Chapter 270: Crime Dens (K)

Chapter 269 The Crime Den (5K)

London, Kensington district, in a coffee shop at the corner of Oxford Street.

The fine rain was drizzling, covering the windows of the cafe with a thin layer of mist, Arthur stirred the spoon of the white porcelain cup, along with his stirring, the milky white milk seeped a little bit into the pure black coffee and melted with it, accompanied by the melted square sugar cubes together to blend the taste.

In the chair across from him sat a blonde woman wearing a pale green pleated skirt and a fashionable sun hat with a wide brim as deep as the night.

Needless to say, she was none other than Miss Fiona Evans, one of the most capable ladies in all of London.

Fiona looked at Arthur not slow stirring his coffee cup, after a long time did not see him speak, some dissatisfaction lifted up the cup of tea and spoke: ”In the past, when I met you, I could still get a couple of unpleasant compliments, how is it that the longer we have known each other, the less I can get? Mr. Hastings, is there something about me that makes you dissatisfied?”

Arthur put down the spoon when he heard this, raised his head and smiled, “Fiona, it’s not that I don’t want to praise your beauty. But after being taught a lesson by you last time, I have reflected a lot. I think I have to apologize to you, it was my fault for praising your beauty from before, I’m sorry, Fiona.”

Fiona held up her visor and asked curiously, “Hmm? What have you figured out?”

The Red Devil, who was sitting at the next table eating a candy bar, just laughed twice when he heard this, “It’s starting, it’s starting again, Arthur, this is a trick you kid is really getting more and more skillful at.”

Arthur glanced at the Red Devil and smiled as he answered, “I think I can use the beauty of appearance to describe a butterfly or a flower, but it is inappropriate to use the beauty of appearance to describe a person. It is true, as Joseph Joubert said: beauty is something that can only be observed with the eyes of the heart. My mind’s eye, on the other hand, has long been blinded, so I don’t think I’m qualified to evaluate you yet.”

Agares propped his head up with one hand, chewing on a candy bar while chanting, “Not even willing to say a word of flattery anymore, Arthur, you’re really getting lazy. But it’s no big deal, as long as a woman holds a favorable opinion of you, even if you go kill and set fire to her, she thinks you must have some reason that’s hard to talk about. This chick doesn’t really hate you right now, so you can just cheat casually, but be careful not to play it off.

What did Plato say? The pain of being a woman is that when she has a physical relationship with the man she loves, she naturally sees that relationship as a forever, but men can be different, they may just see it as another rendition of a way of life. As the book says: between a man and a woman, it’s better to keep the relationship simple until there’s a commitment to marriage, otherwise, there’s really no turning back the years.

Heh, it’s hard to believe that this passage actually came from an old bachelor who has been single all his life.”

Arthur gave a middle finger under the table at the Red Devil in the guise of a relationship guru, but the smile on his face didn’t diminish by half.

Fiona looked at him with a skeptical look on her face, she hesitated for a moment and her delicate lashes fluttered for a moment, “That passage doesn’t quite sound like something you could say, but on second thought, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong with you saying it. After all, those hands of yours hold a knife Monday through Saturday, and leap across the keys of the theater on Sundays. I have to say, Mr. Hastings, you really are the most complicated and difficult person I’ve ever met in my life.”

Arthur took a sip of his coffee, “You’ve been to one of my shows?”

Fiona looked out the window at the traffic and took a sip from her teacup, “It would be nice if you knew a few more tunes.”

Arthur saw that the mood was pretty much laid out and immediately picked up on the conversation, “I’d certainly like to spend more time working on tunes, but Fiona, you understand that I’ve had other things on my mind lately.”

Fiona sighed as soon as she heard that, cupping her cheeks in both hands, “I knew it, the circle has to circle back to work. Bernie Harrison, right? Didn’t I tell you everything? That idiot took the bait a long time ago, and it’s still pretty easy for a girl under my hand to set up a sex-crazed man. Don’t worry, in a few moments you’ll be able to go to 57-B Oxford Street and get the man on time.”

