Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 12, No. 59, November 1948

The Cockroach and the Tortoise by Anthony Gilbert

We have commented before on the curious differences in taste between English and American editors; how some books published in England — books as fine in the short story field as Ernest Bramah’s MAX CARRADOS and C. Daly King’s THE CURIOUS MR. TARRANT — made so small an impression on American boob-editors that they failed to achieve any American publication at all; how anthologies appear on both sides of the Atlantic and not only suffer a change of title but undergo drastic changes in content. Take, for example, that fine collection edited by John Rhode as a publication of the London Detection Club. The book appeared in England in 1939 under the title DETECTION MEDLEY. It was published the following year in America as LINE-UP. There can be no serious quarrel about this change — perhaps DETECTION MEDLEY is a better title for the English market, and LINE-UP a more effective title for the American reading public. But let us dig deeper: the English version of the book contains 35 stories, essays, and articles; the American version contains only 20. Undoubtedly, the American publisher had good and sufficient reasons to restrict their edition to little more than half of the original compilation. It is worth noting, however, that the English book sold for eight shillings, six pence, and the American version for $2.30 — in other words, the English book, with nearly twice as much reading matter, cost less than the American book!. But again let us not quarrel: perhaps the American reader can afford to pay more than his English brother-of-the-blood — perhaps.

To get back to our main point: 35 selections in the English edition, 20 in the American. Now, obviously, the American editor had to pick and choose. We can assume that the American editor selected either the 20 best pieces in the original English table of contents, or if not the 20 best, the 20 which seemed most attractive to American readers. Yet, examine what the American edition did not choose to include: two stories by Margery Allingham (both never published in America); one story by H. C. Bailey (also never published in America until we included it in ROGUES’ GALLERY); one story by Nicholas Blake (also never published in America until we brought it out in EQMM); two stories by Anthony Gilbert (also never published in America); and, of course, nine other pieces.

Well, LINE-UP’s loss is EQMM’s equity. We are grateful, believe us, since it gives us an opportunity to keep remedying the situation. We shall bring you at least one of the two Margery Allingham stories and both tales by Anthony Gilbert. Here is the first of the two stories by Anthony Gilbert: it is not an Arthur Crook adventure, but it does introduce a character new to American fans. Meet Inspector Field, in a reminiscent mood...

“Talking of cockroaches,” observed Inspector Field, guilefully bringing the conversation round to his own subject, “reminds me of a queer thing that happened to me once. It was a good many years ago; I was a sergeant in the K District. That’s a fairly well-to-do part of London, and most of the cases we had were shoplifting and bag-snatching. Not much scope for an ambitious man, but there’s generally a chance if you keep your eyes open. One morning I was on duty in the station when I heard a scuttering movement outside and a woman burst into the room. She was a little thing, very plainly dressed, rather taking if you like ’em small, with big eyes and curly lashes. She stood there, staring, and panting as if she’d been running a race.

“I thought she was another of these people who’ve had their bags emptied while they left them on the counter in order to look at a sweetly pretty thing in the bargain basement. But it turned out not to be that at all. In fact, it was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me.” He polished off his tankard and shoved it across the counter. “I was so sure it was a shop-thieving affair that I’d already picked out the right form. Forms are more useful where women are concerned than you’d ever guess; seem to impress them that there’s something serious going on.

“When I began to ask what was wrong, though, she just gasped at me: ‘I want you to help me. I want some advice. I never meant to come here, but where else am I to go?’

“Well, of course, that wasn’t precisely what I’d expected, but you soon learn in a job like ours not to be surprised at anything, so I said as nicely as I could that we’d be glad to help her, and she went on in a jerky sort of voice: ‘Of course, I know the proper thing would be to go to a lawyer and make him do something. But I daren’t. I don’t know any. Only Harry’s, and he wouldn’t be safe.’

“Harry was her husband, she explained. I told her there were other lawyers, but she said: ‘I wouldn’t dare trust them. If I picked a dishonest one, and a lot of them are rogues, for I’ve heard Harry say so, I’d be even worse off than I am now. So I thought perhaps the police could do something.’

