Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. No. 75, April 1959, British Edition

Theodore Mathieson Daniel Defoe, Detective

If Daniel Defoe failed to unravel the plot against him, more than his very life was at stake... Meet Tuffley playing “Watson” to Daniel Defoe’s “Sherlock Holmes.”

I, Samuel Tuffley, in the year of our Lord 1719, was awakened from my bed at an advanced hour by a loud and imperious knocking at the door of my house in Bury Street, London, and descended to discover my brother-in-law, Daniel Defoe, who at the sight of me clapped his hands upon my shoulders.

“I’m setting off at once for Edinburgh, Tuffley,” he said, “and I’m most wishful that you come with me.”

“But it is late, Daniel,” I said. “Cannot political matters wait until the light of day, or will they not bear it?”

“ ’Tis no political matter that calls me,” Daniel said. “I go to meet a man who calls himself Rogers. If I learn from him what I expect, the knowledge may change my life. And in truth, Tuffley, the secret advisor in my soul warns me to change it anon, else I may not live long. The ‘high fliers’ and the Jacobites would kill me if they could, and even my own Whigs no longer trust me!”

“ ’Tis true, Daniel,” I cried. “ ’Tis not safe for you to be abroad in London alone at this hour!”

“That is why I wish you to accompany me to Edinburgh, Tuffley. Your reliable sword at my side would set my mind at peace.”

I sighed, looking at Daniel’s broad, determined chin shining white in the moonlight, then bade him wait below while I retired to dress. All the while my wife Margaret scolded from her bed, wishing to Heaven my sister Mary had never married Defoe, or that I were not so pusillanimous as to accept what she termed his impositions.

I silenced her, reminding her how generous Daniel had been to us when his star was high, setting me up as a hose factor, in which trade I had prospered. Now that Daniel had thrice seen the inside of Newgate prison for writing seditious pamphlets, and was, it was rumored, losing favor in the minister Harley’s eyes, it was the least I could to do to succour him. Besides, I admired greatly his facile political genius, and always felt my own wits sharpened in his presence.

Daniel and I left London within the hour, not pushing our mounts, but at Daniel’s request, deliberately taking the most round-about way. I could see my brother-in-law was burdened with anxiety, and suggested that the man he went to Scotland to see must certainly, in spite of Daniel’s avowal otherwise, represent a significant political figure.

“I tell you no!” Daniel cried in sudden rage. ‘“Why should I lie to you, Tuffley? All the years I’ve spent in politics, writing in behalf of our party, have given me no rest nor surcease from worry. I cannot prolong it without danger to my self. Meeting and talking with this man may provide a way out of it for me!”

But poor Daniel was an opportunist, no matter how brilliant he might be, and I fear I did not altogether believe him.

We made but slow progress for several days, because the ground, being damp and sandy, offered much difficulty to our horses. After we crossed the Trent at Nottingham, we found the road much harder and made better time.

On the fifth evening, while Daniel and I sat in the public room of an inn in Newcastle, a tall, spare fellow with tortured brown eyes, looking like a fanatic, entered and engaged in conversation with the landlord.

Daniel, at the sight of him, flushed red; then he rose quietly and went above stairs to his chamber. After a bit, I followed him, knocking, since Daniel, in spite of his thrifty nature, always insisted upon engaging a chamber to himself whenever we travelled outside London.

Defoe stood in stockinged feet before the meager flames of the little fireplace, his hands clasped behind him, his head turned in a listening attitude. I realized how below middle-size he was, and how large his head in proportion to his body, even though he had removed his wig, and his brown hair was close-cropped. In profile, his nose appeared sharply hooked in a predatory way, and his clean-shaven chin more stubborn than ever.

“Is that gangling fanatic fellow the cause of your leaving?” I asked.

“I’ve seen him before,” he replied at last, rubbing the mole on his chin reflectively, “in London and at Whitehall, and just night before last, at the tavern in Leeds!” Then he sat himself at the table and surprised me by thumping it with his fists until the candle in its holder jumped crazily.