Arthur fumbled for his pocket watch, his fingertips must have lifted the cover, “Well …… that’s just about the right time, and by the time Mr. Harrison is in place, my journalist friends I’ve arranged to meet should be arriving soon.”

Pink fingernails tapping on the tabletop, Fiona winked at Arthur with one hand over her lips, “So while we’re at it, shouldn’t we talk about the price? I took a day off work to run here today to set things up for you, and you brought the press with you, so while that lousy Harrison deserved it, the little sisters under my command are innocent. Even leaving out my part, Mr. Hastings, you’ve got to offer that poor, helpless young girl a little moral compensation, don’t you?”

Hearing this, Arthur pursed his lips and smiled as he put down his teacup, “Fiona, I thought that with the friendship between the two of us, this kind of small job would be considered to be over. Besides, haven’t I already advanced you a sum of six hundred pounds before? And it’s all in cashier’s checks from the Bank of England, so you can cash out over four thousand grams of gold at any time if you want.”

Fiona fiddled with the blonde hair hanging at her temples and bargained, “Mr. Hastings, I don’t expect you to be as generous as you were before, but you can’t afford to be bloodless. Calling on my little sister isn’t as expensive as calling on me, but you have to pay something for calling a girl around. You may not know it, but the sisters in the East End look up to you as the sun over London. You don’t want to spoil your image of greatness in our minds, do you?”

Arthur calmly replied back as he slipped sugar into his cup, “Is that so? Since I arrived in London five years ago, this is the first time I’ve known the sun to be visible in this hellhole.”

Fiona’s eyebrows were drawn to the corners of her eyes as she saw that the bargaining was not working, and she slumped down onto the table in a deflated manner, waving her hand and saying, “Well, well, well, well, whoever made you ……?”

No sooner had Fiona’s words left her mouth than she heard Arthur’s voice come through.

“It’s not like I said no.”

“You promise?”

Fiona bounced up from the tabletop in surprise, her breasts jolting perhaps from the sheer force of the rising motion.

Seeing this, Arthur just slightly wrinkled his eyebrows and gently shook his head, “It’s okay to stuff less, I remember the first time I saw them, they obviously weren’t this big. You can’t help but remind me of a couple of Frenchies when you jiggle around like that.”

Fiona’s face was red and burning as she tapped the desktop with her knuckles in succession, “What do you mean less stuffing! I’m supposed to be so capitalized! It was the corset I wore when you saw me that time that bolted too tight!”

“Wait, what’s with the Frenchie?” The words were just coming out of her mouth when Fiona suddenly froze again, first in disbelief, then in anger, “Arthur Hastings! Did you go to that bitch Eugenie’s in Chelsea to take care of their business?”

Arthur said calmly, “Do you divide it so finely? French girls, Russian girls, are there not also those from Iberia and the Mediterranean flavors of the Apennines?”

Fiona glared, “This business is not as easy as you think, Mr. Hastings, although I can’t interfere in your private life, after all, you’re a young and strong young man and I can understand that you would do such things. But I must emphasize one thing, Eugenie’s girls are not clean, beware of catching diseases! If you really want to have fun, come to my place and I can arrange the best for you. We also have girls who speak French.”

Arthur sniffed and shook his head, “Forget about French girls, you probably don’t know, I now have a mental image when I hear a girl speak French.”

Fiona was instantly relieved to hear this, and she sipped her tea while not forgetting to talk herself into striking a blow at her rival’s goodwill.

“That’s right, it looks like you’ve already gotten a taste of Eugenie and her family’s service, although she claims to be in the high-end clientele, in reality it’s not an exaggeration to say that they’re running a scam at all. Her girls can literally pile on two or three miles of flab around that waist as soon as they take off their corsets, we don’t have that problem here.

