Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 7, No. 31, June 1946

The Old Lady Who Changed Her Mind by Edgar Wallace

Much has been written of Edgar Wallace’s prolific and phenomenal popularity, and as was to be expected, many exaggerations have crept in to help build the Wallace legend. For example, it has been said that when he died in 1932 (in Hollywood, of all places!) the Wallace estate consisted of £130,000 — in debts! That we can believe, knowing the Wallace penchant for the ponies; but it has also been said that in a mere two years’ time Mr. Wallace’s continuing royalties not only wiped out all his debts but paid free-and-clear dividends to his heirs. It’s a tall story — but Edgar Wallace’s whole life was a tall story.

However, where there’s smoke there’s fact. Wallace was a prodigious producer. It is a matter of recorded history that ’way back in 1928, before the days of monumental reprint sales, before the era of the 25 cent bestseller, Mr. Wallace sold in a single year no less than 3,000,000 copies of his books throughout the world!

That too we believe, and in the light of that highwater mark, you would think that every one of Wallace’s books must have been printed both in England and the United States, to say nothing of Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America. But it is not so. One of Edgar Wallace’s finest volumes of detective short stories — a book worthy to stand beside the J. G. Reeder series — never appeared in this country, at least so far as publishing records indicate. That book is THE ORATOR, about Inspector O. Rater. Long, long ago we brought you one of the Orator’s exploits — “The Man Next Door,” in EQMM, September 1942 — and now we present another fine example of Rater’s ratiocination, another story by the man who for all his prodigal performance in print can still be called upon, fourteen years after his death, to produce a “brand-new” story for American readers.

Mr. Rater never took a job out of the hands of a subordinate unless there was a very urgent reason. The subordinate in this case was a humble police constable, and his job was to remove Mrs. Schtalmeister from the unconscious body of a rent collector. That the oblivion of this unfortunate man was entirely due to the stone jug this vigorous old lady had wielded was a tragic fact, for in an unguarded moment the disgruntled collector had threatened eviction unless the rent was paid. Possibly he was not too well acquainted with the tenants of 79 Keller Row and their peculiar methods — he most certainly did not know Mrs. Schtalmeister and her reputation, or he would not have turned away even as she was reaching for the pitcher.

She was nearer sixty than fifty, a tall and powerful woman with the grip of a navvy, and she had behind and about her the moral support of Keller Row and a people to whom rent collectors, school inspectors and policemen were anathema.

It was when a sympathizer of the old lady took a hand and a pick handle to deal with the interfering officer that Inspector Rater, a chance and interested spectator, decided that the moment had arrived when he might interfere.

It was he who hauled Mrs. Schtalmeister from the prostrate collector, his hard fist that persuaded the sympathizer to retire from view, and finally he who lifted the virago bodily on to the police ambulance and helped strap her; and when, half an hour later, Mrs. Schtalmeister was explaining in broken Dutch that she had been the victim of an unjustifiable attack, it was he who spoke tersely of her past record.

She was a grim, raw woman, the terror of her neighborhood; for fifteen years she had dominated the Swedes, the Dutchmen and the Scotsmen who for some extraordinary reason had congregated in Keller Row, Greenwich. They were seafaring people mostly; their men signed on at irregular intervals in the ships that go down Thames river from Victoria Docks. In the old days they lived in Poplar and Wapping, but once the County Council had driven a tunnel between Black-wall and East Greenwich it was inevitable that there should be a seepage of waste southward.

Seven Jascar brothers lived in one house; No. 43 held a shifting population of Chinese; a veritable German who had been interned during the war was established at No. 15; there were Norwegians, an Irish family, and at least one Finn in that cul de sac which ends blankly at the wall of a shipbreaking yard.

To Keller Row one must surely return, since it was the scene of one of the most remarkable cases that was ever handled by the Orator. For the moment, here is Mrs. Schtalmeister fulminating against the law and its representatives, but growing more coherent every minute.