“Have I waited too long, Tuffley?” he exclaimed strangely distraught. “Am I doomed to die before my time?”

“Tell me about it, Daniel,” I said gently, laying my hand on his wrist and feeling his pulse race.

“A fortnight ago, in London,” he said, “someone entered my bedroom and tried to kill me. Only because I heard him in time, rolled off the bed and made an outcry, did the villain fail of his purpose. But first he leapt upon where I had been lying, and I heard the very bed-frame tremble with the weight of him. I’m sure he came to strangle me, but he got clean away.”

“Without a clue to who he was?”

“Only this,” Daniel said, throwing a metal disk upon the table. It was the size of a shilling piece, but common iron, and in relief upon either side appeared the simple figure of a cross.

“He was one of the Squadroni who carried this, a fanatic religious who fears that the English ministry is backing the pretender. You know, Tuffley, I am no Jacobite, but a certain publication of mine which I wrote in irony was notoriously misunderstood by many, and doubtless the Squadroni also took offence.”

“You think this fellow downstairs—?”

“I think he follows us, at the very least.”

“Mayhap I should have tête à tête with him. With my open, country-looking face—”

“No, no!” Daniel cried. “We must leave here at once. If we see him again at Edinburgh, it will be time enough to act. Quickly, Tuffley, tell the boy to bring our horses!”

And so, fleeing through the rear of the inn to escape the notice of the fanatic, Daniel and I set out northward again in the middle of the night, through a driving rain. Daniel stopped ever and again, listening for the sound of a follower’s horse, but none did we hear, and we reached Edinburgh late the following day without having seen or heard signs of pursuit.

Daniel led me at once to The White Swan, an inn in the northern part of the city, where the innkeeper, a rubicund Scot named McClain greeted him with a warm embrace — Daniel having stayed at this inn on his frequent trips to Edinburgh — and showed him to his finest and largest room. To me the innkeeper gave the smallest and dingiest, but it was ever so when I accompanied the famous Defoe on his political journeys, and I made no complaint.

After resting a bit from the fatigues of our journey, Daniel and I descended to the public room and were served fine beef and a mug of porter by a personable young serving-maid.

Besides ourselves, there were two others dining in the room — one a young man in square-cut clothes, with a reddish face, a scoop of a nose, and a wide, flexible mouth; the other an older man, with grey hair and beard and chill, grey eyes, precise in his gestures, looking like a merchant from Aberdeen or Perth. After the first look at Defoe and me as we entered, neither man gave us further attention — which was strange, I thought, since we had always found the Scottish inns such friendly places.

I could see that Daniel was disappointed that the man he had come to converse with, Rogers, had not yet arrived, and he kept constantly glancing towards the door.

Finally Daniel said: “He’s a master’s mate on His Majesty’s ship, Weymouth, which is now anchored in the Firth, McClain tells me. Rogers ought soon to be here.”

After dinner, Defoe ordered a tass of brandy, and as the maid served it, she accidentally tipped the cup so the contents ran all over the table.

Never have I seen an innkeeper in such a mountainous rage over so little. McClain, red in the face, his blue eyes blazing struck the serving-maid roughly on the cheek. She retired cringing behind the counter, and McClain mopped up the offending liquor with his towel, complaining to Daniel the while.

“ ’Tis muckle discouragin’, Mr. Defoe, to have your business ruined by sluts who have nae manners. If my own daughter was here now, that wouldnae happen. You remember my daughter, Mr. Defoe?”

“She had red hair,” Daniel said obligingly.

“Aye, that’s my Nan. She was a great help to her father she was, before she went away—”

I sat marvelling at what solicitation fame attracted to itself. If the serving-girl had spilled brandy into my lap, I was sure there would have been no great ado. Fame had its compensations, I reflected, although as I looked at Defoe’s anxious face, I knew it also had its grave penalties.