Think how I could have hooked you up with Bernie Harrison’s dumb ass so easily if we hadn’t all been real and the girls knew how to talk. Well …… no, Bernie Harrison may be stupid, but he still has a good eye for girls. He hasn’t even looked squarely at any of Eugenie’s money losers!”

Speaking here, Fiona suddenly turned her mouth and said, “Mr. Hastings, why don’t you look at it this way. I won’t talk about collecting money or not for this order, but ……”

Arthur detected a hint of something wrong from her words, “You want to mess things up?”

“Whoa, honey, how can you talk so hurtfully.” Fiona put both hands over her chest and pretended to be pitiful in a delicate manner, “Look, I’m just a petite and tender girl, what can I get up to?”

Speaking of this, Fiona also did not forget to reach out and take out a ticket from her chest, put it on the table and slowly pushed it over to Arthur: “I’m just asking you to make things easier for me. Do you think it would be possible to remove those fixed security posts on the south side of Chelsea? It doesn’t have to take long, just give me three or two days.”

When Arthur heard this, he just took a bite of his fried, burnt bagel, “Fiona, you’re going to get someone killed.”

Fiona put one hand over her mouth in mock surprise, “Mr. Hastings, look at what you’re saying, isn’t it normal for girls in our line of work to get killed?” Arthur shook his head and said, “I don’t care if you guys get a few more people killed, because that’s the hospital’s responsibility. But if a few less lives are lost, that’s Scotland Yard’s purview. So your request is denied, Fiona, and I’m sorry, but I can’t grant you that.”

Fiona rose up in a rage at that, “Hastings! You’re still defending that bitch! Are you having an affair with her? Has my mother ever once refused to do anything when she was supported? How many times has Eugenie climbed into your bed, and she deserves to shit on my head!”

That said, she wasn’t relieved when Fiona jerked up her skirt, revealing the flintlock pistol strapped to her calf, “Fuck it, I’m going to go shoot her lipo-pot head through the roof tonight!”

Agareth, who was on the side, rolled on the ground laughing at the situation, “Arthur, I told you to watch out, now you’re playing it off, aren’t you?”

Arthur didn’t care about that, he just cupped his chin and nodded at Fiona’s calf, “Can’t tell, it’s quite white.”

Fiona blushed at his comment, the fire she had just raised was half suppressed again, “Cut the grease, I’m going to fuck that bitch Eugenie now, do you agree?”

Arthur neither said he agreed nor outright denied it, but turned to speak, “Fiona, I can’t bail you out of a felony like murder. Even if I hit a stroke of luck and bail you out, you’ll still have to be exiled to South Africa or Australia. If you leave, then the fencing tournament’s handicap money will have to be earned by someone else.”

“A fencing match? Handicapping?” Fiona froze for a moment, then whirled back into her seat, “What the hell is going on?”

Arthur leaned back in his chair, “Didn’t you say earlier that you wanted me to fight in a boxing match at the ring you set up in the East End? I thought back and boxing isn’t my area of expertise, but with fencing, I still have some probability of winning. That’s why a while ago I had a discussion with the young master of the Rothschild family, and I’m going to ask him to arrange a fencing match between me and Mr. François Bertrand.”

“François Bertrand? That foil Napoleon?”

As soon as Fiona heard this, the fire that filled her was thrown into the air, “Wow! Darling, why didn’t you say something so important? Darling, you’re not angry, are you?”

Arthur tilted his head in thought, “Maybe a little.”

Fiona sniffed and rather knowingly leaned over to Arthur’s side and squeezed his shoulder for him, “Honey, it was my fault just now. I’m not going to bother Eugenie anymore, that bitch’s death is not going to make it to your match. Don’t worry, on the day of the match I’ll definitely bring all my sisters to cheer for you.”

