Explore "The Amateur Crime" by Anthony Berkeley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Colonel Ratcliffe straightened himself up from the last footprint with a sigh of relief; he was no longer as young as he had been, and continuous stooping is a little arduous for a frame, however dapper, that is beginning to stiffen. He threw a thoughtful glance round and his eye kindled.
"Not a word about this to anybody, mind, Cottingham," he remarked now to the Inspector at his side. "No, sir," said the crestfallen Inspector. The Colonel had been careful not to rub things in too much, but Inspector Cottingham was a disillusioned man. The revenge for which he was thirsting would have surprised the intimates of this hitherto genial policeman; it was nothing less than that the authors of his ignominy should be hanged, drawn, and quartered, and that Inspector Cottingham might be granted official permission to dance on their graves.