As the innkeeper mourned his lost Nan without replacing the tass of brandy, the door opened and a sailor entered. He was a large, crude-looking fellow with small eyes and a dark beard spotted with white; I judged him to be in his forties. He thrust his legs apart as if bracing them for battle, and looked belligerently around the room.

“Mr. Rogers?” Daniel asked, rising.

“Aye, my name’s Rogers,” the man said with a strong Scottish accent, advancing to our table. “Mr. Defoe?”

The sailor put out his hand, stopped when he saw the innkeeper staring at him, and asked harshly: “What business have you with me?”

The landlord shrugged and moved ponderously behind the counter the while Rogers sat down with us.

“You will stay the night here so we may talk?” Daniel asked eagerly.

“That was the agreement,” the sailor replied.

“And you are willing to give me your permission in writing to use any or all of the material you give me tonight?”

“Aye, for the price agreed upon in your letter.”

“Very well,” Defoe said, satisfied. “Take a room of your own now, and then we shall talk.” He motioned to the innkeeper placing a restraining hand upon my arm as I started to rise, and whispered that he’d rather speak alone with Rogers; so I remained where I was.

As Defoe and Rogers went out, with the innkeeper lumbering after them, the other two men, who now sat smoking before the fireplace, looked after Defoe. The blond young man seemed frankly curious, and the older one cast a side-wise look that was in no way friendly.

I went over to them and introduced myself, and in turn learned the bearded man was a wine-merchant from Liverpool, and the boy, a fervid young Scot, was returning to Aberdeen from an educational trip to the continent.

“And do you know the famous journalist Defoe?” I asked. “That was he who went just now upstairs.”

The boy, Alan McGregor, shook his head. “A distinguished gentleman, to be sure, but I dinnae ken him.”

“I do,” the merchant, Hector Masham, said sharply. “A conniving cheat who writes to suit his political master in Whitehall! Did you ken,” he said, addressing the boy, “that Mr. Defoe advocates in the Scottish press itself, that England and Scotland be united?”

“Na, na,” McGregor said, flushing with ire. “That will never-r-r be! The clans will rise and march again at the verra thought. Such a man as this Mr. Defoe is a wicked tool of the devil!”

I had hot words upon my lips when the inn door opened and another traveller entered, put down his bundle near the counter, and called to the serving-girl for an ale.

“And I want a room for the night,” he said in a voice that proclaimed his English origin.

The serving-girl nodded and drew his ale, and I said no more, but withdrew to the rear of the room to watch.

For the new lodger was the fanatical, brown-eyed man whom Daniel had noted the night before in the public room at Newcastle.

I was awakened in my chamber around the middle of the night by someone shaking me.

At first I could see nothing, but outside I could hear the rain sluicing down, and the wind thundering against the windows from across the Firth. The window lighted up with wild fire, then just as suddenly went black again; but in the flash I saw Daniel’s white face hovering over me.

“Tuffley, wake up!” he cried. “Something dreadful has happened!”

“I’m awake, Daniel,” I said.

“Listen, then. I talked with Rogers until very late. He told me what I wanted to know, and then you came to tire door and informed me the fanatic had come. I mentioned to Rogers that I feared I was being followed, and might be attacked in my bed again. He laughed and said he would change rooms with me. ‘Let them try it with me,’ he said. And so I agreed; I went to sleep in his room, and he stayed in mine. After a while I woke up with several more questions in my mind, and fearing that Rogers might be gone by morning, I went to the room to speak with him. The door was unlocked. I entered and found him strangled, and his neck broken.” Daniel shook me again. “Don’t you see, Tuffley? Whoever it was, thought I was in that room. If we hadn’t exchanged—”

I was up and had a candle lit by this time, and when I turned to Daniel he was sitting in his dressing-robe on the edge of my bed, deep in sober and somber thought. Finally he said, slowly, “If word of this gets back to my enemies in London, they’ll twist the story to make it appear as if I am the murderer. They’ll try to destroy what little reputation I have left by sending me to Newgate again. I cannot let them do that. My back is against the wall now, Tuffley, and I needs must fight. I must discover who murdered Rogers.”