Arthur gently shook his finger, “Whether you find trouble with Eugenie or not is none of my business, as long as you don’t cause any deaths, whatever you do is fine. You should know that Scotland Yard’s Criminal Investigation Department is under my control. And I’m just like you, people don’t like going to work, so try not to get me in trouble.”

“Of course, darling, I’m all yours.”

Fiona’s words were barely finished when the cafe’s wind chimes rattled and Sergeant Jones pushed through the door, leading a junior officer.

Fiona saw this and winked at Arthur as a goodbye.

She picked up her own handbag with a flourish, smiled and nodded at Jones and the small police officer, and then left the café.

The small police officer first froze at the sight, and then asked in a low voice, “Sir, is that one the what’s-her-name of Mr. Hastings?”

Hearing this, Jones angrily glared back at him and lowered his voice, “Asshole shit! Superintendent Hastings is single now! That was Ms. Fiona, Cambridge’s little brother. If Superintendent Hastings gives you the Whitechapel district in the future, you’ll have to keep an eye on her! For the Criminal Investigation Department and Superintendent Hastings, it’s possible that she’s more important than us.”

The young officer nodded thoughtfully at this, but before he could think clearly, he was led to Arthur by Jones.

Jones introduced Arthur with a smile on his face, “Sir, this beside me is Ledley King, a progressive young man from the Whitechapel Police Department. You may not know, that time the operation to arrest …… er, our police secretary Mr. Louis Bonaparte, was successfully completed by his courage to go forward. The boy’s guts and execution are among the strongest in the Whitechapel Police District, so I don’t think it would be wrong to give him the lead on this mission.”

Ledley stood at attention and saluted, “Sir, Ledley King salutes you.”

Arthur sized him up, smiled and nodded, “Ledley, come on, sit down and have a drink. We’re going to be on the move in a few minutes, so warm yourself up. Jones has told me about you before, that you are a very capable young officer. But as you know, Scotland Yard has to have some basis for promoting people, and it’s even better if there are media reports to back up the merits.

The Regent’s Crescent, you took credit, but that was just an individual action, and according to Scotland Yard’s rules a special commendation would have been about right. But this time, Sheriff Jones recommended to me that you lead Scotland Yard officers in a unified sweep of Oxford Street’s crime dens.

I’ve already contacted the reporters from all the major newspapers, and Director Rowan has also attached great importance to this operation, saying that he must take advantage of this operation to reverse the bad influence Scotland Yard has had on public opinion in recent times. Since there are reporters watching, you must remember to behave decently and civilized during your law enforcement, do you understand?”

Ledley took the coffee from Arthur and drank it in one go, “Sir, please don’t worry! You will never find a more suitable candidate than me!”

Arthur nodded slightly as he stood up and put on his hat, and Jones rushed to fetch his uniform jacket from the coat rack and drape it over him.

Arthur lifted his civilized battles and touched the brim of his hat as he pointed to several black cloth umbrellas that had appeared outside the cafe, “The press has arrived. So, Ledley, it’s up to you now.”

……

57-B Oxford Street, Harrison lay on the clean white sheets, beauty in his arms and a bottle of wine in his hand, looking out the window with a disheveled face at the pattering drizzle.

The blonde beauty was resting on Harrison’s chest, “Why are you so despondent, darling?”

Harrison returned with some annoyance, “Nothing, just got into something unclean. Those sons of bitches are literally on to me.”

His words had just reached this point when he suddenly heard a heavy footstep outside the door.

Immediately after that, a warm introduction could be heard, “Gentlemen and ladies, please direct your attention here.”

Harrison frowned, “What the fuck is going on out there?”

“I don’t know, probably house-sitting.”

The two were muttering about it when suddenly, only a bang could be heard as the door was violently kicked open.

With his magnetic voice, Ledley King did his best to make a volume of sound that could carry two blocks.

“Whoa! My God! Folks, look who it is! It turns out to be the member of the House of Commons, Mr. Bernie Harrison!”

(end of chapter)