“For fifteen year’ I lif in dis street — no quarrels haf I mit anyones. I lif like a lady — six pound a week I haf by my son... Nor bad tempers I haf: once, yes, in ’85 it is true. My brudder an’ I quarrels, but never since...”

And then, in perfect innocence, quite unconscious of the amazing breach of the law which she revealed, rather proud than otherwise of her deed, she told a story which Mr. Rater heard apparently unmoved.

The offense was an old one, and in reality a technical one. It was not a matter in which he cared to move, though, being extremely curious, he did confirm the woman’s statement a week or two afterwards.

At the Greenwich Police Court on the following morning the episode of Mrs. Schtalmeister ended with a fine and a horrific warning from the magisterial bench. She paid the fine and her rent — she had money enough but was by nature miserly — and went back to Keller Row, where she died in the winter of ’23.

The Orator did not know of her passing: he was not interested in people who were law-abiding. He was at the moment engaged in a jewel robbery in Chislehurst and it was rather a complicated case, for, although the thieves were caught, their arrest had been delayed just long enough to allow the fourteen big diamonds in Lady Teighmount’s old-fashioned tiara to disappear. The setting was found, but since the setting had only its Early Victorian value, the Orator was not elated.

“I’m tellin’ you the gospel, Mr. Rater,” said Harry Selt, the principal brigand. “I duffed the sparklers with a fence whose name I don’t know: he works for a Big Feller on the Continent. All I got was two hundred, and that splits four ways. It’s no good me tellin’ you a lie, Mr. Rater; you know how many stand in on a conjure like this.”

No more information than this could be had from Harry, which was unfortunate, for Lady Teighmount, in addition to being a very rich woman, was a family connection of a Cabinet Minister. This exalted man sent for the Orator, and he proved to be very human.

“I am asking a special favor, Mr. Rater,” he said. “My aunt is terribly keen on getting those diamonds back. They were given by her husband in the ’seventies or in some prehistoric year, and she attaches a sentimental value to them. Happily she’s never known that diamond giving was the old boy’s hobby. Now isn’t it possible for you to get hold of some underworld gentleman who could lead you to them? She’s willing to pay two thousand pounds and no questions asked—”

“Which is an illegal inducement,” said Mr. O. Rater soberly.

“I know... I know. The point is, will you, as an act of kindness to me, go out of your official way to recover those stones?”

The Orator nodded. He felt that he had already said too much.

No receiver is to be approached directly, especially by a police officer. The Orator began his tortuous investigations by interviewing one Alf Barkin, a dealer in dogs. It was a long interview and Mr. Barkin said very little. Every few seconds he shook his head and said: “I don’t know nothing about it, Mr. Rater,” or: “If I knew I’d tell you, Mr. Rater,” but in the end Alfred arranged to accompany the detective that night to a small drinking shop in Deptford, where they met Joseph Greid, a dealer in furniture, who knew a man “slightly” (he hastened to qualify the extent of his acquaintanceship) who knew another man who might possibly know a friend of somebody else who in his turn could perhaps get into touch with a friend of the receivers.

For twelve days the Orator pursued his patient way. As was his practice, he said little, listened much and alertly. For he must trap certain vital statements carelessly dropped into the streams of verbiage, must sort essentials from non-essentials, unravel cunningly involved sentences.

In the end he made a journey to Brussels, and there he met by appointment M. Heinrich Dissel.

M. Dissel came to his sitting room at the hotel, a stiff, youngish man with large horn-rimmed spectacles, rather untidy yellow hair and a stiff little furry moustache. He clicked his heels and bowed from the waist, before he offered a cotton-gloved hand.

“Your letter I have had, m’sieu. Be pleased to be seated before I myself, sir.”

He put down the big black portfolio he was carrying, hitched the knees of his well-creased trousers, and sat down on the edge of a chair, exposing as he did so a length of white sock above his brilliantly yellow boot.