Indeed Daniel looked firmer and more resolved in his mind; gone was the fear in his eyes, and when he seized my hand it was with a steady purpose.

“Get dressed, Tuffley,” he said. “We have only tonight in which to do our work.”

Poor Rogers lay across the bed, his head hanging over the edge at an acute angle, so that his face with its great staring eyes, seemed to look at us upside-down as we entered. The bedclothes had been whipped into a tumulus which half covered his body, and indicated the mighty struggle that had taken place.

Daniel gripped my wrist and whispered: “Abide here, Tuffley,” and then slipped through the door and was gone. I put the candle on the table and covered the awful staring face with a corner of the blanket, and sat down to wait. Outside the storm was raging.

Daniel was back again shortly. “I awakened the groom,” he says, “and gave him a guinea to come tell me if any lodger demands his horse, although I think it unlikely that any would leave, for it would brand him guilty. Now we must be a law unto ourselves, Tuffley, if we are to uncover within the night the villain who committed this crime. Are you willing to help me?”

“Why else have I come?” I asked,

“Good. In what chamber did the landlord lodge the fanatic?”

“Come, I will show you,” I said, and taking up the candle, led Defoe to the proper door.

First Daniel tried the latch, but found it locked; then he knocked gently.

After a moment there was a stir inside, and the creak of a floorboard.

“Who it is?” the man whispered from within.

“The landlord,” Daniel said, keeping his voice low but heavy. “I have a message for ye.”

As the door opened, Daniel pushed his way in and I followed. The fanatic, in his long nightgown and touseled hair, looked harmless enough.

“What do you want?” he asked in a dry whisper.

Daniel pushed him roughly upon the bed, which was a dumb-show to intimidate the fellow, for Daniel was not a violent man, and he said in a convincing tone: “Murder has been done this night, sir, and we think you have committed it. Unless you tell us why you have been following us from London to Edinburgh, we shall call the constable at once and hand you over to him.”

“No, no,” the man cried, his brown eyes wilder than ever. “I have done no murder!”

“Tell us then who you are, and what is your business here?”

“My name is Dunton — Philip Dunton,” said the other. “It is true I followed you, Mr. Defoe, but only so I might report upon your activities here in Edinburgh. I intended no violence.”

“Search his pockets for a Squadroni disk,” Daniel said to me, pointing to Dunton’s clothes upon a chair.

“Who sent you?” he demanded of Dunton.

“Must I tell you that, sir?” But seeing Defoe’s relentless look, Dunton bowed his head, and said in a whisper: “The minister, Mr. Robert Harley.”

“Even we Whigs do not trust one another, it seems,” Defoe said bitterly. “Anything, Tuffley?”

“No disk,” I said, completing my search.

“Come, then,” he said, opening the door. “You will not leave until morning, my spying Mr. Dunton.”

“I cannot,” said the other. “I have been assigned to stay and watch you.”

Daniel went next below stairs and rapped at the door to the landlord’s quarters. When McClain heard of Rogers’s murder, he wanted at once to send the groom for the constable; but Daniel stopped him and argued that since the attempt had been made upon his, Defoe’s life, he had every right to attempt to run down his would-be assassin without immediate interference.

But Defoe’s assumption of authority did not work as well with McClain as it had with Dunton. The innkeeper grew red with rage and swore great oaths, saying this was his inn and he was a law-abiding citizen, and he would call the constable at once. He made for the door, and Defoe, desperate at seeing his chance of vindication disappear, sent a gin bottle flying after McClain. The bottle landed on the innkeeper’s head with a mighty crack, and felled him on his own threshold like an ox.

I dragged the monumental McClain inside and shut the door against the storm, and as I looked up, I saw that two of the lodgers had descended to the public room — the boy McGregor and the wine-merchant, Masham.

