Detectives Victorianas - Las muescas del bastón (How He Cut His Stick) by M McDonnell Bodkin

 

First Published: 1900

RATING: GOOD

SPOILERS!!!

Jim Pollock is a bank clerk who is assigned to transport five thousand pounds. As he is a strong man, nobody doubts that he will carry out the mission successfully. When he is in his compartment, he is unaware that someone is hiding, and before he can know what is happening, someone attacks him, using chloroform, making him unconscious. When he comes round, the money is gone, and he raises the alarm. The train staff can't think how someone can have stolen the money if nobody has left the train.

As the police don't believe Jim, Sir Gregory Grant, the bank senior partner goes to see Dora Myrl because he has doubts It seems that the boy must be guilty, but he doubts he can invent something like that. Dora asks Gregory to use his influence to get Jim free because he is going to help her. They travel to Eddiscombe, where she thinks the criminal is. What he believes is that they need to find a man with a crooked stick. They stay in a hotel and Dora suspects Mr McCrowder, and she makes the man see Jim, and she notices that the man recognises Jim.

The next day Dora and Jim follow Mr McCrowder on their bicycles, and they catch him red-handed with the money he stole. Then Dora explains that the way he escaped the train was through the train lines. He used the stick to slide, using the lines, and that is why communications were interrupted the day of the robbery.

I enjoyed the book, but I think that Dora jumped to conclusions too early in the story.