“I am merchant and agent, yes? But diamonds seldom. Now in Antwerpen I know several mans who buy, sell diamonds, sometimes goodly bought, sometimes badly bought. Yes, I know them. My brudder in London sent you? He is a good brudder but not amity — how shall you say? — friendtly. We quarrels, make a big row. He gives me plenty money and I love it — piquet, cheval de course, you understand? So we make the big row and no more do we be friendts. When I go to London I telephone, but he say ‘Not to home,’ so we are not friendts.”

He beamed as though his estrangement with his ill-used brother was the greatest joke in the world. The Orator moved uneasily in his chair: such undulations of discomfort were a preliminary to speech.

“That’s all right, M’sieur Dissel; I’m not very much interested in your family troubles. You were good enough to answer my letter about... um... a certain matter. Do I understand that you can buy back these diamonds?”

M. Dissel’s smile was one of triumph. He dived his hand into the inside of his tightly fitting jacket and brought out a fat leather case. This he banged on the table and unfolded with a flourish. From a wad of letters and cards he fished out a packet wrapped in white tissue paper, which, with a deft flick of his finger, he unrolled. The diamonds came into view three by three as he came to the cotton-wool lining.

“Here is!” he said. “For these I pay two hond’erd thirty thousand francs. Of profit I make thirty thousan’ francs — I will not pretend I make no profit.”

The Orator walked to the door of his bedroom and called in the expert he had brought from London. One by one the stones were examined. Henry Dissel was an amused spectator. In the end Mr. O. Rater counted out twenty one-hundred-pound notes and the Belgian folded them carefully and put them in his pocket.

“I suppose, M’sieur Dissel, you are not prepared to give me the name of the man from whom you made this purchase?”

M. Dissel shrugged and shook his head.

“He may be good mans or bad mans,” he said. “If I speak him by name, there should be plenty troubles and questions and reclamations, and then he say: ‘You, M’sieur Dissel, you give me plenty nonsense. Again I will not deal with you,’ isn’t it?”

“Where does your brother carry on business in London?” asked the Orator at parting.

“Theodor has the bureau in Victoria Street. Nomber nine hondred sixty,” replied M. Dissel. “But we are not good friendts. That is sad and against Christian teaching.”

The Orator frowned.

“Theodor? What is his other name?”

“Theodor Louis Hazeborn — mine is Heinrich Frederick Dinehem.”

The Orator looked at him blankly.

“Oh!” he said.

Another man would have said much more, but Chief Inspector Rater was sparing of speech: therefore was he nicknamed by his sardonic peers.

M. Dissel was a Belgian subject and had been engaged in business for ten years, occupying a small office on the Boulevard Militaire. It was a very untidy office, the Orator discovered when he made a visit. Above the desk was a most ornate diploma in a golden frame. It testified to an athletic accomplishment of M. Heinrich Dissel.

He was, as he said, an agent, representing a number of unimportant textile houses, English and German and American. For these he travelled a great deal. He was a member of a club where play was very high, but, although he was a gambler, nothing else was known against him. Occasionally he dealt in precious stones, antiques and even house property. There had been no complaint against him, and he was evidently the sort of man whom international thieves might use as an innocent cover for them in their negotiations.

“Theodor Louis Hazeborn!” The name occurred and recurred to Mr. Rater all the way back to London.

The day he arrived he had the dubious satisfaction of restoring the missing diamonds to their owner — and Lady Teighmount was in an irascible mood. She grudged (she said) every penny of the reward: she thought that if the police could bring about their return for money they could have secured the stones without money; she hinted darkly that she did not exclude the possibility of the police in general and Chief Inspector Rater having shared the reward.

The Orator listened and yet did not listen. He was thinking of M. Theodor Louis Hazeborn Dissel and of M. Heinrich Frederick Dinehem Dissel.

Going back to his suburban home that night, the Orator suddenly said:

“It is crazy!”

“Who is crazy?” asked his startled fellow passenger — for Mr. Rater had made his cryptic pronouncement in a railway carriage.

“Everybody,” said the Orator with great calmness.

His companion drew back to a corner seat and located the alarm cord.

But it was crazy — this theory which was beginning to shape in the Orator’s mind. The craziest notion that any man could conceive.

