The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

The Burglar John Russell

The popular short story writer, journalist, and screenwriter John Russell (1885–1956) is frequently confused with John Russell Fearn, a British writer of American pulp fiction often credited with some of Russell’s stories.

Russell, an American born in Davenport, Iowa, was a reporter for the New York City News Association and the New-York Tribune. He began writing crime and adventure short stories for top magazines and newspapers, then moved to California to work for the motion picture industry. He wrote numerous silent films, his best-known being Beau Geste (1926), which starred Ronald Colman as the titular adventurer; he also worked, uncredited, on the iconic Frankenstein (1931), starring Boris Karloff.

“The Lost God,” a short story originally published in Collier’s Weekly, served as the basis for The Sea God (1930), a Paramount film written and directed by George Abbott. A South Seas adventure, the type of fiction for which Russell was best known, it tells the not-unfamiliar story of an explorer, Phillip “Pink” Barker (Richard Arlen), who becomes a god while battling with Square Deal McCarthy (Eugene Pallette) for the affections of Daisy (Fay Wray). The now lost silent film, Where the Pavement Ends (1923), was based on “The Passion Vine,” a story from Russell’s South Seas story collection, Where the Pavement Ends (1921); it was written and directed by Rex Ingram and starred Alice Terry and Ramon Novarro. The Pagan (1929), a part-silent, part-talking film that also starred Novarro, was based on a similar Russell story.

Russell’s best stories were collected in The Red Mark and Other Stories (1919), Where the Pavement Ends (1921), In Dark Places (1923), and Cops ’n Robbers (1930).

“The Burglar,” originally published in magazine form in the October 1913 issue of New Story Magazine, was first collected in Cops ’n Robbers (New York, W. W. Norton, 1930).

Three steps short of the third floor, and he stopped and grinned to himself inside the blinding mask of the dark, feeling with careful finger tips.

He found the wire at one side, plucked it out in a loop, and severed it neatly, finishing off each end with a scrape of the knife from mechanical habit of thoroughness...

Then he lifted himself over, without even touching that step, as a wolf might break a snare and still shun it in sheer excess of wild caution. He crawled on to the landing. The house was dead as the tomb behind him as he slid along the passage to the rear room.

He was noiseless. He was sure. He was quick. His pulse kept a temperate beat in his throat. His muscles responded smoothly, slipping with silken, steely precision to do his will. His eyes were clear and steady as a cat’s. His eardrums were tuned to finest perception. Every sense of his spare, wiry body was alert, thin drawn.

His was the keen, gaunt perfection of training that the starving thing of prey attains.

In some twenty hours he had not eaten. In some three weeks he had not known a full meal. In some twenty-six years, all he could boast, he had never enjoyed the chance to blunt his fine animal appetites or to dull his fine animal equipment with satiety.

It was in him to live, to endure, to keep his strength where the weaker went to the wall. His nature was the tough, tenacious, elastic, close-compacted metal that does not snap...

Resistless poverty had ground him upon its whetting edge. Remorseless labor had shaped and hardened him. Relentless hunger had driven him forth at last, a cutting tool, finished and ready for crime.

And now he had found his work...

Thin bands of moonlight cut in at an angle through the windows of the rear room. They were big windows, reaching from floor to ceiling, and barred to waist height with graceful iron grilles. They were wide open upon the garden below.

He curled in the heavy shadow along the wall near the door and watched, listened...

Vagrant breaths of the summer night stirred the curtains. Vague rumors of the sleeping city stole mysteriously from the void. Nothing more.

Between winkings, almost without sensible movement, he was across the room to the far side, feeling out the shape and details of the wall cabinet, adjusting his sight to the ghostly reflection of moon glow.

The outer section of the cabinet was a writing desk. A blind, according to his tip. He slipped the bent end of the burnished implement he carried — his sole outfit — against the edge of the lock.

The smooth, lifting pressure gave him his first heave of effort, his first thrill of power. He had a ton at command in that leverage. And the lid came away like the top of a wet cardboard box.

He could make out the interior of the desk dimly. A model desk; there were pigeonholes, paper trays, two rows of shallow wooden drawers. At least, the veneer was of wood, and each inlaid panel was furnished with a neat little glass knob.

His tip saved him the trouble that would have been necessary to establish the incidental fact that behind the trays and the pigeonholes, behind the false fronts and the glass knobs, stood a solid foot of chrome steel plates...

Swiftly, still relying on that valuable tip, he began to unscrew the little glass knobs from the imitation-drawer panels. As he drew each knob off he pressed the tiny screw shaft that was left standing in the wood, and each time he paused, expectant. Even the wonderful tip could not tell him which was the vital knob.

It proved to be the fourth on the left-hand row.

When he pressed, the fourth screw gave like a tiny plunger. The operating current closed. Springs released with an oily snicking. And the whole interior of the cabinet moved outward from the wall in a solid, silent swing like the shift of a scenic illusion.

It was a dainty job. The steps of it fitted like the parts of a jigsaw picture. No hitch, no hurry, no gap, no confusion. He foresaw, he judged, he made the adequate gesture. He applied the exact necessary force. And the act was complete—

It took him three minutes to open the small inner compartment. Three minutes that passed without a jar, without an audible breath, without a hasty movement. Three minutes, until he caught the shock of the snapping steel with deft balance of body, with perfect release of joint and sinew...

He did not grab.

He searched the inner compartment lightly with one hand. When he drew it out, it brought a tiny, flat leather-bound casket. Kneeling there beside the open door of the safe at the edge of the moonlight band, he turned back the cover of the casket.

The moment of success is the test of the criminal. Achievement shows the nerve of the social wolf. Method, judgment, readiness retain their steadfast, savage purpose — or weaken and fumble in the flurry of desire.

He was under full control. His brain was level, cool. His heart had not jumped a stroke. He kept everything he had used about him. Nothing was mislaid. He knew his precise position. He was ready to flit on the instant, leaving no mark, no clue behind. He was fit. He proved it now.

Gently he picked out the Thing that nestled in the casket on its velvet bed.

He lifted the Thing between finger and thumb, as one might lift a sparrow’s egg, and held it before him so that the moonlight fell upon it and was knotted there in a tangle of pale glory and was wafted through in delicate strands of spectral splendor...

He gazed, quietly fascinated, not by the beauty of what he saw, but by what it meant to him.

A sound beat upon his ear — from close at hand — in the same room. He turned his head with birdlike quickness. For the rest he did not move, did not start.

“Keep it right there,” said a voice dryly, calmly.

He kept it there.

“Just as you are,” advised the voice.

He obeyed the suggestion.

“Pretty effect!”

A figure detached itself from the shadows about the doorway. As it advanced into the moonlight it was revealed as that of a man, tall, powerfully built, massively shouldered.

He was draped in an ample dressing gown, hanging loose and untied. He carried a big revolver in his fist carelessly, with the ease of habit. He had the air of one just aroused from a nap, and not at all excited by the incident.

He must have been a magnificent specimen of physical development at one time, this man. Even now he was little more than just beyond the ripeness of his powers. A fleshy droop under the eyes scarce marred his hard-cut features. A certain grossness about the body seemed no clog upon his strength. A heeling tread was as formidable without the spring and litheness it must once have owned.

He was still young, in spite of the marks of indulgence; easy, masterful, and sure in every gesture.

He stood regarding the glistening marvel in the moonshine for an appreciative moment. Then he reached out casually with his free hand.

“I’ll take it... Thanks!”

He turned his bold, confident face down upon the burglar with a grimly humorous smile. The burglar knelt staring up at him, immobile. Idly, almost indifferently, the big man’s hand closed over the extended fingers, took the prize, weighed it an instant, and passed it to a waistcoat pocket.

His eyes were still fixed upon the burglar in lazy mockery. It was all so easy a triumph.

“Get up!”

The voice was deeper and shorter now that the dramatic effectiveness of the incident was complete.

The burglar stood up...

The big man inspected him. His lip lifted as he took in the other’s commonplace exterior. His glance sharpened as he noted each detail of lean wretchedness, of furtive shabbiness.

He dominated his captive in pride and arrogance, scowling down at him.

“And you’re the lad who thought he could lift the Rangely diamond!” he exclaimed incredulously. “You!”

He continued his survey.

“Here’s ambition!”

But his curious glance traveled beyond to the rifled safe, standing wide, and suddenly sarcasm was not adequate to him.

“Now tell me how in hell you did it?”

It rumbled from him in quick anger. The anger of privileged grievance and righteous disappointment.

“How the hell did you get that box open?”

The burglar said nothing.

The big head sank forward. The voice slid down another note.

“Look here,” his restraint of word was ominous, “I think you’d better answer up promptly like a wise little man. I’ve a mind anyway to smash you like a bug! It’d please me a whole lot, and there’s nothing to keep me, you know!..

“I want to hear how a poor sap like you managed to waltz right into that safe!... I’m waiting!”

There was something rawer and closer than menace in the tone.

“I got a tip,” answered the burglar sullenly, at last.

“Where?”

“Off — a guy.”

“What guy?”

“Usta work for a safe company.”

There was silence between them for a time. A silence because the big man was pulling at the band of his collar.

“Never had to force it at all?”

“No.”

“Never even figured to force it?”

“No.”

“Well, you’re some master hand, ain’t you! Then what?”

“I watched.”

“The house?”

“Yes.”

“Go on!”

“And the newspapers.”

“Well?”

“I saw where the old lady — where Mrs. Rangely was jumped to the hospital yest’d’y — and her husban’ hired a room to stay near her.”

“And — the son?”

“I saw where it said the son was livin’ at some club or ’nother.”

“Servants?”

“I saw the last of ’m go out two hours ago.”

“Some student! Some clever crook, eh?... So then you thought you had your chance?”

“Yes.”

“Having doped it all down to a fine point like they do in the books, you thought you’d just happen along and scoop up the Rangely diamond! You thought that?”

“Yes.”

“And I bet you fell into the wires a dozen times on your way up. Do you know that stairway is wired?”

“Yeah.”

“Do, eh?... Where?”

The burglar told him.

“And you dodged the connections?”

“I cut ’m.”

Sudden wrath flared in the questioner.

“Why, damn your grubby little soul, anyway! Where did you get the brazen cheek to think of a job like this? Say — who the hell are you, anyhow?”

He gathered the slack of the dressing gown under an arm and took one heavy stride. The huge revolver jammed against the captive’s ribs. The hard-jawed face sneered into his with brutal contempt...

“Did you ever turn a big trick?”

“No.”

“Did you ever blow a box?”

“No.”

“Did you ever pull off anything above petty larceny in your life?”

He emphasized each question with the gun muzzle.

“No,” muttered the burglar.

“Then what are you doing here? By Jove! I hoped it was somebody of some account. I hoped, anyway, it might be somebody!... Have you got any record of any kind?”

“Nah.”

“And still you had the gall to go after the Rangely diamond! Didn’t you know the best men in the business would have their work cut out to cop such a prize? Didn’t you know the smartest operators in the world would be none too smart for this job? Men like Max Shimburn, or Perry, or even Meadow himself? And you sticking your dirty little paws into the game!..”

He gave a final thrust that sent the other spinning back upon the door of the safe.

The act of violence seemed to make him aware for the first time of the curious height to which his surge of personal resentment had risen.

He laughed at himself.

“Why look at me getting all fussed up!” he observed.

He considered a moment. When he spoke again his voice had regained something of its former dry calm. His manner, too, had reverted somewhat to the self-appreciatory dramatic...

“We’ll teach you a lesson,” he decided. “We’ll teach you to stick to frisking and till-banking and second-story work — where you belong!”

The burglar stared at him.

“You need to be shown, you guttersnipe! You need to be put in your proper place. Jobs like this are not for such as you... I’ll prove it!”

No whimsically cruel punishment would have seemed beyond the possible fancy of that contemptuous colossus.

“Beat it!” he growled.

The burglar still stared.

“That’s what. You’re not important enough! I’m giving you just what you’re worth. I’m ignoring you. Understand?... On your way out of this house and don’t linger!”

He stood there in the moonlight, a powerful, commanding figure, smiling to himself once more at his conceit, restored to casual amusement by his own fanciful disposal of the situation and the effective little play he had made of it. The picture of confidence, strength, and assurance.

For an instant longer the burglar stared, expressionless. Perhaps he was too crushed to understand. The big man banished him with a gesture.

He obeyed...

He slid away from the safe. He glided along the side of the room. He did not even look back from the doorway. He passed through to the hall, to the head of the stairs. He began his descent, an audible descent.

He obeyed...

But at the third stair from the top he introduced a trifling variation into the maneuver of retreat.

He stayed for an instant — just the fleeting fraction of a minute, while his weight bore upon the step; while he stooped; while his nimble fingers found the two free ends of the severed wire and touched, merely touched, the exposed tips of copper, one upon the other.

When he continued his flight it was as if he had not paused at all.

He obeyed.

But at the second floor he deviated again from the letter of his instructions.

He left the balustrade and crept down the hall toward the rear room, just as he had done at his first entrance. The rear room was similar to the one above. Like that, it was empty. Like that, its windows opened wide on the garden side...

The burglar made straight to the farther window. He lifted himself over the ornamental grille. The frame gave him a handhold.

At the back of the house next to the Rangely residence was a one-story conservatory extension. It was vine-grown, flat-roofed.

He knew the exact measurement of the gap from the window ledge to the coping of that room. He bridged it in a step. For a space he was in the full eye of the moon. For such a space as a cat needs to dart across a fence. After that he disappeared from view at the extreme rear end of the conservatory roof in the black shadow of the chimney that raised its square bulk like a tower.

He had obeyed, now he waited...

For all his alertness he was never quite certain whence came the first definite sign of results. Nor exactly when it came.

But presently there was some living presence in the garden below him. Presently, too, he knew that feet were softly astir in the basement of the Rangely house. At about the same time he was made aware of furtive movement in the side street, beyond the wall that hedged the garden two houses above. And glancing up at the sky line of the block he had a glimpse of a police cap spotted against the star dust for a wink...

It was a circling attack, collected and delivered with a promptness, an energy, a cautious eagerness that offered startling proof of the standing of the Rangely family, the importance of the Rangely residence, and the value of the Rangely possessions in the anxious view of the authorities.

It came out of the void of the sleeping city, starting at the flicker of a needle on a dial, centering like a sweep of hornets, closing with a full cordon.

To an observer of ordinary police methods it might have seemed amazing, almost supernatural. To the initiated it might have furnished a cynic commentary on the efficiency that is reserved for the need of the wealthy and the great.

No slighting an emergency call from that locality. The response was swift and adequate...

Meanwhile the man who crouched unseen in the shadow of the chimney on the observatory wing fixed his gaze upon the third-floor windows of the Rangely house.

Those windows were large. They were open from floor to ceiling. From his vantage some fifty feet away he was placed so as to command a low-angled sweep of vision over the sills.

He waited as a man in the pit waits for the rise of the curtain.

And when it did lift it went up on a smash of tense action...

A muffled shout came from the depths of the house — the first challenge; the stamp of feet; then two bursting shots.

“Stand!” bellowed a bull voice. “Who’s there?... Stand, or I’ll fire again!”

The rush had checked on the stairs. Evidently a competent revolver was commanding that well.

“Inspector Lavery and ten men!” came the answer.

A pause, dropping in like the suck of a wave before its breaking. A pause that was tense with possibilities and indecision.

Then—

“Police?” rumbled the big voice. “What’s all the excitement?”

The third-floor rear leaped with sudden radiance as the bulbs were switched on.

“All right, police!”

Upon the brilliantly lighted stage beyond the open windows appeared a knot of blue uniforms. Crowding in the doorway the policemen found themselves confronted by a young giant in a dressing robe who faced them coolly, a fisted weapon hanging by his side.

“Inspector Lavery?” he inquired. “Charmed, I’m sure! How did you get in?”

The inspector came forward.

“Walked in,” he returned crisply. “The front door was open for all and sundry. And you, Mr.—”

“Rangely is my name.”

The inspector looked him over.

“You live here?” he inquired, with considerably less rasp to his tone.

“At present, in the absence of my parents. But — I don’t understand. The door open? The outer door?”

“And an alarm was touched from here about seven minutes ago.”

“Alarm? Strange!... I rang no alarm.”

“It was automatic. You have heard nothing? No disturbance in the house?”

“Not until I was wakened by tramping on the stairs and fired at random just now.”

“You’re quick with a gun!” commented the inspector grimly. “The servants?”

“Gone for the night.”

The inspector turned his head.

“Well?”

“Nothing, sir,” came a respectful answer from the hall. “Everything seems to be all right. We’ve covered the house.”

“Is Devlin satisfied?”

“I’ll ask him to report, sir.”

The inspector looked again at the big, confident, easily interested young man who occupied the middle of the floor. Nothing could have been more reassuring, more solid and untroubled than that same young man.

“Perhaps I forgot to close the door when I came in,” he was saying. “Perhaps I even touched the alarm. I’m not very familiar with the arrangements. Anyway—” He waved a casual hand while he dropped the revolver carelessly in his dressing-gown pocket. “Anyway — here is the house, and here am I. Quite at your service, but in no danger that I know of.”

The inspector hesitated...

In the pause, through the attendant group in the doorway, came thrusting an awkward, undersized man in common clothes who dropped a suit case at the inspector’s feet with a bang and grinned with a most evil squint.

“Well, Devlin?”

“Front room — found ’em under th’ bed in the front room,” announced the newcomer, in a quaint, chuckling cackle. “Jes’ give ’em the once over!”

He kicked open the suitcase as it lay.

Every man within eyeshot stood transfixed...

“As classy a set of can openers as y’ll ever see!” observed Mr. Devlin, rubbing his hands with extraordinary gusto. “Money can’t buy no better. They ain’t made no better. Poems! A package of poems in steel, sir. That’s what they are — poems!”

The inspector looked up sharply.

“That all?”

“Except that the boy who owned ’em has been makin’ hisself damn comfortable in that front room this evening! Reg’ler lordin’ it. Must ’a’ took a nap in there. Nerve! How about it for nerve?”

“You hear this, Mr. — Rangely?”

The host shrugged in frank surprise.

“Extraordinary! Apparently some one has been here — after all.”

The meager individual who had brought the suitcase turned toward the speaker, dropping his head with a curious twist. A misshapen finger plucked the inspector’s arm...

“Who does he say he is?”

“Young Rangely.”

“Huh! Well, he ain’t,” cackled Devlin, squinting. “Herbert Rangely’s about the size an’ shape of a stewed prune. This boy’d make six — Look out!”

A flash of steel from the dressing-gown pocket was swift, but no swifter than the thin spurt of yellow flame that jumped to meet it...

The report was drowned in a shock of sound like the thunder of a torrent, prisoned and plunging for freedom, a roar that pulsed with the wild fury of untamed forces, cornered and struggling.

Through the haze of the electrics on that third-floor stage a gigantic figure flailed amid a writhing mass of blue, and drove with mighty limbs toward the nearest window.

Steadily it made its way, like some slow-moving polyp of the depths, impeded but unmastered by clinging incrustations.

It seemed that nothing could stop it.

It reached the window, it caught the grille, it hurled itself bodily at space in one magnificent heave...

But there it stayed...

The captors would not loosen. They were many, and others came to help. The whole invading force joined the tussle. And the many were too many—

After a moment of swaying doubt the center of the fight collapsed. The group bore back and drew its vortex with it. The roaring ceased. Silence, rushing in, was like an ache in the ears.

A rippling police whistle called the last of the inspector’s reserves—

But there was no more resistance in the giant.

Standing once more in the middle of the room under the lights, half naked, great breast heaving, legs wide apart, he submitted while they snapped his wrists together behind his back, defiant, cursing them with his blazing beast’s eyes, but beaten.

“By God!” broke from him in a gust. “You’d never ’a’ got me if you hadn’t put that bullet through my arm!”

“Don’t y’ fool y’rself!”

It was the detective, Devlin, who answered. He was peering up at the captive with button-bright eyes and rubbing his hands briskly.

“Don’t y’ fool y’rself. We got y’ because y’r time had come! How about that for a little suggestion? Two years ago y’d ’a’ popped through that window, bullet and all, cops and all, and hell itself couldn’t ’a’ stopped y’. Y’ could ‘a’ done it then. But not now. Not now. It ain’t in y’ no more!... How d’y’ like the notion?”

The prisoner snarled down at him, crimson-faced.

Devlin cackled.

“Don’t like it, eh? It’s true. Two years more of success — two years more of easy money — two years more of night clubs and speakeasies — two years more of loafin’ and fifty-cent smokes, of gamblin’ and women — that’s what’s done it for you, ol’ boy!”

He plucked a roll of fat along the big man’s ribs. He prodded his grossness. He pointed out the sag of the cheeks and the thinning at the temples, while the captive raged.

All with the veriest nonchalance, the impersonal interest of the clinical demonstrator...

Only his glittering little eyes betrayed a more concrete meaning behind.

“That’s what’s the matter, ol’ boy. Pret’ tough! But you must ’a’ seen it comin’. A man like you, with such opportunities! Hell, you must ’a’ seen the time comin’. The time when y’d be done, like all the rest.”

The big man had gone from poppy red to wax white.

“Damn you!” he choked. “Shut up, you little fiend. You don’t know anything about me!”

“Oh, don’t I?” cackled Devlin, springing back and pointing a crooked finger. “I wonder! I wonder if I don’t — Mr. Meadow. Mr. Silver-gilt, Silk-stocking Meadow, Mr. Sportin’-life, Top-notcher Meadow, Mr. Jim Meadow, of Nowhere, wanted Everywhere, last seen Somewhere, and headed Anywhere!... I wonder if I don’t!”

A babble of excited tongues burst at the name.

“Are you sure, Devlin?” cried the inspector. “Meadow! He’s never been caught!”

“Look at his face,” triumphed the detective. “It’s writ there. He’s never been caught, no! That’s why I got his goat so easy. Look at him!”

In fact the prisoner could not control himself to put on a denial. Chagrin and rage held him helpless.

“James B. Meadow,” chuckled Devlin. “Million-dollar thief, kid-glove crook, gentleman burglar — the master that never yet did a day in stir! I got one flash at him once, and that’s as near as anybody has ever come to him before...

“There he is! And we got him, because his time was come. Ripe. He was ripe and we picked him, that’s all!”

It was a bit of theatricalism to have suited the taste of the prisoner himself, had the lines, and the supers, and the properties been somewhat altered.

He held the center. The police gathered about him with avid, exultant eyes, like a pack of hounds that have brought the biggest boar of the chase to bay.

“I only wish we’d got him at work,” observed the inspector, dwelling on him fondly. “It’s too tame a way to grab a guy with his record!”

But in the interval Devlin had discovered the wall cabinet. He swung it wide with a cackle.

“Oh, I guess it ain’t so tame as you think! That’s the Rangely safe, chief. You may have heard of it!”

“Cracked?”

“You bet!” Devlin’s eyes were like points of fire. “And chief... this... this is where the Rangely diamond lives!”

But the inspector was the first to find the inner compartment — empty!

“Then it’s moved,” he commented dryly.

Devlin forgot to cackle.

“Don’t tell me—” he began, and stopped.

He scratched his head.

“By golly, let’s see them tools.”

He swung around to the suitcase and pounced on the steel gems it contained.

“Meadow,” he snapped, jumping up. “You never cracked that safe!”

“Didn’t I?” sneered the prisoner.

Devlin was at the cabinet again, examining the mechanism.

“No, you didn’t! The outer door’s been worked with its proper combination. Not cracked at all. Them glass drawer knobs have something to do with it — and I shouldn’t wonder—

“And if it was you who used the combination, why’d you bring all them tools, and a pint of soup? No! You came expectin’ to blow her. Don’t tell me!”

The prisoner smiled superior.

“The inner box has been forced all right,” continued Devlin. “But the guy never had your beauty outfit. He wouldn’t need it. He used a plain jimmy. And he didn’t work like you!”

“No?”

“I know your signature, ol’ boy... See here, what’s it mean?”

The prisoner shrugged.

Devlin shook an ugly finger under his nose.

“That diamond’s been took, Meadow! If you got a pal—”

Meadow laughed at him.

“No, not that,” acknowledged Devlin, totally at a loss. “You never took one. But there’s been a hell of a funny evenin’ around here, first and last. Come across, ol’ boy. What was it?”

The prisoner smiled...

Devlin watched him with bright, squinting eyes, head dropped askew, boring at him.

“By gol!” he breathed.

“By gol, I might have guessed! Of course. Somebody beat y’ to it! Waterloo! It’s y’r Waterloo, this night. Fat, and flabby, and off y’r game, and y’ fall asleep in the next room while somebody beats you to it! The time had to come. It came tonight — all at once — all in a swoop. First y’ lose one of the best cribs y’ ever tackled, and then y’ get pinched on the spot. Dished! Pinched beside another feller’s leavin’s!... Dished!... Done!”

He cackled into the captive’s face.

Meadow had gone white again under the jeering lash of the detective so skillfully wielded. But he held himself with an effort.

“Think so?”

“I know so. And — tell y’, Meadow. Let me tell y’ one thing... Listen—”

He laid finger into palm, and emphasized each word slowly.

“The crook that got that diamond — whoever he was — is a better crook than you. He may be a slob. He may be a green hand — likely he was, with that jimmy. But to come and crack the crib you was after, under your nose, and such a crib! And to get away with the plum!

“Meadow, I’m glad to get you. But if I had a chance to bargain I’d exchange you in a minute — yes — ten like you, like what you are now — for just one good look at that feller!..

“He’s goin’ to make trouble, big trouble. It may take years to find him. It may be years before he loses his punch and goes off his game like you. I tell you, you’re done! You’re no account! And him — he’s just comin’!”

The quivering captive could endure no more. His pride, his self-love, his egotism — the monstrous bloated egotism of the criminal — had been slashed to the quick.

He cried out under it, as Devlin had meant he should.

“Is that so?” he yelled hoarsely. “Well, that’s all the good you are, you shrimpy sleuth! Done? I may be a little out of training. I may have run into a rotten string of luck. But I’ll show you whether I’m done or not.

“Yes, there was another guy on this job! Yes, he tried to butt in on my crib! And how far did he get with it, do you suppose? How far do you think I let him travel with my swag?

“He was a sniveling little wharf rat. Somehow, by dumb luck, he had picked up the combo of that safe. By more dumb luck he got the diamond. And then — I blew him back where he belonged...

“I’m done, am I? Feel here — in what you’ve left of my vest. The right-hand pocket!”

Devlin sprang to him, smiling.

“I hand it to you, Jim,” he cackled. “You’re a wonder! Gents—”

He fumbled in the pocket while the bluecoats pressed eagerly around.

“Gents, we have here that well-known wonder of the world, famed in song and story — the Rangely diamond!”

There was a moment’s strained silence in the rear room of the third floor, on that lighted stage offered to the windows of the night...

Then Devlin’s curiously hushed addition cut across it.

“Rangely h-ell! It’s glass!... It’s one of them blasted glass knobs off — that — blasted — safe — front!”

Such was the crisis of that impromptu midnight drama. It is likely that it might have afforded further interest.

But the audience did not wait to see. The audience had had enough. The audience was quite content to leave the action at that point, and to slip gently down the vine-laddered rear wall of the conservatory.

Safely started, he began a circumspect flight over the fences and through the yards to the far end of the block, unsuspected and unpursued...

He was noiseless. He was sure. He was quick. He gave his undivided attention to the immediate problem of getting back to his lair. He was the keen hunting prowler of the night. He had made his kill. He had done more, he had stricken down and removed from the meat trail a competitor who had interfered with his quest, a rival whose cunning had failed to match his own, a fellow wolf whose day was done.

Now he was hurrying away with his unsatisfied hunger and his lusting appetite, hurrying toward the appeasement of that hunger and that lust. But even in his triumph, even in his hour of success, he did not slacken a nerve from his savage tension, his readiness, his craft, his precision. For he was perfectly fitted for the work of prey. And he had never yet known satiety...

Only once he relaxed, when it was quite safe.

—

Under the edge of a garden wall, where the moonshine filtered among the lilac bushes, he took from his pocket and held in the cup of his hands for a moment a Thing, a glorious, delicate drop of shimmery light... The Rangely diamond.

Portrait of a Murderer Q. Patrick

Okay, try to follow this, if you can. The Q. Patrick pseudonym is one of three pen names (the others being Patrick Quentin and Jonathan Stagge) used in a complicated collaboration that began with Richard Wilson Webb (1902–1970) and Martha (Patsy) Mott Kelly (1906–2005) producing Cottage Sinister (1931) and Murder at the Women’s City Club (1932). Webb then wrote Murder at Cambridge (1933) alone before collaborating with Mary Louise (White) Aswell (1902–1984) on S.S. Murder (1933) and The Grindle Nightmare (1935). He found a new collaborator, Hugh Callingham Wheeler (1912–1987), for Death Goes to School (1936) and six additional Q. Patrick titles, the last of which was Danger Next Door (1951); all were largely traditional British detective stories. Wheeler and Webb moved to the United States in 1934 and eventually became U.S. citizens.

Wheeler and Webb created the Patrick Quentin byline with A Puzzle for Fools (1936), which introduced Peter Duluth, a theatrical producer who stumbles into detective work by accident. The highly successful Duluth series of nine novels inspired two motion pictures, Homicide for Three (1948), starring Warren Douglas as Peter and Audrey Long as his wife, Iris, and Black Widow (1954), with Van Heflin (Peter), Gene Tierney (Iris), Ginger Rogers, George Raft, and Peggy Ann Garner. Webb dropped out of the collaboration in the early 1950s, and Wheeler continued using the Quentin name but abandoned the Duluth series to produce stand-alone novels until 1965.

