Edgar Wallace

The Missing Million Edgar Wallace

"YOU'VE dropped a flower, sir," said the beef-eater. Detective-Inspector James Sepping blushed and looked down guiltily at the three violets that lay on the gravelled ground. He did not look like a detective, and seemed too youthful to hold any such exalted rank. He had the appearance of an athletic young man about town. "No-don't pick them up, unless it is against the regulations of the Tower of London to drop flowers around. They look good there." The burly Yeoman of the Guard, in his quaint sixteenth-century dress, fingered his grey beard and looked suspiciously at the visitor. Jimmy Sepping appeared to be perfectly sober. "You're not supposed to drop paper, but there's nothing about flowers-thank you, sir." Jimmy slipped a coin into the man's hand. "I've an idea I've seen you in the Tower before, sir," said the beef-eater. "I have been here before," drawled Jimmy vaguely. He had brought that drawl from Oxford to the Metropolitan Police, and it had been the stock joke of the division to which he was drafted in the days when Officer Sepping wore uniform and walked a beat, reciting the Iliad to keep himself awake. He stood by the flowers until the yeoman strolled away, for he was a sentimentalist, and every year on a certain day he came to the Tower of London to drop a flower on the spot where Fritz Haussman had smiled into a smiling sky. Fritz was a German and a spy. Jimmy had run him to earth and arrested him. Jimmy's evidence had procured his doom. And then one fine morning in May they had brought him out to shoot him, and he came gaily. "May I smoke a cigarette?" he asked, and the Provost-Marshal gave him permission. He took the cigarette from his case and was returning it to the waistcoat pocket just above his heart, when he stopped and laughed softly. "