Patiently he began a fresh enquiry, exploring new avenues that radiated from old crimes. For three weeks he sought interviews with jewel thieves who were behind bars. A dozen prisons were visited, and at the end of his investigations he uncovered a skilfully hidden path that led from London to Belgium. Along this path furtive intermediaries had passed, carrying the proceeds of a score of robberies big and little. Not always did it lead to Brussels; sometimes it branched off to Liége, sometimes it stopped short at Ostend, but always at the end of it was a mysterious somebody to be found in a café or a beer-hall or place less reputable, and always the rendezvous was designated in London.

“This was how it was done, Mr. Rater” (the speaker was a fence serving out his sentence in Maidstone Gaol). “When the boys got a good haul it was as certain as anything one of the big fences would be called up on the ’phone and told where the stuff could be sold. I don’t know where this bird got his information, but he got it. And then one of our runners would take it over the water. The money was always good. I’ve taken stuff over myself.”

“You never saw the foreign fence?”

“Never. You’d get to the café and then somebody would come in and say ‘The boss is outside.’ He’d be waiting round the corner in a cab. He’d go through the swag like lightning with an electric lamp, name the price and pay it on the spot.”

The Orator did not ask how the London agent of the fence came to know who held the stolen property. He knew the underworld well enough to know that in certain sets such matters are common knowledge. He knew too that most receivers and the bigger of the thieves had houses of call to which they might be telephoned. The crazy idea was no longer crazy.

Two days after this he had a whole day to himself and he took a busman’s holiday — he called on the brother of the volatile Heinrich.

Heinrich’s office in Brussels had been one miserable room, untidily furnished. The office of the industrious Theodor was a place of polished mahogany and shining brass. On the ground-glass panel of the door was a neatly painted announcement:

He was a tall, carefully dressed man, clean-shaven, rather exquisite, thought the Orator. His hair was brushed carefully back from his high forehead, he wore a monocle, his linen (in contrast to his brother’s) was immaculate. His English was faultless.

A girl secretary showed Mr. Rater into the private office where Theodor sat at a desk so amazingly neat and orderly that it seemed impossible that it could have been used. Theodor bowed from his hips, a little ceremoniously — it was the only suggestion of his foreign origin.

“I have an uncomfortable feeling that you have come to see me about my brother,” he said with a rueful smile. “It isn’t exactly a premonition, because I happen to know that you interviewed him a few days ago — in fact he wrote and told me, and although he did not tell me the object of your call, I am just a little uneasy.”

“Why?” asked the Orator bluntly.

M. Theodor Dissel paced up and down the room, his hands in the pockets of his well-creased trousers.

“Well...” he hesitated, “you will not expect me to say anything disparaging of Heinrich — that would be unnatural. He is a wild sort of fellow, absolutely unstable, but I do not think bad at heart. When a man is as careless with money as he is, there is always a likelihood that he might get himself into serious trouble. Is it some trading transaction — some debt he has contracted which he has not paid? I am certain he would do nothing fraudulent—”

His manner betrayed a natural anxiety. It was exactly the attitude the Orator would have expected in a worried brother.

“If it is money...” Theodor shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I can do little. I have already helped him to the extent of fifteen thousand pounds. That money I shall never receive in his lifetime.”

“There is no question of fraud” — the Orator spoke slowly — “not the kind of fraud you mean. Your brother is a Belgian national, isn’t he?” and, when Theodor nodded: “And you are British — naturalized?”

“Yes,” said Theodor quietly. “I am married in England since the war. If my brother is married I do not know.” He shrugged again. “He is the kind of man who is likely to contract alliances of a less permanent character. I will be frank with you — he is a great trouble to me.”

The Orator said nothing. He stroked his face, and in his large, pathetic, doglike eyes seemed to be reflected something of the other’s care.

“Whatever you told me of Heinrich I should, alas! believe. He has certain friends who are not—” His gesture expressed the limits of disparagement.

“Ever heard of his being engaged in the jewellery business?”

Theodor frowned.