Wheeler and Webb also collaborated on nine Jonathan Stagge novels, beginning with Murder Gone to Earth (1936; published in the United States the following year as The Dogs Do Bark). The series featured Dr. Hugh Westlake, a general practitioner in a small Eastern town, and his precocious teenage daughter, Dawn.

Wheeler went on to have a successful career as a playwright, winning the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical in 1973, 1974, and 1979 for A Little Night Music, Candide, and Sweeney Todd.

“Portrait of a Murderer,” written by Wheeler and Webb under the Q. Patrick byline, was originally published in the April 1942 issue of Harper’s Magazine; it was first collected in The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow under the Patrick Quentin byline (London, Gollancz, 1961).

This is the story of a murder. It was a murder committed so subtly, so smoothly that I, who was an unwitting accessory both before and after the fact, had no idea at the time that any crime had been committed.

Only gradually, with the years, did that series of incidents, so innocuous-seeming at the time, fall into a pattern in my mind and give me a clear picture of exactly what happened during my stay at Olinscourt with Martin Slater.

Martin and I were at an English school together during the latter half of the First World War. In his fourteenth year Martin was a nondescript boy with light, untidy hair, quick brown eyes, and that generic schoolboy odor of rubber and chalk. There was little to distinguish him from the rest of us except his father, Sir Olin Slater.

Sir Olin, however, was more than enough to make Martin painfully notorious. Whereas self-respecting parents embarrassed their children by appearing at the school only on state occasions such as Sports Day or Prize-Giving, Sir Olin haunted his son like a passion. Almost every week this evangelical baronet could be seen, a pink, plump hippopotamus, walking about the school grounds, his arm entwined indecently round Martin. In his free hand he would carry a large bag of chocolates which he offered to all the boys he met with pious adjurations to lead nobler, sweeter lives.

Martin squirmed under these paraded embraces. It was all the worse for him in that his father suffered from a terrible disease of the throat which made every syllable he uttered a pathetic mockery of the English language. This disease (which was probably throat cancer) had no reality for Sir Olin. He did not believe that other people were even conscious of his mispronunciations. At least once every term, to our irreverent delight and to Martin’s excruciating discomfort, he was invited to deliver before the whole school an informal address of a religious nature — or a pi-jaw as we called it. When I sat next to Martin in Big School, suppressing a disloyal desire to giggle, I used to watch my friend’s knuckles go white as his father, from the dais, urged us “laddies” to keep ourselves strong and pure and trust in the Mercy of God, or, as he pronounced it, the “Murky of Klock.”

Sir Olin’s pious solicitude for his own beloved “laddie” expressed itself also in the written word. Every morning, more regular than the rising of the English sun, there lay on Martin’s breakfast plate the blue envelope with the Slater coat-of-arms. Martin was a silent boy. He never spoke a word to hint that Sir Olin’s effusiveness was a torment to him, even when the derisive titter parodied down the table: “Another lecker for the lickle lackie.” But I noticed that he left these letters unopened unless his sensitive fingers, palpating the envelopes, could detect bank notes in them.

Most of the other boys tended to despise Martin for the solecism of such a parent. My own intimacy with him might well have been tainted with condescension had it not been for the hampers of “tuck” which Lady Slater sent from Olinscourt. Such tuck it was, too — coming at a period when German submarines were tightening all English belts. Being a scrawny and perpetually hungry boy, I was never more prepared to be chummy with Martin Slater than when my roommate and I sneaked off alone together to tackle those succulent tongues, those jellied chickens, those firm, luscious peaches, and those chocolate cakes stiffened with mouth-melting icing.

Martin shared my enthusiasm for these secret feasts, but he had another all-absorbing enthusiasm which I did not share. He was an inventor. He invented elaborate mechanical devices, usually from alarm clocks of which there were always five or six in his possession in different stages of disembowelment. He specialized at that period in burglar alarms. I can see now those seven or eight urchins that he used to lure into our room at night with sausage rolls and plum cake; I can almost hear my own heart beating as we waited in the darkness to witness in action Martin’s latest contrivance for foiling house-breakers.

These thrilling episodes ended summarily, however, when an unfeeling master caught us at it, confiscated all Martin’s clocks, and gave him a hundred lines for disturbing the peace.

Without these forbidden delights, the long, blacked-out nights of wartime seemed even darker and colder. It was Martin who evolved a system whereby we could dispel the dreary chill which settled every evening on the institution like a miasma, and warm up our cold beds and our undernourished bodies. He invented wrestling — or rather, he adapted and simplified the canons of the art to suit the existing contingency. His rules were simple almost to the point of being nonexistent. One took every possible advantage; one inflicted as much pain as one reasonably dared; one was utterly unscrupulous toward the single end of making one’s opponent admit defeat with the phrase: “I give in, man. You win.”

It didn’t seem to do us much harm thus to work out on one another the sadism that is inherent in all children. It warmed and toughened us; perhaps in some subtle way it established in us an intimacy, a mutual respect.

Though Martin had the advantage of me in age and weight, I was, luckily, more wiry and possibly craftier. As I gradually got on to Martin’s technic I began to develop successful counter measures. So successful were they, in fact, that I started to win almost nightly, ending up on top with monotonous regularity.

And that was the first, the greatest mistake I ever made in my dealings with Martin Slater. I should have known that it is unwise to win too often at any game. It is especially unwise when one is playing it with a potential murderer, who, I suspect, had already conceived for any subjugation, moral or physical, a hatred that was almost psychopathological and growing in violence.

I experienced its violence one night when, less scrupulous than Hamlet toward Claudius, he attacked me as I knelt shivering at my bedside going through the ritual of “saying my prayers.” The assault was decidedly unfair. It occurred before the specified safety hour and while the matron was still prowling. Also, though props and weapons were strictly inadmissible, he elected on this occasion to initiate his attack by throwing a wet towel over my head, twisting it round my neck as he pulled me backward. It was a very wet towel too, so wet that breathing through it was quite out of the question.

With his initial, almost strangling jerk backward, my legs had shot forward, underneath the bed, where they could only kick feebly at the mattress springs, useless as leverage to shake off Martin, who had seated his full weight on my face, having pinioned my arms beneath his knees. I was a helpless prisoner with a wet towel and some hundred pounds of boy between me and any chance of respiration.

Frantically I gurgled my complete submission. I beat my hands on the floor in token of surrender. But Martin sat relentlessly on. For a moment I knew the panic of near suffocation. I clawed, I scratched, I bit; but I might have been buried a hundred feet under the earth. Then everything began to go black, including, as I afterward learned, my own face.

I was saved mercifully by the approach of the peripatetic matron who bustled in a few moments later and blew out the candle without being aware that one of her charges had almost become Martin Slater’s first victim in homicide.

Martin apologized to me next morning but there was a strange expression on his face as he added: “You were getting too cocky, man, licking me every night.”

His more practical appeasement took the form of inviting me to Olinscourt for the holidays. I weighed the disadvantages of four weeks under Sir Olin’s pious tutelage against the prospect of tapping the source of those ambrosial hampers. Inevitably, my schoolboy stomach decided for me. I went.

To our delight, when we first arrived at Olinscourt we found Sir Olin away on an uplift tour of the reformatories and prisons of Western England. He might not have existed for us at all had it not been for the daily blue envelope on Martin’s breakfast plate.

Lady Slater made an admirably unobtrusive hostess — a meek figure who trailed vaguely round in low-heeled shoes and snuff-colored garments which associate themselves in my mind with the word “gabardine.” Apart from ordering substantial meals for us “growing boys” and dampening them slightly by an aroma of piety, she kept herself discreetly out of our way in some meditative boudoir of her own.

Left to our devices, Martin spent long days of feverish activity in his beautifully equipped workshop, releasing all the inventive impulses which had been frustrated at school and which, as he hinted apologetically, would be thwarted again on the return of Sir Olin. Being London-bred, there was nothing I enjoyed more than wandering alone round the extensive grounds and farm lands of Olinscourt, ploddingly followed by a dour Scotch terrier called Roddy.

The old rambling house was equally exciting, particularly since on the second day of my visit I discovered a chamber of mystery, a large locked room on the ground floor which turned out to be Sir Olin’s study. Martin was as intrigued as I by the closure of this room which was normally much used. Inquiries from the servants elicited only the fact that there had been alterations of an unknown nature and that the room had been ordered shut until Sir Olin’s return.

This romantic mystery, which only Sir Olin could solve, made us almost look forward to the Baronet’s return. He arrived unexpectedly some nights later and appeared in our room, oozing plump affection, while we were having our supper — Martin’s favorite meal and one he loved to spin out as long as possible. That evening, however, we were never to finish our luscious salmon mayonnaise. Ardent to resume his spiritual wrestling match with his beloved laddie, Sir Olin summarily dismissed our dishes and settled us down to a session known as “The Quiet Quarter,” which was to prove one of the most mortifying of our daily ordeals at Olinscourt.

It started with a reading by Sir Olin from a book written and privately published by himself, entitled: Five Minute Chats with a Growing Lad. When this one-sided “chat” was over Sir Olin sat back, hands folded over his ample stomach, and invited us with an intimate smile to tell him of our problems, our recent sins and temptations. We wriggled and squirmed a while trying to think up some suitable sin or temptation; then the Baronet relieved the situation by a long impromptu prayer, interrupted at last, thank heavens, by the downstairs booming of the dinner gong. Then, having laid benedictory hands on our heads, Sir Olin kissed us both — me on the forehead and Martin full on the mouth — and dismissed us to our beds.

There, for the first time since my arrival at Olinscourt, Martin leaped on me with a sudden savagery far surpassing anything he had shown at school. With his fingers pressed against my windpipe, I was helpless almost immediately and more than ready to surrender.

“Swear you won’t tell the chaps at school about him kissing us good night,” he demanded thickly.

“I swear, man,” I stuttered.

“Nor about those pi-jaws he’s going to give us every evening.”

It was not until I had given my solemn oath that he released me.

Next morning it became immediately apparent that with Sir Olin’s return the golden days were over. With his return too Lady Slater had departed on some missionary journeyings of her own, a fact which suggested that she enjoyed her husband’s presence no more than we did. In the place of her short but fervent grace, Sir Olin treated us and the entire staff of servants to ten minutes of family prayers — all within sight and scent of the lemon glory of scrambled eggs, the glistening mahogany of sausage and kippers, which sizzled temptingly on the side table.

But at least the Baronet solved the mystery of the locked study, solved it quite dramatically too. Immediately after breakfast on his first day at home, he summoned us into the long, booklined room and announced with a chuckle: “Lickle surprise for you, Martin, laddie. Just you both watch that center bookcase.”

We watched breathless as Sir Olin touched an invisible switch and smoothly, soundlessly, the bookcase swung out into the room, revealing behind it the dull metal of a heavy door. And in the center of this heavy door was a gleaming brass combination-dial.

“Oh, Father, it’s a secret safe!” Martin’s face lighted up with enthusiasm.

Sir Olin chuckled again and took out a heavy gold hunter watch. Opening the back of it as if to consult some combination number, he started to turn the brass knob to and fro. At length, as on oiled wheels, the heavy door rolled back, disclosing not a mere safe, but a square, vaultlike chamber with a small desk and innumerable drawers of different sizes, suggesting the more modern bank-deposit strong rooms. He invited us to enter and we obeyed, trembling with excitement. Sir Olin showed us some of the wonders, explaining as he did so that his object in withdrawing his more liquid assets from his London bank had been to protect his beloved laddie’s financial future from the destructive menace of German zeppelins. He twisted a knob and drew out a drawer glittering with golden sovereigns. He showed us other mysterious drawers containing all that was negotiable of the Slaters’ earthly treasure, labeled with such titles as MORTGAGES, INSURANCE, STOCKS AND SHARES, TREASURE NOTES, etc., etc.

Confronted by this elaborate manifestation of parental solicitude, Martin asked the question I had expected: “Has it got a burglar alarm, Father?”

“No. No.” Sir Olin’s plump fingers caressed his son’s hair indulgently. “Why don’t you try your hand at making one, laddie, in your spare time?”

I was soon to learn, however, that spare time was a very rare commodity with Sir Olin about. The Baronet, a passionate English country gentleman himself, was determined to instill a similar enthusiasm in his only son and heir. Every morning after breakfast Martin, yearning for his workshop, was obliged to make the rounds of the estate with his father, following through barn and stable, over pasture and plowland, listening to an interminable monologue on how Sir Olin, the Eleventh Baronet, with the aid of God, was disposing everything perfectly for the Twelfth Baronet, the future Sir Martin Slater. I usually tagged along behind them with Sir Olin’s only admirer, the dour Roddy, staring entrancedly at the sleek flanks of cows whose cream would enrich next term’s tuck hampers; at pigs whose very shape suggested sausage rolls of the future; at poultry whose plumpness I translated dreamily into terms of drumsticks, second joints, and slices of firm white breast.

Every day Sir Olin brought us back from our cross-country tramps at exactly five minutes to one, which left us barely time to wash our hands for lunch. And after lunch until tea, the Baronet, eager to share Martin’s playful as well as his weighty moments, took us riding or bowled googly lobs to us at the cricket nets, in a vain attempt to improve our batting style in a game that we both detested.

Tea at four-thirty was followed by our only real period of respite. For at five o’clock, punctual as Sir Olin’s gold hunter, his estate agent arrived from Bridgewater, and the two of them were closeted together in the library until seven o’clock when the dressing gong sounded and Sir Olin put documents and ledgers into his strong room and the agent took his leave.

Needless to say, Martin and I daily blessed the estate agent’s name, though it was, infelicitously enough, Ramsbotham. And, needless to say, his arrival was the signal for us to scoot off, me to my wanderings, Martin to his workshop, until suppertime.

Suppertime itself, once the most blissful moment of the day, lost its glory; for Sir Olin, unlike his wife, was quite indifferent to food. Eager for his “Quiet Quarter,” he allowed us a scant twelve minutes to feed the inner boy. His appearance, dressed in a claret-colored dinner jacket, meant the instant removal of our plates, and many a succulent morsel did I see snatched from me. Martin loved good food as much as I did, but being a truer epicure than I, was incapable of gobbling. He frequently had to endure “The Quiet Quarter” and his father’s good-night kiss on an almost empty stomach.

A few days later Sir Olin introduced yet another torture for Martin. The Baronet decided that his son was now old enough to learn something about the business side of an estate that would one day be his. Three times a week, therefore, Martin was required to be present from five to seven o’clock in the library with his father and Ramsbotham. This left him only two hours on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for tinkering in his beloved workshop. It meant also that, at least three times a week, his supper period was even further curtailed.

I think it was about this time I began to notice a change in Martin. He became even more silent and his face was pale and set with dark lines under his eyes. These, I suspect, were caused partly by the fact that he made up for the lost time in his workshop by sneaking out to it in the middle of the night. I say I suspect this, for he never took me into his confidence; but on two occasions when I happened to wake after midnight his bed was empty and through the open window I could see a flickering light in the workshop.

My guess is that the final stage really started on Saturday night at the end of my third week at Olinscourt. The dressing gong had just sounded and, as I happened to pass the library, I heard the tinkle of a bell. I was surprised, since the telephone there rang very seldom and usually only for something important. Martin, who had joined me on the stairs, voiced my unspoken hope.

“Say, man, d’you think perhaps that’s someone calling Father away or something jolly like that?”

And later, as I was hurrying through my bath, there was the sound of a car starting, and from the window Martin announced excitedly:

“There’s old Ramsbum’s car, and I do believe I see Father in it with him. He hasn’t come up to dress yet. Wait while I go down to the library to see.”

He returned in a few minutes with the good news that his father, not being there, had presumably left with Mr. Ramsbotham, which meant we could linger pleasantly over supper. It was a delicious supper too — fresh trout followed by raspberries and cream — and was brought up by no less a person than Pringle, the head butler. “Excuse me, Master Martin,” he said with an apologetic cough, “but do you happen to know if Sir Olin will be down to dinner?”

“I think he went to Bridgewater with Mr. Ramsbotham.” Martin’s mouth was full of green peas. “I know he was asked to give a talk at the boys’ reformatory there some Saturday. And someone rang him up on the telephone.”

“I see, sir, but he didn’t mention it to me, sir.” Pringle withdrew in starchy disapproval and left us the pleasant realization that there would be no “Quiet Quarter” and no good-night kiss.

And there were no family prayers next morning, since Sir Olin had not returned. It was to be presumed that he had been exhausted by reforming reformatory boys and had consequently spent the night in Bridgewater with Mr. Ramsbotham. And, as it was a Sunday, no question was raised as to his absence.

Martin, bright-eyed, rushed off to his workshop immediately after breakfast and I decided on a stroll. It was then that happened one of those tiny incidents that seemed trivial at the time, but seen in later perspective, appear most significant.

I had whistled for Roddy, usually so anxious to share my walks abroad, but no scampering feet answered my summons. I whistled again. Then I started to look for him, calling:

“Hey, Roddy... rats...!”

The sound of whining from the study at last solved the problem. Roddy had apparently found a rat of his own, for he was scratching at the central bookcase with a strange crooning sound.

I induced him to follow me, but later when I turned to look back, he had vanished. And that, in itself, was quite unprecedented.

Another seemingly unimportant incident occurred later that morning when I arrived home from my walk. The day was hot and I had taken off my school blazer before going out, hanging it on a peg in the hall, near the front door. When I got back a blazer was there, but it was hanging upside down. As I unhooked it a number of letters dropped from the pockets. They were from Sir Olin to his son and I realized at once that Martin had gone in to lunch ahead of me, taking my blazer by mistake. I picked up the letters — all of them as I thought — shoved them back into the pockets and promptly forgot the whole thing. I doubt even if we bothered to effect an exchange of coats.

Next morning Martin did a rare thing. He got up before me and was at his place at the breakfast table when I came down. In front of him was an unopened letter and I immediately recognized the writing on the envelope as his father’s.

As Pringle brought the coffee he said with his usual apologetic cough: “When I picked up the letters from the front hall, Master Martin, I took the liberty of observing there was one for you from Sir Olin. I was wondering if he mentions the date of his return.”

“Just give me a sec, Pringle.” Martin heaped his plate with kedgeree. “I’ll read it and tell you.”

After the dignified withdrawal of Pringle, Martin tore open the envelope and pulled out two pages of the familiar crabbed scrawl. He scanned the first page quickly, muttering: “Just the usual pi stuff.”

“Does he say when he’s coming back?” I asked.

“Wait, here’s something at the end.” As Pringle’s footsteps sounded in the passage outside he handed me the first page and the envelope, saying urgently: “Here, shove those into the fire, man. I’d die rather than have Pringle see all that slosh.”

As I speedily thrust the first page of slosh, together with the envelope, into the fire, I heard Martin’s voice, studiedly casual for Pringle’s benefit: “Here, Pat, read this. You’re better at making out Father’s writing.”

He passed me the second sheet and I read:

The letter contained no hint as to his actual whereabouts.

We imparted the gist of this to Pringle and he seemed satisfied enough, though somewhat resentful that he had not been informed personally of his master’s absence. Still more resentful and far less satisfied was Mr. Ramsbotham when he arrived at the usual hour that afternoon. No, he had not driven Sir Olin to Bridgewater or anywhere else. The talk at the reformatory had been definitely arranged for next Saturday. He had of course to accept the evidence of the letter which Martin duly presented but it was all very vexing... all very odd. It was more vexing and more odd when it came out that no one had driven Sir Olin to the station.

I don’t know exactly when anyone became really alarmed at Sir Olin’s continued absence, but at some stage Mr. Ramsbotham must have telephoned Lady Slater to come home. Even before her return, however, I had put the missing Baronet temporarily out of my mind and given myself up to thorough enjoyment of life without him.

To the adult it may seem odd that, in view of the circumstances narrated, I myself felt no uneasiness as to Sir Olin’s safety. I can only say that a child’s mind is not a logical one; that the events preceding the Baronet’s disappearance had no sinister shape for me then; and it is only as I look back now and place each occurrence in its proper context that I can see the terrifying inevitability of the pattern that was forming.

The next piece of news I heard was exciting. The need to pay the staff and the monthly bills had made it essential that the vault, containing among its other riches all the Slater ready cash, be opened. Since Sir Olin alone knew its combination, arrangements were finally made to bring from London the workmen who had built it and who were to blast through the complicated lock.

We were warned to keep away during the period of the actual dynamite blast, but nothing could have kept me from the scene of operations. I lured a curiously reluctant Martin to join me, and we had hidden behind a couch in the dust-sheeted study by the time the men came in to set the fuse.

Even now I am able to recapture those tense moments of waiting behind the couch. I can smell the musty smell of the heavy brocade; I can hear Martin’s breath coming faster and faster as we waited; I can see his face pale and set; I can hear the whispered words of the men as they set about their dangerous job.

And then, sooner than I had expected, came the blast. It was terrific, rocking the study and, so it seemed, rocking the very foundations of Olinscourt. Martin and I bumped heads painfully as we jumped up, but I did not notice the pain. I was watching the stream of black smoke which poured from the door of the vault. Through it we heard: “That ought to have done the trick. Here, lend a hand.”

Martin and I watched as the men started to swing back the heavy door of the vault. Pringle was hovering fussily behind them. I could see him through the clearing smoke. I was conscious again of Martin’s heavy breathing, of the inscrutable brown eyes staring fixedly at the door of the vault as it gradually opened.

Then I heard a smothered exclamation from one of the men, followed by the barking of Roddy who had somehow got into the room. Above it came Pringle’s voice: “Good God in Heaven, it’s Sir Olin!”

I saw it then — saw the body of a stout man slumped over the tiny desk inside the vault. I saw the dull gleam of a revolver in his hand, the purplish bloodstain above the right temple. I saw the men moving hesitatingly toward it to lift it up — and then Pringle’s voice again, warningly: “Leave him for the police. He’s dead. Shot ’isself.”

For a moment I stared at that slumped body with the fascination of a child who is seeing death for the first time. A vague odor invaded my nostrils. It was probably the odor of gunpowder, but to my childish mind it became the smell of death. I knew sudden, blinding terror. I pushed past Martin, running upstairs to the lavatory on the fourth floor. I was very sick.

I don’t know how long I stayed there locked in the lavatory. I don’t remember what my thoughts were except that I had a wild desire to get home — to walk if necessary back to zeppelin-raided London — away from the horror of the thing that I had seen in the vault.

I must have been there for hours.

Someone was calling my name. I emerged from the lavatory rather sheepishly to see Pringle on the landing below. He said: “Master Pat, you are wanted in Lady Slater’s dressing room. You and Master Martin.”

I found Martin hovering outside his mother’s door. He looked as if he had been sick too. Lady Slater was sitting by the window in her boudoir. The snuff-colored gabardines had given place to funereal black, but there was no sign of grief or tears on her face. Even at that cruel moment it seemed beyond her scope to become human. Through a haze of pious phraseology she told us what I already knew — that Sir Olin had taken his own life.

“The terrible disease in his throat... we do not know how much he suffered... he explained it all in a letter to me... we must not judge him...”

And then she was holding out a thick envelope to Martin. “He left a letter for you too, my son.”

Martin took the envelope, and I could not help noticing that his fingers instinctively palpated it to discover the lurking presence of bank notes, just as he had always done at school.

“And he left a parcel for you also.” Lady Slater handed Martin a square carefully wrapped package. Then she continued: “The inscription on it is the same as on the letter. They are for you alone, Martin, to open and do with as you think fit.”

After this Lady Slater took us downstairs to the great living room. The village constable was standing by the door. A gentleman of military deportment was talking with Pringle, the butler, and Mr. Ramsbotham. A dim, drooping figure hovered at their side — the local doctor.

From behind a bristling mustache, the military gentleman questioned Martin and myself about the day of Sir Olin’s disappearance. Martin, surprisingly steady now, told our simple story. We had both thought we heard the telephone ringing in the library. Martin believed he had caught a glimpse of Sir Olin driving off with Mr. Ramsbotham. He assumed that his father had gone to give his lecture at the reformatory. Monday morning there had been a letter from Sir Olin on Martin’s plate telling him that he would not return for several days.

The problem of that letter which had lulled everyone into a false sense of security was next considered. The mustache pointed out that it must have been one which Sir Olin had written to his son at some earlier date and which, by accident, had become confused with the morning post on the front-door mat. It was at this moment that I remembered how, in my hurry for lunch on the day after Sir Olin’s disappearance, I had snatched at the blazer which had been hanging in the hall. I remembered how the unopened letters from Sir Olin to Martin had fallen from the pocket. With the conviction of sin known only to children, I saw the whole tragedy as my own fault. And, with more confusion than courage, I was stammering out my guilty secret.

Martin, watching me steadily, was able to corroborate my story, admitting with an awkward flush that he had not always opened his father’s letters the moment they arrived. The military eyebrows were raised a trifle and there the matter of the letter stood. “Martin’s little friend” had spilled some old unopened letters from Sir Olin out of Martin’s blazer; he had failed to pick one of them up; next morning the butler had found it on the doormat and supposed it to be part of the regular morning post... A most unfortunate accident.

The military gentleman then turned to Lady Slater: “There is one thing, Lady Slater. Sir Olin went into the vault on Saturday evening and he was never seen again. It is to be presumed that he did not come out. Indeed, he could not have opened that heavy door from the inside even if he had wished to.”

Martin was watching the brisk mustache now, his eyes very bright.

“And yet, Lady Slater, Dr. Webb here tells me that your husband has actually been dead for less than twenty-four hours. Today is Thursday. This means that Sir Olin shot himself through the temple sometime yesterday. In other words he must have spent the three previous days alive in the vault.”

He cleared his throat. “From this letter to you there is no question but that your husband took his own life, but I am wondering if you could... er... offer an explanation as to why he should have delayed so long — why he should have spent that uncomfortably long period in the vault. Why he should have waited until the oxygen must have been almost exhausted, why he should...”

“He had letters to write. Last bequests to make.” Lady Slater’s eyes blinked. She seemed determined to reduce the unpleasantness of her husband’s death to its lowest possible terms.

“He wanted to make the final arrangements just right.” Her voice sank to a whisper. “Such things take time.”

“Time. Yes.” The military gentleman gave almost an invisible shrug. “But not the better part of three days, Lady Slater.”

“I think,” replied Lady Slater, and with these words she seemed to lift the whole proceedings to a higher plane, “I think that Sir Olin probably spent the greater part of his last three days in — in prayer.”

And indeed there was no answer to that.

We were dismissed almost immediately. In his mother’s dressing room Martin carefully picked up the letter and the package which had been left for him by Sir Olin. He moved ahead of me toward the door.

Now that the ordeal was over I felt the need of human companionship, but Martin seemed eager to get away from everyone. Keeping a discreet distance, I followed him out into the sunlit afternoon. He made straight for his workshop, shutting the door behind him and leaving me with my face pressed dolefully against the window.

I don’t think he was conscious of me, but I had no intention of spying on him. The loneliness of death was still with me and contact, however remote, with Martin was a comfort. As I watched, he put the letter down on his work bench. Then, casually, he started to unpack the parcel.

I was surprised to see that it was nothing more than an alarm clock, an ordinary alarm clock similar to the dozen or so that already stood on the workshop shelf, except for the fact that it seemed to have attached to it some sort of wire contrivance. I have a dim memory of thinking it odd that his father’s last tangible bequest should be anything so meager, so commonplace as an alarm clock.

Martin hardly looked at the clock. He merely put it on the shelf with the others. Then he lighted one of the Bunsen burners with which his well-stocked workshop was provided. He picked up the letter his father had written him, the last of those many letters which he had received and which he had neglected to read. He did not even glance at the envelope. He thrust it quickly into the jet from the Bunsen burner and held it there until the flames must almost have scorched his fingers.

Then, very carefully, Sir Martin Slater, Twelfth Baronet, collected the ashes and threw them into the wastepaper basket.

I remained at Olinscourt for the funeral. Of the service itself I have only the shadowiest and most childish memories. Not so dim, however, are my recollections of the funeral baked meats. I am ashamed to say that I gorged myself. I have no doubt that Martin did so too.

The next day it was decided by my family that I should leave the Slaters alone to their grief. My reluctant departure was sweetened by a walnut cake left over from the funeral which I packed tenderly and stickily at the bottom of my portmanteau.

I never saw Martin Slater again. For some reason it was decided that he should leave the school where we had shivered and wrestled together and go straight to Harrow. For a while I missed the hampers from Olinscourt, but soon the war was over and my family moved to America. I forgot all about my old chum.

Not long ago a mood of nostalgia brought me to thinking of my childhood and Martin Slater again. Slowly, uncovering a fragment here, a fragment there, I found that I was able to restore this long obliterated picture of my visit at Olinscourt.

The facts of course had been in my mind all the time. All they had lacked was interpretation. Now, thanks to a more adult and detached eye, I can see as a whole something which, to my childish view, was nothing more than a disconnected sequence of happenings.

Perhaps I am doing an old school friend an atrocious wrong; perhaps I am cynically forcing a pattern onto what was, in fact, nothing more than a complex of unfortunate accidents and fantastic coincidences. But I am inclined to think otherwise. For I can grasp Martin Slater’s character so much more clearly now than when we were children together. I see a boy teetering on the unstable brink of puberty, who revolted passionately from any physical or spiritual intrusion into his privacy; a boy of intense pride and fastidiousness who was mature enough to know he must fight to maintain his personal independence, yet not mature enough to have learned that in the wrestling match of life certain holds are barred — the death-lock, for example.

