Detective Ben
Ben the tramp, the awkward Cockney with no home and no surname, turns detective again – and runs straight into trouble.Ben encounters a dead man on a London bridge and is promptly rescued from the same fate by a posh lady in a limousine. But like most posh ladies of Ben’s acquaintance, this one isn’t what she seems. Seeking escape from a gang of international conspirators, Ben is whisked off to the mountains of Scotland to thwart the schemes of a poisonous organisation and finds himself in very unfamiliar territory.With its startling prelude, Detective Ben is a glorious adventure, told with the unsurpassed mixture of humour and creepy thrills that made J. Jefferson Farjeon famous and Ben the tramp one of the best-loved characters of the Golden Age.
Читать Detective Ben онлайн беплатно
J. JEFFERSON FARJEON
Detective Ben
COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain for Crime Club by W. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1936
Copyright © Estate of J. Jefferson Farjeon 1936
Cover design by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover background images © shutterstock.com
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008156008
Ebook Edition © August 2016 ISBN: 9780008156015
Version: 2016-06-14
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Happenings on a Bridge
Chapter 3: Questions Without Answers
Chapter 4: The Man in the Next Room
Chapter 5: What the Morning Brought
Chapter 8: Northward Through the Night
Chapter 9: Mr Smith, of Boston
Chapter 10: Exit Mr Smith, of Boston
Chapter 16: Ben Murders Himself
Chapter 17: Consultation in the Mist
Chapter 18: In the Wake of MacTavish
Chapter 20: Someone at the Door
Chapter 21: Development of a Game
Chapter 23: Meanwhile, Outside—
Chapter 26: Back to Muirgissie
‘I wouldn’t mate, if I was you,’ said Ben. ‘It looks narsty!’
Thus, on a bridge at night, spoke one ragged man to another. Beneath them oozed dark water wending its inscrutable way towards the sea. Above them were the stars.
‘Mindjer, I ain’t sayin’ that life’s plumpunnin’,’ continued Ben, since his observation elicited no response. ‘If yer was to arsk me wot it was orl abart, I couldn’t tell yer, that’s a fack. Yer born without so much as by yer leave, and then they chucks yer this way and that till yer fair giddy. But—well, we gotter ’ang on—that’s right, ain’t it? England expecks every man to ’ang on, Gawd knows why, but yer can’t git away from it. ’Ang on!’ He paused to peer downwards at the inky river. ‘Any’ow, if I ever does pop meself orf, I’d sooner do it with a bang than a gurgle!’
He removed his eyes from the inky river. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. A moment later he was looking at another unpleasant sight. A small object gleamed up from the pavement by the stone parapet, and stooping to pick it up he discovered that it was a pin on which was mounted a miniature skull.
‘Well, I’m blowed!’ he muttered. ‘Do yer belong to one o’ them Suissicide Clubs?’
He held the hideous little decoration out to his ragged companion. Then he found himself staring at the most unpleasant sight of all. The dejected attitude in which his companion was leaning over the parapet was not that of a man contemplating death, but of a man already dead!
Ben had seen plenty of dead men in his time. It seemed to him that as soon as a person died, Fate rang for him to come and view the body. ‘Lumme, I’ve stopped noticin’ ’em!’ he had once boasted. But the boast had been bravado. He always noticed them, and they always affected his spine. This one affected his legs, as well, and before he knew it he was twenty yards away. Run first and think afterwards. That was his Napoleonic motto.
In the distance chimed a clock. The metallic notes hung slow and heavy on the air. One—two. Then from the direction of the chiming came another sound. The sound of an approaching car.
‘If yer runs, they’ll ’ave yer for it,’ Ben told himself with a gulp. ‘Stay where yer are and look ’appy.’
The only thing he had to be happy about was the substantial shadow in which he stood.
The approaching car drew closer. It also grew larger. Watching it from his shadowy sanctuary as it sped on to the bridge, Ben was impressed by the fact that it was not an ordinary car. That, perhaps, was not surprising, since nothing at this moment was ordinary. Ben’s mood was not ordinary. The bridge was not ordinary; it had become distorted into a grotesque, unnatural travesty of itself, painted with the sinister insecurity of nightmare colours. The little pin with its miniature skull was not ordinary. The ragged figure leaning limply against the parapet twenty yards away was not ordinary …