“Jewellery business?” He spoke slowly. “I did not know that he was in that trade. And yet, when he was in London last, he hinted that he had some dealings with a man in London — a Mr. Devereux. I met Devereux once, a rather unpleasant looking man — not the kind one would imagine was a jeweller. In fact I disliked his appearance so much that when he called on me after my brother’s return to Belgium I sent a message to him that I was busy and could not see him.”

The Orator thought for a long time.

“Quite right,” he said at last. “Devereux is a pretty bad man. I know him.”

He went home to his lodgings and puzzled things out.

“Crazy idea!” was the sum of his conclusions.

It was a problem that could be marked Shelved for development. The Orator accordingly laid his mystery in a handy place.

It was a fortnight later that Heinrich Dissel stepped gingerly out of the Brussels train at Ostend station. It was a warm and heavy September day and a white mist lay upon a glassy sea. He engaged a cabin aft, a “cabin of luxury,” where he deposited his one piece of luggage, a small valise, and ordered lunch to be served. He was, apparently, a little lame, for he walked painfully with the aid of a stick when he made an appearance upon the deck.

The mist held to Dover, growing thicker as the English coast was approached. The boat, guided by the guns and siren of Dover Harbor, came slowly towards the harbor’s mouth, an hour late.

It was when she was turning — for mail boats go into harbor stern first — that a second-class passenger heard a cry for help. Heinrich Dissel had been seen hobbling towards the stern of the ship; had also been seen (and warned by a quartermaster) sitting perilously on the rail over the stern.

The cry was followed by a splash, and rushing to the side, a steward saw Heinrich’s walking stick floating out of sight, but saw nothing of the man. A boat was instantly lowered, but though the sailors recovered his hat, Heinrich had disappeared from sight.

That night Mr. Rater read in the stop press of an evening newspaper:

“Well, well!” said the Orator, unmoved by the tragedy.

The body of Heinrich Dissel had not been found when the Orator paid his visit of condolence on the stricken brother.

He discovered M. Theodor examining the contents of the small valise that the Dover police had handed to the dead man’s relatives.

“I am bewildered,” said Theodor, shaking his head. “I have just been on the telephone to Brussels, but apparently there is not the slightest reason for suicide. His affairs were prospering, everything in his office was in order — so far as the poor fellow’s affairs could be in order — and he had over a thousand pounds in his bank. The other day he lamed himself playing tennis, and I can only suppose that a sudden lurch of the ship brought the weight of his body on to his injured ankle...”

“Insured?” asked Mr. Rater.

Theodor nodded slowly.

“Yes — I had forgotten that. When I paid his debts I insisted that he should insure with an English company. It was perhaps a little heartless, but it was necessary that I should have security.”

“For fifteen thousand?”

“I think that was the sum. But the money is nothing — I am overwhelmed with grief at this terrible tragedy. Poor Heinrich—”

“Insured in the name of Dissel?” interrupted the Orator.

M. Theodor hesitated.

“No. Our family name is—”

“Schtalmeister,” said the Orator, nodding. “I know.”

Only for a second was Theodor disconcerted.

“We changed our names by deed—” he began.

“I know,” said the Orator. “You had two uncles, didn’t you? One was called Theodor Louis Hazeborn and one called Heinrich Frederick Dinehem. Your mother named you Heinrich Frederick Dinehem a week after you were born. A month later she moved into another district in London and had a violent quarrel with your uncle Heinrich. So she went and registered your birth all over again!”

M. Theodor was white but silent.

“You started life with two names and you’ve been carrying on the good work. With a clever little mustache you were Heinrich in Brussels and Theodor in London — a receiver of stolen property in both places. When your mother changed her mind, she gave us a lot of trouble.”

“You are mad,” gasped Theodor agitatedly. “My brudder—”

“You are your brother — and that falling overboard was pretty easy for you, wasn’t it? I saw a diploma in your Brussels office — long distance swimming, eh? You got ashore and had a car waiting, I’ll bet. You’re the bird I’ve been waiting for — the bird in two places at once. Get your hat.”