"
Now I like accuracy for its own sake, strive after it myself, and
am sometimes guilty of forcing it upon others. So this was more
than I could pass.
"That's not quite right," I put in mildly. "He never made use of
the knife."
The young clerk twisted his head round in its vase of starch.
"Chawley Peace killed two policemen," said he.
"No, he didn't; only one of them was a policeman; and he never
killed anybody with a knife."
The clerk took the correction like a lamb. I could not have
refrained from making it, to save my skin. But Raffles rewarded
me with as vicious a little kick as he could administer unobserved.
"Who was Charles Peace?" he inquired, with the bland effrontery of
any judge upon the bench.
The clerk's reply came pat and unexpected. "The greatest burgular
we ever had," said he, "till good old Raffles knocked him out!"
"The greatest of the pre-Raffleites," the master murmured, as we
passed on to the safer memorials of mere murder. There were
misshapen bullets and stained knives that had taken human life;
there were lithe, lean ropes which had retaliated after the live
letter of the Mosaic law.
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