I see that boy stifled by the sincere but nauseating affection of a father who bombarded him with assiduous pieties that made him the laughingstock of his schoolfellows; of a father who, with his “Quiet Quarters,” his sermonizings, his full-mouthed good-night kisses, turned Martin’s home life into an incessant siege upon the sacred citadel of his privacy. I am sure that Martin’s hatred of his father was something deeply ingrained in him which grew as he grew toward adolescence. That hatred was kept in check perhaps so long as the undeclared war of love was waged unknown to the outside world. It was different when I came to Olinscourt. For I represented the outside world, and in front of me Sir Olin stripped his son naked of all the decent reserves. Those kisses on the mouth were, I believe, to Martin the kisses of Judas. Sir Olin had betrayed him forever.

And Martin Slater was too young to know any other punishment for betrayal than — death.

The details of that crime speak, I think, plainly enough for themselves. During one of his nightly absences from our bedroom Martin could easily have stolen into his sleeping father’s room and studied the combination of the safe in the back of the gold hunter. He could easily have slipped into the vault on the night before the crime and installed there some ingenious product of his workshop, some device manufactured from an alarm clock and set for the hour at which Sir Olin invariably entered the vault, which would either automatically have shut the heavy steel door behind the Baronet or have distracted his attention long enough for Martin to close the door upon him himself. Martin’s inventive powers were more than adequate to have created that last and most successful “burglar alarm,” just as his conversation with his father about installing the alarm, as witnessed by myself, would have provided an innocent explanation for the contrivance if it had been discovered later in the vault with Sir Olin.

From then on, with me as an unconscious and carefully exploited accessory, the rest must have been simple too — an invented glimpse of Sir Olin driving off in Mr. Ramsbotham’s car, the clever trick of the old letter, steamed open probably and checked for content, planted among the morning post to put Pringle’s mind at rest about his master’s absence and to make certain that Sir Olin would not be searched for until it was too late.

There was genuine artistry in Martin’s use of me to cover his tracks. For it was I who innocently burned the first page and the envelope of that fatal letter whose date and postmark would otherwise have proved it to have been of earlier origin. It was I too, with my clumsy grab at the blazer, who was held responsible for that letter’s having dropped “inadvertently” into the morning mail.

Yes, Martin Slater, at fourteen, showed a shrewd and native talent for murder. And, as a murderer, he must be considered an unqualified success. For he never even came under suspicion.

There was one person, however, who must have been only too conscious of Martin Slater’s dreadful deed. And in that, to me, lies the real horror of the story. I try to keep myself from thinking of Sir Olin bustling into his safe to put away his papers as usual; Sir Olin hearing a little ting-a-ling like the whirring bell of an alarm clock; Sir Olin spinning round to see the great door of the safe closing behind him, shutting him into that soundproof vault; and somewhere, probably above the door, a curious amateur device composed of a clock and some lengths of wire.

I try not to think of the nightmare days that must have followed for him — days spent staring at that alarm-clock contrivance which he must have recognized as the lethal invention of his own son; days spent hoping against hope that Martin would relent and release him from that chamber where the oxygen was growing suffocatingly scarcer; days spent contemplating the terrible culmination of his “perfect” relationship with his beloved laddie.

I wonder if, during those hours of horror, Sir Olin Slater’s evangelical faith in the intrinsic goodness of human nature ever faltered. Somehow I doubt it. His heroic manner of death gives me the clue. For Sir Olin, however frightfully he had mismanaged his life, made a triumphant success of death. I can see him, weakened with hunger and thirst, scarcely able to breathe; I can see him neatly, almost meticulously, wrapping up the telltale alarm clock which, if left to be discovered, might have pointed to Martin’s complicity. I can see him writing a pious “suicide” note to his wife, and that other probably forgiving note, which was never to be read, to his son. I can see him producing a revolver from one of those brass-handled drawers in the wall of the vault — and gallantly taking his own life in order to shield his son’s immense crime from detection.

Indeed, it may well be said of Sir Olin that nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.

Karmesin and the Big Flea Gerald Kersh

Although the tireless Gerald Kersh (1911–1968) wrote more than a thousand magazine pieces and more than a thousand short stories, he is best known in the crime field for the few very short tales about Karmesin, a rogue who narrates his own adventures and has been described as “either the greatest criminal or the greatest liar of all time.” Typical of these stories is “Karmesin and the Crown Jewels,” in which the thief may have stolen the jewels from the Tower of London. For all his savoir faire and apparent elegance, there remains an undercurrent of smarminess; he could have been played by Sydney Greenstreet.

It is impossible to slot Kersh into any category of fiction, as his strange and powerful stories and novels cover the gamut from crime to fantasy to literary fiction, with many of the works straddling more than one genre. A somewhat bizarre young life — he was pronounced dead at four, only to sit up in his coffin at the funeral — continued through the early years of adulthood, in which he worked as a baker, nightclub bouncer, salesman, and professional wrestler. Although a successful writer, he moved to the United States after World War II to escape what he regarded as confiscatory taxation and became a naturalized citizen.

His most famous novel, Night and the City (1938), is set in the London underworld of professional wrestling and was the basis for the classic 1950 film noir directed by Jules Dassin and starring Richard Widmark; it was remade in 1992 with Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange. Most critics regard the 1957 novel Fowler’s End to be Kersh’s masterpiece and one of the great novels of the twentieth century, but it remains relatively unknown.

“Karmesin and the Big Flea” was originally published in the winter 1938/39 issue of Courier; it was first collected in Karmesin: The World’s Greatest Criminal — or Most Outrageous Liar (Norfolk, Virginia, Crippen & Landru, 2003).

A street photographer clicked his camera at us, and handed Karmesin a ticket. Karmesin simply said: — “Pfui!” and passed it to me. It was a slip of green paper, printed as follows —

“There is an opportunity for you,” said Karmesin. “Procure nine or ten dummy cameras. Give them to nine or ten men, with your printed tickets. Have an accommodation address. A reasonable number of your tickets will come back with shillings. It will be quite a time before anybody complains. If anybody does, explain: — ‘Pressure of business: millions of customers.’ In three or four weeks, you have made some money. Then you can start a mail-order business. By the time you are forty you may retire. Voila. I have set you up in life. I have done more for you than many fathers do for their sons. Give me a cigarette. Well, what are you laughing at?”

“Why don’t you try the scheme yourself?”

Karmesin ignored this question and went on, in an undertone: — “On second thoughts, have real cameras and real films. That relieves you of the necessity for accomplices. Always avoid accomplices. Don’t develop your film: just keep it. Then, if the police come, you say indignantly: ‘Look, here are the pictures. Give a man a chance to develop them!’ In this manner you can last for two or three months. Never trust any man. Work alone. And speaking of photography; keep out of the range of cameras. They are dangerous.”

“Why?”

“I once blackmailed a man by means of a camera.”

I was silent. Karmesin’s huge, plum-like eyeballs swiveled round as he looked at me. Under his moustache, his lips curved. He said: — “You disapprove. Good! Ha!” and he let out a laugh which sounded like the bursting of a boiler.

I said: “I hate blackmailers.”

“The man I blackmailed was a very bad man,” said Karmesin.

“How bad?”

“He was a blackmailer,” said Karmesin.

“Oh,” was all I could say.

“It was a good example of the manner in which little fleas bite big fleas. The man whom he proposed to blackmail was myself.”

“Make it a little clearer,” I said.

“Certainly. It is very simple. We were going to blackmail Captain Crapaud, of the French Police. He, in his turn, was blackmailing a certain Minister. The man with whom I was working was a certain villain named Cherubini, also of the French Police. He, not content with blackmailing Captain Crapaud, also wanted to blackmail me.”

“On what grounds?”

“He was going to blackmail me, because I was blackmailing Captain Crapaud; and blackmail is a criminal offence, even in France. All he had to do was obtain evidence that I was blackmailing Crapaud.”

“All this is very complicated.”

“Not at all. It is childishly simple,” said Karmesin; and, having borrowed a cigarette, he proceeded to explain —

Captain Crapaud (said Karmesin) was a man with whom it was impossible to feel sympathy. He was, if you will pardon the expression, a filthy pig. It is not usual to discover such men in high executive positions, in the police force of any great country, such as France. But as you know, such things happen. He had acquired a sort of hold upon a very great politician of the period. And he was using this man for all he was worth, which was plenty. This Crapaud was playing the devil. Like that other police officer, whose name, I think, was Mariani, he was using his office for purposes of personal profit. He organised burglaries, arranged the return of the loot, took rake-offs from this side and that; was responsible for many murders. He was a dangerous man to play with — a French equivalent of your own Jonathan Wild.

There is the basis of the situation: Captain Crapaud was holding a certain power, to the detriment of law and order; and his power was built upon a certain incriminating letter which he held.

You understand that? Good.

Now Crapaud had an underling, a species of stooge, a wicked little Corsican named Cherubini. This Cherubini was a bad man. He combined nearly all the vices, and, as is usual in such cases, was always short of money, although his income was far in excess of the normal. You know the type: his dependents starve, that he may bathe a couple of demi-mondaines in vintage champagne. Pfui on such wretches, I say! And pfui — and pfui! Tfoo! One spits at the very thought. Cherubini was little and rat-like. He had prominent front teeth, and no eyes worth mentioning. He would stop unhappy girls, and say “Be nice, or else...” But he had a weakness for the more elegant type of woman; and that kind of weakness costs money. Always beware, my friend, of the underling with luxurious tastes, for the time will come when he will nail you to the cross.

I met Cherubini in Cannes. He was going around like a Hungarian millionaire; with gardenias, and a gold-headed stick, and a diamond in his cravat, and an emerald like a walnut on his finger, and real Amber perfume on his moustache; smoking a Corona-Corona nearly as long as your arm... English clothes, English boots, silk shirts, polished nails — nothing was too good for this swine of a Cherubini.

I, needless to say, was a man of superlative elegance. I believe I have mentioned that my moustache was practically unrivalled in Europe. Yes, indeed, I am not exaggerating when I tell you that, while dressing, I used to keep my moustache out of the way by hanging it behind my ears. Nearly twenty-two inches, my friend, from tip to tip! However; it did not take me long to worm all the secrets out of the wretched little soul of this species of a Cherubini. He was second in command to the unspeakable Crapaud. Yes. That, in itself, was bad enough. But he was a traitor even to his master.

I will cut it short. Crapaud had a hold upon the Minister... let us call him Monsieur Lamoureux. Follow this carefully. Crapaud also had a hold upon Cherubini. Do you get that? Good. The Minister Lamoureux wanted very much to break away from the clutches of Crapaud, and was prepared to pay heavy money for the letter which Crapaud held.

Was this letter procurable? No. But there was an alternative to procuring it, and that was, to incriminate Crapaud in such a manner that he would be glad to part with the letter incriminating the Minister.

But how could one incriminate Crapaud?

Cherubini had a plan.

There was one thing which, in France, could never be forgiven or forgotten; and that was Treason. Out of any other charge, it was possible for a man with influence to wriggle; but not Treason. There was a spy scare at the time. (It was a little before the infamous Dreyfus affair.) If one could prove that Crapaud was receiving money from German agents, in return for information, then one had him.

“But is he?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Cherubini, “Crapaud is the outlet through which so many confidential matters concerning internal policy leak through to Germany. He receives, in his apartment, Von Eberhardt of the German Embassy; and receives, in exchange for certain information, a certain sum of money. If only one could prove this...”

I asked: — “Have you means of getting into Crapaud’s flat?”

“Yes.”

“Then the whole matter is simple,” I said. “Find out the exact moment when the money is likely to change hands, and take a photograph. A good photograph of Crapaud, taking money from Von Eberhardt, would be enough to hang him ten times over.”

“Yes,” said Cherubini.

“There is only one drawback,” I said, “A camera is too cumbersome.” This, you must remember, was before the days of the Candid Camera, and the lightning snapshot.

“Not at all,” said Cherubini. “The police in Paris are beginning to use the portable camera invented by Professor Hohler. This camera can be concealed under an ordinary overcoat, and has a lens good enough to take a clear picture by strong gaslight.”

“Can you get one?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

“I am afraid,” said Cherubini.

I paused; then asked: — “How much would there be in this?”

“How much? Why, two or three hundred thousand francs,” said this rat of a man.

“Then have no fear. I will take the photograph, if you get me into Crapaud’s flat at the right time.”

Bon. It was agreed.

We arranged to go to Paris together, and settle the affair.

“I have entrée to the flat,” said Cherubini, “and I know it like the palm of my hand. It is simple.” And he added: — “But you must do the photography, mind.”

All right. I will skip the tiresome details concerning the house, and so forth. It was a huge place in the Avenue Victor Hugo, with rooms as large as three rooms such as are built nowadays. The salon was something like a football field — vast, I tell you, and most luxuriously carpeted. The furniture in that room alone must have been worth four or five thousand pounds. Rare stuff. This pig-dog of a Crapaud did himself well. Near the window, there was a deep alcove, with another little window, or air-vent, at the back of it.

It was from this place that I was supposed to work. Cherubini had keys, and everything necessary. He also supplied me with the camera; a nice little piece of work, not dissimilar to the Leica or Contax camera of the present-day. I believe, in fact, that the Hohler Camera was the father of the candid camera. I was smuggled into the alcove, and there I waited for four hours, not daring to move. It was not very comfortable, my friend. However, in due course Crapaud arrived, with his friend Von Eberhardt. They sat. I was admirably in line with them. They conversed. I photographed them. They drank. Again I photographed them. They patted each other on the shoulder. Click! Again. Crapaud took out an enormous gold cigar-case, and offered Von Eberhardt a cigar. Again, click! Then, at last, the German took from his pocket a large roll of banknotes, and held it between his thumb and forefinger. Crapaud grinned and produced a sheet of paper. Then, as the paper and the money changed hands — click! Perfect.

Another hour passed before Von Eberhardt left. Then, as Crapaud went to escort his visitor to the door, I was up and out of the window, and away. You would never believe, looking at me now, how very agile I used to be. I thought I saw another figure slinking away in the shadows, but the night was too dark. I got to the street, and walked quietly home, where I developed my plates.

They were beautiful. The glaring gaslight, amply reflected in a dozen mirrors, was perfect. The photographs were as clear as figures seen by strong sunlight.

The next day, Cherubini came to see me. There was something in the manner of the wretch which disturbed me a little. He looked me up and down with an insolent grin, and said —

“Captain Crapaud’s apartment was broken into, last night.”

“So?” I said.

“Watches, rings, trinkets, and money, to the value of fifty thousand francs were stolen,” said Cherubini.

“Yes?”

“You were in the apartment, Monsieur,” said Cherubini.

“Oh?”

“Yes. You see, Monsieur, I was behind you, also with a camera.”

“Indeed?” I said.

“Indeed. And I am afraid that it will be my duty to have you arrested for the crime.”

“Oh.”

“Unless, of course, you are prepared to...”

“Pay you off, I suppose?” I said.

“Fifty thousand francs,” said Cherubini.

“And otherwise?”

“Listen my friend,” said Cherubini, throwing himself into a chair, “We are men of the world. I will put the cards on the table. The plates in your camera were duds, useless. You have no pictures. I, on the contrary, have some excellent ones of yourself in Captain Crapaud’s flat.”

“Any decent counsel could kick that case full of holes,” I said.

“Oh no. Not by the time Crapaud and I have finished with it,” said Cherubini. “Oh, my friend, my friend, you have no idea what evidence our boys would find, if once they searched your rooms.”

“So I was caught, was I?” I asked.

“Like a fish in a net.”

“But Von Eberhardt...”

Cherubini laughed. “Do you imagine that we would let you into the place with a camera? I mean, with a workable camera? With a camera loaded with proper plates? Be reasonable, Monsieur, be reasonable. There is nothing but your word, concerning Von Eberhardt. Who would believe you? No, no. You had better pay, my friend; you really had.”

“And if I thought of all that, and took the precaution of changing the plates?” I asked.

“It would still have made no difference,” said Cherubini, “The shutter of your camera would not work.”

I rose, and seized him by the throat, slapped him in the face, and threw him to the floor.

“Listen,” I said, “I would not trust you as far as I could see you. I saw through your game from the first. I had the shutter adjusted, the lens arranged, and the plates replaced. The camera was in perfect order. I will show you some pictures,” I said; and showed him.

He was silent. Then I said: — “And now the ace of trumps. You remember how Crapaud offered Von Eberhardt a cigar?”

“Well?”

“Look,” I said, and threw down a print. It was an excellent photo. One could see Eberhardt, Crapaud, and the unmistakable luxury of the salon. “Take that magnifying glass, and look at the cigar-case,” I said. Cherubini took the large lens which I handed him, and looked; shrieked once, and looked at me.

Clearly defined in the polished lid of the case was an image of Cherubini, lurking behind the curtains, perfectly recognisable.

“Who wins?” I asked.

And Cherubini said: — “You win.”

“And now who goes to Devil’s Island?” I asked.

Cherubini simply said: — “How much for the plate?”

And I replied: — “Tell Crapaud this: — If he does not give me that letter of the Minister Lamoureux, then the day will come when one of his superior officers will hand him a revolver containing one cartridge.”

“You are mad,” said Cherubini. Nevertheless, three days later Crapaud’s nerve broke, and I got the letter, which I returned to the Minister.

I asked Karmesin: — “What, you returned it free of charge?”

“Certainly,” said Karmesin. “I simply asked him to pay my expenses.”

“How much?”

“Chicken-feed. Fifty thousand francs,” said Karmesin, “But am I a blackmailer? Bah.”

“And Crapaud?”

“He left the country very suddenly, and, I believe, came to an evil end in the Belgian Congo, in the time of the Congo Atrocities. Probably some cannibal ate him. Or a lion. Who knows? Perhaps an elephant trod on him. I hope so. He was a villain. He was also a fool. He overreached himself. I was not the first person whom he had tried to blackmail in that manner. Only he was a little too clever. It should be a lesson to you: never be too clever. Also, beware of cameras. And furthermore, remember the folly of Crapaud, and if ever you come into possession of an incriminating document, you will know what to do.”

“What?”

“Photograph it immediately,” said Karmesin.

The Very Raffles-Like Episode of Castor and Pollux, Diamonds De Luxe Harry Stephen Keeler

Fair warning: In more than a half-century of reading mystery fiction, I can point to no author who has confused me as frequently and comprehensively as Harry Stephen Keeler (1890–1967), whose zany, complex intrigue-farces are almost a genre to themselves. The prolific author produced scores of short stories and more than fifty novels, several of which were more than one hundred thousand words in length. It was common for him to interweave previously published stories into what passed for plot.

His “plots” were achieved by fishing through a large file cabinet that he filled with newspaper clippings that interested him and pulling out a handful at random, interweaving them into a story, using such eccentric devices as wacky wills, hitherto unknown religious tenets, insane (and nonexistent) laws, and, most commonly, coincidences that defy credulity. For all their lack of rationality and cohesion, Keeler’s books had a wide and devoted following in the 1920s and ’30s, but, as the books became more and more bizarre, his readership eroded and then all but vanished entirely, his many later novels being published only in Spain and Portugal. Keeler’s wife of more than forty years, Hazel Goodwin, collaborated with him on dozens of books, often sharing a byline.

Thieves’ Nights, Keeler’s only short story collection, features Bayard DeLancey, King of Thieves, “whom lesser thieves feel honored to have known.”

“The Very Raffles-Like Episode of Castor and Pollux, Diamonds De Luxe” was originally published in Keeler’s Thieves’ Nights (New York, Dutton, 1929).

I first met DeLancey in London. The circumstances of that acquaintance hardly matter, except that I had about the best references that a crook could have. When he went over to Paris, I went back to New York with an understanding between us that I was to serve as the New York end of any big deal, and he had my address, and a code system by which we could communicate.

That he was mixed up in the Simon and Company robbery which he had broached to me at one time on Piccadilly, and that he had been successful, furthermore, was clearly proven by the interesting account I clipped from a New York paper on the second day of July. It read:

Clever old DeLancey! It looked indeed as though that well-worked-out scheme he had outlined on Piccadilly had come to a successful conclusion.

As for myself, I had, of course, promised to be of assistance to DeLancey merely in getting the two stones into the hands of old Ranseer at his farm near Morristown, New Jersey, after which the split would be forthcoming and would be divided up according to our respective risks in the proceeding. This was the method which we had outlined when DeLancey first heard that I was personally acquainted with old Ranseer, the wealthy recluse who bought stolen rare jewels at nearly their face value.

Had the clipping itself, however, been insufficient evidence that DeLancey had scored one on the French police, his letter, which reached me a week and a half later, made everything clear.

The communication, which was, of course, in cipher, when translated ran as follows:

So Von Berghem, I reflected curiously, seemed to be the only man in Europe who could get those two sparklers across the pond?

Surely, I thought troubledly, if he had to get them out of Europe before the eyes of the police, and get them into the States before the eyes of the customs authorities, he would have to be sharp indeed, especially in view of the fact that a hue and cry had already been raised.

Everything was in readiness, though. The pigeons were cheeping in their covered basket. On the mantel were two small leather leg bags ready for the loot. I looked at my watch and found that it was after nine o’clock.

Strange that Von Berghem had not arrived. I had called the steamship offices by telephone at six o’clock and had learned that the Princess Dorothy had docked an hour before.

Then I fell to wondering why he had encumbered himself with his son. Unquestionably, he must have realized that in dealings such as ours, every extra man, constituting a possible weak link, meant just so much more chance of failure.

The clock struck ten.

Where had DeLancey found this fellow — this Von Berghem? I found myself asking myself. Was he sure of him? Did he understand the game as we did?

Everything that DeLancey did was always more or less mystifying. He seemed to know the name of every crook between the equator and the poles, and to understand just what part of an undertaking should logically be assigned to anyone. Without doubt he must have known what he was doing this time.

So Von Berghem, I told myself, was the only man that DeLancey believed capable of—

The clock struck ten-thirty.

I heard the slam of a taxicab door down on the street below.

A second later the bell of my New York apartment tinkled sharply.

I hurried to the front door and opened it quietly. In the outer hall stood a tall man wearing glasses. He had gray hair — and a mole on his left cheek. At his side was a boy of about sixteen.

“This is Rat,” I whispered.

“Von Berghem,” he answered, and stepped inside with the boy, while I closed the door behind them.

I passed down the narrow inner hall and threw open the library door. “In here,” I said, and snapped on the lights. “How did you make out?”

Von Berghem seemed to be ill. The whiteness of his face and his halting gait, as he leaned heavily on the shoulder of his son, signified either sickness or—

Failure! Ah — that must be it, I told myself. My heart seemed to stop beating. Von Berghem must have been unsuccessful in his mission.

He sank heavily into a chair that the boy brought forth for him. The latter dropped down on a small footstool, nearby, and remained silent.

In the interval, I studied Von Berghem and perceived for the first time the horrible expression on his face. His eyes had the same haunting look that I had once seen on the face of a maniac in the state insane asylum in Wyoming, where I originally came from.

“Met with considerable trouble,” he stated laconically, after a pause.

“Tell me about it,” I said, half sympathetically and half suspiciously. His gaze, which had been roving aimlessly around the room, he directed toward me again. Then he commenced to talk.

“I called on DeLancey the morning after the robbery. He gave the two gems into my keeping at once. The lad was with me. He’s a coming thief, is the lad. We took a cab at once for the station. Three hours afterward, DeLancey was nabbed.

“The lad and I boarded a train that morning for Calais. We reached there at one o’clock in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day in a hostel. From the hostel we made the boat safely that evening and got into Dover at midnight. So far, everything ran without a hitch. We stayed at a hostel in Dover till morning.

“No use to bore you telling you of our crawling progress across England. Only three hundred miles, but we spent four days covering it. Of course, we were just a gentleman and his son traveling for pleasure.

“But things began to liven up for us. We had hoped by this time that we were not being looked for after all, but apparently we were wrong. As we got off the train in the station at Liverpool, on the evening of July 5th, the lad, little lynx that he is, spots a man in a brown suit, carelessly watching all the passengers. He nudges me quickly.

“Now comes luck itself. A crazy emigrant, farther down the platform, pulls out a gun and commences shooting through the roof. Hell and confusion break loose. During the big rush of people that takes place, the lad notices a little door leading out to a side street. ‘Quick, Daddy,’ he says, ‘we’ll slip out this way.’

“Outside, he flags a cabby in a jiffy and we drive to a little dirty hostel on a side street, where we spend the night wondering whether the man in the brown suit was looking for us or for someone else.

“However, we’re on our guard now. We don’t feel quite so easy. Next morning we make the pier and board the Princess Dorothy, which boat, I may add, is one of the few going out of Liverpool that do not touch at Queenstown or any other point but New York, once she casts off from the Liverpool landing stage. Yes, friend Rat, every detail was figured out long in advance by DeLancey himself.

“As soon as we get aboard, I lie down in the stateroom and let the lad remain on deck. I’m not a well man, friend Rat, and traveling under the conditions and handicaps that we traveled under is hard on me. The following is the boy’s account.

“As he says: No sooner had the ship pulled out from the landing stage and was headed about for the open water, than a motor car comes rushing pell-mell up to the wharf. Out jump four men — and one of ’em is our friend in the brown suit. The lad whips out the binoculars and watches their lips. ‘Damn — too late — radio—’ is what our brown-suited near-acquaintance appears to say.

“Well, in spite of the fact that, like all boats, we’re equipped with wireless, nothing happens to us on board. But at no time do I forget the existence of the Atlantic Cable. What I figure is that they’re trying to lull us into a false sense of security. At any rate, all the way across I take my meals in the stateroom and the lad prowls around deck trying to pick up some information. But, as I said before, everything’s as peaceful as the grave.

“It’s a mighty long nine days for us, friend Rat, but late in the afternoon of the fifteenth, we find we’re within one hour of the Battery — and we realize now that things are very doubtful for us.

“As we step from the gangplank together, each of us suddenly finds a hand on our shoulder. In front of us stand three men, two of ’em fly-bulls with stars — the third a customs inspector. ‘You’re Von Berghem,’ says one of ’em. ‘Want you both to step in this little house at the end of the pier for a couple of hours. When we get done there won’t be any further bother to you of a customs inspection, for the inspector himself here is going to help us out.’ He laughed unpleasantly. ‘Yep — we got a warrant,’ adds the other in answer to my unspoken question.

“Well, my friend, I, Von Berghem, know my limitations. I didn’t take the trouble to deny anything. Smilingly, I admitted that I was Von Berghem and that this was my son. Then I asked them what they intended to do. ‘Just want to look you and your boy and your two suit-cases over,’ admits one of them.

“In that little inspection house they locked the door. They drew down the shades and turned on the lights. They commanded us both to strip. When we had done this, they made us stand stark naked up against the wall. They began by examining our mouths, taking good care to look under our tongues. Then they combed out our hair with a fine-tooth comb. After a full fifteen minutes, in which they satisfied themselves that the jewels were not concealed on our bodies, they turned out the lights, and wheeled over some kind of a vertical metal standard that held a huge, powerful X-ray tube that could be moved up and down, and swung to left and right. The boy here is a little radio bug and can describe it and explain it far better than I. At any rate, standing us naked in turn in front of the tube, they slid it slowly up and down, from a point in our bodies about level with the esophagus and downward, literally peering through our very bodies with what I heard them refer to among themselves as a fluoroscope, which they handed back and forth from hand to hand. Of course I know enough about the X-rays and elementary physics to understand that they hoped to find a deep black opaque shadow that is always made, as I understand, by the crystalline carbon we call a diamond; they hoped to find such a shadow in our stomachs, or alimentary tracts, and had they done so, they could have watched its movement downward and corroborated matters for themselves. But, to cut a long story short, friend Rat, our alimentary tracts gave no opacities at all, outside of our bones which were fixed shadows and which they checked up on by moving the tube or the fluoroscope. For, you see, we made no errors of trying to swallow any big diamonds such as Castor or Pollux, if for no other reason than that your friend DeLancey had read all about this new customs instrument in the London Illustrated News, and had mentioned to us laughingly that if he ever tried to carry stolen jewels across the ocean himself, swallowing them was the last thing on earth he’d do.

“So as I say, after satisfying themselves unequivocally that the jewels were not in our hair or our mouths, on our bodies or in our bodies, they turned on the lights once more and started on our luggage. ‘This is an outrage,’ I grumbled.

“They dumped out the clothing in our suit-cases and placed it in one pile, together with that which we had been forced to discard. Then they commenced with our underclothing, which they examined seam by seam, button by button, square inch by square inch. Following that, our garters, our socks, our suspenders, were subjected to the same rigid examination.

“As fast as they finished with an article of clothing, they tossed it over to us and allowed whichever one of us was the owner to don it. In that way, we dressed, garment by garment, always protesting stoutly at the outrage.

“In the same manner they went through our neckties, most of which they ripped open; our shirts, collars, and vests followed next.

“When they came to our outer suits, not content with an exacting scrutiny, they brought out hammers and hammered every inch. Our shoes — look for yourself, friend Rat — are without heels; they tore them off, layer by layer. Our felt hats underwent similar treatment, for they removed the linings, replacing them later, loose.

“Our suit-cases were examined at buckle and seam, rivet and strap. At every place of possible concealment — every place which involved, say, a thickness greater than the diameter of Castor or Pollux — they pounded vigorously with their hammers, using enough force to smash steel balls, let alone brittle diamonds. And for every place that was thin, they gave a few vicious poundings for good measure.

