you can set ‘em. There isn’t a better educated police force in the world, as I’ve heard, than the Metropolitan — unless it’s the City.
“But I have not the patience to go in for schoolin’. I tried it once. Went to a private evenin’ class, an’ a chap wanted to teach me decimal fractions, but there didn’t seem much sense in it to me, although I dessay I’m wrong. I can write a report, an’ tell the truth, an’ know enough about the law to know when to arrest a man, an’ that’s about as much as I’m anxious to know. The fact that the River Danube empties itself into the Arctic Ocean doesn’t worry me, because the Arctic Ocean ain’t on my beat.
“I never deny that education is a good thing — in spite of its difficulty. Lots of people think that education has increased the number of criminals, but I say it has reduced ‘em. I once took a young fellow for embezzlement. He was a milkman, an’ his mother cried an’ carried on something dreadful.
‘“It’s what a board school education has done for my poor boy,’ she says, ‘fillin’ his head with stuff an’ nonsense.’
“But my own opinion was that if he’d been better educated he’d have had more sense than try to alter the customer’s account book so as to make it tally with his cash hook. It’s ignorance that makes criminals, having no sense to look ahead, no imagination.
“There was a feller once,” reflected P.C. Lee, who gave a lecture at the Police Institute, an’ he said a very true thing: he said ‘True happiness you pay for in advance, false happiness you pay for afterwards’; and if criminals knew this there’d be no criminals. It’s because a chap doesn’t bother to think about tomorrow an’ the policeman who’s waitin’ round the corner to pinch him, that he finds the easiest way to make money is to take money. There are exceptions, of course, an’ a case in point, that shows how education sometimes works the wrong end first, was the case of Albert Walker.
“When I first knew Albert he was a little barefooted boy runnin’ wild in Lambeth. I was in the ‘L’ Division at the time. His parents were a bad lot: his father was in and out of prison most of the time, an’ his mother — well, got a livin’; it wasn’t much in the food line at home, but knowin’ how the poor help the poor, I should say that the neighbours kept him from starvin’. Then the School Board got hold of him, an’ from what I’ve heard he was a rare boy for learnin’, an’ sucked up education like a sponge till he was the best writer in the school an’ the best at arithmetic an’ geography.
“He was a prime favourite with the schoolmaster, who got him some old cast-off clothes to wear in place of his rags, an’ helped him in many ways. The school was on my beat, an’ I’ve often spoke to the boy, just a word of encouragement now an’ then. I never used to mention his father to him, because I didn’t want the kid to think I had any other reason for takin’ an interest in him. He wasn’t a bit shy, an’ would tell me how he’d taken prizes for reg’lar attendance an’ for geometry.
“The only time he ever spoke about his people was just after his father had gone down for nine months for stealin’ pewter pots.
“The boy was then well up in the school; he was a sort of pupil teacher now, an’ had just won a scholarship, an’ I was sayin’ how pleased I was. I specially bought him a little book called ‘A Man of Note’ which was all about a boy who rose to a wonderful position through study.
“‘Yes,’ he says, after thankin’ me, ‘I’m glad I’ve got on so well at school, too. I don’t want to be like father.’
“‘Quite right,’ I says.
“‘Father is a strikin’ example of unintelligent application,’ he says — he was a rare one for usin’ long words an’ could spell ‘Constantinople’ before he was nine—’he is the unskilled labourer, for whom no real need exists. Here’s father doing nine months for stealing pewter. Another man, scarcely any more intelligent, will one day get two years for converting these pewter pots into spurious coin of the realm, yet another man will probably go to prison for passing the counterfeit coin — it is inevitable.’
“He sighed regretfully.
‘With silver at its present price,’ he went on, ‘there is no need at all why the coins should not be made of silver an’ a handsome profit made. The chances of detection would be reduced to a minimum.’
‘That’s against the law, Albert,’ I says, sternly; ‘It don’t matter whether the coin is made of silver or made of pewter, it’s coinin’.’
“He waved his hand with a lordly air, which looked curious in a boy of his age.
“‘I am not discussin’ the ethical side of the question, he says.
“That conversation made me think a bit. What with his long words an’ his ready tongue, I hadn’t an answer ready for him, an’ I had my misgivings.
“The next thing I heard about him was that he’d gone to a trainin’ college, an’ that he’d passed through that with every kind of honour.
“All this time his father was in an’ out. Three month’ for larceny, six months for robbery from the person, twelve months for felony.
“Then his mother died. ‘Chronic alcoholism’ was the verdict of the coroner’s jury. Albert didn’t go to the funeral, but sent a beautiful wreath with a Latin inscription which, properly translated, meant ‘She was all right accordin’ to her lights, but her lights were pretty bad.’
“One of the masters at the school translated it to me, an’ shook his head.
“I saw Albert again soon after an’ he gave me his views on the subject.
“‘Bein’ my mother was only an accident,’ he said, very serious, ‘she couldn’t help it any more than me. Gen’rally speakin’, I’m glad she’s dead.’
“‘That’s not the way for a boy to speak about his mother, however bad she was,’ I says reprovingly.
“‘I’m speakin’ less as a son than as a philosopher,’ he says very thoughtful, then he added, ‘Father looks very healthy, don’t you think, Mr. Lee?’
“‘Yes,’ I says, for he’d just come out of the ‘College’.
“Albert shook his head.
“‘The short sentence system is wasted on father,’ he says sadly, ‘he’ll last for ages.’
“I never saw Albert again for eight — nine — why, it must have been ten years.
“One day I was on duty in the Kensington Park Road — one summer day it was — when a cab drove up to one of the swaggerest houses an’ out stepped — Albert! He was well-dressed, not showily dressed like one of the ‘nuts’ would have been, but quietly in dark grey, an’ he recognised me instantly.
“‘Hullo, constable!’ he said with a smile, ‘I think we’ve met before?’
“‘Not Albert!’ I says, astonished.
“‘He nodded. ‘You can go on calling me Albert,’ he says easy and affable. ‘I don’t want ‘sir’ from you.’
He told me he lived in the big house, was goin’ to be married, and was makin’ money.
“His father was dead, an’ he’d forgotten about the old Lambeth life.
‘‘It seems a nightmare,’ he says.
“He told me how he’d left school-teaching an’ had gone in for business at printin’ in High Street, Kensington. Started in a small way, an’ worked up until he was employin’ over a hundred workmen.
“He was very enthusiastic about printin’ — it was as much a hobby as anything else with him. I could see his heart was in his work, an’ in my mind I marked him down as bein’ a brand from the burnin’.
“He must have guessed