“ ‘You’ll have to tell me a bit more,’ I encouraged her, and bit by bit, a word here and another there, I got the story out of her. It was what I’d begun to expect — blackmail — and for the commonest of reasons where a woman’s concerned.

“ ‘It’s wicked,’ she kept saying, ‘simply wicked that I should be tortured like this, just because I was a fool for a little time.’

“I could see at a glance it wasn’t any good telling her that life doesn’t play a bit fair, and that lots of people are tortured for being a fool for less than an hour. Some of these murderers, for instance, who’re driven half-crazy before they strike. But she wasn’t the type of woman to appreciate a point like that, so I just let it go and asked her to tell me what was wrong. It was an ordinary enough affair. She’d got playing about with some young fellow while her husband was away, and now the chap was making trouble. Well, that’s quite a common position, too, though I knew she wouldn’t believe me if I told her.

“ ‘He’s trying to get money out of me,’ she went on in an incredulous sort of voice, as if she despaired of making me believe in the existence of such a monster. ‘I’ve told him again and again that it’s no good — I haven’t got the money — but he says I can get it out of my husband. Which, of course, is just what I can’t do. As it is, he’s beginning to complain of my extravagance, says I never used to ask for extras like this, and do I think he’s made of money? I’ve sold all my jewelry, and pretended it’s being reset, but I shan’t be able to keep up that pretense for long, and when Harry finds out he’ll start making inquiries, and everything will be ruined.’

“ ‘You haven’t thought of telling your husband?’ I suggested, and I thought she was going to faint dead away.

“ ‘He’d kill me,’ she said simply. ‘And though sometimes I feel I wouldn’t mind being dead, I couldn’t bear to think of him being hanged because I’d been a fool.’ She admitted that quite frankly. This fellow — she referred to him as Gerald — had just been a diversion. She was young and not bad-looking, and like a lot of young pretty women she’d got into a mess as soon as her husband took his eye off her. But she insisted that it was Harry who mattered.

“ ‘He’s real,’ she said. ‘Gerald was only a game. I never meant any harm.’

“I sometimes wonder,” added Field in parentheses, “whether some of these women would do worse if they meant to play the devil generally. Most likely not, seeing the way women are. Well, she’d tried to shake this fellow off, but he was sticking closer than a brother, asking for more and more money.

“ ‘Have you got any of his letters?’ I asked her, and she said she hadn’t, but if I wanted one there were sure to be more and she’d bring one along.

“ ‘He never wrote the other kind,’ she went on, ‘though I used to write pages to him. He’s kept all those, and he’s making me buy them back. The worst — I mean, the ones that Harry would think the worst — are the most expensive. I don’t feel as though there were enough money in the world to pay for them.’

“I was sorry for her, of course, but I don’t mind telling you I was a bit disappointed too. Just at first, when she began, I’d got an idea she might be one of those cases that do a fellow a bit of good. These domestic blackmails don’t get you anywhere. I asked her the usual things — how long had she been giving this Gerald money — and she said: ‘Six months. And I can’t give him any more. But lately he’s begun to torture me in a new way. He follows me when I’m out; he hangs around the house, so that the servants must notice him. The other day, when my husband and I were walking together, he came across the street towards us. I thought he was going to speak to me. I think he just wanted my husband to notice him, to warn me that he would have no mercy. He’s cruel and wicked.’

“I asked her for Gerald’s full name, and she hesitated.

“ ‘I don’t want him to find out I’ve come to you,’ she said.

“ ‘Your best plan will be to suggest a rendezvous next time he asks for money,’ I told her. ‘Meet him there, and we’ll catch him red-handed.’

“She looked horrified. ‘I couldn’t. My husband might find out.’

“I thought that most probable, but she wouldn’t hear of making a clean breast of it. She wasn’t afraid of a divorce — there would be no question of that, she said — but her life would cease to be worth living.

“ ‘It would be just a prison for the rest of my days,’ she assured me. ‘And he would turn our child against me. I will never, never do anything wrong again, but somehow you must frighten this man away without Harry finding out.’

“I couldn’t argue about her husband, of course; there are men like that, taking a pride in cutting off their noses to spite their faces, and go about mutilated forever afterwards.