“Friend Rat, we were in there three and a half hours, and had we had trunks, we might have been there yet. They left nothing unturned. Everything, though, has to come to an end. In disgust, they finally threw away their hammers. ‘That lead from Liverpool’s a phony one,’ said one of the three to the two others. ‘You’re free, Von Berghem and son,’ his companion added. ‘It’s a cinch you’ve not got the proceeds of the Simon Company’s burglary at Paris. You and your boy can go.’

“This was about two hours ago. We have had no supper, for we took a taxicab and, with the exception of a couple of breakdowns on the way, came straight here in order to tell you of the situation in which we found ourselves.”

I was crestfallen, disappointed, at the story I had heard. And I told Von Berghem so frankly.

“It’s a shame,” I commented bitterly. “DeLancey stakes his liberty on a bit of dangerous and clever work — and then sends a bungler across with the proceeds. Of course, man, they’ve got ’em by this time. It doesn’t matter where in the stateroom you hid ’em — the woodwork, the carpet, the mattress — they’ve found ’em now. Well... we’ll have to put it down as a failure — that’s all.”

He heard me through before he uttered a word. Then, dropping his glasses in his coat pocket, he answered me sharply.

“Failure? Who has said anything of failure? You do me a great injustice, friend Rat. Are your pigeons all in readiness? All right. Von Berghem never fails. Look!”

He pressed his hands to his face. For a moment I thought he was going to weep, for he made strange clawing motions with his fingers. Then he lowered his hands.

I sprang to my feet, suppressing a cry with difficulty. Where his eyes had been were now black, sightless sockets. On each of his palms lay a fragile, painted, porcelain shell — and in the hollow of each shell was a tiny cotton packet, tied with silk thread.

The Most Dangerous Game Richard Connell

Although a successful and prolific short story writer who also enjoyed some success in Hollywood, Richard Edward Connell (1893–1949) is known today mainly for “The Most Dangerous Game,” one of the most anthologized stories ever written and the basis for numerous film versions, including the 1932 RKO film of the same title (called The Hounds of Zaroff in England), with Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, and Leslie Banks; A Game of Death (RKO, 1945, with John Loder, Edgar Barrier, and Audrey Long); and Run for the Sun (United Artists, 1956, with Richard Widmark, Jane Greer, and Trevor Howard). It has often served as the basis for slightly looser adaptations in other media (especially radio and television), sometimes credited and sometimes not.

At the age of eighteen, Connell became the city editor of The New York Times, then went to Harvard, where he was the editor of The Harvard Lampoon and The Harvard Crimson. Upon graduation, he returned to journalism but was soon offered a lucrative job writing advertising copy. After serving in World War I, he sold several short stories and became a full-time freelancer, becoming one of America’s most popular and prolific magazine writers; he also produced four novels. Many of his stories served as the basis for motion pictures, notably Brother Orchid (1940, starring Edward G. Robinson, Ann Sothern, and Humphrey Bogart, based on his 1938 short story of the same name). Connell wrote original stories for several films, including F-Man (1936, with Jack Haley) and Meet John Doe (1941, directed by Frank Capra, starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing, Original Story. He was nominated for another Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Two Girls and a Sailor (1944, with June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven, and Van Johnson). He also wrote the screenplay for Presenting Lily Mars (1943, starring Judy Garland and Van Heflin), based on Booth Tarkington’s novel.

“The Most Dangerous Game” was originally published in the January 19, 1924, issue of Collier’s magazine, winning the O. Henry Memorial Prize; it was first collected in Connell’s Variety (New York, Minton Balch, 1925).

“Off there to the right — somewhere — is a large island,” said Whitney. “It’s rather a mystery—”

“What island is it?” Rainsford asked.

“The old charts called it Ship-Trap Island,” Whitney replied. “A suggestive name, isn’t it? Sailors have a curious dread of the place. I don’t know why. Some superstition—”

“Can’t see it,” remarked Rainsford, trying to peer through the dank tropical night that pressed its thick warm blackness in upon the yacht.

“You’ve good eyes,” said Whitney with a laugh, “and I’ve seen you pick off a moose moving in the brown fall bush at four hundred yards, but even you can’t see four miles or so through a moonless Caribbean night.”

“Nor four yards,” admitted Rainsford. “Ugh! It’s like moist black velvet.”

“It will be light enough in Rio,” promised Whitney. “We should make it in a few days. I hope the jaguar guns have come from Purdey’s. We should have some good hunting up the Amazon. Great sport, hunting.”

“The best sport in the world,” agreed Rainsford.

“For the hunter,” amended Whitney. “Not for the jaguar.”

“Don’t talk rot, Whitney. You’re a big-game hunter, not a philosopher. Who cares how a jaguar feels?”

“Perhaps the jaguar does.”

“Bah! They’ve no understanding.”

“Even so, I rather think they understand one thing — fear. The fear of pain and the fear of death.”

“Nonsense,” laughed Rainsford. “This hot weather is making you soft, Whitney. Be a realist. The world is made up of two classes — the hunters and the huntees. Luckily you and I are hunters. Do you think we have passed that island yet?”

“I can’t tell in the dark. I hope so.”

“Why?”

“The place has a reputation — a bad one.”

“Cannibals?”

“Hardly. Even cannibals wouldn’t live in such a God-forsaken place. But it’s gotten into sailor lore, somehow. Didn’t you notice that the crew’s nerves seemed a bit jumpy today?”

“They were a bit strange, now you mention it. Even Captain Nielsen.”

“Yes, even that tough-minded old Swede, who’d go up to the devil himself and ask him for a light. Those fishy blue eyes held a look I never saw there before. All I could get out of him was: ‘This place has an evil name among seafaring men, sir.’ Then he said, gravely: ‘Don’t you feel anything?’ Now you mustn’t laugh but I did feel a sort of chill, and there wasn’t a breeze. What I felt was a... a mental chill, a sort of dread.”

“Pure imagination,” said Rainsford. “One superstitious sailor can taint a whole ship’s company with his fear.”

“Maybe. Sometimes I think sailors have an extra sense which tells them when they are in danger... anyhow I’m glad we are getting out of this zone. Well, I’ll turn in now, Rainsford.”

“I’m not sleepy. I’m going to smoke another pipe on the after deck.”

There was no sound in the night as Rainsford sat there but the muffled throb of the yacht’s engine and the swish and ripple of the propeller.

Rainsford, reclining in a steamer chair, puffed at his favourite briar. The sensuous drowsiness of the night was on him. “It’s so dark,” he thought, “that I could sleep without closing my eyes; the night would be my eyelids—”

An abrupt sound startled him. Off to the right he heard it, and his ears, expert in such matters, could not be mistaken. Again he heard the sound, and again. Somewhere, off in the blackness, someone had fired a gun three times.

Rainsford sprang up and moved quickly to the rail, mystified. He strained his eyes in the direction from which the reports had come, but it was like trying to see through a blanket. He leaped upon the rail and balanced himself there, to get greater elevation; his pipe, striking a rope, was knocked from his mouth. He lunged for it; a short, hoarse cry came from his lips as he realized he had reached too far and had lost his balance. The cry was pinched off short as the blood-warm waters of the Caribbean Sea closed over his head.

He struggled to the surface and cried out, but the wash from the speeding yacht slapped him in the face and the salt water in his open mouth made him gag and strangle. Desperately he struck out after the receding lights of the yacht, but he stopped before he had swum fifty feet. A certain cool-headedness had come to him, for this was not the first time he had been in a tight place. There was a chance that his cries could be heard by someone aboard the yacht, but that chance was slender and grew more slender as the yacht raced on. He wrestled himself out of his clothes and shouted with all his power. The lights of the boat became faint and vanishing fireflies; then they were blotted out by the night.

Rainsford remembered the shots. They had come from the right, and doggedly he swam in that direction, swimming slowly, conserving his strength. For a seemingly endless time he fought the sea. He began to count his strokes; he could do possibly a hundred more and then—

He heard a sound. It came out of the darkness, a high, screaming sound, the cry of an animal in an extremity of anguish and terror. He did not know what animal made the sound. With fresh vitality he swam towards it. He heard it again; then it was cut short by another noise, crisp, staccato.

“Pistol shot,” muttered Rainsford, swimming on.

Ten minutes of determined effort brought to his ears the most welcome sound he had ever heard, the breaking of the sea on a rocky shore. He was almost on the rocks before he saw them; on a night less calm he would have been shattered against them. With his remaining strength he dragged himself from the swirling waters. Jagged crags appeared to jut into the opaqueness; he forced himself up hand over hand. Gasping, his hands raw, he reached a flat place at the top. Dense jungle came down to the edge of the cliffs, and careless of everything but his weariness Rainsford flung himself down and tumbled into the deepest sleep of his life.

When he opened his eyes he knew from the position of the sun that it was late in the afternoon. Sleep had given him vigour; a sharp hunger was picking at him.

“Where there are pistol shots there are men. Where there are men there is food,” he thought; but he saw no sign of a trail through the closely knit web of weeds and trees; it was easier to go along the shore. Not far from where he had landed, he stopped.

Some wounded thing, by the evidence a large animal, had crashed about in the underwood. A small glittering object caught Rainsford’s eye and he picked it up. It was an empty cartridge.

“A twenty-two,” he remarked. “That’s odd. It must have been a fairly large animal, too. The hunter had his nerve with him to tackle it with a light gun. It is clear the brute put up a fight. I suppose the first three shots I heard were when the hunter flushed his quarry and wounded it. The last shot was when he trailed it here and finished it.”

He examined the ground closely and found what he had hoped to find — the print of hunting boots. They pointed along the cliff in the direction he had been going. Eagerly he hurried along, for night was beginning to settle down on the island.

Darkness was blacking out sea and jungle before Rainsford sighted the lights. He came upon them as he turned a crook in the coast line, and his first thought was that he had come upon a village, as there were so many lights. But as he forged along he saw that all the lights were in one building — a château on a high bluff.

“Mirage,” thought Rainsford. But the stone steps were real enough. He lifted the knocker and it creaked up stiffly as if it had never before been used.

The door, opening, let out a river of glaring light. A tall man, solidly built and black-bearded to the waist, stood facing Rainsford with a revolver in his hand.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Rainsford, with a smile that he hoped was disarming. “I’m no robber. I fell off a yacht. My name is Sanger Rainsford of New York City.”

The man gave no sign that he understood the words or had even heard them. The menacing revolver pointed as rigidly as if the giant were a statue.

Another man was coming down the broad, marble steps, an erect slender man in evening clothes. He advanced and held out his hand.

In a cultivated voice marked by a slight accent which gave it added precision and deliberateness, he said: “It is a great pleasure and honour to welcome Mr. Sanger Rainsford, the celebrated hunter, to my home.”

Automatically Rainsford shook the man’s hand.

“I’ve read your book about hunting snow leopards in Tibet,” explained the man. “I am General Zaroff.”

Rainsford’s first impression was that the man was singularly handsome; his second, that there was a bizarre quality about the face. The general was a tall man past middle age, for his hair was white; but his eyebrows and moustache were black. His eyes, too, were black and very bright. He had the face of a man used to giving orders. Turning to the man in uniform, he made a sign. The fellow put away his pistol, saluted, withdrew.

“Ivan is an incredibly strong fellow,” remarked the general, “but he has the misfortune to be deaf and dumb. A simple fellow, but a bit of a savage.”

“Is he Russian?”

“A Cossack,” said the general, and his smile showed red lips and pointed teeth. “So am I.

“Come,” he said, “we shouldn’t be chatting here. You want clothes, food, rest. You shall have them. This is a most restful spot.”

Ivan had reappeared and the general spoke to him with lips that moved but gave forth no sound.

“Follow Ivan if you please, Mr. Rainsford. I was about to have my dinner, but will wait. I think my clothes will fit you.”

It was to a huge beam-ceilinged bedroom with a canopied bed large enough for six men that Rainsford followed the man. Ivan laid out an evening suit and Rainsford, as he put it on, noticed that it came from a London tailor.

“Perhaps you were surprised,” said the general as they sat down to dinner in a room which suggested a baronial hall of feudal times, “that I recognized your name; but I read all books on hunting published in English, French, and Russian. I have but one passion in life, and that is the hunt.”

“You have some wonderful heads here,” said Rainsford, glancing at the walls. “That Cape buffalo is the largest I ever saw.”

“Oh, that fellow? He charged me, hurled me against a tree, and fractured my skull. But I got the brute.”

“I’ve always thought,” said Rainsford, “that the Cape buffalo is the most dangerous of all big game.”

For a moment the general did not reply, then he said slowly: “No, the Cape buffalo is not the most dangerous.” He sipped his wine. “Here in my preserve on this island I hunt more dangerous game.”

“Is there big game on this island?”

The general nodded. “The biggest.”

“Really?”

“Oh, it isn’t here naturally. I have to stock the island.”

“What have you imported, General? Tigers?”

The general grinned. “No, hunting tigers ceased to interest me when I exhausted their possibilities. No thrill left in tigers, no real real danger. I live for danger, Mr. Rainsford.”

The general took from his pocket a gold cigarette case and offered his guest a long black cigarette with a silver tip; it was perfumed and gave off a smell like incense.

“We will have some capital hunting, you and I,” said the general.

“But what game—” began Rainsford.

“I’ll tell you. You will be amused, I know. I think I may say, in all modesty, that I have done a rare thing. I have invented a new sensation. May I pour you another glass of port?”

“Thank you, General.”

The general filled both glasses and said: “God makes some men poets. Some he makes kings, some beggars. Me he made a hunter. But after years of enjoyment I found that the hunt no longer fascinated me. You can perhaps guess why?”

“No — why?”

“Simply this: hunting had ceased to be what you call a ‘sporting proposition.’ I always got my quarry... always... and there is no greater bore than perfection.”

The general lit a fresh cigarette.

“The animal has nothing but his legs and his instinct. Instinct is no match for reason. When I realized this, it was a tragic moment for me.”

Rainsford leaned across the table, absorbed in what his host was saying.

“It came to me as an inspiration what I must do.”

“And that was?”

“I had to invent a new animal to hunt.”

“A new animal? You are joking.”

“I never joke about hunting. I needed a new animal. I found one. So I bought this island, built this house, and here I do my hunting. The island is perfect for my purpose — there are jungles with a maze of trails in them, hills, swamps—”

“But the animal, General Zaroff?”

“Oh,” said the general, “it supplies me with the most exciting hunting in the world. Every day I hunt, and I never grow bored now, for I have a quarry with which I can match my wits.”

Rainsford’s bewilderment showed in his face.

“I wanted the ideal animal to hunt, so I said, ‘What are the attributes of an ideal quarry?’ and the answer was, of course: ‘It must have courage, cunning, and, above all, it must be able to reason.’ ”

“But no animal can reason,” objected Rainsford.

“My dear fellow,” said the general, “there is one that can.”

“But you can’t mean—”

“And why not?”

“I can’t believe you are serious, General Zaroff. This is a grisly joke.”

“Why should I not be serious? I am speaking of hunting.”

“Hunting? Good God, General Zaroff, what you speak of is murder.”

The general regarded Rainsford quizzically. “Surely your experiences in the war—”

“Did not make me condone cold-blooded murder,” finished Rainsford stiffly.

Laughter shook the general. “I’ll wager you’ll forget your notions when you go hunting with me. You’ve a genuine new thrill in store for you, Mr. Rainsford.”

“Thank you, I am a hunter, not a murderer.”

“Dear me,” said the general, quite unruffled, “again that unpleasant word; but I hunt the scum of the earth — sailors from tramp ships — lascars, blacks, Chinese, whites, mongrels.”

“Where do you get them?”

The general’s left eyelid fluttered down in a wink. “This island is called Ship-Trap. Come to the window with me.”

Rainsford went to the window and looked out towards the sea.

“Watch! Out there!” exclaimed the general, as he pressed a button. Far out Rainsford saw a flash of lights. “They indicate a channel where there’s none. Rocks with razor edges crouch there like a sea-monster. They can crush a ship like a nut. Oh, yes, that is electricity. We try to be civilized.”

“Civilized? And you shoot down men?”

“But I treat my visitors with every consideration,” said the general in his most pleasant manner. “They get plenty of good food and exercise. They get into splendid physical condition. You shall see for yourself tomorrow.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll visit my training school,” smiled the general. “It is in the cellar. I have about a dozen there now. They’re from the Spanish bark Sanlucar, which had the bad luck to go on the rocks out there. An inferior lot, I regret to say, and more accustomed to the deck than the jungle.”

He raised his hand and Ivan brought thick Turkish coffee. “It is a game, you see,” pursued the general blandly. “I suggest to one of them that we go hunting. I give him three hours’ start. I am to follow, armed only with a pistol of smallest calibre and range. If my quarry eludes me for three whole days, he wins the game. If I find him” — the general smiled — “he loses.”

“Suppose he refuses to be hunted?”

“I give him the option. If he does not wish to hunt I turn him over to Ivan. Ivan once served as official knouter to the Great White Tsar, and he has his own ideas of sport. Invariably they choose the hunt.”

“And if they win?”

The smile on the general’s face widened. “To date I have not lost.”

Then he added, hastily: “I don’t wish you to think me a braggart, Mr. Rainsford, and one did almost win. I eventually had to use the dogs.”

“The dogs?”

“This way, please. I’ll show you.”

The general led the way to another window. The lights sent a flickering illumination that made grotesque patterns on the courtyard below, and Rainsford could see a dozen or so huge black shapes moving about. As they turned towards him he caught the green glitter of eyes.

“They are let out at seven every night. If anyone should try to get into my house — or out of it — something regrettable would happen to him. And now I want to show you my new collection of heads. Will you come to the library?”

“I hope,” said Rainsford, “that you will excuse me tonight. I’m really not feeling at all well.”

“Ah, indeed? You need a good restful night’s sleep. Tomorrow you’ll feel like a new man. Then we’ll hunt, eh? I’ve one rather promising prospect—”

Rainsford was hurrying from the room.

“Sorry you can’t go with me tonight,” called the general. “I expect rather fair sport. A big, strong black. He looks resourceful—”

The bed was good and Rainsford was tired, but nevertheless he could not sleep, and had only achieved a doze when, as morning broke, he heard, far off in the jungle, the faint report of a pistol.

General Zaroff did not appear till luncheon. He was solicitous about Rainsford’s health. “As for me,” he said, “I do not feel so well. The hunting was not good last night. He made a straight trail that offered no problems at all.”

“General,” said Rainsford firmly, “I want to leave the island at once.”

He saw the dead black eyes of the general on him, studying him. The eyes suddenly brightened. “Tonight,” said he, “we will hunt — you and I.”

Rainsford shook his head. “No, General,” he said, “I will not hunt.”

The general shrugged his shoulders. “As you wish. The choice rests with you, but I would suggest that my idea of sport is more diverting than Ivan’s.”

“You don’t mean—” cried Rainsford.

“My dear fellow,” said the general, “have I not told you I always mean what I say about hunting? This is really an inspiration. I drink to a foeman worthy of my steel at last.”

The general raised his glass, but Rainsford sat staring at him. “You’ll find this game worth playing,” the general said, enthusiastically. “Your brain against mine. Your woodcraft against mine. Your strength and stamina against mine. Outdoor chess! And the stake is not without value, eh?”

“And if I win—” began Rainsford huskily.

“If I do not find you by midnight of the third day, I’ll cheerfully acknowledge myself defeated,” said General Zaroff. “My sloop will place you on the mainland near a town.”

The general read what Rainsford was thinking.

“Oh, you can trust me,” said the Cossack. “I will give you my word as a gentleman and a sportsman. Of course, you, in turn, must agree to say nothing of your visit here.”

“I’ll agree to nothing of the kind.”

“Oh, in that case — but why discuss that now? Three days hence we can discuss it over a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, unless—”

The general sipped his wine.

Then a business-like air animated him. “Ivan,” he said, “will supply you with hunting clothes, food, a knife. I suggest you wear moccasins; they leave a poorer trail. I suggest, too, that you avoid the big swamp in the southeast corner of the island. We call it Death Swamp. There’s quicksand there. One foolish fellow tried it. The deplorable part of it was that Lazarus followed him. You can’t imagine my feelings, Mr. Rainsford. I loved Lazarus; he was the finest hound in my pack. Well, I must beg you to excuse me now. I always take a siesta after lunch. You’ll hardly have time for a nap, I fear. You’ll want to start, no doubt. I shall not follow until dusk. Hunting at night is so much more exciting than by day, don’t you think? Au revoir, Mr. Rainsford, au revoir.”

As General Zaroff, with a courtly bow, strolled from the room, Ivan entered by another door. Under one arm he carried hunting clothes, a haversack of food, a leathern sheath containing a long-bladed hunting knife; his right hand rested on a cocked revolver thrust in the crimson sash about his waist...

Rainsford had fought his way through the bush for two hours, but at length he paused, saying to himself through tight teeth, “I must keep my nerve.”

He had not been entirely clear-headed when the château gates closed behind him. His first idea was to put distance between himself and General Zaroff and, to this end, he had plunged along, spurred by the sharp rowels of something approaching panic. Now, having got a grip on himself, he had stopped to take stock of himself and the situation.

Straight flight was futile for it must inevitably bring him to the sea. Being in a picture with a frame of water, his operations, clearly, must take place within that frame.

“I’ll give him a trail to follow,” thought Rainsford, striking off from the path into trackless wilderness. Recalling the lore of the fox-hunt and the dodges of the fox, he executed a series of intricate loops, doubling again and again on his trail. Night found him leg-weary, with hands and face lashed by the branches. He was on a thickly wooded ridge. As his need for rest was imperative, he thought: “I have played the fox, now I must play the cat of the fable.”

A big tree with a thick trunk and outspread branches was near by, and, taking care to leave no marks, he climbed into the crotch and stretched out on one of the broad limbs. Rest brought him new confidence and almost a feeling of security.

An apprehensive night crawled slowly by like a wounded snake. Towards morning, when a dingy grey was varnishing the sky, the cry of a startled bird focussed Rainsford’s attention in its direction. Something was coming through the bush, coming slowly, carefully, coming by the same winding way that Rainsford had come. He flattened himself against the bough and, through a screen of leaves almost as thick as tapestry, watched.

It was General Zaroff. He made his way along, with his eyes fixed in concentration on the ground. He paused, almost beneath the tree, dropped to his knees and studied the ground. Rainsford’s impulse was to leap on him like a panther, but he saw that the general’s right hand held a small automatic.

The hunter shook his head several times as if he were puzzled. Then, straightening himself, he took from his case one of his black cigarettes; its pungent incense-like smoke rose to Rainsford’s nostrils.

Rainsford held his breath. The general’s eyes had left the ground and were travelling inch by inch up the tree. Rainsford froze, every muscle tensed for a spring. But the sharp eyes of the hunter stopped before they reached the limb where Rainsford lay. A smile spread over his brown face. Very deliberately he blew a smoke ring into the air; then he turned his back on the tree and walked carelessly away along the trail he had come. The swish of the underbrush against his hunting boots grew fainter and fainter.

The pent-up air burst hotly from Rainsford’s lungs. His first thought made him feel sick and numb. The general could follow a trail through the woods at night; he could follow an extremely difficult trail; he must have uncanny powers; only by the merest chance had he failed to see his quarry.

Rainsford’s second thought was more terrible. It sent a shudder through him. Why had the general smiled? Why had he turned back?

Rainsford did not want to believe what his reason told him was true — the general was playing with him, saving him for another day’s sport. The Cossack was the cat; he was the mouse. Then it was that Rainsford knew the meaning of terror.

“I will not lose my nerve,” he told himself, “I will not.”

Sliding down from the tree, he set off into the woods. Three hundred yards from his hiding-place he stopped where a huge dead tree leaned precariously on a smaller, living one. Throwing off his sack of food, he took his knife from its sheath and set to work.

When the job was finished, he threw himself down behind a fallen log a hundred feet away. He did not have to wait long. The cat was coming back to play with the mouse.

Following the trail with the sureness of a bloodhound came General Zaroff. Nothing escaped those searching black eyes, no crushed blade of grass, no bent twig, no mark, no matter how faint, in the moss. So intent was the Cossack on his stalking that he was upon the thing Rainsford had made before he saw it. His foot touched the protruding bough that was the trigger. Even as he touched it, the general sensed his danger, and leaped back with the agility of an ape. But he was not quite quick enough; the dead tree, delicately adjusted to rest on the cut living one, crashed down and struck the general a glancing blow on the shoulder as it fell; but for his alertness he must have been crushed beneath it. He staggered but he did not fall; nor did he drop his revolver. He stood there, rubbing his injured shoulder, and Rainsford, with fear again gripping his heart, heard the general’s mocking laugh ring through the jungle.

“Rainsford,” called the general, “if you are within sound of my voice let me congratulate you. Not many men know how to make a Malay man catcher. Luckily for me I, too, have hunted in Malacca. You are proving interesting, Mr. Rainsford. I am now going to have my wound dressed; it is only a slight one. But I shall be back. I shall be back.”

When the general, nursing his wounded shoulder, had gone, Rainsford again took up his flight. It was flight now, and it carried him on for some hours. Dusk came, then darkness, and still he pressed on. The ground grew softer under his moccasins; the vegetation grew ranker, denser; insects bit him savagely. He stepped forward and his foot sank into ooze. He tried to wrench it back, but the mud sucked viciously at his foot as if it had been a giant leech. With a violent effort he tore his foot loose. He knew where he was now. Death Swamp and its quicksand.

The softness of the earth had given him an idea. Stepping back from the quicksand a dozen feet, he began, like some huge prehistoric beaver, to dig.

Rainsford had dug himself in, in France, when a second’s delay would have meant death. Compared to his digging now, that had been a placid pastime. The pit grew deeper; when it was above his shoulders he climbed out and from some hard saplings cut stakes, sharpening them to a fine point. These stakes he planted at the bottom of the pit with the points up. With flying fingers he wove a rough carpet of weeds and branches and with it covered the mouth of the pit. Then, wet with sweat and aching with tiredness, he crouched behind the stump of a lightning-blasted tree.

By the padding sound of feet on the soft earth he knew his pursuer was coming. The night breeze brought him the perfume of the general’s cigarette. It seemed to the hunted man that the general was coming with unusual swiftness; that he was not feeling his way along, foot by foot. Rainsford, from where he was crouching, could not see the general, neither could he see the pit. He lived a year in a minute. Then he heard the sharp crackle of breaking branches as the cover of the pit gave way; heard the sharp scream of pain as the pointed stakes found their mark. Then he cowered back. Three feet from the pit a man was standing with an electric torch in his hand.

“You’ve done well, Rainsford,” cried the general. “Your Burmese tiger pit has claimed one of my best dogs. Again you score. I must now see what you can do against my whole pack. I’m going home for a rest now. Thank you for a most amusing evening.”

At daybreak Rainsford, lying near the swamp, was awakened by a distant sound, faint and wavering, but he knew it for the baying of a pack of hounds.

Rainsford knew he could do one of two things. He could stay where he was. That was suicide. He could flee. That was postponing the inevitable. For a moment, he stood there thinking. An idea that held a wild chance came to him, and, tightening his belt, he headed away from the swamp.

The baying of the hounds drew nearer, nearer. Rainsford climbed a tree. Down a watercourse, not a quarter of a mile away, he could see the bush moving. Straining his eyes, he saw the lean figure of General Zaroff. Just ahead of him Rainsford made out another figure, with wide shoulders, which surged through the jungle reeds. It was the gigantic Ivan and he seemed to be pulled along. Rainsford realized that he must be holding the pack in leash.

They would be on him at any moment now. His mind worked frantically, and he thought of a native trick he had learned in Uganda. Sliding down the tree, he caught hold of a springy young sapling and to it fastened his hunting knife, with the blade pointing down the trail. With a bit of wild grape-vine he tied back the sapling... and ran for his life. As the hounds hit the fresh scent, they raised their voices and Rainsford knew how an animal at bay feels.

He had to stop to get his breath. The baying of the hounds stopped abruptly, and Rainsford’s heart stopped, too. They must have reached the knife.

Shinning excitedly up a tree, he looked back. His pursuers had stopped. But the hope in Rainsford’s brain died, for he saw that General Zaroff was still on his feet. Ivan, however, was not. The knife, driven by the recoil of the springing tree, had not wholly failed.

Hardly had Rainsford got back to the ground when, once more, the pack took up the cry.

“Nerve, nerve, nerve!” he panted to himself as he dashed along. A blue gap showed through the trees dead ahead. The hounds drew nearer. Rainsford forced himself on towards that gap. He reached the sea, and across a cove could see the grey stone of the château. Twenty feet below him the sea rumbled and hissed. Rainsford hesitated. He heard the hounds. Then he leaped far out into the water.

When the general and his pack reached the opening, the Cossack stopped. For some moments he stood regarding the blue-green expanse of water. Then he sat down, took a drink of brandy from a silver flask, lit a perfumed cigarette, and hummed a bit from Madame Butterfly.

General Zaroff ate an exceedingly good dinner in his great panelled hall that evening. With it he had a bottle of Pol Roger and half a bottle of Chambertin. Two slight annoyances kept him from perfect enjoyment. One was that it would be difficult to replace Ivan; the other, that his quarry had escaped him. Of course — so thought the general, as he tasted his after-dinner liqueur — the American had not played the game.

To soothe himself, he read in his library from the works of Marcus Aurelius. At ten he went to his bedroom. He was comfortably tired, he said to himself, as he turned the key of his door. There was a little moonlight, so before turning on the light he went to the window and looked down on the courtyard. He could see the great hounds, and he called: “Better luck another time.” Then he switched on the light.