“What animal combat takes place here?” Masham, in a dressing-gown, inquired angrily. “We lodgers cannot be expected to sleep through such Roman antics.”

Before Daniel could reply, the serving-maid looked out the door from McClain’s room, staring white-faced at the fallen innkeeper.

“He’s all right,” I assured her. “He just bumped his head.”

She gave me the look of a trapped wild animal, then pulled back and slammed the door.

The boy McGregor leaned over the innkeeper and whistled. “He’s got the devil’s own peg on the head — from a gin bottle, too.”

“Gin is the devil’s own drink,” Daniel said with perfect gravity. “Please sit down, gentlemen, and name your drink. I will be the host.”

The two men looked sharply at Daniel, then sat down at the long table near the shrinking fire. I threw on a log and moved the bulky McClain close to it, so he would not be chilled, and joined the others at the table. A round of introductions ensued, then Daniel explained what had happened. Finally, he took a place at the head of the table.

“Do you mean you suspect one of us of having attempted to murder you?” Masham asked frigidly.

“Or of actually murdering Mr. Rogers — put it how you please, the answer is yes,” Daniel said with authority.

“Then I will not drink with you!” Masham blurted out, rising.

“Sit down, Mr. Masham,” Daniel said, with even deadlier authority.

“Yes, sit down,” I echoed, fingering the hilt of my short sword.

Masham looked from one to the other of us, then sat down and glared sulkily into the fire.

Young McGregor spoke up then, and his clear eyes never left Defoe’s face.

“I’ll put it plain to you, Mr. Defoe,” he said. “I belong to a group of young men in Edinburgh who are mighty resistant to the idea of unification of Scotland and England. We would give our lives to prevent such a calamity. Your coming here tonight was heralded, and I was sent to speak to you, lest you continue to wield your talented pen in Scottish newspapers in favor of unity. I come to warn you, if you like.”

“Then why did you not speak with me before?” Daniel asked.

“I was told you were closeted with that sailor fellow,” said the other, “and planned to wait until morning.”

“But earlier you said you did not know Mr. Defoe when I pointed him out to you,” I reminded him.

McGregor hesitated. “I did not wish to become involved — in case something should happen.”

“Something did happen,” Defoe said. “Someone tried to kill me. Was that what you feared to be involved in?”

“Yes,” McGregor answered promptly. “The fact is, Mr. Defoe, you are a verra unpopular man with many parties.”

A creak at the top of the stairs brought Daniel suddenly to his feet and across the room. He clapped the newel post, crying: “Come on down, Mr. Dunton!”

Harley’s tool descended timidly, full dressed, his bundle in his hand.

“You were trying to sneak off,” Daniel accused. “Why?”

“I can do no further good here,” Dunton said, forlornly.

“Sit there,” Daniel ordered, pointing to a place at the table next to me.

“Yes, join the prisoners at the gaol board,” Masham said with a sneer. “And answer the insulting questions put by this insolent usurper of authority.”

“Usurper!” Defoe cried. “The word comes easily to your lips, Mr. Masham, as it would naturally to any one who feared the pretender coming to the throne. Usurper is the word most frequently on the lips of Squadroni!”

Masham paled; his hand fluttered up to the lapel of his robe, then fell to his lap again.

“What do you have there?” Daniel demanded as Masham started pushing his chair back from the table. “Answer me!”

Masham rose as Daniel stepped forward and flipped the lapel so that the underside showed. I caught the glint of metal and knew what it was — the disk of the Squadroni.

“You are the one who tried to kill me!” Daniel cried as his hands shot out and seized Masham around the throat, crushing the wine-merchant’s beard, and bending the man backwards to his knees.

“No! No!” Masham struggled to speak. “I did not attack you!”

Suddenly Daniel released him; Masham fell to floor and sat there, fingering his bruised throat.

