence. The two ex-policemen had not expected anything so interesting as this, and their expressions were worthy of study. They had been engaged, through a private agency, to assist and support an injured husband, and afterwards to appear as witnesses of a vulgar clandestine meeting, as they supposed.
Fifteen of you are wanted." As each was named, he stepped out of the ranks and took his place in the death-row. Paul Seigneret was one of them. He seemed perfectly calm, and gently pressed the hand of his Seminary friend who was not summoned. In the courtyard they were joined by thirty-five ex-policemen, so-called hostages like themselves.
Many are ex-policemen, and make up the pack that hunts the well-dressed lady shop-lifter, the gentle pickpocket, the agile burglar, the Paris Apache, and the common murderer of the Bill Sykes type; they are good dogs in their way, if you do not press them, though they are rather apt to give tongue.
Of course, he may be first class in spite of these disqualifications, but the presumption in the first instance is that he is no longer alert or effective, and in the second that in one way or another he is not honest. Agencies recruited from deposed and other ex-policemen usually have all the faults of the police without any of their virtues.
Van Torp watched her with genuine admiration, and when she looked at him and nodded her thanks again, he unconsciously smiled too, and answered by a nod of approval. The fair-haired foreign gentleman turned to his two ex-policemen with considerable dignity. 'You have heard and seen, he said impressively. 'I shall expect you to remember all this when you are in the witness-box.
But when they are not ex-policemen, they are always ex-something else, since there is no college for detectives, and it is not probable that any young man ever deliberately began life with the intention of becoming one. Edgar Poe invented the amateur detective, and modern writers have developed him till he is a familiar and always striking figure in fiction and on the stage.
And that Jacky was correct in his surmise there could be but little doubt both the outlawed ex-policemen had Winchesters, taken from the Chinese packers whom they had murdered. "Go on, Jacky, my boy, for God's sake!" he said hoarsely, placing his hand on the blackboy's shoulder. "Missie may be killed if we do not hurry."
'If you say another word against your wife in my hearing I'll make it the last you ever said to anybody. Now you'd better be gone before I telephone for the police. Do you understand? The two ex-policemen employed by a private agency thought the case was becoming more and more interesting; but at the same time they were made vaguely nervous by Mr. Van Torp's attitude.
What have you to say? he asked. 'To you? Nothing! She deliberately turned her back on her husband, rested one elbow on the mantelpiece and set one foot upon the low fender, drawing up her velvet gown over her instep. But a moment later she heard other footsteps in the room, and turned her head to see Mr. Van Torp enter the room between two big men who were evidently ex-policemen.
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