A man who had been hiding in the curtains of the bed was standing before him.

“Rainsford!” screamed the general. “How in God’s name did you get here?”

“Swam. I found it quicker than walking through the jungle.”

The other sucked in his breath and smiled. “I congratulate you. You have won the game.”

Rainsford did not smile. “I am still a beast at bay,” he said, in a low, hoarse voice. “Get ready, General Zaroff.”

The general made one of his deepest bows. “I see,” he said. “Splendid. One of us is to furnish a repast for the hounds. The other will sleep in this very excellent bed. On guard, Rainsford...”

He had never slept in a better bed, Rainsford decided.

Four Square Jane Edgar Wallace

In the “Editor’s Note” for the first edition of Four Square Jane (1929), the only book devoted to the young rogue’s exploits, the “heroine” is described as an “extremely ladylike crook, an uncannily clever criminal who exercises all her female cunning on her nefarious work, makes the mere male detectives and policemen who endeavor to be on her tracks look foolish.”

Jane is pretty, young, slim, and chaste, and leaves her calling card at the scene of her robberies: a printed label with four squares and the letter “J” in the middle. She makes sure to do this so that none of the servants will be accused of the theft. She has a coterie of loyal associates on whom she calls as they are needed.

During the height of his popularity in the 1920s as the most successful thriller writer who ever lived, Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) is reputed to have been the author of one of every four books sold in England. After dropping out of school at an early age, he joined the army and was sent to South Africa, where he wrote war poems and later worked as a journalist during the Boer War. Returning to England with a desire to write fiction, he self-published The Four Just Men (1905), a financial disaster, but went on to produce 173 books and 17 plays.

Wallace’s staggering popularity assured a market for anything he wrote and the top magazines competed for his work, paying him princely sums, but the stories in Four Square Jane appear to have been written directly for the book, with no prior periodical appearance. None of the stories has a title.

“Four Square Jane” was originally published in Four Square Jane (London, Readers Library, 1929).

Mr. Joe Lewinstein slouched to one of the long windows which gave light to his magnificent drawing-room and stared gloomily across the lawn.

The beds of geraniums and lobelias were half-obscured by a driving mist of rain, and the well-kept lawns that were the pride of his many gardeners were sodden and, in places, under water.

“Of course it had to rain to-day,” he said bitterly.

His large and comfortable wife looked up over her glasses.

“Why, Joe,” she said, “what’s the good of grousing? They haven’t come down for an al fresco fête; they’ve come down for the dance and the shooting, and anything else they can get out of us.”

“Oh, shut up, Miriam,” said Mr. Lewinstein irritably; “what does it matter what they’re coming for? It’s what I want them for myself. You don’t suppose I’ve risen from what I was to my present position without learning anything, do you?” Mr. Lewinstein was fond of referring to his almost meteoric rise in the world of high finance, if not in the corresponding world of society. And, to do him justice, it must be added that such companies as he had promoted, and they were many, had been run on the most straightforward lines, nor had he, to use his own words, risked the money of the “widows and orphans.” At least, not unnecessarily.

“It’s knowing the right kind of people,” he continued, “and doing them the right kind of turns that counts. It’s easier to make your second million than your first, and I’m going to make it, Miriam,” he added, with grim determination. “I’m going to make it, and I’m not sticking at a few thousands in the way of expenses!”

A housewifely fear lest their entertainment that night was going to cost them thousands floated through Mrs. Lewinstein’s mind, but she said nothing.

“I’ll bet they’ve never seen a ball like ours is tonight,” her husband continued with satisfaction, as he turned his back on the window and came slowly towards his partner, “and the company will be worth it, Miriam, you believe me. Everybody who’s anybody in the city is coming. There’ll be more jewels here tonight than even I could buy.”

His wife put down her paper with an impatient gesture.

“That’s what I’m thinking about,” she said. “I hope you know what you’re doing. It’s a big responsibility.”

“What do you mean by responsibility?” asked Joe Lewinstein.

“All this loose money lying about,” said his wife. “Don’t you read the paper? Don’t any of your friends tell you?”

Mr. Lewinstein burst into a peal of husky laughter.

“Oh, I know what’s biting you,” he said. “You’re thinking of Four Square Jane.”

“Four Square Jane!” said the acid Mrs. Lewinstein. “I’d give her Four Square Jane if I had her in this house!”

“She’s no common burglar,” said Mr. Lewinstein shaking his head, whether in admonition or admiration it was difficult to say. “My friend, Lord Belchester — my friend, Lord Belchester, told me it was an absolute mystery how his wife lost those emeralds of hers. He was very worried about it, was Belchester. He took about half the money he made out of Consolidated Grains to buy those emeralds, and they were lost about a month after he bought them. He thinks that the thief was one of his guests.”

“Why do they call her Four Square Jane?” asked Mrs. Lewinstein curiously.

Her husband shrugged his shoulders.

“She always leaves a certain mark behind her, a sort of printed label with four squares, and the letter J in the middle,” he said. “It was the police who called her Jane, and somehow the name has stuck.”

His wife picked up the paper and put it down again, looking thoughtfully into the fire.

“And you’re bringing all these people down here to stop the night, and you’re talking about them being loaded up with jewellery! You’ve got a nerve, Joe.”

Mr. Lewinstein chuckled.

“I’ve got a detective, too,” he said. “I’ve asked Ross, who has the biggest private detective agency in London, to send me his best woman.”

“Goodness gracious,” said the dismayed Mrs. Lewinstein, “you’re not having a woman here?”

“Yes, I am. She’s a lady, apparently one of the best girls Ross has got. He told me that in cases like this it’s much less noticeable to have a lady detective among the guests than a man. I told her to be here at seven.”

Undoubtedly the Lewinstein’s house-party was the most impressive affair that the county had seen. His guests were to arrive by a special train from London and were to be met at the station by a small fleet of motor cars, which he had pressed to his service from all available sources. His own car was waiting at the door ready to take him to the station to meet his “special” when a servant brought him a card.

“Miss Caroline Smith,” he read. On the corner was the name of the Ross Detective Agency.

“Tell the young lady I’ll see her in the library.”

He found her waiting for him. A personable, pretty girl, with remarkably shrewd and clever eyes that beamed behind rimless glasses and a veil, she met him with an elusive smile that came and went like sunshine on a wintry day.

“So you’re a lady detective, eh?” said Lewinstein with ponderous good humour; “you look young.”

“Why, yes,” said the girl, “even way home, where youth isn’t any handicap, I’m looked upon as being a trifle under the limit.”

“Oh, you’re from America, are you?” said Mr. Lewinstein, interested.

The girl nodded.

“This is my first work in England, and naturally I am rather nervous.”

She had a pleasant voice, a soft drawl, which suggested to Mr. Lewinstein, who had spent some years on the other side, that she came from one of the Southern States.

“Well, I suppose you pretty well know your duties in the game to suppress this Four Square woman.”

She nodded.

“That may be a pretty tough proposition. You’ll give me leave to go where I like, and do practically what I like, won’t you? That is essential.”

“Certainly,” said Mr. Lewinstein; “you will dine with us as our guest?”

“No, that doesn’t work,” she replied. “The time I ought to be looking round and taking notice, my attention is wholly absorbed by the man who is taking me down to dinner and wants my views on prohibition.

“So, if you please, I’d like the whole run of your house. I can be your young cousin, Miranda, from the high mountains of New Jersey. What about your servants?”

“I can trust them with my life,” said Mr. Lewinstein.

She looked at him with a half-twinkle in her eyes.

“Can you tell me anything about this she-Raffles?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said her host, “except that she is one of these society swells who frequent such — well, such parties as I am giving tonight. There will be a lot of ladies here — some of the best in the land — that is what makes it so difficult. As likely as not she will be one of them.”

“Would you trust them all with your life?” she asked mischievously, and then going on: “I think I know your Four Square woman. Mind,” she raised her hand, “I’m not going to say that I shall discover her here.”

“I hope to goodness you don’t,” said Joe heartily.

“Or if I do find her I’m going to denounce her. Perhaps you can tell me something else about her.”

Mr. Lewinstein shook his head.

“The only thing I know is that when she’s made a haul, she usually leaves behind a mark.”

“That I know,” said the girl nodding. “She does that in order that suspicion shall not fall upon the servants.”

The girl thought a moment, tapping her teeth with a pencil, then she said:

“Whatever I do, Mr. Lewinstein, you must not regard as remarkable. I have set my mind on capturing Four Square Jane, and starting my career in England with a big flourish of silver trumpets.” She smiled so charmingly that Mrs. Lewinstein in the doorway raised her eyebrows.

“It is time you were going, Joseph,” she said severely. “What am I to do with this young woman?”

“Let somebody show her her room,” said the temporarily flustered Mr. Lewinstein, and hurried out to the waiting car.

Mrs. Lewinstein rang the bell. She had no interest in detectives, especially pretty detectives of twenty-three.

Adchester Manor House was a large establishment, but it was packed to its utmost capacity to accommodate the guests who arrived that night.

All Mrs. Lewinstein had said — that these pretty women and amusing men had been lured into Buckinghamshire with a lively hope of favours to come — might be true. Joe Lewinstein was not only a power in the City, with the control of four great corporations, but the Lewinstein interests stretched from Colorado to Vladivostock.

It was a particularly brilliant party which sat down to dinner that night, and if Mr. Lewinstein swelled a little with pride, that pride was certainly justified. On his right sat Lady Ovingham, a thin woman with the prettiness that consists chiefly in huge appealing eyes and an almost alarming pallor of skin. Her appearance greatly belied her character, for she was an unusually able business woman, and had partnered Mr. Lewinstein in some of his safer speculations. An arm covered from wrist to elbow with diamond bracelets testified to the success of these ventures in finance, for Lady Ovingham had a way of investing her money in diamonds, for she knew that these stones would not suddenly depreciate in value.

The conversation was animated and, in many cases, hilarious, for Mr. Lewinstein had mixed his guests as carefully as his butler had mixed the cocktails, and both things helped materially towards the success of the evening.

It was towards the end of the dinner that the first disagreeable incident occurred. His butler leant over him, ostensibly to pour out a glass of wine, and whispered:

“That young lady that came this afternoon, sir, has been taken ill.”

“Ill!” said Mr. Lewinstein in dismay. “What happened?”

“She complained of a bad headache, was seized with tremblings, and had to be taken up to her room,” said the butler in a low voice.

“Send into the village for the doctor.”

“I did, sir,” said the man, “but the doctor had been called away to London on an important consultation.”

Mr. Lewinstein frowned. Then a little gleam of relief came to him. The detective had asked him not to be alarmed at anything that might happen. Possibly this was a ruse for her own purpose. She ought to have told him though, he complained to himself.

“Very good, wait till dinner is over,” he said.

When that function was finished, and the guests had reached the coffee and cigarette stage before entering the big ballroom or retiring to their cards, Mr. Lewinstein climbed to the third floor to the tiny bedroom which had been allocated by his lady wife as being adequate for a lady detective.

He knocked at the door.

“Come in,” said a faint voice.

The girl was lying on the bed, covered with an eiderdown quilt, and she was shivering.

“Don’t touch me,” she said. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me even.”

“Good Lord!” said Mr. Lewinstein in dismay, “you’re not really ill, are you?”

“I’m afraid so; I’m awfully sorry. I don’t know what has happened to me, and I have a feeling that my illness is not wholly accidental. I was feeling well until I had a cup of tea, which was brought to my room, when suddenly I was taken with these shivers. Can you get me a doctor?”

“I’ll do my best,” said Mr. Lewinstein, for he had a kindly heart.

He went downstairs a somewhat anxious man. If, as the girl seemed to suggest, she had been doped, that presupposed the presence in the house either of Four Square Jane or one of her working partners. He reached the hall to find the butler waiting.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the butler, “but rather a fortunate thing has happened. A gentleman who has run short of petrol came up to the house to borrow a supply—”

“Well?” said Mr. Lewinstein.

“Well, sir, he happens to be a doctor,” said the butler. “I asked him to see you, sir.”

“Fine,” said Mr. Lewinstein enthusiastically, “that’s a good idea of yours. Bring him into the library.”

The stranded motorist, a tall young man, came in full of apologies.

“I say, it’s awfully good of you to let me have this juice,” he said. “The fact is, my silly ass of a man packed me two empty tins.”

“Delighted to help you, doctor,” said Mr. Lewinstein genially; “and now perhaps you can help me.”

The young man looked at the other suspiciously.

“You haven’t anybody ill, have you?” he asked, “I promised my partner I wouldn’t look at a patient for three months. You see,” he explained, “I’ve had rather a heavy time lately, and I’m a bit run down.”

“You’d be doing us a real kindness if you’d look at this young lady,” said Mr. Lewinstein earnestly. “I don’t know what to make of her, doctor.”

“Setheridge is my name,” said the doctor. “All right, I’ll look at your patient. It was ungracious of me to pull a face I suppose. Where is she? Is she one of your guests by the way? I seem to have butted in on a party.”

“Not exactly,” Mr. Lewinstein hesitated, “she is... er... a visitor.”

He led the way up to the room, and the young man walked in and looked at the shivering girl with the easy confident smile of the experienced practitioner.

“Hullo,” he said, “what’s the matter with you?”

He took her wrist in his hand and looked at his watch, and Mr. Lewinstein, standing in the open doorway, saw him frown. He bent down and examined the eyes, then pulled up the sleeve of his patient’s dress and whistled.

“Is it serious?” she asked anxiously.

“Not very, if you are taken care of; though you may lose some of that hair,” he said, with a smile at the brown mop on the pillow.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Scarlet fever, my young friend.”

“Scarlet fever!” It was Mr. Lewinstein who gasped the words. “You don’t mean that?”

The doctor walked out and joined him on the landing, closing the door behind him.

“It’s scarlet fever, all right. Have you any idea where she was infected?”

“Scarlet fever,” moaned Mr. Lewinstein; “and I’ve got the house full of aristocracy!”

“Well, the best thing you can do is to keep the aristocracy in ignorance of the fact. Get the girl out of the house.”

“But how? How?” wailed Mr. Lewinstein.

The doctor scratched his head.

“Of course, I don’t want to do it,” he said slowly; “but I can’t very well leave a girl in a mess like this. May I use your telephone?”

“Certainly, use anything you like; but, for goodness’ sake, get the girl away!”

Mr. Lewinstein showed him the library, where the young man called up a number and gave some instructions. Apparently his telephone interview was satisfactory, for he came back to the hall, where Mr. Lewinstein was nervously drumming his fingers on the polished surface of a table, with a smile.

“I can get an ambulance out here, but not before three in the morning,” he said; “anyway, that will suit us, because your guests will be abed and asleep by then, and most of the servants also, I suppose. And we can get her out without anybody being the wiser.”

“I’m awfully obliged to you, doctor,” said Mr. Lewinstein, “anything you like to charge me—”

The doctor waved fees out of consideration.

Then a thought occurred to Mr. Lewinstein.

“Doctor, could that disease be communicated to the girl by means of a drug, or anything?”

“Why do you ask?” said the other quickly.

“Well, because she was all right till she had a cup of tea. I must take you into my confidence,” he said, lowering his voice. “She is a detective, brought down here to look after my guests. There have been a number of robberies committed lately by a woman who calls herself ‘Four Square Jane,’ and, to be on the safe side, I had this girl down to protect the property of my friends. When I saw her before dinner she was as well as you or I; then a cup of tea was given to her, and immediately she had these shiverings.”

The doctor nodded thoughtfully.

“It is curious you should say that,” he said; “for though she has the symptoms of scarlet fever, she has others which are not usually to be found in scarlet fever cases. Do you suggest that this woman, this Four Square person, is in the house?”

“Either she or her agent,” said Mr. Lewinstein. “She has several people who work with her by all accounts.”

“And you believe that she has given this girl a drug to put her out of the way?”

“That’s my idea.”

“By jove!” said the young man, “that’s rather a scheme. Well, anyway, there will be plenty of people knocking about tonight, and your guests will be safe for tonight.”

The girl had been housed in the servants’ wing, but fortunately in a room isolated from all the others. Mr. Lewinstein made several trips upstairs during the course of the evening, saw through the open door the doctor sitting by the side of the bed, and was content. His guests retired towards one o’clock and this agitated Mrs. Lewinstein, to whom the news of the catastrophe had been imparted, having been successfully induced to go to bed, Mr. Lewinstein breathed more freely.

At half-past one he made his third visit to the door of the sick room, for he, himself, was not without dread of infection, and saw through the open door the doctor sitting reading a book near the head of the bed.

He stole quietly down, so quietly that he almost surprised a slim figure that was stealing along the darkened corridor whence opened the bedrooms of the principal guests.

She flattened herself into a recess, and he passed her so closely that she could have touched him. She waited until he had disappeared, and then crossed to one of the doors and felt gingerly at the key-hole. The occupant had made the mistake of locking the door and taking out the key, and in a second she had inserted one of her own, and softly turning it, had tip-toed into the room.

She stood listening; there was a steady breathing, and she made her way to the dressing-table, where her deft fingers began a rapid but silent search. Presently she found what she wanted, a smooth leather case, and shook it gently. She was not a minute in the room before she was out again, closing the door softly behind her.

She had half-opened the next door before she saw that there was a light in the room and she stood motionless in the shadow of the doorway. On the far side of the bed the little table-lamp was still burning, and it would, she reflected, have helped her a great deal, if only she could have been sure that the person who was lying among the frilled pillows of the bed was really asleep. She waited rigid, and with all her senses alert for five minutes, till the sound of regular breathing from the bed reassured her. Then she slipped forward to the dressing-table. Here, her task was easy. No less than a dozen little velvet and leather cases lay strewn on the silk cover. She opened them noiselessly one by one, and put their glittering contents into her pocket, leaving the cases as they had been.

As she was handling the last of the jewels a thought struck her, and she peered more closely at the sleeping figure. A thin pretty woman, it seemed in the half-light. So this was the businesslike Lady Ovingham. She left the room as noiselessly as she had entered it, and more quickly, and tried the next door in the passage.

This one had not been locked.

It was Mrs. Lewinstein’s own room, but she was not sleeping quietly. The door had been left open for her lord, who had made a promise to see his wife to make arrangements for the morrow. This promise he had quite forgotten in his perturbation. There was a little safe let into the wall, and the keys were hanging in the lock; for Mr. Lewinstein, who, being a prudent, careful man, was in the habit of depositing his diamond studs every night.

The girl’s fingers went into the interior of the safe, and presently she found what she wanted. Mrs. Lewinstein stopped breathing heavily, grunted, and turned, and the girl stood stock-still. Presently the snoring recommenced, and she stole out into the corridor.

As she closed each door she stopped only long enough to press a small label against the surface of the handle before she passed on to the next room.

Downstairs in the library, Mr. Lewinstein heard the soft purr of a motor car, and rose with a sigh of relief. Only his butler had been let into the secret, and that sleepy retainer, who was dozing in one of the hall chairs, heard the sound with as great relief as his employer. He opened the big front door.

Outside was a motor-ambulance from which two men had descended. They pulled out a stretcher and a bundle of blankets, and made their way into the hall.

“I will show you the way,” said Mr. Lewinstein. “You will make as little noise as possible, please.”

He led the procession up the carpeted stairs, and came at last to the girl’s room.

“Oh, here you are,” said the doctor, yawning. “Set the stretcher by the side of the bed. You had better stand away some distance, Mr. Lewinstein,” he said, and that gentleman obeyed with alacrity.

Presently the door opened and the stretcher came out, bearing the blanket-enveloped figure of the girl, her face just visible, and she favoured Mr. Lewinstein with a pathetic smile as she passed.

The stairs were negotiated without any difficulty by the attendants, and carefully the stretcher was pushed into the interior of the ambulance.

“That’s all right,” said the doctor; “if I were you I would have that bedroom locked up and fumigated tomorrow.”

“I’m awfully obliged to you, doctor. If you will give me your address I would like to send you a cheque.”

“Oh, rubbish,” said the other cheerfully, “I am only too happy to serve you. I will go into the village to pick up my car and get back to town myself.”

“Where will you take this young woman?” asked Mr. Lewinstein.

“To the County Fever Hospital,” replied the other carelessly. “That’s where you’re taking her, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” said one of the attendants.

Mr. Lewinstein waited on the steps until the red lights of the car had disappeared, then stepped inside with the sense of having managed a very difficult situation rather well.

“That will do for the night,” he said to the butler. “Thank you for waiting up.”

He found himself walking, with a little smile on his lips, along the corridor to his own room.

As he was passing his wife’s door he stumbled over something. Stooping, he picked up a case. There was an electric switch close by, and he flooded the corridor with light.

“Jumping Moses!” he gasped, for the thing he held in his hand was his wife’s jewel case.

He made a run for her door, and was just gripping the handle, when the label there caught his eye, and he stared in hopeless bewilderment at the sign of Four Square Jane.

An ambulance stopped at a cross-road, where a big car was waiting, and the patient, who had long since thrown off her blankets, came out. She pulled after her a heavy bag, which one of the two attendants lifted for her and placed in the car. The doctor was sitting at the wheel.

“I was afraid I was going to keep you waiting,” he said. “I only just got here in time.”

He turned to the attendant.

“I shall see you tomorrow, Jack.”

“Yes, doctor,” replied the other.

He touched his hat to Four Square Jane, and walked back to the ambulance, waiting only to change the number plates before he drove away in the opposite direction to London.

“Are you ready?” asked the doctor.

“Quite ready,” said the girl, dropping in by his side. “You were late, Jim. I nearly pulled a real fit when I heard they’d sent for the local sawbones.”

“You needn’t have worried,” said the man at the wheel, as he started the car forward. “I got a pal to wire calling him to London. Did you get the stuff?”

“Yards of it,” said Four Square Jane laconically. “There will be some sad hearts in Lewinstein’s house tomorrow.”

He smiled.

“By the way,” she said, “that lady detective Ross sent, how far did she get?”

“As far as the station,” said the doctor, “which reminds me that I forgot to let her out of the garage where I locked her.”

“Let her stay,” said Four Square Jane. “I hate the idea of she-detectives, anyway — it’s so unwomanly.”

A Fortune in Tin Edgar Wallace

The enormous success that Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) enjoyed in the 1920s and ’30s extended beyond the United Kingdom to the United States, but Elegant Edward (1928) was suffused with a kind of humor that evidently did not appeal to Americans, as the collection of short stories was never published on the other side of the Atlantic.

Unlike most of the many criminal characters created by Wallace, Edward Farthindale, known to one and all as Elegant Edward, was not a brilliant mastermind who arrogantly laughed at the police who tried to capture him. He is described thus by the editor:

As the most popular writer in the world in the 1920s and ’30s, Wallace earned a fortune — reportedly more than a quarter of a million dollars a year during the last decade of his life, but his extravagant lifestyle left his estate deeply in debt when he died.

“A Fortune in Tin” was originally published in Elegant Edward (London, Readers Library, 1928).

Elegant Edward dealt in a stable line of goods, and, in the true sense of the word, he was no thief. He was admittedly a chiseller, a macer, a twister, and a get-a-bit. His stock-in-trade consisted either of shares in derelict companies purchased for a song, or options on remote properties, or genuine gold claims, indubitable mineral rights, and oil propositions. Because of his elegance and refinement, he was able to specialize in this high-class trade and make a living where another man would have starved.

Mr. Farthindale had emerged from a welter of trouble with almost all the capital which had been his a week before. He had tracked down certain disloyal partners who had sold property of his, and had forced them to disgorge their ill-gotten gains, and from the fence who had illegally purchased his property, he had obtained the rest.

The police were seeking a certain Scotty Ferguson, the partner in question, and because Edward had no desire to give evidence against his some-time confederate, he had changed his lodgings, and was considering the next move in his adventurous game.

It came as a result of a chance meeting with an itinerant vendor of novelties, who stood on the kerb of a London street selling 100,000 mark notes for twopence. Insensibly Edward’s mind went to the business he understood best. In the city of London was a snide bucket-shop keeper with whom he was acquainted. This gentleman operated from a very small office in a very large building. A picture of the building was on his note-paper, and country clients were under the impression that the Anglo-Imperial Stock Trust occupied every floor and overflowed to the roof. To him, Edward repaired, and found him playing patience, for business was bad.

“How do, Mr. Farthindale. Come in and sit down.”

“How’s it going?” asked Edward conventionally.

The Anglo-Imperial Stock Trust made a painful face.

“Rotten,” he said. “I sent out three thousand circulars last week, offering the finest oil ground in Texas at a hundred pounds an acre. I got one reply — from an old lady who wanted to know if I’d met her son who lives in Texas City. The suckers are dying, Mr. Farthindale.”

Edward scratched his chin.

“Oil’s no good to me,” he said. “I’ve worked oil in Scotland. What about mines?”

“Gold or silver?” asked the Anglo-Imperial, rising with alacrity. “I’ve got a peach of a silver mine—”

“I’ve worked silver mines,” said the patient Edward, “in Wales. Silver never goes as well as gold.”

“What about tin?” asked The Trust anxiously. “The Trevenay Tin Mine Corporation? The mine’s been working since the days of the Pernicions, or Phinocians... prehistoric dagoes... you know?”

Elegant Edward had a dim idea that the Phœnicians were pretty old, and was mildly impressed.

“I’ve got a hundred and twenty thousand shares out of a hundred and fifty thousand. It’s a real mine, too — about forty years ago a thousand people used to work on it!” The Trust continued. “The other thirty thousand are owned by an old Scotsman — a professor or something — and he won’t part. I offered him twenty pounds for ’em, too. Not that they’re worth it, or rather at the time they weren’t,” added The Trust hastily, realizing that Edward stood in the light of a possible purchaser.

“But the land and machinery are worth money?” suggested Edward.

The Trust shook his head.

“The company only holds mining rights, and the royalty owner has got first claim on the buildings — such as they are. But the company looks good, and the new share certificates I had printed look better. You couldn’t have a finer proposition, Mr. Farthindale.”

There were hagglings and bargainings, scornful refusings and sardonic comments generally before Elegant Edward was able to take the trail again, the owner of a hundred and twenty thousand shares in a tin company, which was genuine in all respects, except that it contained no tin.

“If you’re going to Scotland, see that professor,” said The Trust at parting. “You ought to get the rest of the stock for a tenner.”

It was to Scotland, as a needle to a magnet, that Elegant Edward was attracted. A desire to get “his own back,” to recoup himself for his losses, in fact to “show ’em” brought him to a country he loathed.

He had come to sell to the simple people of Scotia, at ten shillings per share, stock which he had bought at a little less than a farthing. And, since cupidity and stupidity run side by side in the mental equipment of humanity, he succeeded.

It was in the quietude of an Edinburgh lodging that Edward ran to earth Professor Folloman.

The professor was usually very drunk and invariably very learned — a wisp of a man, with long, dirty-white hair and an expression of woe. Five minutes after the two boarders met in the dismal lodging-house “drawing-room,” the professor, a man without reticence, was retailing his troubles.

“The world,” said Professor Folloman, “neglects its geniuses. It allows men of my talent to starve, whilst it gives fortunes to the charlatan, the faker, and the crook. O mores, o tempores!”

“Oui, oui,” said Elegant Edward misguidedly.

The professor came naturally to his favourite subject, which was the hollowness and chicanery of patent medicines. It was his illusion that his life had been ruined, his career annihilated, and the future darkened by the popularity of certain patent drugs which are household words to the average Briton. That his misfortune might be traced to an early-acquired habit of making his breakfast on neat whisky — a practice which on one occasion had almost a tragical result — never occurred to him.

“Here am I, sir, one of the best physicians of the city of Edinburgh, a man holding degrees which I can only describe as unique, and moreover, the possessor of shares in one of the richest tin mines in Cornwall, obliged to borrow the price of a drink from a comparative stranger.”

Elegant Edward, recognizing this description of himself, made an heroic attempt to nail down the conversation to the question of tin mines, but the professor was a skilful man.

“What has ruined me?” he demanded, fixing his bright eyes on Edward with a hypnotic glare. “I’ll tell you, my man! Biggins’ Pills have ruined me, and Walkers’ Wee Wafers and Lambo’s Lightning Lung-tonic! Because of this pernicious invasion of the healing realm, I, John Walker Folloman, am compelled to live on the charity of relations — let us have a drink.”

Such a direct invitation, Elegant Edward could not refuse. They adjourned to a near-by bar, and here the professor took up the threads of the conversation.

“You, like myself, are a gentleman. The moment I saw you, my man, I said: ‘Here is a professional.’ None but a professional would have his trousers creased, and wear a tail-coat. None but a professional would pay the scrupulous attention to his attire and the glossiness of his hat — don’t drown it, my lass! whisky deserves a better fate — you’re a doctor, sir?”

Edward coughed. He had never before been mistaken for a doctor. It was not an unpleasing experience.

“Not exactly,” he said.

“Ah! A lawyer!”

“I’ve had a lot to do with the law,” said Elegant Edward truthfully, “but I’m not exactly a lawyer.”

“Something that makes money, I have no doubt,” said the old man gloomily. “I could have been a millionaire, had I descended to the manufacture of noxious quack medicines instead of following my profession. I should have been a millionaire had somebody with my unique knowledge of metallurgy been in control of the Trevenay Mines—”

“Tin mines?” asked Elegant Edward. “There’s no money in tin. I always tell my friends — I’m in the stock-broking business — ‘If you’ve got tin shares, sell ’em.’ ”

“I’ll no’ sell mine,” said the old man grimly. “No, sir! I’ll hold my shares. A dear friend of mine, Professor Macginnis, is in Cornwall and has promised to give me a report — Macginnis is the greatest authority on tin in this world, Sir. I have his letter,” he fumbled in his pocket unsuccessfully, “no, I have left it in my other jacket. But it doesn’t matter. He is taking a holiday in the south, and has promised to thoroughly examine the ground.”

