Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 36, No. 4, October 20, 1928

International Crooks I Have Known by Captain Charles H.Moss

But for a detective’s intervention, the underworld’s “Slyest, Slimiest Crook” would have sent an old man to a pauper’s grave.

Just after midnight, I found him lying in a heap before the door. It was bitterly cold; snow was falling, and behind me the sea lashed itself to a fury under the scourge of the northeast wind.

That is my introduction to a human story I was later to unravel and which, to-day, I remember in every detail.

James MacDougall was a man of some sixty-live years of age, tall and of some presence. He wore a gray heard and, when I met him, was living in a well furnished flat in a block of mansions at Hove. Temporarily, I was living in the same block.

When I found him he was as one dead, and even as I dragged him into the hall and up the stairs. I feared that I had found him too late. His keys were hanging from the end of a chain in his trousers pocket.

I dragged him into his bedroom and on to his bed, switched on the electric fire, undressed him, poured brandy down his throat and set to work on him, but it was an hour and a half before he showed any sign of life, and three hours before I was able to leave him, tucked comfortably between blankets and fast asleep.

The next morning, the hall porter told me that MacDougall wished to see me. Inside his flat again, he was profuse in his thanks, and afterward he looked at me, I thought somewhat strangely, and asked:

“When you searched me, did you find any money?”

“No,” I answered.

“I had twelve or thirteen pounds on me when I left the ‘Old Ship,’ ” he explained. “Some one must have stolen it.”

Some one had — and that some one was Sam Crockett — “Slippery” Sam to his associates.

Sam is dead now, but in spite of that he remains to me what he was — the slyest, slimiest crook I ever knew. Usually there are redeeming features in crooks. Some of the worst of men from a criminal point of view are the most charming of individuals to meet when one is off duty — generous, good-natured, genial and irresponsible. One can often at least be amused by them, but there was nothing amusing about Slippery Sam.

When, later, as this story will relate, I had occasion to investigate the case of James MacDougall, I unearthed a story as mean and despicable as any of my career.

Sam Crockett had been a solicitor’s clerk in one of those offices which possesses an excellent knowledge of the law and how to dodge it, of fraud which is legally protected. It specialized in accident cases. It bribed hall-porters at hospitals to keep it informed of accidents; it had runners bringing in information from mean and splendid streets — all so that the office might get at the victim first and become empowered to act on his behalf in the matter of compensation.

That office was adept at concocting evidence; it had on its books the names and addresses of a score of professional witnesses — men and women who could swear to facts they had never seen and tell a primed story with an air of conviction.

Slippery had been chief clerk, and in course of time he had blackmailed victims of accidents whose cases the office had won for a goodly share of the damages awarded. Finally Sam, with two or three thousand pounds in his pocket, had retired from drudgery in London and taken himself, his money, and his wits to Brighton with the firm intention of using the last to augment the first and secure him an easy living.

Such is the man, whom later I found to be in the background on which was thrown the figure of James MacDougall, whom I left at Hove a week or so later, as I believed, restored to the same health he had ever possessed.

Six months elapsed. Then Hove had to be my home again for a time. I inquired and was given possession of a furnished flat in the same house as before. I walked into the hall and into the lift. The man in charge expressed pleasure at seeing me again — and before the lift stopped at my floor, he said:

“It’s a sad thing about Mr. MacDougall, sir!”

“Oh, what’s the matter with him?” I asked.

The lift stopped and he strode with me on to the landing.

“He goes into the workhouse tomorrow,” he explained — and went on when I showed surprise: “Yes, poor old chap, he’s lost his memory; he’s failing; he’s got no money; the bailiff’s have cleared his flat — he’s down and out, utterly broken — and to-morrow they are calling for him.”

Within my new abode, I digested this information over lunch. Then I called to the hall porter and told him to ask MacDougall to come up and see me. MacDougall came, though it was with difficulty that I got him to recognize me.

In place of the hale, well-set-up man, there was a decrepit individual who looked half insane and veritably on his last legs. He could answer no questions.

Formerly he had been a man with a good income, now old age was upon him and poverty.