“ ‘If you won’t tell your husband and you won’t give me this man’s name, what do you expect us to do?’ I wanted to know.

“She said she didn’t really know, but that sometimes she thought she’d kill herself.

“ ‘I shouldn’t do that,’ I warned her. ‘But if you should be in earnest, don’t come and tell the police about it first. It’s a criminal offense, see? And you’d be making me accessory before the fact.’

“But it was easy to see she didn’t care about that. I could be sent to prison for five years and she wouldn’t even notice it. Any more than she wanted to proceed formally against this chap who was bleeding her white.

“ ‘You ought to think of the community,’ I told her. ‘Why, he may be sucking another lady’s blood at this minute.’

“She tossed her head. ‘That’s nothing to do with me. And, anyway, he isn’t. Because he’s been following me about ever since I left my house this morning. That’s why I came in here, because I thought it was the one place where he wouldn’t dare show his face. Even he wouldn’t be brazen enough to storm a police station.’

“Outside the door someone whistled, and then a very tall man, dark and clean-shaven, walked in; he had those deep blue eyes you see in some Irish families, and when he saw the lady he began to laugh.

“ ‘So this is where you got to,’ he said. ‘I must hand it to you for nerve. Putting your head into the lion’s mouth and trusting to his British chivalry not to snap.’

“She stood up; she was a tiny little thing, really, and for a minute I thought she was going to faint. She leaned against my shoulder and one hand clutched my arm. But when I said I’d fetch her a glass of water, she said No, it was all right, she didn’t want anything, I wasn’t to go.

“ ‘I’ve been telling the police about you,’ she told the newcomer defiantly.

“He only laughed again. ‘Tell me,’ he urged. ‘I always like to learn.’

“ ‘The officer says you could get seven years.’

“I gasped a bit, because I hadn’t said that, though it might be true. It depends on the judge.

“The man threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘That’s a good one,’ he said, ‘but you always were fine at telling the tale. All right, Sergeant, go ahead. Make your arrest. Incidentally, you might let me know the charge. That is, if you know it yourself.’

“I said in a wooden sort of voice: ‘This lady wishes to charge you with blackmail,’ and instead of laughing again he turned to my companion and remarked in a soft sort of voice: ‘So I’m a blackmailer, am I? I will say, Fanny, you do think up good stories. How much have I had off you?’

“I was beginning to feel uncommonly foolish; if this lady had been hazing me it might put me a long way back with my superiors if the truth came out, but before I could speak the woman he called Fanny went on in indignant tones: ‘You can’t deny you’ve been following me about all the morning...’

“ ‘Like hell I have,’ he agreed heartily. ‘Well, wouldn’t you, if she’d pinched a stone worth four thousand out of your house?’ He was talking to me now. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Pendleton Emerald? I’m Pendleton.’ He fished in his pocket for a card. ‘I’m taking this emerald abroad this afternoon, as Fanny knew, and she meant to get her claws on it. I will say one thing, her gang generally does get what it wants. I got a ’phone message this morning calling me up in a ghastly emergency, and off I went hell-for-leather. When’ I arrived I found my man knew nothing about it, and I realized I’d got Clapham Fanny on my track. This isn’t, I may add, the first shot they’ve made to relieve me of responsibility for the jewel. Of course, you know all about her; so do we. She’s a familiar name to every dealer and fence between Hatton Garden and Amsterdam. I came haring back in a taxi just in time to see another taxi going away from my house. I just caught a glimpse of a lady stepping into it and — well, you can see for yourself she’s not a lady you’d easily forget. I knew I hadn’t a moment to wait; in that taxi were Clapham Fanny — and my emerald. I was so sure I didn’t even stop to open my safe. I knew she’d done that job for me. My man, Baynes, is pretty reliable, but he’s no match for an old-timer like our friend here. She’d sent the message, of course — or one of the gang had. It wasn’t a woman’s voice.’

“He stopped to get his breath, and Fanny said contemptuously: ‘That’s very clever of you, but this is a police station. They know your sort here.’

“ ‘Well,’ he told her, ‘the proof of the pudding’s in the eating. Where are my blackmailing letters?’

