"
Mr. James Leander Winter, Chief Inspector under the Criminal
Investigation Department, whistled softly.
"Tut, tut!" he said. "One can never trust the newspapers. Reading this
morning's particulars, it looked dead easy."
"Tell me how it struck you. Sometimes the uninformed brain is vouchsafed
a gleam of unconscious genius."
Winter appeared to be devoting his mind to circumventing the vagaries of
a fragile tobacco-leaf. He was a man of powerful build, over forty, heavy
but active, deep-chested, round-headed, with bulging blue eyes which
radiated kindliness and strength of character. The press photographer
described him accurately to Grant. The average Londoner would have taken
him for a county gentleman on a visit to the Agricultural Show at
Islington, with a morning at Tattersall's as a variant. Yet, Sam Weller's
extensive and peculiar knowledge of London compared with his as a
freshman's with a don's of a university. It would be hard to assess, in
coin of the realm, the value of the political and social secrets stowed
away in that big head.
"First, I must put a question or two," he said, smiling at a baby which
cooed at him from the shaded depths of a passing perambulator.
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