“His... his report won’t be published in the papers, will it?” asked Edward anxiously.

“It will not,” said the professor, and pushed his glass across the counter. “Repeat the potion, Maggie, and let your hand be as generous as your heart, my lass!”

A few days later, and on a raw December morning, with leaden clouds overhead and the air thick with driving sleet, Elegant Edward came out of the station and gazed disconsolately upon so much of the town as was visible through the veil of the blizzard.

“So this is Dundee!” said Elegant Edward, unconsciously paraphrasing a better-known slogan. He had chosen Dundee for the scene of his operations, mainly because it was not Glasgow. Gathering up his rug and his bag, he beckoned the one cab in sight and gave his instructions.

At the little hotel where he was set down, he found a letter awaiting him. It was addressed to Angus Mackenzie (he had signed the register in that name) and its contents were satisfactory. The small furnished office which he had engaged by letter was waiting his pleasure, the key was enclosed, together with a receipt for the rent he had paid in advance.

To trace the progress of Mr. Farthindale through the months that followed his arrival on the Tay would be more or less profitless; to tell the story of his limited advertising campaign, his clever circularization and the pleasing volume of business which came his way, and divers other incidentals, would be to elongate the narrative to unpardonable length.

Margaret Elton came to him on the third day after his arrival. She was tall, good-looking and, moreover, she believed in miracles. But although she was, by the admission of one who loved her best, masterful, she could not master the cruel fate which had hitherto denied her sufficient money to support an ailing mother without having recourse to the limited income of a young man who found every day a new reason for marrying at once.

“It is no use, John,” she said firmly. “I’m not going to let you marry the family. When I can make mother independent I’ll marry.”

“Margaret,” he said, “that means waiting another fifty years — but I’ll wait. What is your new boss like?”

“He’s English and inoffensive,” she said tersely.

Which in a sense was true, though Elegant Edward had his own doubts about his inoffensiveness.

Edward would have fired her the day she came, only he couldn’t summon sufficient courage. Thereafter, he was lost. She took control of the office, the business, and Elegant Edward. It was she who had the idea for appointing the travellers to carry the joyous news about the Trevenay Tin Mine to the remotest parts of Scotland; she who discharged them when their expense accounts came in; she who saw the printers and corrected the proofs of the circular describing the history of the Trevenay Mine; she who bought the typewriter, and insisted upon Edward coming to the office at ten o’clock every morning. She liked Edward; she told him so. Usually such a declaration, coming from so charming a female, would have set Edward’s head wagging. But she had so many qualifications to her admiration that he was almost terrified at her praise.

“I don’t like that moustache. Why do you wax it, Mr. Mackenzie?” she demanded. “It looks so ridiculous! I wonder how you would look clean-shaven?”

Now Edward’s moustache was the pride of his life, and he made one great effort to preserve it intact.

“My personal appearance—” he began with tremulous hauteur.

“Take it off; I’d like to see you without it,” she said, “unless you’ve got a bad mouth. Most men wear moustaches because their mouths won’t stand inspection.”

The next morning Edward came clean-shaven, and she looked at him dubiously.

“I think you had better grow it again,” she said. It was her only comment.

Money was coming in in handsome quantities — Mr. Farthindale’s new profession was paying handsome dividends.

One day there floated into his office an acquaintance of other days, Lew Bennyfold — an adventurer at large. Happily the dominant Margaret was out at lunch.

“Thought it was you,” said Lew, seating himself uninvited. “I spotted you coming into the building yesterday; it took me all the morning to locate you. What’s the graft?”

Edward gazed upon the apparition in dismay. He had some slight acquaintance with this confidence man — he did not wish to improve upon it.

“This is no graft, Mr. Bennyfold,” he said gently, “but honest toil and labour — I’m running a mine.”

“Go on?” said the other incredulously. “You’re not the What-is-it Tin Mine, are you?”

Edward nodded.

“That explains everything,” said Mr. Lew Bennyfold gravely, and rose to his feet. “Well, I won’t stay — I don’t want to be in this.”

“What do you mean?” asked Edward.

Mr. Bennyfold smiled pityingly.

“From what I’ve heard of you, you’re a fly mug,” he said; “in fact, you’ve got a name for being clever but easy. But how any grafter could sit here in an office, working with a ‘nose’ and not be wise to it, beats me.”

“A nose!” said the startled Edward.

Mr. Bennyfold nodded again.

“I’ve been working Dundee, and ‘work’s’ a good word. It has been perishing hard work. And I’ve been here long enough to see things. How do you think I came to be watching this office?”

Edward had wondered that too.

“I’ve been tailing up Sergeant Walker and his girl,” said Lew. “I happen to lodge opposite the sergeant — he’s the smartest ‘busy’ in Dundee. And I’ve noticed that he’s always with a girl. Meets her after dark and they go long walks. So I got on the track of the girl. And she led me here.”

“Here?” gasped Edward turning pale. “You don’t mean to tell me—?”

“She’s Miss Margaret Elton,” said Bennyfold, “and if you’ve let her know anything about your business, you’re as good as jugged.”

Elegant Edward wiped his warm forehead.

His business was an honest one — only an insider who knew the office secrets could prove otherwise. Usually, Elegant Edward did not allow an insider to know much, but this bossy girl had taken the office workings into her own hands.

“He’s sweet on her — there’s no doubt about that,” said Bennyfold. “My landlady told me they’re going to be married. But that’s worse for you, because she’ll do anything for him and swear anything. Mr. Farthindale, I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a million!”

He left with this, and his anxiety to avoid complications added to Edward’s distress.

When the girl came back from lunch he regarded her with a new and a fearful interest. There was something very remorseless about her mouth; her eyes, he thought, were pitiless, her profile made him shudder.

“Our agent in Ayr isn’t doing much business,” she said brusquely. “I think we had better fire him and get another man.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. Now he understood her bossiness. She had behind her the power and authority of the law.

Late in the afternoon she interruped his gloomy meditations.

“Will you excuse me for a few minutes? A friend of mine wants to see me.”

“Certainly, Miss Elton,” he said, almost humbly.

When she had left the room, he went to the window and looked out.

A tall, stern-looking young man was pacing the sidewalk on the opposite side, from time to time looking up at the office window. With him was an older man — a typical chief constable in mufti.

Edward saw the girl join them, watched the earnest conversation between them, and once saw the girl look up to the window where he was standing. She saw him and said something and all three looked up.

Edward drew back quickly out of sight.

So Lew was right. He was trapped!

Now Edward was a quick thinker and a man to whom inspiration came very readily. He was inspired now. The scheme came to him in a flash — the greatest wangle that had ever entered his mind. He waited until the girl came back.

“I’m sorry I was so long. That young gentleman you saw me with — I noticed you were looking — is my fiancé, and the other gentleman is a house agent. Willie is buying a house, though I doubt if he’ll ever put it to the use he intends.”

“Indeed,” said Edward politely. “I’ll be going to my lawyers for a few minutes to get my will made. Will you witness it for me?”

She looked at him in surprise.

“Thinking of dying?” she asked suspiciously.

Edward had the feeling that to die without her permission would be regarded by her as an unfriendly act.

The little lawyer who had fixed up his tenancy was in.

“I want a short deed drawn up, transferring my business to a young lady,” said Edward. “I want it done right away so that I can get it signed.”

The lawyer was puzzled.

“A deed? I don’t think it is necessary. A receipt would be sufficient. I’ll draw it up for you. How much is being paid?”

“Half-a-crown,” said Edward. He didn’t think Margaret would part with more without explanation. “But it has got to have her signature.”

“I see — a nominal transfer,” said the lawyer, and drew up the document on the spot.

Edward carried the paper back to his office.

“You sign this here,” he said, as he wrote his name across the stamp, “and to make this document legal you’ve got to put your name under mine and give me half-a-crown.”

“Why? I’ve got no half-crowns to throw away!”

Eventually and on the promise that the money would be returned, she consented, signed the paper, paid, and was repaid the money.

Edward put the document into an envelope, sealed it, and placed it in his little safe.

“Now everything’s all right,” he said and smiled seraphically.

The next morning came fifty inquiries for Trevenay Shares. The afternoon post brought forty more. He went to his bank and drew six hundred pounds. He must be ready to move at a moment’s notice.

Edward had often lived on the edges of volcanoes and thrived in the atmosphere of sulphur, but he was more than usually nervous that day and the next; and on the evening of the second day the blow fell.

He was leaving his office when he saw the tall stern young man come quickly towards him. Elegant Edward stood stock still.

“I want you, Mr. Mackenzie,” said the officer.

“I don’t know what you want me for,” said Edward loudly, and at that moment Margaret Elton came out into the street.

“You may want this young lady, but you certainly don’t want me.”

The officer stared at him.

“I don’t understand you,” he said.

“You don’t? Well, I’ll tell you something — the business belongs to her. If you’ll step inside I’ll show you.”

Edward led the way back to his sanctum, opened the safe, took out and opened the envelope.

“Here you are,” he said, “read this.”

Sergeant Walker read in silent amazement the document that transferred to Margaret Elton, “the business known as the Trevenay Share Syndicate, together with all shares held by that company, exclusive of monies standing to the credit of the syndicate, furniture, leaseholds, and all properties whatsoever.”

“You mean... this is Miss Elton’s business?” gasped Walker.

Edward nodded gravely.

“I gave it to her as — as a wedding present,” he said, “there’s the key of the safe — bless you, my children!”

He was out of the office before they could stop him.

“What does it mean?” asked the amazed girl.

Sergeant Walker shook his head.

“I don’t know — it must be that miracle you’re always talking about,” he said. “I stopped him in the street to ask him if he could give you a fortnight’s holiday and come to the wedding and he sprung this on me. How did he know we were getting married?”

The first person Edward saw on Edinburgh railway station was the professor, and he was sober. The recognition was mutual and the professor waved a cheery greeting.

“Going south, eh? So am I. Yes, sir, thanks to the activities of the quacks, I haven’t seen London for thirty years.”

The old man got into the carriage and deposited his bag on the hat rack, and as the train began to move slowly out of the station on its non-stop run to Newcastle, he explained the object of his journey.

“I’m going to meet my dear friend, Macginnis, who has made me a rich man. The Trevenay Mine, sir, is a gold mine! I am speaking figuratively, of course. A new tin deposit has been discovered, the shares which were not worth the paper they are written on, are now worth a pound — perhaps two pounds. You said you had some? I congratulate you...”

Edward did not hear any more. He had swooned.

The Genuine Old Master David Durham

The Colonel Gives a Party Everett Rhodes Castle

Largely forgotten today, Everett Rhodes Castle (1894–1968) was a hugely popular short story writer for decades, appearing with regularity in the pages of the best-paying magazines in America, including Redbook, Collier’s, and The Saturday Evening Post, to which he sold his first story in 1917.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, his goal had been to be a cartoonist, but he instead became a journalist before becoming an advertising copywriter while creating gently humorous stories that mostly featured business, romance, and crime on the side.

Castle is best known for his long series about Colonel Humphrey Flack, a con man who swindles other swindlers with the aid of his partner, Uthas P. (“Patsy”) Garvey. They serve a role akin to Robin Hood figures, turning over their ill-gotten gains to the deserving while retaining a percentage “for expenses.” The magazine stories inspired a humorous, family-oriented television series for the Dumont network titled Colonel Humphrey Flack that ran from October 7, 1953, to July 2, 1954; it was revived for a thirty-nine-episode syndicated series that aired from October 5, 1958, to July 5, 1959, with the title Colonel Flack.

“The Colonel Gives a Party” was first published in the May 8, 1943, issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

The old gentleman with the crimson face and sweeping white mustaches picked up the telephone and asked, in an amiable bass, for the cashier. His watery blue eyes, pendent in bulging brassières of flesh, twinkled good-naturedly. His free hand, a massive paw speckled with brown spots, fondled a brandy and soda. A vintage cigar, also speckled with brown spots, rode jauntily above his huge, glistening, winged collar.

“This is Colonel Humphrey Flack in Suite Nine-o-two,” he said, after a moment. “Mr. Garvey and I are checking out in the morning. Ha... Exactly... Eh?... No, no. Everything has been eminently satisfactory. Quite. I... we are merely going South. To my place in Palm Beach. Will you see that my chit is ready immediately after breakfast? Ha... Good. Very good. Incidentally, there will be a few... hum... additions to the account this evening. I... ha... am giving a little farewell party.”

The younger man with his hands thrust deep into the trouser pockets of his blue flannel suit turned away from the window. His dark eyes smoldered with resentment.

“It ought to be a pleasure to hear you speak the truth for once,” he fumed. “But it isn’t! The Colonel gives the party! What else have you been doing twice a week for the past weeks? Poker, he calls it! Ever thought of what that gang of high-binders you’ve been having in here probably call it?” His thin, bitter laugh curdled the twilight.

The old gentleman by the telephone gestured meekly with his sweating glass. “But it’s been fun,” he protested mildly. “And at seventy-one a man must seize the few... hum... pleasures which come his way.”

Mr. Uthas Garvey’s nervous fingers flecked the ash from his cigarette. “That’s your trouble,” he snapped. “You’re living in the past. You’re a hangover from the good old days when suckers bought the Brooklyn Bridge, gold bricks, went for the wire racket, the tear-up, and all the other bewhiskered gyps of the Gay Nineties.”

The Colonel dipped his aristocratic puce beak into his glass, came up smiling. “I live by my wits,” he admitted benignly. “Ha. I admit it, frankly. But so do you, my dear chap. The pot libels the kettle, eh?”

“I’m fed up with wits!” Mr. Garvey assured him sourly. “What’s it got me in the two years we’ve been playing around together? Right now I’ve got three dollars and ten cents in cash and a case of stomach ulcers. And what have you laid by, fine-feathered friend? Two bucks and a bad case of dementia grandeur. Some balance sheet, eh?”

“It could be worse, my dear boy.”

“How?” Mr. Garvey dropped his voice to a mocking imitation of his associate’s rumble. “Get my bill ready, my good man! I’m leaving for the South, my good man.” His voice edged up. “Where does the lettuce come from to pay the bill? The railroad tickets? Where will you get the dough you’ll lose tonight trying to make a four-card flush stand up against three mop squeezers?”

“Maybe I’ll hold the three queens tonight, my dear chap. Ha. Exactly.”

“Against Billings?” Mr. Garvey’s laughter was abrupt, derisive. “That goon used to be a dealer in Moxey Manning’s gambling joint in Denver. Purdy? He just beat a rap for selling fake cemetery lots to the widow-and-orphan trade by an eyelash. And Spertz! A crooked stock rigger under indictment right now. And Dolan! A bottom-of-the-deck artist. A fine gang of playmates.”

“Don’t forget Captain Ferdinand Smythe-Calder,” the Colonel implored him meekly. “Of course, he isn’t a captain and Calder isn’t his real name. But he has a very quick brain. Ha. Indubitably.”

“As opposed to senile decay!” Mr. Garvey muttered wrathfully.

The Colonel rubbed his lower lip tenderly. “It’s heartening, the interest people take in the aged and mentally infirm,” he observed placidly. “At my last little poker party, Eddie, the bell captain, delivered some cigars. Yesterday he took the time and... hum... trouble to hint that my guests — particularly the Captain — were residents of Queer Street, as the English say. Ha. Exactly. I gathered the Captain had done the dirty, as they say, to some friend of the lad’s. A nice boy. Ha. Eddie, I mean. Did you know this was his last day at the hotel? He’s leaving in the morning. The Marines, I believe. A noble service. I must not forget to leave him a substantial remembrance.”

“And they lock up poor jerks who only imagine that they’re Nero or Napoleon or Lincoln,” Mr. Garvey mourned.

The Colonel was humming one of his favorite tunes now. A little number entitled A Violet Plucked from Mother’s Grave. It was more than flesh could take.

“For God’s sake, quit that dirge!” Mr. Garvey screamed.

“Dirge?” The watery orbs were mildly reproving. “Hardly, my dear fellow. A most interesting little lyric. By a chap named J. P. Skelly. He was known as the Bible House Plumber in his day. He wrote over four hundred songs. All on brown wrapping paper. Ha. Exactly. Most interesting, eh?”

“I’m enthralled,” Mr. Garvey snarled. “You’ve opened up an entirely new world to me.” He dropped down abruptly on a putty-colored settee that cornered the far side of the parlor. “My ulcers!” he moaned.

With quick solicitude the Colonel dug up the telephone and called for room service. He ordered bicarbonate, and then, almost as a casual afterthought, added two quarts of Scotch, a bottle of brandy, one of bourbon, charged water, ginger ale, cigarettes, and a box of cigars.

“And... hah... a large platter of turkey, ham and cheese sandwiches later, eh? About ten-thirty.”

Mr. Garvey’s stomach writhed in agony, but his mind was busy with a bitter sum in mental arithmetic. “How typical of our partnership,” he observed brightly. “Everything fifty-fifty! A dose of baking soda for Garvey and forty dollars’ worth of high living for Colonel Humphrey.”

The old gentleman ignored the crack. He gulped his drink and reached again for the telephone. “The desk,” he commanded.

When the connection was made, he requested the immediate installation of a radio. He hung up with a flourish.

“Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” Mr. Garvey quoted petulantly. Then his mind backtracked to the flourish. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Or could I be wrong?”

“About a hangover from the old days when suckers went for the wire racket and all the other bewhiskered gyps of the Gay Nineties? My dear boy!”

“Spare me those trained dewlaps quivering with reproach.” The younger man stood up and started for the array of glasses and bottles on the side table near the older man. Then he sighed and twisted away. “You don’t like radio,” he pointed out accusingly over his shoulder. “You’ve said so a hundred times. The blatting—”

“But I do like the... hah... manly art of self-defense, my dear lad,” the Colonel pointed out glibly. “And so do my guests.” The massive gold chain attached to his stomach watch twitched with logic — or something. “Young Cooney is battling Stanley Peyskisk for the light-heavyweight championship tonight. Ha. Exactly. I... I was reading about it over luncheon today. Hum. On the sports page. Then I happened to notice that the bout would also be on a local station at eleven o’clock. What a marvelous age we are living in, my dear boy! It... it makes one think, doesn’t it?”

“Cooney will cut him to pieces,” Mr. Garvey predicted. “And don’t tell me all the wise money is going on the Polack. I know it is. But wise dough has been wrong before.”

The Colonel was making himself another drink. He held glass and bottle high, squinting tenderly at the golden liquid threading into the glass. “I wasn’t thinking of the two contestants,” he chirruped blithely. “My... my mind was traveling back. Years ago we had to... hum... depend on the telegraph for sporting results—”

“I’m not interested.”

But the old goat was off, teetering on his toes, one hand tugging reminiscently at his port mustache.

Mr. Garvey sighed, shrugged his shoulders wearily, and wished the bicarbonate would arrive.

“I was thinking of the old wire racket you mentioned,” the Colonel pattered on. “Remember how it worked? Contact was made with a... hum... gullible and... and avaricious gentleman with money. It was explained to this easy mark that the contactor was a close friend or relative of a telegraph operator. This operator had agreed to hold up the news of certain race results. Ha. Exactly. At the same time he would pass along the names of the winning horses to his friend. The friend would thus be able to place a bet on the winning horse with some bookie joint... hah... after the race was won. It... it was absolutely sure. The contactor explained that he was without the necessary funds to make a big killing, quick. Hence the opportunity for the easy mark. Of course, the whole thing was a plant. After letting the mark win a few small bets, they took him in... hah... a big way and... hum... fled.”

Mr. Garvey draped his feet over the end of the settee and lit a cigarette. The tableau was one of complete disinterest.

“I was just thinking—” the Colonel went on with a sly, ruminative grin, as his younger partner sent smoke rings twisting toward the ceiling — “ha... how the magic of modern science and invention has made such small stratagems... hum... quite obsolete. You agree?”

Mr. Garvey yawned, loudly and ostentatiously.

A waiter arrived, pushing a white-clothed cart covered with bottles before him. Mr. Garvey sat up with a quick sigh of relief. The Colonel signed the check with the dash and confidence of the Federal Reserve System. He added a tip to the bottom of the card. The smile on the waiter’s face made Mr. Garvey wince as he stirred his bicarbonate.

Then the old boar was at the telephone again. This time he wanted the bell captain. “Eddie? Ha... Oh, I see. This is Colonel Flack. Will you tell him I’d like to see him for a minute as soon as he returns? Tell him it is... hah... very important.”

Garvey eyed him thoughtfully over the cloudy glass. The Colonel grinned.

Something — either the bicarbonate or the grin — made the younger man feel better. “So I was wrong, eh?”

“What time have you, my dear fellow?”

Garvey stared at his wrist. “Five to eight.”

“Your watch is three minutes slow. I checked with the telephone company just before you returned from dinner. Please set it.”

“What difference does three minutes make when—”

The Colonel returned his huge gold hunter to his white linen vest. “Timing is one of the most important things in life, my dear Garvey. In business. In... hah... the drama. Even in paying one’s hotel bill. Ha. Exactly. Quite.”

Mr. Uthas P. Garvey dragged his coat sleeve away from his wrist for the fifth time in twenty minutes. It was exactly five minutes after ten. Nearly an hour to go! Mr. Garvey lit another cigarette and sat back to brood. Why couldn’t the old goat come right out and say what the angle was? He had insisted that the younger man could carry out his part of the deal more naturally, and, consequently, with a better chance for success, if he did not know what was going on. But that was always his line.

Mr. Garvey inhaled savagely. At three minutes after eleven o’clock — not one moment sooner — he was to turn on the radio.

After pretending to fiddle with the tuning controls, he was to bring in the local station carrying the fight. What did that make him? A stooge for a cheap hotel radio, Mr. Garvey thought bitterly. The smoke from his cigarette was flat and unstimulating in his lungs. Nothing added up. The old crocodile had intimated, with one of his sly cat-and-canary smiles, that the Garvey bewilderment augured well for the success of his scheme. It proved, he said, the psychological soundness of the basic thought.

So what? So where? So how? Mr. Garvey ground out his cigarette with savage thoroughness. The old ram had intimated that his ulcers were nothing but attacks of nervous indigestion. Well, for once, Mr. Garvey hoped the old bull was right. Ulcers or no ulcers, he had to have a drink! A big drink! The six men around the green-covered table in the middle of the room paid no attention to him as he crossed to the bottle-littered table by the door.

“All pink,” a flat voice announced as he reached for rye. “Sorry, Colonel. They don’t seem to be running, do they?”

Mr. Garvey recognized the voice. He wondered if Dolan had dealt his flush from the bottom of the pack.

But apparently the Colonel entertained no such suspicion. He took a hearty pull from the glass beside him.

“That’s the third time I’ve had three of a kind topped,” he announced, with a chuckle. “Perhaps I’m allergic to the... hah... digit, eh? Ha. Quite. Well, we shall see... Your deal, Billings.”

The news caused Mr. Garvey to add still another jigger of liquor to his drink. He gulped thirstily and then sauntered over to stand behind the Colonel. His dark eyes took a swift inventory of the chips. He gulped again. They were playing five-card stud, five-dollar limit. As Mr. Garvey stood there, a little man in his shirt sleeves across the table bet a red chip on an exposed ace. He had eyebrows like Harpo Marx and a mouth like a barracuda. A tall man next to him saw the red chip with long, delicate-looking fingers and added a yellow one. His exposed card was a knave of diamonds. And Captain Ferdinand Smythe-Calder looked like a knave, Mr. Garvey thought. A very elegant knave.

A beefy man whose baldness and horn-rimmed glasses made him look like a gremlin’s wicked uncle grunted and turned down his hand. The next man did the same with a shrug and a thin smile.

The Colonel hiccuped gently. His shirt sleeves ballooned out of his bulging vest. His white mustaches seemed to reach out and clutch at the drifting smoke which brooded over the table. His eyes seemed to be at full tide.

“Purdy,” he said to the gremlin’s wicked uncle, “you ought to have more faith in the... hah... future. Ha. Exactly... Spertz, did I see you turn down a nine? Observe my little trey of hearts, gentlemen. Now take heed of my confidence in a beneficent providence.” He hiccuped again and the ashes from his cigar cascaded gently down the front of his vest. “Here is Billings’s original bet. Here is Calder’s raise. Ha. And here is my answer to them both.” He pushed another yellow chip forward.

Billings saw the raise and added a yellow chip on his own account. His eyebrows twitched greedily. Calder, the tall man with the long white fingers, lit a fresh cigarette and raised them both. The Colonel beamed delightedly.

Tight-lipped, Mr. Garvey watched the hand through. Eyebrows won it with aces back-to-back. His hairy arms, bare to the elbow, went out to garner the harvest. Mr. Garvey turned away from the slaughter with a groan he found difficult to stifle. The old mark was getting tighter by the minute.

His journey back to the grateful dimness of the putty-colored settee in the corner was broken by the shrill summons of the telephone. Mr. Garvey crossed to the instrument. A male voice asked for Colonel Flack.

“For you,” Mr. Garvey said, gesturing with the receiver.

The Colonel levered himself upward with difficulty.

“Flack here... Eh? What?... Oh, Parker! No, I haven’t given the matter any... hah... further consideration. I... I’m leaving for the South in the morning... Eh?... Yes, I know. But consider the low coupon rate, my dear man. Suppose I bought ten thousand dollars’ worth?... I know they’re high-grade bonds. Ha. Without question. But at one hundred and seven, the yield is less than three per cent... Eh?... So am I. Some later offering, perhaps.”

He pattered back to the table in the center of the room. The old chump’s guests were impatiently awaiting his return. Jackals awaiting their prey, Mr. Garvey thought. He plucked nervously at his wrist. Nearly a half hour to go.

“Broker chap,” the Colonel explained to the table. “Well, well. Perhaps the fellow changed my luck. Ha. Eh?... Another stack of chips, my dear Calder.”

This washes me up, Mr. Garvey assured himself fervidly. When I get out of this jam I’m traveling on my own.

His ulcers began to yell. A waiter brought two great platters of sandwiches. Mr. Garvey closed his eyes. The next time he looked at his watch, it was one minute after eleven.

He arose and stretched with elaborate carelessness. The Colonel, busily engaged in an unsuccessful attempt to draw to an inside straight, seemed to miss the movement completely. Mr. Garvey moved aimlessly in the direction of the radio.

“Now they’re out in the middle of the ring, ladies and gentlemen. One minute and fifteen seconds of this fifteen-round bout for the light-heavyweight championship is over. And the boys—”

The Colonel bounded out of his chair. “Bless my soul!” he sputtered. “The Cooney-Peyskisk go! I... I had forgotten all about it... Leave it on, my dear Garvey! Leave it on!”

“Cooney will cut that guy to pieces,” Mr. Garvey predicted for the second time that night.

The Colonel’s eyes popped with interest. “You think so, my dear boy? Really? Of... of course, I don’t know much about boxing myself. Next to... hah... nothing. But Eddie, the bell captain here, was talking about it to me this morning. He seems to think it will be all Peyskisk. Ha. Without a doubt. Apparently, he had made quite a substantial wager on the chap. Betting with the wise money was the way... hum... he put it.”

Mr. Garvey stared at the mountain of chips before Billings, swiveled his eyes to the Captain’s pile and went on to take in the substantial assets of the remaining guests.

“I’m afraid the poor chump doesn’t know any more about wise money than you do, Colonel,” he sneered.

Billings spoke around his cigar, “Meaning what, Claude High-pocket?”

Mr. Garvey felt the color flood his face at this insulting reference to his financial conservatism. But the Colonel halted the angry retort which rose to his younger associate’s tightly pressed lips.

“Now, now, gentlemen!” he pleaded hastily. “No personalities, eh? A... a friendly little gathering. My... my young friend here is not well. He... hum... suffers from ulcers... I... I’m sorry if his dislike for cards seemed to reflect on your... er-r... luck, Billings. Ha... I’m sure nothing of the kind was intended, eh, my dear boy?”

Mr. Garvey eyed him stonily, obstinately.

“How about a little bet on the outcome of the event?” the Colonel proposed, obviously covering the awkward situation as best he could. “Garvey, here, likes Cooney. But he’s not a... hah... betting man. The wise money seems to prefer Peyskisk. Ha. Exactly. Whom do you gentlemen prefer? Billings? Purdy?”

The radio bellowed: “Cooney lands two light rights to the face. Another right and a left. The Polished Pole took the last two going away. Now both men are back in the middle of the ring. Now it’s Peyskisk who’s handing it out. A looping right which caught Cooney on the side of the face, and then two hard lefts to the champion’s midriff and one in the face. They go into a clinch. Peyskisk— And there’s the bell, for Round One, ladies and gentlemen. Now George Maxwell for Bellows Shaving Lotion. Come in, George.”

“Sounds like an even match.” The drawling observation came from the elegant Captain lounging in the doorway leading into the bedroom. The bathroom lay beyond the bedroom. The self-styled military man had carelessly sauntered out of the parlor just as the Colonel’s challenge had been pinched off by the increased volume of the radio.

The Colonel turned, pivoting on another hiccup. “How about you, Calder?”

The Captain lit a languid cigarette. “I always trail along with the wise money your friend Mr. Garvey seems to dislike,” he said, with a smile which bared even white teeth beneath a small elegant mustache. “I like Peyskisk. Would you like a hundred or two on Cooney, just to put a little extracurricular interest into the broadcast?”