“ ‘Do you suppose I kept anything so dangerous?’ she asked him. She did look rather handsome in a rage.

“ ‘Even more to the point,’ the fellow went on, ‘where’s my emerald?’

“ ‘I don’t believe you ever had an emerald,’ she scoffed. ‘It was clever of you to follow me in here, when you realized I was going to the police at last, and to try and spoil things, but you lose this time.’

“ ‘Do I?’ If he was bluffing, he was a remarkably cool card.

“ ‘If I’d stolen your emerald do you think I’d be in a police station?’

“ ‘Ever hear the story of the cockroach that was set before the tortoise as a bonne bouche? It took one look at the tortoise and gave one leap and concealed itself under the creature’s armpit — the safest hiding-place it could find. I don’t want to sound rude, Fanny, comparing you with a cockroach, but — well, you see my point?’

“ ‘Perhaps the Sergeant’s a bit quicker than I am,’ Fanny retorted.

“ ‘Oh, come off it,’ said my fine gentleman. ‘Hand over that emerald — unless you want to get about five years.’

“Fanny faced him with her chin in the air, her hands gripped round the neck of a little black silk bag she was carrying. ‘I haven’t got your emerald,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything about your emerald. I don’t even like emeralds. They’re unlucky stones. This is simply another of your crooked attempts to get a living.’

“ ‘My dear, be a sportsman,’ Mr. Pendleton urged her. ‘You haven’t been out of my sight since you left my house, except for a second when I got caught in a traffic jam. It isn’t likely the taxi driver has the stuff; you wouldn’t let it out of your sight. Therefore, you have it on you. Hadn’t you better confess you’re beaten? If you won’t listen to reason,’ he added regretfully, ‘I shall have to charge you, and you’ll be searched, which will be most humiliating. You do see that, don’t you?’

“However, she stuck to her guns that she knew nothing about the thing and hadn’t got it, though she was more frightened now. I could feel her trembling.

“ ‘All right,’ said Mr. Pendleton. ‘Then I’ll charge you with the theft.’ And he turned to me.

“I hadn’t any choice. I had to have her searched, and off she went with a woman searcher, and I felt pretty uncomfortable altogether.

“I didn’t gather that my companion felt much happier. ‘I don’t like this,’ he told me. ‘I’ve a lot of admiration for that girl. She takes chances and she generally brings them off. Silly of her not to admit she had the stone.’

“I wasn’t feeling quite so certain myself; after all, he hadn’t stopped to examine the safe. It looked to me uncommonly as though he’d walked into the trap Clapham Fanny had laid for him, and that at this very moment the rest of the gang was making its getaway with the emerald. But I had the sense to say nothing about that.

“ ‘If it turns out that you’re mistaken you’ll find yourself in a tight pair of shoes,’ I suggested, but he only laughed and offered me his cigarette case.

“ ‘She’s got it all right,’ he said. ‘She hoped I’d weaken, that’s all. Just you wait.’

“Well, we waited, and presently the searcher came in and said she’d examined Fanny from top to toe, and the only jewel she had was the big paste diamond on her left hand.

“Well, thought I, this about cooks the goose, and then Fanny herself came in. She was in a towering rage, no doubt about that. Her eyes were burning and she said, in the sort of voice that makes husbands remember there’s a job of work they left unfinished at the other end of the town: ‘Well, Mr. Pendleton, and what happens now? Perhaps I can’t give you in charge for blackmail, but I can give you in charge for slander, and false accusation, and I hope it ruins you.’

“My gentleman hadn’t turned a hair. He was still leaning against the door, with his hands in his pockets, and all he said was: ‘Then, if you haven’t got it on you — and I must take the searcher’s word for that — it’s somewhere in this room. The point is, where?’

“He didn’t move, but I could see his eyes going round to every possible place. ‘There’s no need to look on the picture rail,’ I told him. ‘The lady hasn’t been alone for a minute, and all the time she was here she was talking to me.’

“ ‘You remaining stationary,’ he suggested. ‘Well, that narrows the field certainly.’

