Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 3, 2025
He found the picture on his desk at Police Headquarters. Greig had preceded him by two hours to the building in Mulberry street, and was deep in the intricacies of the case when Britz summoned him. He entered the room, followed a moment or two later, by Manning. "What do you make of it?" asked Britz, holding up the picture. "Pretty jagged wound," commented Manning.
"Yes, let him stay there for the present. He's an obstacle to the progress of the investigation, if not the actual murderer." Again Manning studied the newspaper account of the crime. "Confound it!" he exploded, crumpling the paper. "I've read every line printed about the case. I've talked with the Coroner and discussed the case with Greig for half an hour this morning.
"Yes," pursued Britz, "Greig and I have been treated to a series of surprises even now I haven't recovered entirely from my bewilderment." "Well, go ahead and spring them," urged Manning. "They can't be much more astounding than the one I've bumped into."
They did not clip their sentences and use pet words, and they did not smoke cigarettes all the time. The women, although not nearly so well dressed or attractive to look at, were much more agreeable to one another, and one was a perfectly wonderful musician. Her playing delighted us all. She played the things of Greig that I played to Antony on the evening at Dane Mount.
"Gosh!" says I. "I hope you don't call two hours of Greig frivolous." That seems to be his idea, though. Anything that ain't connected with quotations on carload lots or domestic demands for middlings he looks at scornful. He tells me he's on the trail of a big foreign contract, but is afraid its going to get away from him. "Maybe you'd linger on for a year or so if it did," I suggests.
Manning and Greig looked at each other in blank bewilderment. In the light of Britz's explanation of the case, his confident assertion could only be regarded as a vain boast. Or was it the expression of a last, flickering hope, to which he clung desperately, like a man staking his last dollar on a thousand-to-one chance?
Having dismissed my detail, I was going to my tent when Sergeant Major Greig sang out, "Sergeant Fuller, the colonel says you may consider yourself under arrest, and you will confine yourself to your tent." I knew of course the reason for this. I stayed within for a couple of days, and then wrote a statement of the case and got a drummer to take it to the colonel.
"Your sister undoubtedly has been arraigned in court by now and probably is at the Tombs. The coroner will give you permission to visit her." Britz walked out of the office and proceeded slowly to Police Headquarters. In the lobby he encountered Greig. "Come into my office," said Britz. "And ask the chief to come also."
James Greig, the kind cottar who sheltered them for the better part of three weeks, was but a poor man, and two additional inmates consumed the meal which he had laid in for himself and his wife, so that he was obligated to apply twice for the loan of some from a neighbour, which caused a suspicion to arise in that neighbour's mind; and he being loose-tongued, and a talking man, let out what he thought in a public at Kilmarnock, in presence of some one connected with the soldiers then quartered in the Dean-castle.
Towards the end of April when the case looked very serious, Mr. Brown had a long conversation with the Rev. Dr. Greig, his old pastor, and with members of his family. "In that conversation," says Mr. Mackenzie, "he spoke freely to them of his faith and hope, and we are told poured out his soul in full and fervent prayer," and he joined heartily in the singing of the hymn "Rock of Ages."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking