The Game Played in the Dark

The Game Played in the Dark
by Ernest Bramah
from Max Carrados, Methuen (1914), London.
"It's a funny thing, sir," said Inspector Beedel, regarding Mr. Carrados
with the pensive respect that he always extended towards the blind
amateur, "it's a funny thing, but nothing seems to go on abroad now but
what you'll find some trace of it here in London if you take the trouble
to look."
"In the right quarter," contributed Carrados.
"Why, yes," agreed the inspector. "But nothing comes of it nine times
out of ten, because it's no one's particular business to look here or the
thing's been taken up and finished from the other end. I don't mean
ordinary murders or single-handed burglaries, of course, but"--a modest
ring of professional pride betrayed the quiet enthusiast--"real
First-Class Crimes."
"The State Antonio Five per cent. Bond Coupons?" suggested
Carrados.
"Ah, you are right, Mr. Carrados." Beedel shook his head sadly, as
though perhaps on that occasion some one ought to have looked. "A
man has a fit in the inquiry office of the Agent-General for British
Equatoria, and two hundred and fifty thousand pounds' worth of faked
securities is the result in Mexico. Then look at that jade fylfot charm
pawned for one-and-three down at the Basin and the use that could
have been made of it in the Kharkov 'ritual murder' trial."
"The West Hampstead Lost Memory puzzle and the Baripur bomb
conspiracy that might have been smothered if one had known."

"Quite true, sir. And the three children of that Chicago
millionaire--Cyrus V. Bunting, wasn't it?--kidnapped in broad daylight
outside the New York Lyric and here, three weeks later, the dumb girl
who chalked the wall at Charing Cross. I remember reading once in a
financial article that every piece of foreign gold had a string from it
leading to Threadneedle Street. A figure of speech, sir, of course, but
apt enough, I don't doubt. Well, it seems to me that every big crime
done abroad leaves a finger-print here in London--if only, as you say,
we look in the right quarter."
"And at the right moment," added Carrados. "The time is often the
present; the place the spot beneath our very noses. We take a step and
the chance has gone for ever."
The inspector nodded and contributed a weighty monosyllable of
sympathetic agreement. The most prosaic of men in the pursuit of his
ordinary duties, it nevertheless subtly appealed to some half-dormant
streak of vanity to have his profession taken romantically when there
was no serious work on hand.
"No; perhaps not 'for ever' in one case in a thousand, after all,"
amended the blind man thoughtfully. "This perpetual duel between the
Law and the Criminal has sometimes appeared to me in the terms of a
game of cricket, inspector. Law is in the field; the Criminal at the
wicket. If Law makes a mistake--sends down a loose ball or drops a
catch--the Criminal scores a little or has another lease of life. But if he
makes a mistake--if he lets a straight ball pass or spoons towards a
steady man--he is done for. His mistakes are fatal; those of the Law are
only temporary and retrievable."
"Very good, sir," said Mr. Beedel, rising--the conversation had taken
place in the study at The Turrets, where Beedel had found occasion to
present himself--"very apt indeed. I must remember that. Well, sir, I
only hope that this 'Guido the Razor' lot will send a catch in our
direction."
The 'this' delicately marked Inspector Beedel's instinctive contempt for
Guido. As a craftsman he was compelled, on his reputation, to respect

him, and he had accordingly availed himself of Carrados's friendship
for a confabulation. As a man--he was a foreigner: worse, an Italian,
and if left to his own resources the inspector would have opposed to his
sinuous flexibility those rigid, essentially Britannia-metal, methods of
the Force that strike the impartial observer as so ponderous, so
amateurish and conventional, and, it must be admitted, often so
curiously and inexplicably successful.
The offence that had circuitously brought "il Rasojo" and his "lot"
within the cognizance of Scotland Yard outlines the kind of story that is
discreetly hinted at by the society paragraphist of the day, politely
disbelieved by the astute reader, and then at last laid indiscreetly bare in
all its details by the inevitable princessly "Recollections" of a
generation later. It centred round an impending royal marriage in
Vienna, a certain jealous "Countess X." (here you have the discretion of
the paragrapher), and a document or two that might be relied upon (the
aristocratic biographer will impartially sum up the contingencies) to
play the deuce with the approaching nuptials. To procure the evidence
of these papers the Countess enlisted the services of Guido, as reliable a
scoundrel as she