“It seemed to me it narrowed it so much it was scarcely a blade of grass, let alone a field, but before I could say so he’d dashed forward and caught me by the arm. While I was wondering what the game was he’d plunged his other hand into my pocket, and when he brought it out there was something in it, something that seemed to fill the room with a bright light. I hadn’t had much to do with jewel crimes, but even if I had, the Pendleton Emerald would probably have dazzled me just the same. Like a green fire it was.

“ ‘I ought to have guessed when I saw you standing so much nearer the law than is normal or safe,’ he teased the girl. ‘It was very long-sighted of you. I suppose you thought I’d never look for you in here; and then, when you realized I wasn’t altogether a fool, in spite of my appearance, you disposed of the emerald in the one place where no one would think of looking for it. Oh, you’re a very pretty cockroach, my dear. Well, what’s the next move?’

“I admired the woman then; she must have known she was on a hot spot, but she didn’t turn an eyelash.

“ ‘You can have me arrested — if you dare,’ she said. ‘Though it mightn’t be too comfortable for the Inspector here. After all,’ and here she burst out laughing, ‘nobody saw me park the jewel.’

“He roared at that. ‘Jolly for you, Inspector,’ he said.

“I didn’t altogether like the way things were shaping.

“ ‘Do you wish to make a charge?’ I asked him.

“He shook his head. ‘Haven’t the time. I told you this jewel has to accompany me out of England this afternoon.’

“ ‘It doesn’t take all day to make a charge,’ I assured him in my driest tones.

“ ‘I’m afraid, if I do make it, I may never live to make anything else,’ he explained. ‘Fanny has a husband — and even a public school education doesn’t seem to give these gangmen any respect for the police.’

“He grinned, said, ‘So long, Fanny,’ and to my disgust out she went a good deal cooler than when she came in.

“I was properly angry now. ‘You’d no right to do that, sir,’ I told him. ‘She may be robbing someone else’s safe within the hour.’

“ ‘That’s their luck,’ he said.

“ ‘You ought to have given her in charge,’ I insisted.

“ ‘That’s her luck,’ he told me.

“ ‘There ought to have been an arrest,’ I said again.

“ ‘That’s your luck.’ He’d gone before I’d properly understood what he meant. I was beginning to think: ‘That’s life; just a lot of beginnings that don’t lead anywhere,’ when one of my colleagues came in with some photographs in his hand.

“ ‘Keep a look-out for these,’ he said, putting them down. ‘Some gang got away with the Pendleton Emerald this morning. Old Sir Joseph’s foaming at the mouth, and seeing what a squat bald little chap he is, it isn’t safe for him to work overtime at that game. It seems it’s worth a lot of money — four thousand, the experts say — and he was got out of his house by a trick this morning, and then the thieves turned up as calm as you please, on a pretext of answering some advertisement, tied up the butler, and picked the lock of the safe as easy as kiss your hand.’

“ ‘Do they know who the chaps were?’ I asked.

“ ‘A man and a woman. Here are the pictures. Someone saw them in this part of London. How they got away with it in broad daylight takes some explaining. One thing, you’d know him again.’

“He put the pictures on my desk. Hers wasn’t very flattering, but I’d have recognized his anywhere, that tall dark fellow, with the big shoulders and long chin. I suppose she thought someone had hit her trail, so in she came, parked the jewel as calmly as you please in case questions were asked, and then he popped along to warn her the coast was clear. It was all very prettily done.”

“Did they get them?” someone asked.

Inspector Field shook his head. “I did hear the emerald was seen round the neck of a lady in Central Europe some time afterwards, but that might be just gossip. Anyhow, Sir Joseph died of apoplexy within the month, so it wouldn’t have been much use to him.”

We all felt a bit delicate about putting the final question. Finally, the barmaid, braver than the rest of us, or perhaps just more curious, asked: “And what happened when the story came out?”

Field looked at her disapprovingly. “When you’re as old as I am,” he told her, “you’ll understand there’s times when it’s positively unhealthy to know more than your superiors. Gives them a wrong impression, and an ambitious man — and I was ambitious in those days — doesn’t make mistakes like that. But it’s an odd thing,” he wound up, pushing his tankard across the counter, “and I daresay these newfangled psychologists would find some indecent reason for it, but since that time I’ve never been really partial to a tortoise.”