A Scream in Soho Read Online Free Page B

terrible quality of that cry when, even in a neighbourhood where midnight screams were no strange sound, this one was unhesitatingly set down as an accompaniment, prelude would perhaps be the better word, to murder.
    Just how many times in his career McCarthy had boasted that he could traverse Soho at any hour of the day or night blindfolded, or in the thickest fog, was borne in weightily upon him at this moment. Fog was one thing, and bad enough in the congested streets of Soho to rattle anyone. But this never-to-be-sufficiently-damned black-out business was the absolute frozen limit! For the safety of the populace it was necessary, he supposed, and therefore had to be endured, but how the divil any man was supposed to get quickly upon the track of crime committed in it was something more than he was prepared to answer.
    His first crash was into a light standard which received the shock without murmur; his second was into someone who gave indignant tongue in a manner to which the word “murmur” could certainly not be applied.
    By the feel of the obstacle it was the front of an extremely stout Italian lady who cursed him fluently in what McCarthy instantly recognized as the Neapolitan idiom of his dead mother. It was interlarded with many calls upon the Madonna mia , and many other of the better known saints of her native land. Uttering in the same tongue the soft, appeasing words which, we are told, turneth away wrath, and in which the lady recognized instantly the voice of the Detective Inspector McCarthy that staggered officer reassured her. She apologized handsomely and sent the inspector upon his way with the cheering personal opinion that the lads of either the Mafia or Camorrista were at it again!
    At the corner leading into the square itself, McCarthy also bumped into C. 1285 who, all things considered, was also showing a fair turn of speed. He recognized the voice of the inspector instantly—aided possibly by the quality of some of the adjectives he was using.
    â€œWhere?” McCarthy snapped, when he, in turn, recognized the voice of the bumped.
    â€œIt seemed to me to come from the square, sir. By heaven, it was an awful scream!”
    Into the square and round it the pair crawled, to find the windows of such places of residence as are still left there well up, and presumably filled with a wondering and shuddering audience. For the rest of it, the square might have been a large expanse of black velvet, for anything that could be seen in it.
    At that moment there occurred one of those happenings which the inspector was wont to refer to as “the Luck of the McCarthys.” For all that, at the moment and in the circumstances, it might have seemed to him a manifestation of a beneficent Providence, to other persons concerned, such as the owner of the premises, the A.R.P. authorities and the fire brigades, it probably took on a totally different aspect. These things all depend upon the point of view.
    At any rate, and without the slightest warning, a sheet of flame burst suddenly from the roof of one of the few old tenement houses left standing in the vicinity of the square, though rather back from it. It later transpired that some attic dweller, aroused from slumber by that ghastly scream, had darted out of bed in a more or less bemused state and knocked over a paraffin lamp which, despite superhuman struggle, promptly had the place in flames. Although the efforts of the firemen managed to prevent it spreading to other nearby buildings, the one in question was eventually gutted, and in the process lit the square and those who rushed into it almost with the searching light of day. It amazed the inspector to find how many hundreds of people had managed to find their way into it, and as for the audience at the surrounding upper windows, their name was legion.
    By this time the pounding of heavy feet along the pavements and the constant shrilling of police whistles told both McCarthy and C. 1285 that