“Tell your miserable organization they misunderstood me,” Defoe said, his voice distant, as if another matter claimed his mind. “I do not and never have encouraged enthronement of the pretender. I am a Whig, pure and simple, one of the little business men of England who is loyal to His Majesty. Yes, tell them they have misunderstood!”

When he had finished speaking, Defoe stood looking with a queer expression at the fire; then he strode purposefully to the door of the landlord’s apartment, threw it open, and pulled the serving-maid into the room. She had been listening to all that had transpired.

Now she trembled in her thin robe and looked terrified at us.

“I shall take you at once to the constable for the murder of Mr. Rogers, if you do not tell me the truth,” Daniel thundered.

“No, no, not the police!” the girl moaned.

“Then tell us the truth!"

“He did it,” she cried, pointing at the prostrate McClain, whose eyelids were beginning to flutter. “He swore he’d kill the man who lured away his daughter, Nan. Although it wasn’t really Mr. Rogers’s fault. Nan followed him, and he spurned her, and Nan drowned herself in the Firth. But he blamed Mr. Rogers for it — only his name is not Rogers—”

“I know,” Daniel intervened. “Go on.”

She pointed again at McClain, who was half conscious now.

“He overheard Mr. Rogers agree to change rooms with you, Mr. Defoe, and thought this was his chance to kill the sailor without himself being suspected, for he told me you were a marked man. That’s why he was so eager to send for the constable — so the constable would look for your enemies... Then he came down and threatened to kill me if I ever spoke a word about what he’d done—”

McClain had heard her last words, and so great was the vitality of the man, he rose with a roar and would have killed the serving-maid upon the spot, had not four men held him back while he trumpeted and cursed and made his guilt plain to all of us.

Daniel and I jogged along side by side late the next morning, on our way back to London.

I said: “Why did you suddenly leave off throttling Masham and turn to McClain as the guilty one? How were you so sure it was not Masham after all, or Dunton, or McGregor that did the deed?”

“It was elementary,” Daniel said, fingering the mole on his chin. “When I put my hands around Masham’s throat, his beard scratched my hands. Well, my enemies know I am clean-shaven. They would not continue to strangle a man after feeling a beard — they would know it was not I. Yet Rogers, who had a beard, was strangled. That meant that his murderer knew whom he was strangling and did it deliberately.

“Now none of the lodgers had a grudge against Rogers. They couldn’t have — he was a non-political figure, just as I assured you. They were only after me. That left McClain, who, by the way, was the only one big enough to subdue a hearty fellow like Rogers. I remembered the innkeeper’s dirge about the lost Nan, recalled the look in the serving-girl’s eye when she first looked out from McClain’s room and saw him on the floor—”

“I see,” I said after a while. “But there is still another mystery, Daniel. Why did Rogers come to the inn under an assumed name? And who was he?”

“His coming to the inn was entirely my fault,” Defoe explained. “I insisted upon The White Swan as our meeting place, although he objected; but since I was paying his bill, he finally agreed. I didn’t know that he had experienced an unfavorable episode there until the serving-girl mentioned it. The beard was new, I think, but McClain recognized him nevertheless. And do you remember how aggressive Rogers was to the landlord when he first entered? Why, unless there existed bad blood between the two men already?”

“Who was Rogers?” I asked.

Daniel sighed.

“Remember I told you I wished to quit politics? I mean to do so. I have already bought a house in a quiet section of Stoke Newington, where I plan to retire and write novels instead of pamphlets. For my first novel I have chosen a theme dear to the hearts of the English public — the story of one man struggling alone against the forces of Nature. But before I began writing, I felt it was imperative that I should hear the true story from the lips of the one man in England who had actually experienced that struggle on an island, all alone — one Alexander Selkirk—”

“Then Rogers was Selkirk!” I cried.

“Yes, poor fellow. And although I cannot use his real name and have decided to call him Robinson Crusoe, my novel shall really be his epitaph. It’s the least I can do for the man.”

“It might even assure him a kind of immortality,” I said.

“Possibly,” said Defoe.