“For what?” Jack enquired.
“The arrival of the constables, of course.”
“Ah,” said Jack. “And you expect their arrival imminently?”
“I do,” said Smokey Joe. “I pressed the secret button beneath my counter when you entered my store. It connects by a piece of knotted string to the alarm board at the police station.”
“Most unsporting,” said Eddie.
“Which is why I engaged you in a lot of time-wasting toot,” said Smokey Joe, “to give the police time to appear.”
“Then all that business about chickens?” Jack asked.
“That wasn’t toot. You should fear those chickens. I know whereof I speak.”
“You failed to mention that I should similarly fear the arrival of the constables.”
“I kept that to myself. Now just you stand still, or I will be forced to take the law into my own hands and shoot you myself.”
“For stealing one hundred cigars?” Jack threw up his hands. Smokey Joe cocked the pistol.
“Easy, please,” said Jack, his hands miming “easy” motions and miming them rather well. “I will pay you for the cigars. There’s no need to go involving the police.”
“But I never bought the cigars,” said Eddie. “It wasn’t me, Jack, honest.”
“I know it wasn’t, Eddie.”
“It was too,” said Smokey Joe. “And his soggy feet made puddles on my floor. I had to employ the services of a mop and bucket. And they don’t come cheap of an evening, I can tell you. They charged me double.”
“I’ll pay you whatever you want,” said Jack.
“With what?” whispered Eddie.
“I’ll write you an IOU,” Jack told Smokey Joe. “I’m a prince, you know.”
“Then why aren’t you wearing a crown?”
“Actually, I am,” said Jack. “It’s under my fedora.”
“It never is,” said Smokey Joe.
“It never is, is it?” said Eddie.
“In fact,” said Jack, “you can have the crown and all the jewels on it. Will that be payment enough?”
“It must be a very small crown to fit under that hat,” said Smokey Joe, cocking his head in suspicion.
“Would you mind doing that again?” asked Eddie.
“Why?” said Smokey Joe.
“Well, you did it rather well, and it’s not the sort of thing you see every day.”
Smokey Joe obligingly did it again.
“Even better the second time,” said Jack.
“Thanks,” said Smokey Joe.
“So, would you like to see the crown?”
“More than anything else I can presently imagine.”
“Right, then,” said Jack, and he swept off his hat with a flourish. It was a considerably flourish. A considerably hard and sweeping flourish. As flourishes went, this one was an award-winner. So hard and sweeping was this award-winning flourish that it knocked the pistol right out of Smokey Joe’s hand and sent it skidding across the store floor.
“Run!” shouted Jack to Eddie. And both of them ran.
Although they didn’t run far.
They ran to the door and through the doorway and then they ran no further. They would have dearly liked to, of course. They would dearly have loved to have run to Bill’s car and then driven away in it at speed. But they did not. They came to a standstill on the pavement and there they halted and there they raised their hands.
Because there to greet them outside the store were very many policemen. Some stood and some knelt. All of them pointed guns. They pointed guns as they stood or knelt and they laughed and grinned as they did so. For these were Toy City’s laughing policemen, though this was no laughing matter.
A very large and rotund policeman, a chief of policemen in fact, leaned upon the bonnet of Bill’s splendid automobile. He was all perished rubber and he was smoking a large cigar. It wasn’t a Turquoise Torpedo, of course, but an inferior brand, but he puffed upon it nonetheless and seemed to enjoy this puffing. Presently he tapped away ash and shortly after he spoke.
“Well, well, well,” said Chief Inspector Wellington Bellis, for it was none but himself. “Surely it is Eddie and Jack. Now what a surprise this is.”
The “shaking down” and the “cuffing up” were uncomfortable enough. The “flinging into the police van” lacked also for comfort, and the unnecessary “necessary restraint”, which involved numerous officers of the law either sitting or standing upon Jack and Eddie during the journey to the police station, lacked for absolutely any comfort whatsoever. In fact, the unnecessary “necessary restraint” was nothing less than painful. The “dragging out of the police van”, the “kicking towards the police cell” and the “final chucking into the cell” were actually a bit of a doddle compared to the unnecessary “necessary restraint”. But not a lot of fun.
“I can’t believe it,” Eddie said, at least now uncuffed and brushing police boot marks from his trenchcoat. “Wrongly accused and arrested. And this only our first day on the case.”
“My first and indeed my last,” said Jack.
“Now don’t you start, please.”
“Look at me,” said Jack. “They trod on me, they sat on me. That Officer Chortle even farted on me. And I could never abide the smell of burning rubber.”
“We’ll soon be out of here,” said Eddie. “As soon as my solicitor arrives.”
“You have a solicitor!”
“I’m entitled to have one. I know the law.”
“But do you actually have one?”
“Not as such,” said Eddie. “It’s always details, details with you.”
“And it’s always trouble with you.”
“You love it really.”
“I don’t.”
The face of the laughing policeman whose name was Officer Chortle, a name that made him special because it was printed across his back, grinned in through the little door grille.
“Comfortable, ladies?” he said.
“I’m innocent,” said Eddie. “Wrongly accused. And Jack’s innocent, too. He’s an innocent bystander.”
“Looks like a hardened crim’ to me,” chuckled Officer Chortle. “And a gormster.”
“How dare you,” said Jack. “I’m a prince.”
“Aren’t no princes,” laughed Officer Chortle. “That mad mayor we had did away with princes.”
Jack cast Eddie a “certain” look.
“And,” said Office Chortle, “who can forget Edict Number Four?”
“I can,” said Eddie. “What was it?”
“The one about curtailing police violence against suspects.”
“Ah, that one,” said Eddie. “How’s that going, by the way?”
Officer Chortle chuckled. Menacingly. “And when it comes to it,” he continued, “you look a lot like that mad mayor.”
“No I don’t,” said Eddie. “Not at all.”
Officer Chortle squinted at Eddie. “No, perhaps not.” He sniggered. “The mad mayor had matching eyes and those really creepy hands.”
“They were not creepy,” said Eddie. “And neither was the mayor mad.”
“Not mad?” Officer Chortle fairly cracked himself up over this. “Not mad? Well, he wasn’t exactly cheerful when the mob tarred and feathered him.”
Eddie shuddered at the recollection. “Has my solicitor arrived?” he asked.
“I’ll have to ask you to stop,” said Officer Chortle. “Solicitor, indeed! If you keep making me laugh like this I’ll wet myself.”
“We are innocent,” said Eddie. “Let us out please.”
“The chief inspector will interview you shortly. You can make your confessions to him then if you wish. Although if you choose not to, I must caution you that me and my fellow officers will be calling in later to beat a confession out of you. And as we do have a number of ‘unsolveds’ hanging about, you will find yourselves confessing to them also, simply to ease the pain.”
And with that Officer Chortle left, laughing as he did so.
“Perfect,” said Jack. “So it’s prison for us, is it?”
“It might be for you,” said Eddie, “if it’s anything more than a summary beating. You’re the meathead, after all. You have some status. It will be the incinerator for me. I’m as dead as.”
“We have to escape,” said Jack.
“I seem to recall,” said Eddie, “that you do have some skills with locks. Perhaps you’d be so good as to pick this one on the door and we will, with caution, go upon our way.”