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.”
“Ah, yes indeed,” and Jack sought something suitable.
And he would probably have found it also had not a key turned in the lock, the door opened and several burly though jolly and laughing policemen entered the cell and hauled him and Eddie from it.
Chief Inspector Wellington Bellis’s office was definitely “of the genre”. It had much of the look of Bill Winkie’s office about it, but being below ground level it lacked for windows. It didn’t lack for a desk, though, a big and crowded desk, with one of those big desk lamps that they shine into suspects’ eyes.
The walls were lavishly decorated with mug shots, press cuttings and photographs of crime scenes and horribly mutilated corpses. Eddie recognised the victims pictured in several of these gory photographs: the P.P.P.s who had been savagely done to death by the kindly, lovable white-haired old Toymaker’s evil twin during the exciting adventure that he and Jack had had but months before.[7]
Upon the floor was a carpet, which like unto Bill’s dared not to speak its name. And it was onto this carpet that Jack and Eddie were flung.
“This treatment is outrageous,” Jack protested. “I protest,” he also protested. “I demand to speak to my solicitor.”
“All in good time,” said Bellis, settling himself into the chair behind his desk and gesturing to the two that stood before it. “Seat yourselves. Would you care for a cup of tea?”
“A cup of tea?” Jack got to his knees and then his feet.
“Or coffee?” said the chief inspector.
“I’d like a beer,” said Eddie.
Chief Inspector Bellis frowned upon him.
“Or perhaps just a glass of water.” Eddie arose and did further dustings down of himself.
“You’ll have to pardon the officers,” said Bellis, leaning back in his chair and further gesturing to Jack and Eddie. “Sit yourselves down, if you will. The police officers do get a little carried away. They are so enthusiastic about maintaining law and order. They do have the public’s interests at heart.”
“They don’t have one heart between the lot of them,” said Eddie, struggling onto a chair. “They’re all as brutal as.”
“They overcompensate,” said Chief Inspector Bellis. “I expect it’s just the overexuberance of youth, which should really be channelled into sporting activities. That’s what it says in this book I’ve been reading – Learn to Leap Over Candlesticks In Just Thirty Days, by J. B. Nimble and J. B. Quick. Perhaps you’ve read it?”
7
Which is to be found chronicled in that damn fine book (and