(_Extracted from the Correspondence of the London Police_.)
FROM CHIEF INSPECTOR THEAKSTONE, OF THE DETECTIVE POLICE, TO SERGEANT
BULMER, OF THE SAME FORCE.
London, 4th July, 18--.
Sergeant Bulmer,
This is to inform you that you are wanted to assist in looking up a case
of importance, which will require all the attention of an experienced
member of the force. The matter of the robbery on which you are now
engaged you will please to shift over to the young man who brings you
this letter. You will tell him all the circumstances of the case, just
as they stand; you will put him up to the progress you have made (if
any) towards detecting the person or persons by whom the money has been
stolen; and you will leave him to make the best he can of the matter now
in your hands. He is to have the whole responsibility of the case, and
the whole credit of his success, if he brings it to a proper issue.
So much for the orders that I am desired to communicate to you. A word
in your ear, next, about this new man who is to take your place. His
name is Matthew Sharpin; and between ourselves, Sergeant, I don't think
much of him. He has not served his time among the rank and file of the
force. You and I mounted up, step by step, to the places we now fill;
but this stranger, it seems, is to have the chance given him of dashing
into our office at one jump,--supposing he turns out strong enough to
take it. You will naturally ask me how he comes by this privilege. I can
only tell you, that he has some uncommonly strong interest to back him
in certain high quarters, which you and I had better not mention except
under our breaths. He has been a lawyer's clerk; and he looks, to my
mind, rather a mean, underhand sample of that sort of man. According to
his own account,--by the bye, I forgot to say that he is wonderfully
conceited in his opinion of himself, as well as mean and underhand to
look at,--according to his own account, he leaves his old trade and
joins ours of his own free will and preference. You will no more believe
that than I do. My notion is, that he has managed to ferret out some
private information, in connection with the affairs of one of his
master's clients, which makes him rather an awkward customer to keep in
the office for the future, and which, at the same time, gives him hold
enough over his employer to make it dangerous to drive him into a corner
by turning him away. I think the giving him this unheard-of chance among
us is, in plain words, pretty much like giving him hush-money to keep
him quiet. However that may be, Mr. Matthew Sharpin is to have the case
now in your hands; and if he succeeds with it, he pokes his ugly nose
into our office, as sure as fate. You have heard tell of some sad stuff
they have been writing lately in the newspapers, about improving the
efficiency of the Detective Police by mixing up a sharp lawyer's clerk
or two along with them. Well, the experiment is now going to be tried;
and Mr. Matthew Sharpin is the first lucky man who has been pitched on
for the purpose. We shall see how this precious move succeeds. I put
you up to it, Sergeant, so that you may not stand in your own light by
giving the new man any cause to complain of you at head-quarters, and
remain yours,
Francis Theakstone.