Sharp Practice.
Standing with his back to the fireplace, his legs slightly apart, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes fixed on the ceiling, Mr Sharp, Police Superintendent of the Grand National Trunk Railway, communed with himself and dived into the future.
Mr Sharp’s powers of diving were almost miraculous. He had an unusually keen eye for the past and the present, but in regard to the future his powers were all but prophetic. He possessed a rare capacity for following up clues; investigating cases; detecting falsehoods, not only of the lip, but of the eye and complexion; and, in a word, was able to extract golden information out of the most unpromising circumstances. He was also all but ubiquitous. Now tracking a suspicion to its source on his own line in one of the Midland counties; anon comparing notes with a brother superintendent at the terminus of the Great Western, or Great Northern, or South-Eastern in London. Sometimes called away to give evidence in a county court; at other times taking a look in at his own home to kiss his wife or dandle his child before dashing off per express to follow up a clue to John O’Groats or the Land’s End. Here, and there, and everywhere—calm, self-possessed, and self-contained, making notes in trains, writing reports in his office, making discoveries and convictions, and sometimes making prisoners with his own hands by night and day, with no fixed hours for work, or rest, or meals, and no certainty in anything concerning him, save in the uncertainty of his movements, Mr Sharp with his myrmidons was the terror of evil doers, and, we may truly add, the safeguard of the public.
Little did that ungrateful public know all it owed to the untiring watchfulness and activity of Mr Sharp and his men. If he and his compeers were to be dismissed from our lines for a single week, the descent of a host of thieves and scoundrels to commit wide-spread plunder would teach the public somewhat severely how much they owe to the efficient management of this department of railway business, and how well, constantly and vigilantly—though unobtrusively—their interests are cared for.
But to return. Mr Sharp, as we have said stood communing with himself and diving into the future. Apparently his thoughts afforded him some amusement, for his eyes twinkled slightly, and there was a faintly humorous twist about the corners of his mouth.
David Blunt sat at a desk near him, writing diligently. Against the wall over his head hung a row of truncheons. Besides the desk, a bench, two or three wooden chairs, and a chest, there was little furniture in the room.
Blunt’s busy pen at length ceased to move, and Sharp looked at him.
“Well, Blunt,” he said, “I see nothing for it but to make a railway porter of you.”
“By all means, sir,” said Blunt, with a smile, laying down his pen.
“Gorton station,” continued Sharp, “has become a very nest of thieves. It is not creditable that such a state of things should exist for a week on our line. They have managed things very cleverly as yet. Five or six bales of cloth have disappeared in the course of as many days, besides several loaves of sugar and half-a-dozen cheeses. I am pretty sure who the culprits are, but can’t manage to bring it home to them, so, as I have said, we must convert you into a porter. You have only been once engaged on this part of the line—that was at the accident when you were so hard on poor Mr Gurwood, so that none of the Gorton people will know you. I have arranged matters with our passenger superintendent. It seems that Macdonell, the station-master at Gorton, has been complaining that he is short-handed and wants another porter. That just suits us, so we have resolved to give you that responsible situation. You will get a porter’s uniform from—”