I could not believe it. Some sixth sense told me that somewhere something was wrong. Perhaps the small adventure of the winter had made me more than usually interested in the man. Whatever the cause. I determined he should not die in the work-house.

Within a few hours, I had seen the manager of the building, arranged with him that the man should be allowed to stay, undertaken some small liability on his behalf, and seen the bailiffs and secured from them the return of a part of the beautiful furniture and silver which they had seized for a paltry debt of some twenty-five pounds.

“You’re a fool to do it,” said the manager with a gesture. “I tell you flatly, I’ve investigated and he has no friends, no relatives; he knows nobody, nobody knows him, he’s got no money, he’s down and out and a sick man into the bargain.”

My answer was to send for a doctor I knew. He came and examined the slobbering, vacant-looking man I had known in better days.

“He’ll be dead in three weeks,” he declared.

So I had to get to work quickly. I went down into his flat and examined everything in it. Nothing interested me except an old portmanteau, which was crammed full of old letters — the stamps on which, at least I thought, were worth enough to keep him for three weeks. I examined these letters, and during that and the following two days, I wrote some scores of letters to people who had written to him, asking them for information. I did not receive a single reply. Truly, I thought, MacDougall is broke and friendless.

But there was one thing more that had attracted my attention.

Among a heap of rubbish I found an old dirty blank check. What was it doing there? Search as I would, I could find no check book, nor a passbook, nor anything else that would give me the smallest clew to work upon. Still I could not understand that blank check, old and torn as it was. So I acted on it.

Walking into the branch of the bank concerned, I asked to see the manager. I asked him if James MacDougall had an account with them. At first I could get no information, then came the guarded news that there was such an account, but that MacDougall was dead, and who was I?

“On the contrary, MacDougall is very much alive,” I said. “and” — taking a leap in the dark — “I want also to see his deed box.”

The manager looked at me shrewdly and inquired:

“Where’s your authority?”

I told him my story, but he was stubborn. So I returned to the flats, saw a solicitor, and in a few minutes a power of attorney had been made out in my name. I returned to the bank and the deed box was produced.

But I had no key to open it, and it was only after a long argument that, at length, I was permitted to have it forced open in the manager’s presence.

Inside were securities valued at nearly seven thousand pounds, together with a passbook denoting another account containing funds belonging to the man whom a day or two ago had been at the door of the workhouse. From this point, the — I hardly dare call it an investigation — went on, and the end of tin’s side of the story was that I placed MacDougall in a home of his own, provided him with medical attention, and two manservants to look after him — and he lived for some months.

Then on his death came Sam Crockett with a will made out in his favor by James MacDougall. He went to the solicitor, who had never heard of nor seen him until that day. The solicitor got hold of me. We conferred and we decided not to admit the will without finding out something more about Mr. Crockett.

The facts as I have reported them earlier in this article came slowly. From that point they came even more slowly, but at last I was able to present a true story which caused Mr. Crockett to disappear hurriedly when we faced him with police interference.

He had met old MacDougall at the “Old Ship” Hotel. The old man, without a friend in the world, was making a habit of putting in his time almost entirely at this well known inn.

Crockett had watched him and made inquiries and the end of it was that he began to make himself agreeable. Slowly and very carefully, he worked his way into the old fellow’s confidence, plying him steadily with drink until, in his cups, MacDougall was at his mercy.

First Crockett abstracted his checkbook and other personal papers; then he worked on until he had removed every shred of identification; then he tried to induce him to sign the will in his favor. But he had been too anxious. MacDougall could not have been so drunk as he appeared at that time, and he refused with scorn to do anything of the kind. What actually he said to the crook will never be known, but such was the effect of his expressed contempt that the crook slipped something into his glass, took him home on that bitterly cold night, robbed him, and went home to forge his signature quite sure in his own mind, that in the morning MacDougall would be found dead in the street.

That is the story. It does not pretend to deal with the adventures of a detective in his business of searching for crooks, nor does it tell of the spectacular episodes in the life of a wrong ’un of international repute. It is merely a true tale of what has happened at Hove and which might well have happened to any man.

A torn and dirty blank check, an old man with one foot in the grave — and Slippery Sam, the slimiest scoundrel I have ever known.