“I’ll take five hundred!”

“You’re a... a— Don’t be a fool!” Mr. Garvey snarled. “The odds are seven to five on Peyskisk. I... I was only giving you my personal opinion.”

“I have great confidence in your... hah... fistic judgment, my dear boy,” the Colonel chided him with unheeding cheerfulness. “Ha. Hic! Indeed.” His watery eyes swiveled challengingly around the room. “Any other supporters of... hah... the Pole?”

“I’ll take a couple of hundred,” the gremlin’s uncle said eagerly. He spoke after one quick look at the Captain.

“A hundred,” Dolan, the alleged bottom-of-the-deck artist, said quickly. He licked his gray lips.

“Calder usually knows what he’s doing,” Spertz said over a poised siphon. He made the observation sound like a question. “A hundred for me,” he said suddenly.

Garvey heard them through an agony of apprehension. He faced the teetering old fool savagely.

“Don’t be a patsy!” he cried with passionate earnestness. “You... you’re tight as a fiddler’s toupee! I... I only said I thought Cooney—”

“You mustn’t... hah... deprecate your... er-r... talents, my dear Garvey,” the old monkey reproved him. He tugged gently at his port mustache. “No. No. Besides, I have a hunch that Cooney may change my... hum... recent bad luck.”

“...The referee is now between the two men,” the staccato voice of the announcer rattled on as the Colonel paused to lift his glass. “Cooney’s right eye apparently was slightly hurt by Peyskisk in that volley during the closing seconds of the first round. He keeps brushing it with his right. Now the contender tries two lefts to the chin and another looping right to the head. Now they’re trading rights and lefts to the body. The Pole tries a left hook and the men go into a clinch as the bell rings... Now back to George Maxwell and a message from the makers of the shaving lotion with a lift.”

Mr. Garvey suddenly resolved never to use a bottle of the stuff as long as he lived. Words foamed up to his lips and were smothered in helpless rage. While the rest of the party munched sandwiches and lapped up liquor, the announcer spattered the room with four more rounds of give and take. Too much take on the part of Cooney to keep the fever from glistening in Garvey’s eyes.

“Telephone down for another spot of soda, my dear chap,” the Colonel begged him after the fifth round. In this round Cooney’s right optic was realistically described by the announcer as bearing a startling resemblance to an oyster with high blood pressure.

“I’m having a double rye,” Mr. Garvey informed him thickly. He started recklessly for the array of bottles and glasses. He was busy pouring when the seventh round began. In the middle of the operation he replaced both the bottle and the glass on the table and started unsteadily for the bedroom. Cooney was down. He was up at the count of five, however, but Mr. Garvey did not stop. He went through the darkened room and snapped on the lights in the bathroom. For several minutes he ran cold water on his wrists. Then he sprinkled some of the Colonel’s imported toilet water on his forehead and eyelids.

Back in the bedroom he sat down on the edge of the far bed and lit a cigarette. He wondered how many years a first offender got under the Defrauding-an-Innkeeper Act.

Time has a hackneyed habit of standing still in moments of great mental stress. Mr. Garvey had no idea how long he sat there on the bed, before the door leading into the parlor was suddenly flung open to flood his harassed, weary eyes with a blaze of golden radiance.

“Garvey! My dear boy! Where are you? Ha. Come out! Come out immediately! Your judgment has been vindicated! Ha. Completely! Cooney retains his title!”

Garvey made him out finally. The Colonel stood on the threshold. The light from behind caught the triumphant ends of his mustaches and danced gleefully on his huge bald pate.

“What—” he managed to say before the Colonel was off again.

“In the eleventh round, my dear boy. Ha. A miracle! Exactly. Without a doubt. The... the Pole had battered him to a... hum... pulp. Ha. Quite. But our boy did not give up. No! No! The... the typical American spirit. He kept boring in. And then a lucky punch! A — a truly lethal affair. Come out, my dear fellow. Our... our guests wish to congratulate you on your... hum... acumen.”

The world rolled gently off Mr. Garvey’s chest. He stood up. He tugged his red-and-green foulard out from under his ear, whither it had slipped during his stay in the bathroom.

“I told you Cooney would cut him to pieces,” he said for the third time since dinner.

But he still was not done with the observation. Two hours later, when the parlor of Suite 902 was a quiet shambles of empty bottles, sandwich fragments, ashes, and scattered poker chips, he perched himself on the arm of one of the room’s easy chairs and repeated it again.

The Colonel was seated at the big table in the center of the room, busy with pencil and paper as he hummed another of his favorite tunes. It was The Letter Edged in Black.

For a moment Mr. Garvey digressed. “How much?” he inquired eagerly.

The Colonel sat back in his chair and removed the heavy horn-rimmed reading glasses which he had adjusted at the start of his book-keeping.

“After... hah... adequate allowance for my poker losses of recent weeks and setting aside all moneys due and owing our hostel,” he reported with a broad smile, “I find that we are in the black to the extent of three hundred and fifteen dollars and... hum... sixty-five cents. Ha. Three hundred and fifteen dollars. Not bad, eh? By the way, did you notice how the other guests seemed to... hah... regard the gallant Captain with marked disfavor after the fight?”

Mr. Garvey’s nod started out to be gay enough, but before it could flower fully it became slightly frostbitten.

“Suppose Cooney had lost?” he inquired with a shiver.

The Colonel had risen from his bookkeeping labors to mix himself a nightcap. His huge head twisted benignly at the question.

“Eh? Then I wouldn’t have bet on him, my dear boy. I would have maneuvered the situation so that my money would have been on Peyskisk. Ha. Exactly. Perhaps by offering odds which would have appealed to my... hum... sporting guests. Or, if that failed, I had in mind suggesting that each of us put one hundred dollars into a pool. The money to go to the man picking the winning round. Or then I might have recouped our battered fortunes by betting them I could name the round in which the fight would end. Ha. I fancy this would have got me some... hum... juicy odds.”

Mr. Garvey slid down into the easy chair.

“Am I gazing at a seventh son of a seventh son?” he demanded incredulously. “Am I looking at Swami Flack in the flesh? Were those hiccups of yours really phonies? Are you standing there telling me in all sobriety that you knew Cooney was going to win that fight in the eleventh round by a lucky punch?”

The old gentleman stirred his drink thoughtfully. He looked like a sporting peer after a hard day at Ascot. “Put it this way, my dear boy,” he said blandly: “I did not know Cooney was going to win the fight — in advance. Ha. No. No. But I did know that he had won the fight in the eleventh round — before I made any wagers.”

Mr. Garvey thought of something. “That telephone call! Parker!”

The Colonel took a long, appreciative pull at his nightcap.

“Eddie, the bell captain,” he corrected the younger man softly. “He told me it was Cooney.”

“But that couldn’t be,” said Mr. Garvey. “The... the fight didn’t go on until eleven o’clock.”

The Colonel brushed the golden drops from his mustaches. His watery eyes twinkled merrily. “Earlier in the evening,” he rumbled benignly, “you called me a confidence man. Ha. Eh? Exactly. I... I protested that I lived by my wits. The two aren’t necessarily synonymous. This evening — my little party — is a case in point. I arranged it after I noticed by the paper that this fight was being carried by the local radio station, starting at eleven o’clock. Ha. Exactly. It struck me that this was rather a late hour for a... hum... bout of this importance.”

“A difference of time could account for that,” Mr. Garvey pointed out.

“It could, but it didn’t. I took the trouble to call up the radio station and inquire. I was informed that because of prior commercial commitments the station could not carry the fight at ten o’clock — when it actually occurred. So they were carrying an electrical transcription of the entire affair, exactly as it occurred, at eleven o’clock. Ha. Exactly. A rebroadcast.”

A quick grin broke like a breaker over Mr. Garvey’s tanned face. “That was why you were so particular about the time I turned the radio on. If we had caught the first minutes of the broadcast, we — your guests would have realized that it was a transcription and... and—” He paused. “I suppose you cut off the closing announcement too?”

“Exactly.”

Mr. Garvey stood up. His ulcers had disappeared.

“Clever!” he said admiringly. “And — and my natural anxiety made it look like the McCoy, didn’t it?” he added with thoughtful modesty.

“A great job, my dear boy,” the Colonel agreed, and Mr. Garvey’s suddenly suspicious eyes found only guileless enthusiasm in the crimson face behind the words. “Splendid. Ha. Quite. But perhaps it didn’t work quite the way I’ve just described it at all.”

The younger man sat down suddenly. “I... I don’t get you.”

“Ask yourself these two questions,” the old gentleman suggested solicitously: “Wouldn’t it have been rather... hum... dangerous for me to assume that a group of gamblers — to... hah... name them gently — would not know the exact time of a big-time bout?”

“Lots of people don’t stop to think about things they read in the paper,” Mr. Garvey pointed out. “I didn’t.” Then he added hastily, “What’s the second question?”

“Didn’t it strike you that the boys were a bit... hah... avid to get their money down on Peyskisk?”

“That was Calder. He’s a smart cooky. You said so yourself. They followed his lead.”

“Exactly.”

Mr. Garvey lit a cigarette. He blew smoke at his partner. “So what?”

The Colonel beamed over his fondly clasped nightcap. Then he sat down and crossed his plump knees tenderly. “Eh? Oh. So I took out some insurance, my dear boy. Ha. Just in case. Or I protected my exposed flank, as they say in... hah... military circles.”

“I get my military news over the radio,” Mr. Garvey pointed out sourly.

Colonel Humphrey Flack ignored both the acid and the observation. “Put yourself in the wily, quick-thinking Captain’s shoes,” he urged gently. “A slightly... hah... inebriated, innocent old gentleman of means with whom he has been playing cards — at a profit — is leaving town. At a farewell party given by this old gentleman a radio happens to be turned on about eleven o’clock, just in time to catch the opening minutes of the first round of a prize fight. The wily Captain, being a follower of such things, knows the fight really started at ten o’clock, hence this must be a rebroadcast. Luckily, this fact is not apparent, because the radio was not tuned in when the opening announcement was made. Ha. Quite. Now! Even as the wily Captain is figuring on how to turn this situation to his financial... hum... advantage, the old gentleman hands him the idea on a platter — with a convincing hiccup.”

“The bet?”

“Right. So what happens? The Captain saunters unobtrusively in the direction of the bathroom. But his real destination is the telephone in the bedroom. The radio will cover his... er-r... quick, guarded inquiry. A moment later he emerges. He offers to bet on the man whom he has just been told has won the fight. Exactly. Peyskisk! He is betting on a sure thing. He can’t lose. The fight is over. Ha. Hum. A wink is as good as a word to his friends. Ha. Indubitably. They hasten to... hah... get in their wagers.”

“The guy he telephoned gave him the wrong boy.” Mr. Garvey’s dark head nodded understandingly. Then he frowned. “But it still doesn’t add up,” he protested plaintively. “How could you be sure Calder would get the wrong boy? How could you control his call? He might have called some pal or a newspaper office or a dozen different gambling joints?”

The Colonel finished his nightcap and arose. He pulled out his stomach watch and stared at it.

“Nearly two o’clock, my dear chap. And we must be up and away to the sun-drenched Southland in the morning... Eh? Oh, the telephone call, of course. It was very simple. Elementary. I had stressed the fact that Eddie, the bell captain, had a substantial wager on the fight, that he was a rabid boxing enthusiast. Remember? To be sure. Calder had no time to waste. The sucker might cool off while he was waiting around for a number. Ha. Then there was always the danger that if he did too much talking he might be overheard. Against all this was the simple, quick, and direct path! Pick up the telephone. Ask for the bell captain. Inquire about the fight. A few seconds and the whole thing was over. It was just the bait for a wily captain.”

The Colonel lowered his eyes modestly.

“And of course with Eddie having it in for the guy anyway and leaving to join the Marines in the morning—”

Mr. Garvey grinned. Then he thought of something else. “What gave you the idea, in the first place?”

The Colonel looked longingly at the bottle-covered table, sighed and turned resolutely toward the bedroom. “I... I was living in the past, my dear boy,” he chuckled from the threshold. “Ha. Just so. Remember our talking about the old wire racket earlier in the evening? How the... er-r... confidence man ensnared his victim by pretending to get advance notice of racing results. Ha. I see you do. Well, I just got to wondering how one of the wonders of... hum... modern science — like radio, for instance — might be adapted to this be-whiskered gyp of the Gay Nineties — in reverse, so to speak.”

Footsteps of Fear Vincent Starrett

Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett (1886–1974), one of the greatest bibliophiles in the history of the American book world, produced innumerable essays, biographical works, critical studies, and bibliographical pieces on a wide range of authors, all while managing the “Books Alive” column for the Chicago Tribune for many years. His autobiography, Born in a Bookshop (1965), should be required reading for bibliophiles of all ages.

He also wrote numerous mystery short stories and several detective novels, including Murder on “B” Deck (1929), Dead Man Inside (1931), and The End of Mr. Garment (1932). His 1934 short story, “Recipe for Murder,” was expanded to the full-length novel The Great Hotel Murder (1935), which was the basis for the film of the same title and released the same year; it starred Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen.

Few would argue that Starrett’s most outstanding achievements were his writings about Sherlock Holmes, most notably The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1933) and “The Unique ‘Hamlet,’ ” described by Sherlockians for decades as the best pastiche ever written.

A charming story involves his young daughter, who offered the best tombstone inscription for anyone who is a Dofob — Eugene Field’s useful word for a “damned old fool over books” — as Starrett admitted to being. When a friend called at his home, Starrett’s daughter answered the door and told the visitor that her father was “upstairs, playing with his books.”

“Footsteps of Fear” was originally published in the April 1920 issue of Black Mask — the magazine’s first issue. It was first collected in Starrett’s The Quick and the Dead (Sauk City, Wisconsin, Arkham House, 1965).

Dr. B. Edward Loxley (jocularly called “Bedward” by the gossip columnists), the wife-murderer for whom hundreds of police had been scouring the city for three weeks, sat quietly at his desk in the great Merchandise Exchange reading his morning mail. The frosted glass door beyond his outer office read simply William Drayham, Rare Books. Hours by Appointment. After three weeks of security he was beginning to feel complacent. For three weeks he had not left his hiding place and he had no intention of leaving it immediately, except feet first.

It had all been thought out beforehand. The office had been rented a month before the murder of Lora Loxley, and he had quietly taken possession and begun his new personality buildup as William Drayham. He had been accepted by his neighbors in the sixth floor corridor. The elevator starter was getting to know him. He breakfasted, lunched, and dined at the several restaurants in the building, was shaved by a favorite barber, and was — he had every reason to believe — an accepted fixture. His neighbors were inoffensive, unimaginative workers who did not question his identity, and the words Rare Books on the door were formidable enough to frighten away casual visitors.

Lora Loxley, murdered by suffocation, had long been buried and even the newspapers were beginning to minimize the sensational story. The feeling was growing that Loxley, himself, also might have been murdered and a desultory search for his body continued when the police had nothing better to occupy them. As his window overlooked the river where, in addition to the normal traffic, police boats occasionally plied, he was enabled to watch their activities with amused appreciation of their effort. He had now spent two lonely Sundays watching the holiday traffic with a pair of binoculars, waiting for any active renewal of police attention. He was on excellent terms with the watchmen in his part of the building, who were accustomed to seeing him around at unlikely hours.

The Merchandise Exchange was a city within a city. It contained everything he needed — restaurants, laundries, barbershops, tobacconists, dentists, news stands, banking facilities, a gymnasium, even a postal station. He was known by name in the restaurants and barbershops. He bought all the newspapers. Occasionally he dictated a letter to a public stenographer, ordering or rejecting books. As William Drayham he had a sufficient banking account downstairs for his immediate needs. The rest of his wealth, in cash, was in Paris with Gloria.

His principal bogies had been watchmen and cleaning women. He had little fear, however, of the cleaning women, a friendly trio who liked candy and who readily agreed to visit his office while he was having a late dinner. His domestic arrangements were simple. He slept on a couch in his inner office, which held also a vault to which he could retire in an emergency. To date there had been no emergency.

Dr. Loxley pushed the mail aside impatiently. Too early perhaps to expect a response to the little ad he was running in a Sunday book supplement. But not too early for the coffee that Miss Marivole Boggs served at all hours. What luck to have found so admirable a creature in the same corridor, and even in the same line. Rare books and antiques went very well together. She had been responsible for a number of his infrequent customers. He glanced at his expensive wristwatch and left William Drayham’s rare books behind him without a pang.

M. Boggs, Antiques, as she described herself on the show window of her small shop at the end of the corridor, looked up at his entrance.

“Hello,” she said. “I was hoping you would come in.”

“I couldn’t miss,” he said. His brown eyes took in the familiar room, resting for a moment on the suit of antique armor that dominated one corner of the shop and the Spanish chest that was Miss Boggs’s pride and joy. “Well, I see nobody has bought either of them yet.” It was one of their standing jokes that some day, when the rare book business was better, he would write a check for them himself.

As she poured his coffee she said, “The newspaper stories about that doctor are getting shorter every day. I’m beginning to believe he really was murdered.”

They often discussed the missing Dr. Loxley, as indeed the whole city was doing. At first it had been Miss Boggs’s idea that the “society doctor” had murdered his wife over some glamorous patient who was now living in sin with him somewhere on the Riviera.

Dr. Loxley had thought not. “Too romantic, Boggs. I still think he’s in the river or somewhere on his way to the Gulf of Mexico. That scarf they found on the river banks looks like it.”

“Anyway, the police seem to have stopped looking,” said M. Boggs.

“Anyway, this is good coffee, Boggs. I hope you’ll leave me the recipe. Do you still plan to leave this month?”

“At once,” she said. “I’m flying to New York tomorrow, if I can get away. I want to be in London for the Exhibition; then on to Paris, Rome, Switzerland, and what have you. I’m enormously relieved that you’ll be here to keep an eye on things, Bill. Coffee at all hours, eh?”

“Morning, noon, and night,” he agreed, rising to leave. Her change of plan had startled him for a moment; but he was quick enough to see an advantage in it for himself. “Never fear, I’ll be here waiting for you when you return.”

Strolling back to his own shop, humming a jaunty air, he became aware of a man leaving the doorway of the office directly opposite his own. Something about the man’s carriage seemed familiar. He was turning toward the elevators and walking fast. In an instant they would meet.

And suddenly Dr. Loxley realized that the man was, indeed, familiar. He was his own brother-in-law, Laurence Bridewell.

His first instinct was to turn and flee, his second to turn back to M. Boggs, Antiques. His final decision, made in a split second, was to see the encounter through. His disguise had fooled better men than Larry Bridewell, although none who knew him better. With his neat little beard and moustache gone, and his blue eyes transformed by brown contact lenses, he was another man. After an appalling moment of indecision, he fumbled for a cigarette, realizing that after three weeks of complacent safety, he was about to face a supreme test.

He tried and failed to light the cigarette... Then they were face to face, looking at each other as men do in passing, and the test was over. Or was it? Bridewell continued on his way to the elevators, walking fast, and Loxley stumbled to his own door.

Dared he look back? Had Bridewell turned to look back at him? Moving casually, he stole a glance along the corridor. There was no doubt about it — Larry was looking back, too. Perhaps he had merely been troubled by a fancied resemblance...

Dr. Loxley made some difficulty about opening his own door, and just before he closed it, it occurred to him to look at the name on the door of the office from which his brother-in-law had emerged. Actually he knew very well what he would find there: Jackson & Fortworth, Attorneys at Law. And below, the significant word Investigations.

He tried to take himself in hand and was annoyed to find himself shaking. Experimentally he ventured a little drink to see what it would do for him. It helped considerably. But the whole incident haunted him and gave him a bad night. In the morning, however, his fears had vanished. He was his confident self again until, a few hours later, a second incident shook his nerve. Returning from the cigar stand in the lobby he had to pass the De Luxe Dog Salon in one of the street level corridors and paused, as he had often done before, to look in at the windows at the fashionable dogs in process of being barbered, an amusing spectacle. But as he turned away an appalling thing happened.

A well-dressed woman was approaching the salon with a sprightly French poodle on a leash. She looked familiar. God’s teeth! She was familiar, and so was the dog. She was Mrs. Montgomery Hyde, no less, an old patient. His heart seemed to stop beating. Would she recognize him?

It was the dog that recognized him. With a yelp of joy the poodle jerked the leash from the woman’s hand and flung himself rapturously against the doctor’s legs.

With an effort Loxley recovered his balance and somehow recovered his poise. It was his worst moment to date. Automatically he disengaged himself from the poodle’s embrace and pulled the black ears.

“There, there fellow,” he said to the excited animal in a voice that he hoped was not his own. “I beg your pardon, Madam. Your dog appears to have made a mistake.”

To his intense relief, Mrs. Montgomery Hyde agreed.

“Do forgive Toto’s impulsiveness,” she begged, snatching up the leash. “He loves everybody.”

Dr. Loxley left the scene in almost a hurry. She had not recognized him! It seemed to him a miracle, but again he was annoyed to find himself shaking. And yet, could it not be a good omen? If Mrs. Hyde and his own brother-in-law had failed to recognize him, what was there to fear? Immediately he began to feel better. But when he had returned to his office William Drayham again treated himself to a stiff drink.

In a moment of alert intelligence he realized that for three weeks he had been too complacent. His meeting with Mrs. Hyde had taught him something that was important to remember. He had almost spoken her name. In his first moment of panic he might well have betrayed himself. If it was important for him not to be recognized, it was equally important that he must not recognize someone by accident.

It was clear to him that this cat-and-mouse existence could not go on indefinitely. He must remain in hiding only until it was safe for him to emerge and get out of the country. Then William Drayham would ostentatiously pack his books and remove to New York. After that, the world was wide.

For several days the chastened doctor lived cautiously, visiting M. Boggs, Antiques at intervals for coffee and to admire the suit of armor and the Spanish chest, which continued to fascinate him. He had promised Boggs, now on her travels, not to cut the price on either.

Twice, returning from the antique shop, again he had caught a glimpse of his brother-in-law entering the law office of Jackson & Fortworth, and had hastened to lock himself in his own quarters before Larry could emerge. What the devil did the fellow want with a firm of investigators anyway?

The visit of Jackson, the lawyer, to the bookshop one morning took him by surprise or he might have locked the door.

“I’ve been intending to look in on you for some time, Mr. Drayham,” said the lawyer cordially. “I’m Jackson, just across from you. Rare books have always interested me. Mind if I look around?”

Loxley rose from his chair abruptly, knocking a book from his desk to the floor. An icy fear had entered his heart. Was this it, at last, he wondered.

He shook hands effusively. “Glad to know you, Mr. Jackson. Sure, look around. Is there anything I can show you?”

But Jackson was already looking around. When he had finished he strolled to the window. “Nice view of the river you have,” he said appreciatively. “My windows all look out on a court.” He strolled to the door. “Just wanted to meet you. I’ll come in again when I have more time.”

“Any time,” said Loxley with perfunctory courtesy.

Dr. Loxley sat down at his desk and reached for the lower drawer. Another little drink wouldn’t hurt him. What had the fellow really wanted? What had he hoped to find? Or was he really one of the many idiots who collected books?

One thing at last was clear. Any day now he might have to leave the building and the city. If he was suspected, the blow would fall swiftly. At any minute the door might open again, and perhaps Jackson would not be alone. Why not get the hell out of this trap immediately? What was there to stop him? His stock — three hundred volumes of junk bought at a storage house — could be left behind if necessary.

What stopped him was Gloria’s cable from Paris: “Trouble here. Phoning Friday night.”

This was Thursday. Whatever else, he had to wait for Gloria’s call. His hand moved toward the lower drawer, then was withdrawn. Coffee, not whiskey, was what he needed; and after luncheon he spent most of the afternoon with M. Boggs’s weird collection of antiques. There, he had a fair view of Jackson’s door, and was not himself conspicuous. If Larry Bridewell was among the lawyer’s visitors, Loxley did not see him.

Exploring the antique shop he paused, as always to admire its two star exhibits, the almost frightening suit of armor and the massive Spanish chest. In a pinch, either would do as a hiding place — if there were time to hide.

That evening he was startled to find his picture in the paper again. The familiar face of Dr. B. Edward Loxley as he had looked with the neat little beard and moustache before he murdered his wife. It appeared that he had been arrested by an alert Seattle policeman, but had denied his identity.

Dr. Loxley drew a long breath of relief. After all, perhaps he was still safe. But what could Gloria have to say to him that required a call from Paris? Bad news of some kind. Bad for somebody.

In spite of his new fears he hated to leave the building that had been his refuge. It had been his hope to live there indefinitely, undetected; never again to venture into the streets until Dr. Loxley was as forgotten as Dr. Crippen.

Again he slept off his fears and spent an uninterrupted morning with his view and newspapers. He was beginning to feel almost at ease again, indeed, when the insufferable Jackson knocked on his locked door and called a hearty greeting. There was somebody with him. Through the frosted pane the shadowy outline of another man was visible.

“May we come in?” asked the lawyer. “I’ve got a couple of friends here who want to meet you.”

Loxley rose uncertainly to his feet and moved to the door. So it had come at last! He had been right about his damned brother-in-law and this sneaking lawyer. This is it! And suddenly he knew what he had to do.

He unlocked and threw open the door. “Come in, gentlemen,” he said without emotion. “What can I do for you?”

Jackson was beaming. “These are my friends, Sergeants Coughlin and Ripkin, from Headquarters. They hope you will come quietly.” He laughed heartily at his own witticism.

“Come in, gentlemen, and sit down.” Loxley forced a smile. He seated himself at his desk, stamped and addressed an envelope, and stood up. “I was just going to the mail chute with an important letter. I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

“Sure,” said the two cops genially. “Take your time.”

Dr. Loxley closed the outer door behind him and almost ran for M. Boggs, Antiques. As he locked the antique shop door he was relieved to see the corridor was still empty. They would follow him, of course. Every office in the building would be searched, probably this one first.

It had to be the chest!

It stood open as always, and he squeezed down inside — an uncomfortable fit — then lowered the heavy lid until only a thin crack remained for air. Faintly now he could hear footsteps in the corridor. He drew a deep breath and closed the lid.

There was a sharp click, then only intense darkness and suffocating silence...

Twenty minutes later Sergeant Ripkin said to his partner, “Wonder what’s keeping that guy. We’ve still got sixty tickets to sell, Pete.”

“Oh, leave them with me,” said Jackson. “I’ll see that you get your money. Drayham’s a good fellow.”

The two policemen, who had been hoping to dispose of a block of tickets for a benefit ball game, departed leisurely.

The disappearance of William Drayham, a “rare book dealer” in the Merchandise Exchange, attracted less attention than that of Dr. B. Edward Loxley; but for a few days it was a mild sensation.

Returning from Europe, a month later, M. Boggs wondered idly when Bill would drop in for a cup of coffee. He had told her he would be here when she returned.

She puttered happily among her treasures. Some fool, she noted, had automatically locked the chest by closing it. One of these days she’d have to unlock it and raise the lid...

The Signed Masterpiece Frederick Irving Anderson

The Hands of Mr. Ottermole Thomas Burke

The birth of the mystery/detective story is generally conceded to have occurred in 1841 with the publication of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” It is probably impossible to count the number of stories in the genre that were published in the ensuing century. A few years after that centenary, in 1949, a panel of twelve experts was called upon to name the greatest of them all, and the story given that extraordinary honor was “The Hands of Mr. Ottermole” by Sydney Thomas Burke (1886–1945), a tale inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders.

Burke was born in the London suburb of Clapham, but when he was only a few months old his father died, and he was sent to the East End to live with his uncle until the age of ten, when he was put into a home for respectable middle-class children without means. Burke sold his first story, “The Bellamy Diamonds,” when he was fifteen. His first book, Nights in Town: A London Autobiography, was published in 1915, soon followed by the landmark volume Limehouse Nights (1916), a collection of stories that had originally been published in the magazines The English Review, Colour, and The New Witness. This volume of romantic but violent stories of the Chinese district of London was enormously popular and, though largely praised by critics, there were objections to the depictions of interracial relationships, opium use, and other “depravities.”

“The Hands of Mr. Ottermole” was originally published in the author’s collection The Pleasantries of Old Quong (London, Constable, 1931); it was published in the United States as A Tea-Shop in Limehouse (Boston, Little, Brown, 1931).

At six o’clock of a January evening Mr. Whybrow was walking home through the cobweb alleys of London’s East End. He had left the golden clamour of the great High Street to which the tram had brought him from the river and his daily work, and was now in the chessboard of byways that is called Mallon End. None of the rush and gleam of the High Street trickled into these byways. A few paces south — a flood tide of life, foaming and beating. Here — only slow-shuffling figures and muffled pulses. He was in the sink of London, the last refuge of European vagrants.

As though in tune with the street’s spirit, he too walked slowly, with head down. It seemed that he was pondering some pressing trouble, but he was not. He had no trouble. He was walking slowly because he had been on his feet all day, and he was bent in abstraction because he was wondering whether the Missis would have herrings for his tea, or haddock; and he was trying to decide which would be the more tasty on a night like this. A wretched night it was, of damp and mist, and the mist wandered into his throat and his eyes, and the damp had settled on pavement and roadway, and where the sparse lamplight fell it sent up a greasy sparkle that chilled one to look at. By contrast it made his speculations more agreeable, and made him ready for that tea — whether herring or haddock. His eye turned from the glum bricks that made his horizon, and went forward half a mile. He saw a gas-lit kitchen, a flamy fire, and a spread tea table. There was toast in the hearth and a singing kettle on the side and a piquant effusion of herrings, or maybe of haddock, or perhaps sausages. The vision gave his aching feet a throb of energy. He shook imperceptible damp from his shoulders, and hastened towards its reality.

