The Flying Squad by Edgar Wallace

MR. TISER sometimes invited a few fortunate inmates of the Home to attend him in his private room, which was also his bedroom. It was on the ground floor and the window looked out on to a noisy side street, so that the padded second door, designed, as he told visitors, to keep out the noises of the house, seemed a little superfluous. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the padded door retained sounds in the room, and not even the cleverest of eavesdroppers with the most sensitive ear glued to the largest keyhole could overhear the many interesting conversations that took place in this chamber.

It was very often necessary for Mr. Tiser that he should discuss problems of the greatest moment, both to himself and to the ex-criminals whom the Home sheltered. That night he had three men who were particularly well known to the police, and two of them had the distinction, when they were badly wanted, of being described in the Hue and Cry as "dangerous--may carry firearms." One of these had only come out of prison that week for robbery and assault; and here he was fortunate, for the law makes a nice distinction between "robbery and assault" and "robbery with assault." If you steal a man's watch and follow this up by hitting him on the head, you are liable to all the pains and penalties of larceny; but if you hit him on the head and then take his watch, you have committed a felony, and have an even chance of being chained up to a steel triangle and receiving the agony inflicted by a whip with nine silk-tipped thongs.