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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 78

Good Enough for "Pinafore."

Good Enough for "Pinafore."

Even after Stuart professes to have received the information, his delay in acting upon it is as unaccountable on the assumption of its genuineness as Lambert's delay in passing it on .Here is the explanation which Stuart made m the box:—

"Why did you not go to the police at once?"—" There was a report of a horse having been stolen, and I had a feeling that I would give Meikle a chance. If he would send word that the sheep were in his paddock, or would turn them out, or say something about them, I would not have laid the information. I did not want to take the man short, because I was pretty certain he would say I had got some one to put in the sheep."—(C. 149/227.)

Truly "a virtuous and a Christian-like conclusion," but such-soft-heartedness, however becoming in the detective of comic opera, would represent anywhere else a combination of treachery and gushing incompetence not to be lightly credited. According to Troup, the Company had been losing sheep at the rate of over 1000 a year—(C. 131/31)*; Lambert had been retained with the express object of securing the thief; and Stuart, as an ex-policeman, was also employed for the same purpose. (P. 21 and 41.) Yet the chief detective's first thought when the necessary evidence was forthcoming against the man who had been suspected long before was not "to take the man short," but to give him a chance to return these sheep—and steal some more when nobody was looking! Before any more critical audience than the marines of H.M.S. "Pinafore" such a cock-and-bull story will never pass muster. Some page 28 explanation less flattering to the human heart and less insulting to the human intelligence must be sought than the drivelling benevolence for which Stuart now claims credit. Whether he is to be regarded as Lambert's accomplice or merely his dupe, the suggestion that the sheep alone would not constitute sufficient evidence doubtless supplies the key. Something more was needed than the ambiguous presence of the sheep to turn the scale between the conflicting oaths of informer and victim; and the long delay which on any other theory would have been utterly idiotic became rational and inevitable until that something was supplied. If the missing link was supplied on the night of the 1st November, it must be conceded that the Company's detective staff acted with praiseworthy promptitude in putting the police in on the following morning.