But Mr. Whybrow wasn’t going to get any tea that evening — or any other evening. Mr. Whybrow was going to die. Somewhere within a hundred yards of him another man was walking: a man much like Mr. Whybrow and much like any other man, but without the only quality that enables mankind to live peaceably together and not as madmen in a jungle. A man with a dead heart eating into itself and bringing forth the foul organisms that arise from death and corruption. And that thing in man’s shape, on a whim or a settled idea — one cannot know — had said within himself that Mr. Whybrow should never taste another herring. Not that Mr. Whybrow had injured him. Not that he had any dislike of Mr. Whybrow. Indeed, he knew nothing of him save as a familiar figure about the streets. But, moved by a force that had taken possession of his empty cells, he had picked on Mr. Whybrow with that blind choice that makes us pick one restaurant table that has nothing to mark it from four or five other tables, or one apple from a dish of half a dozen equal apples; or that drives Nature to send a cyclone upon one corner of this planet, and destroy five hundred lives in that corner, and leave another five hundred in the same corner unharmed. So this man had picked on Mr. Whybrow, as he might have picked on you or me, had we been within his daily observation; and even now he was creeping through the blue-toned streets, nursing his large white hands, moving ever closer to Mr. Whybrow’s tea table, and so closer to Mr. Whybrow himself.

He wasn’t, this man, a bad man. Indeed, he had many of the social and amiable qualities, and passed as a respectable man, as most successful criminals do. But the thought had come into his mouldering mind that he would like to murder somebody, and, as he held no fear of God or man, he was going to do it, and would then go home to his tea. I don’t say that flippantly, but as a statement of fact. Strange as it may seem to the humane, murderers must and do sit down to meals after a murder. There is no reason why they shouldn’t, and many reasons why they should. For one thing, they need to keep their physical and mental vitality at full beat for the business of covering their crime. For another, the strain of their effort makes them hungry, and satisfaction at the accomplishment of a desired thing brings a feeling of relaxation towards human pleasures. It is accepted among non-murderers that the murderer is always overcome by fear for his safety and horror at his act; but this type is rare. His own safety is, of course, his immediate concern, but vanity is a marked quality of most murderers, and that, together with the thrill of conquest, makes him confident that he can secure it, and when he has restored his strength with food he goes about securing it as a young hostess goes about the arranging of her first big dinner — a little anxious, but no more. Criminologists and detectives tell us that every murderer, however intelligent or cunning, always makes one slip in his tactics — one little slip that brings the affair home to him. But that is only half true. It is true only of the murderers who are caught. Scores of murderers are not caught: therefore scores of murderers do not make any mistake at all. This man didn’t.

As for horror or remorse, prison chaplains, doctors, and lawyers have told us that of murderers they have interviewed under condemnation and the shadow of death, only one here and there has expressed any contrition for his act, or shown any sign of mental misery. Most of them display only exasperation at having been caught when so many have gone undiscovered, or indignation at being condemned for a perfectly reasonable act. However normal and humane they may have been before the murder, they are utterly without conscience after it. For what is conscience? Simply a polite nickname for superstition, which is a polite nickname for fear. Those who associate remorse with murder are, no doubt, basing their ideas on the world legend of the remorse of Cain, or are projecting their own frail minds into the mind of the murderer, and getting false reactions. Peaceable folk cannot hope to make contact with this mind, for they are not merely different in mental type from the murderer: they are different in their personal chemistry and construction. Some men can and do kill, not one man, but two or three, and go calmly about their daily affairs. Other men could not, under the most agonising provocation, bring themselves even to wound. It is men of this sort who imagine the murderer in torments of remorse and fear of the law, whereas he is actually sitting down to his tea.

The man with the large white hands was as ready for his tea as Mr. Whybrow was, but he had something to do before he went to it. When he had done that something, and made no mistake about it, he would be even more ready for it, and would go to it as comfortably as he went to it the day before, when his hands were stainless.

Walk on, then, Mr. Whybrow, walk on; and as you walk, look your last upon the familiar features of your nightly journey. Follow your jack-o’-lantern tea table. Look well upon its warmth and colour and kindness; feed your eyes with it, and tease your nose with its gentle domestic odours; for you will never sit down to it. Within ten minutes’ pacing of you a pursuing phantom has spoken in his heart, and you are doomed. There you go — you and phantom — two nebulous dabs of mortality, moving through green air along pavements of powder blue, the one to kill, the other to be killed. Walk on. Don’t annoy your burning feet by hurrying, for the more slowly you walk, the longer you will breathe the green air of this January dusk, and see the dreamy lamplight and the little shops, and hear the agreeable commerce of the London crowd and the haunting pathos of the street organ. These things are dear to you, Mr. Whybrow. You don’t know it now, but in fifteen minutes you will have two seconds in which to realise how inexpressibly dear they are.

Walk on, then, across this crazy chessboard. You are in Lagos Street now, among the tents of the wanderers of Eastern Europe. A minute or so, and you are in Loyal Lane, among the lodging houses that shelter the useless and the beaten of London’s camp followers. The lane holds the smell of them, and its soft darkness seems heavy with the wail of the futile. But you are not sensitive to impalpable things, and you plod through it, unseeing, as you do every evening, and come to Blean Street, and plod through that. From basement to sky rise the tenements of an alien colony. Their windows slot the ebony of their walls with lemon. Behind those windows strange life is moving, dressed with forms that are not of London or of England, yet, in essence, the same agreeable life that you have been living, and tonight will live no more. From high above you comes a voice crooning “The Song of Katta.” Through a window you see a family keeping a religious rite. Through another you see a woman pouring out tea for her husband. You see a man mending a pair of boots; a mother bathing her baby. You have seen all these things before, and never noticed them. You do not notice them now, but if you knew that you were never going to see them again, you would notice them. You never will see them again, not because your life has run its natural course, but because a man whom you have often passed in the street has at his own solitary pleasure decided to usurp the awful authority of nature, and destroy you. So perhaps it’s as well that you don’t notice them, for your part in them is ended. No more for you these pretty moments of our earthly travail: only one moment of terror, and then a plunging darkness.

Closer to you this shadow of massacre moves, and now he is twenty yards behind you. You can hear his footfall, but you do not turn your head. You are familiar with footfalls. You are in London, in the easy security of your daily territory, and footfalls behind you, your instinct tells you, are no more than a message of human company.

But can’t you hear something in those footfalls — something that goes with a widdershins beat? Something that says: Look out, look out. Beware, beware. Can’t you hear the very syllables of mur-der-er, mur-der-er? No; there is nothing in footfalls. They are neutral. The foot of villainy falls with the same quiet note as the foot of honesty. But those footfalls, Mr. Whybrow, are bearing on to you a pair of hands, and there is something in hands. Behind you that pair of hands is even now stretching its muscles in preparation for your end. Every minute of your days you have been seeing human hands. Have you ever realised the sheer horror of hands — those appendages that are a symbol for our moments of trust and affection and salutation? Have you thought of the sickening potentialities that lie within the scope of that five-tentacled member? No, you never have; for all the human hands that you have seen have been stretched to you in kindness or fellowship. Yet, though the eyes can hate, and the lips can sting, it is only that dangling member that can gather the accumulated essence of evil, and electrify it into currents of destruction. Satan may enter into man by many doors, but in the hands alone can he find the servants of his will.

Another minute, Mr. Whybrow, and you will know all about the horror of human hands.

You are nearly home now. You have turned into your street — Caspar Street — and you are in the centre of the chessboard. You can see the front window of your little four-roomed house. The street is dark, and its three lamps give only a smut of light that is more confusing than darkness. It is dark — empty, too. Nobody about; no lights in the front parlours of the houses, for the families are at tea in their kitchens; and only a random glow in a few upper rooms occupied by lodgers. Nobody about but you and your following companion, and you don’t notice him. You see him so often that he is never seen. Even if you turned your head and saw him, you would only say “Good-evening” to him, and walk on. A suggestion that he was a possible murderer would not even make you laugh. It would be too silly.

And now you are at your gate. And now you have found your door key. And now you are in, and hanging up your hat and coat. The Missis has just called a greeting from the kitchen, whose smell is an echo of that greeting (herrings!) and you have answered it, when the door shakes under a sharp knock.

Go away, Mr. Whybrow. Go away from that door. Don’t touch it. Get right away from it. Get out of the house. Run with the Missis to the back garden, and over the fence. Or call the neighbours. But don’t touch that door. Don’t, Mr. Whybrow, don’t open...

Mr. Whybrow opened the door.

That was the beginning of what became known as London’s Strangling Horrors. Horrors they were called because they were something more than murders: they were motiveless, and there was an air of black magic about them. Each murder was committed at a time when the street where the bodies were found was empty of any perceptible or possible murderer. There would be an empty alley. There would be a policeman at its end. He would turn his back on the empty alley for less than a minute. Then he would look round and run into the night with news of another strangling. And in any direction he looked nobody to be seen and no report to be had of anybody being seen. Or he would be on duty in a long-quiet street, and suddenly be called to a house of dead people whom a few seconds earlier he had seen alive. And, again, whichever way he looked nobody to be seen; and although police whistles put an immediate cordon around the area, and searched all houses, no possible murderer to be found.

The first news of the murder of Mr. and Mrs. Whybrow was brought by the station sergeant. He had been walking through Caspar Street on his way to the station for duty, when he noticed the open door of No. 98. Glancing in, he saw by the gaslight of the passage a motionless body on the floor. After a second look he blew his whistle, and when the constables answered him he took one to join him in a search of the house, and sent others to watch all neighbouring streets, and make inquiries at adjoining houses. But neither in the house nor in the streets was anything found to indicate the murderer. Neighbours on either side, and opposite, were questioned, but they had seen nobody about, and had heard nothing. One had heard Mr. Whybrow come home — the scrape of his latchkey in the door was so regular an evening sound, he said, that you could set your watch by it for half past six — but he had heard nothing more than the sound of the opening door until the sergeant’s whistle. Nobody had been seen to enter the house or leave it, by front or back, and the necks of the dead people carried no finger prints or other traces. A nephew was called in to go over the house, but he could find nothing missing; and anyway his uncle possessed nothing worth stealing. The little money in the house was untouched, and there were no signs of any disturbance of the property, or even of struggle. No signs of anything but brutal and wanton murder.

Mr. Whybrow was known to neighbours and workmates as a quiet, likeable, home-loving man; such a man as could not have any enemies. But, then, murdered men seldom have. A relentless enemy who hates a man to the point of wanting to hurt him seldom wants to murder him, since to do that puts him beyond suffering. So the police were left with an impossible situation: no clue to the murderer and no motive for the murders; only the fact that they had been done.

The first news of the affair sent a tremor through London generally, and an electric thrill through all Mallon End. Here was a murder of two inoffensive people, not for gain and not for revenge; and the murderer, to whom, apparently, killing was a casual impulse, was at large. He had left no traces, and, provided he had no companions, there seemed no reason why he should not remain at large. Any clear-headed man who stands alone, and has no fear of God or man, can, if he chooses, hold a city, even a nation, in subjection; but your everyday criminal is seldom clear-headed, and dislikes being lonely. He needs, if not the support of confederates, at least somebody to talk to; his vanity needs the satisfaction of perceiving at first hand the effect of his work. For this he will frequent bars and coffee shops and other public places. Then, sooner or later, in a glow of comradeship, he will utter the one word too much; and the nark, who is everywhere, has an easy job.

But though the doss houses and saloons and other places were “combed” and set with watches, and it was made known by whispers that good money and protection were assured to those with information, nothing attaching to the Whybrow case could be found. The murderer clearly had no friends and kept no company. Known men of this type were called up and questioned, but each was able to give a good account of himself; and in a few days the police were at a dead end. Against the constant public gibe that the thing had been done almost under their noses, they became restive, and for four days each man of the force was working his daily beat under a strain. On the fifth day they became still more restive.

It was the season of annual teas and entertainments for the children of the Sunday Schools, and on an evening of fog, when London was a world of groping phantoms, a small girl, in the bravery of best Sunday frock and shoes, shining face, and new-washed hair, set out from Logan Passage for St. Michael’s Parish Hall. She never got there. She was not actually dead until half past six, but she was as good as dead from the moment she left her mother’s door. Somebody like a man, pacing the street from which the Passage led, saw her come out; and from that moment she was dead. Through the fog somebody’s large white hands reached after her, and in fifteen minutes they were about her.

At half past six a whistle screamed trouble, and those answering it found the body of little Nellie Vrinoff in a warehouse entry in Minnow Street. The sergeant was first among them, and he posted his men to useful points, ordering them here and there in the tart tones of repressed rage, and berating the officer whose beat the street was. “I saw you, Magson, at the end of the lane. What were you up to there? You were there ten minutes before you turned.” Magson began an explanation about keeping an eye on a suspicious-looking character at that end, but the sergeant cut him short: “Suspicious characters be damned. You don’t want to look for suspicious characters. You want to look for murderers. Messing about... and then this happens right where you ought to be. Now think what they’ll say.”

With the speed of ill news came the crowd, pale and perturbed; and on the story that the unknown monster had appeared again, and this time to a child, their faces streaked the fog with spots of hate and horror. But then came the ambulance and more police, and swiftly they broke up the crowd; and as it broke the sergeant’s thought was thickened into words, and from all sides came low murmurs of “Right under their noses.” Later inquiries showed that four people of the district, above suspicion, had passed that entry at intervals of seconds before the murder, and seen nothing and heard nothing. None of them had passed the child alive or seen her dead. None of them had seen anybody in the street except themselves. Again the police were left with no motive and with no clue.

And now the district, as you will remember, was given over, not to panic, for the London public never yields to that, but to apprehension and dismay. If these things were happening in their familiar streets, then anything might happen. Wherever people met — in the streets, the markets, and the shops — they debated the one topic. Women took to bolting their windows and doors at the first fall of dusk. They kept their children closely under their eye. They did their shopping before dark, and watched anxiously, while pretending they weren’t watching, for the return of their husbands from work. Under the Cockney’s semi-humorous resignation to disaster, they hid an hourly foreboding. By the whim of one man with a pair of hands the structure and tenor of their daily life were shaken, as they always can be shaken by any man contemptuous of humanity and fearless of its laws. They began to realise that the pillars that supported the peaceable society in which they lived were mere straws that anybody could snap; that laws were powerful only so long as they were obeyed; that the police were potent only so long as they were feared. By the power of his hands this one man had made a whole community do something new: he had made it think, and left it gasping at the obvious.

And then, while it was yet gasping under his first two strokes, he made his third. Conscious of the horror that his hands had created, and hungry as an actor who has once tasted the thrill of the multitude, he made fresh advertisement of his presence; and on Wednesday morning, three days after the murder of the child, the papers carried to the breakfast tables of England the story of a still more shocking outrage.

At 9:32 on Tuesday night a constable was on duty in Jarnigan Road, and at that time spoke to a fellow officer named Petersen at the top of Clemming Street. He had seen this officer walk down that street. He could swear that the street was empty at that time, except for a lame bootblack whom he knew by sight, and who passed him and entered a tenement on the side opposite that on which his fellow officer was walking. He had the habit, as all constables had just then, of looking constantly behind him and around him, whichever way he was walking, and he was certain that the street was empty. He passed his sergeant at 9:33, saluted him, and answered his inquiry for anything seen. He reported that he had seen nothing, and passed on. His beat ended at a short distance from Clemming Street, and, having paced it, he turned and came again at 9:34 to the top of the street. He had scarcely reached it before he heard the hoarse voice of the sergeant: “Gregory! You there? Quick. Here’s another. My God, it’s Petersen! Garotted. Quick, call ’em up!”

That was the third of the Strangling Horrors, of which there were to be a fourth and a fifth; and the five horrors were to pass into the unknown and unknowable. That is, unknown as far as authority and the public were concerned. The identity of the murderer was known, but to two men only. One was the murderer himself; the other was a young journalist.

This young man, who was covering the affairs for his paper, the Daily Torch, was no smarter than the other zealous newspaper men who were hanging about these byways in the hope of a sudden story. But he was patient, and he hung a little closer to the case than the other fellows, and by continually staring at it he at last raised the figure of the murderer like a genie from the stones on which he had stood to do his murders.

After the first few days the men had given up any attempt at exclusive stories, for there was none to be had. They met regularly at the police station, and what little information there was they shared. The officials were agreeable to them, but no more. The sergeant discussed with them the details of each murder; suggested possible explanations of the man’s methods; recalled from the past those cases that had some similarity; and on the matter of motive reminded them of the motiveless Neill Cream and the wanton John Williams, and hinted that work was being done which would soon bring the business to an end; but about that work he would not say a word. The Inspector, too, was gracefully garrulous on the thesis of Murder, but whenever one of the party edged the talk towards what was being done in this immediate matter, he glided past it. Whatever the officials knew, they were not giving it to newspaper men. The business had fallen heavily upon them, and only by a capture made by their own efforts could they rehabilitate themselves in official and public esteem. Scotland Yard, of course, was at work, and had all the station’s material; but the station’s hope was that they themselves would have the honour of settling the affair; and however useful the coöperation of the Press might be in other cases, they did not want to risk a defeat by a premature disclosure of their theories and plans.

So the sergeant talked at large, and propounded one interesting theory after another, all of which the newspaper men had thought of themselves.

The young man soon gave up these morning lectures on the Philosophy of Crime, and took to wandering about the streets and making bright stories out of the effect of the murders on the normal life of the people. A melancholy job made more melancholy by the district. The littered roadways, the crestfallen houses, the bleared windows — all held the acid misery that evokes no sympathy: the misery of the frustrated poet. The misery was the creation of the aliens, who were living in this makeshift fashion because they had no settled homes, and would neither take the trouble to make a home where they could settle, nor get on with their wandering.

There was little to be picked up. All he saw and heard were indignant faces, and wild conjectures of the murderer’s identity and of the secret of his trick of appearing and disappearing unseen. Since a policeman himself had fallen a victim, denunciations of the force had ceased, and the unknown was now invested with a cloak of legend. Men eyed other men, as though thinking: It might be him. It might be him. They were no longer looking for a man who had the air of a Madame Tussaud murderer; they were looking for a man, or perhaps some harridan woman, who had done these particular murders. Their thoughts ran mainly on the foreign set. Such ruffianism could scarcely belong to England, nor could the bewildering cleverness of the thing. So they turned to Roumanian gipsies and Turkish carpet sellers. There, clearly, would be found the “warm” spot. These Eastern fellows — they knew all sorts of tricks, and they had no real religion — nothing to hold them within bounds. Sailors returning from those parts had told tales of conjurors who made themselves invisible; and there were tales of Egyptian and Arab potions that were used for abysmally queer purposes. Perhaps it was possible to them; you never knew. They were so slick and cunning, and they had such gliding movements; no Englishman could melt away as they could. Almost certainly the murderer would be found to be one of that sort — with some dark trick of his own — and just because they were sure that he was a magician, they felt that it was useless to look for him. He was a power, able to hold them in subjection and to hold himself untouchable. Superstition, which so easily cracks the frail shell of reason, had got into them. He could do anything he chose: he would never be discovered. These two points they settled, and they went about the streets in a mood of resentful fatalism.

They talked of their ideas to the journalist in half tones, looking right and left, as though HE might overhear them and visit them. And though all the district was thinking of him and ready to pounce upon him, yet, so strongly had he worked upon them, that if any man in the street — say, a small man of commonplace features and form — had cried “I am the Monster!” would their stifled fury have broken into flood and have borne him down and engulfed him? Or would they not suddenly have seen something unearthly in that everyday face and figure, something unearthly in his everyday boots, something unearthly about his hat, something that marked him as one whom none of their weapons could alarm or pierce? And would they not momentarily have fallen back from this devil, as the devil fell back from the Cross made by the sword of Faust, and so have given him time to escape? I do not know; but so fixed was their belief in his invincibility that it is at least likely that they would have made this hesitation, had such an occasion arisen. But it never did. To-day this commonplace fellow, his murder lust glutted, is still seen and observed among them as he was seen and observed all the time; but because nobody then dreamt, or now dreams, that he was what he was, they observed him then, and observe him now, as people observe a lamp-post.

Almost was their belief in his invincibility justified; for, five days after the murder of the policeman Petersen, when the experience and inspiration of the whole detective force of London were turned towards his identification and capture, he made his fourth and fifth strokes.

At nine o’clock that evening, the young newspaper man, who hung about every night until his paper was away, was strolling along Richards Lane. Richards Lane is a narrow street, partly a stall market, and partly residential. The young man was in the residential section, which carries on one side small working-class cottages, and on the other the wall of a railway goods yard. The great wall hung a blanket of shadow over the lane, and the shadow and the cadaverous outline of the now deserted market stalls gave it the appearance of a living lane that had been turned to frost in the moment between breath and death. The very lamps, that elsewhere were nimbuses of gold, had here the rigidity of gems. The journalist, feeling this message of frozen eternity, was telling himself that he was tired of the whole thing, when in one stroke the frost was broken. In the moment between one pace and another silence and darkness were racked by a high scream and through the scream a voice: “Help! help! He’s here!”

Before he could think what movement to make, the lane came to life. As though its invisible populace had been waiting on that cry, the door of every cottage was flung open, and from them and from the alleys poured shadowy figures bent in question mark form. For a second or so they stood as rigid as the lamps; then a police whistle gave them direction, and the flock of shadows sloped up the street. The journalist followed them, and others followed him. From the main street and from surrounding streets they came, some risen from unfinished suppers, some disturbed in their ease of slippers and shirt sleeves, some stumbling on infirm limbs, and some upright, and armed with pokers or the tools of their trade. Here and there above the wavering cloud of heads moved the bold helmets of policemen. In one dim mass they surged upon a cottage whose doorway was marked by the sergeant and two constables; and voices of those behind urged them on with “Get in! Find him! Run round the back! Over the wall!” and those in front cried: “Keep back! Keep back!”

And now the fury of a mob held in thrall by unknown peril broke loose. He was here — on the spot. Surely this time he could not escape. All minds were bent upon the cottage; all energies thrust towards its doors and windows and roof; all thought was turned upon one unknown man and his extermination. So that no one man saw any other man. No man saw the narrow, packed lane and the mass of struggling shadows, and all forgot to look among themselves for the monster who never lingered upon his victims. All forgot, indeed, that they, by their mass crusade of vengeance, were affording him the perfect hiding place. They saw only the house, and they heard only the rending of woodwork and the smash of glass at back and front, and the police giving orders or crying with the chase; and they pressed on.

But they found no murderer. All they found was news of murder and a glimpse of the ambulance, and for their fury there was no other object than the police themselves, who fought against this hampering of their work.

The journalist managed to struggle through to the cottage door, and to get the story from the constable stationed there. The cottage was the home of a pensioned sailor and his wife and daughter. They had been at supper, and at first it appeared that some noxious gas had smitten all three in mid-action. The daughter lay dead on the hearthrug, with a piece of bread and butter in her hand. The father had fallen sideways from his chair, leaving on his plate a filled spoon of rice pudding. The mother lay half under the table, her lap filled with the pieces of a broken cup and splashes of cocoa. But in three seconds the idea of gas was dismissed. One glance at their necks showed that this was the Strangler again; and the police stood and looked at the room and momentarily shared the fatalism of the public. They were helpless.

This was his fourth visit, making seven murders in all. He was to do, as you know, one more — and to do it that night; and then he was to pass into history as the unknown London horror, and return to the decent life that he had always led, remembering little of what he had done, and worried not at all by the memory. Why did he stop? Impossible to say. Why did he begin? Impossible again. It just happened like that; and if he thinks at all of those days and nights, I surmise that he thinks of them as we think of foolish or dirty little sins that we committed in childhood. We say that they were not really sins, because we were not then consciously ourselves: we had not come to realisation; and we look back at that foolish little creature that we once were, and forgive him because he didn’t know. So, I think, with this man.

There are plenty like him. Eugene Aram, after the murder of Daniel Clarke, lived a quiet, contented life for fourteen years, unhaunted by his crime and unshaken in his self-esteem. Dr. Crippen murdered his wife, and then lived pleasantly with his mistress in the house under whose floor he had buried the wife. Constance Kent, found Not Guilty of the murder of her young brother, led a peaceful life for five years before she confessed. George Joseph Smith and William Palmer lived amiably among their fellows untroubled by fear or by remorse for their poisonings and drownings. Charles Peace, at the time he made his one unfortunate essay, had settled down into a respectable citizen with an interest in antiques. It happened that, after a lapse of time, these men were discovered, but more murderers than we guess are living decent lives to-day, and will die in decency, undiscovered and unsuspected. As this man will.

But he had a narrow escape, and it was perhaps this narrow escape that brought him to a stop. The escape was due to an error of judgment on the part of the journalist.

As soon as he had the full story of the affair, which took some time, he spent fifteen minutes on the telephone, sending the story through, and at the end of the fifteen minutes, when the stimulus of the business had left him, he felt physically tired and mentally dishevelled. He was not yet free to go home; the paper would not go away for another hour; so he turned into a bar for a drink and some sandwiches.

It was then, when he had dismissed the whole business from his mind, and was looking about the bar and admiring the landlord’s taste in watch chains and his air of domination, and was thinking that the landlord of a well-conducted tavern had a more comfortable life than a newspaper man, that his mind received from nowhere a spark of light. He was not thinking about the Strangling Horrors; his mind was on his sandwich. As a public-house sandwich, it was a curiosity. The bread had been thinly cut, it was buttered, and the ham was not two months stale; it was ham as it should be. His mind turned to the inventor of this refreshment, the Earl of Sandwich, and then to George the Fourth, and then to the Georges, and to the legend of that George who was worried to know how the apple got into the apple dumpling. He wondered whether George would have been equally puzzled to know how the ham got into the ham sandwich, and how long it would have been before it occurred to him that the ham could not have got there unless somebody had put it there. He got up to order another sandwich, and in that moment a little active corner of his mind settled the affair. If there was ham in his sandwich, somebody must have put it there. If seven people had been murdered, somebody must have been there to murder them. There was no aeroplane or automobile that would go into a man’s pocket; therefore that somebody must have escaped either by running away or standing still; and again therefore—

He was visualising the front-page story that his paper would carry if his theory were correct, and if — a matter of conjecture — his editor had the necessary nerve to make a bold stroke, when a cry of “Time, gentlemen, please! All out!” reminded him of the hour. He got up and went out into a world of mist, broken by the ragged discs of roadside puddles and the streaming lightning of motor buses. He was certain that he had the story, but, even if it were proved, he was doubtful whether the policy of his paper would permit him to print it. It had one great fault. It was truth, but it was impossible truth. It rocked the foundations of everything that newspaper readers believed and that newspaper editors helped them to believe. They might believe that Turkish carpet sellers had the gift of making themselves invisible. They would not believe this.

As it happened, they were not asked to, for the story was never written. As his paper had by now gone away, and as he was nourished by his refreshment and stimulated by his theory, he thought he might put in an extra half hour by testing that theory. So he began to look about for the man he had in mind — a man with white hair, and large white hands; otherwise an everyday figure whom nobody would look twice at. He wanted to spring his idea on this man without warning, and he was going to place himself within reach of a man armoured in legends of dreadfulness and grue. This might appear to be an act of supreme courage — that one man, with no hope of immediate outside support, should place himself at the mercy of one who was holding a whole parish in terror. But it wasn’t. He didn’t think about the risk. He didn’t think about his duty to his employers or loyalty to his paper. He was moved simply by an instinct to follow a story to its end.

He walked slowly from the tavern and crossed into Fingal Street, making for Deever Market, where he had hope of finding his man. But his journey was shortened. At the corner of Lotus Street he saw him — or a man who looked like him. This street was poorly lit, and he could see little of the man: but he could see white hands. For some twenty paces he stalked him; then drew level with him; and at a point where the arch of a railway crossed the street, he saw that this was his man. He approached him with the current conversational phrase of the district: “Well, seen anything of the murderer?” The man stopped to look sharply at him; then, satisfied that the journalist was not the murderer, said:

“Eh? No, nor’s anybody else, curse it. Doubt if they ever will.”

“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about them, and I’ve got an idea.”

“So?”

“Yes. Came to me all of a sudden. Quarter of an hour ago. And I’d felt that we’d all been blind. It’s been staring us in the face.”

The man turned again to look at him, and the look and the movement held suspicion of this man who seemed to know so much. “Oh? Has it? Well, if you’re so sure, why not give us the benefit of it?”

“I’m going to.” They walked level, and were nearly at the end of the little street where it meets Deever Market, when the journalist turned casually to the man. He put a finger on his arm. “Yes, it seems to me quite simple now. But there’s still one point I don’t understand. One little thing I’d like to clear up. I mean the motive. Now, as man to man, tell me, Sergeant Ottermole, just why did you kill all those inoffensive people?”

The sergeant stopped, and the journalist stopped. There was just enough light from the sky, which held the reflected light of the continent of London, to give him a sight of the sergeant’s face, and the sergeant’s face was turned to him with a wide smile of such urbanity and charm that the journalist’s eyes were frozen as they met it. The smile stayed for some seconds. Then said the sergeant: “Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Newspaper Man, I don’t know. I really don’t know. In fact, I’ve been worried about it myself. But I’ve got an idea — just like you. Everybody knows that we can’t control the workings of our minds. Don’t they? Ideas come into our minds without asking. But everybody’s supposed to be able to control his body. Why? Eh? We get our minds from lord-knows-where — from people who were dead hundreds of years before we were born. Mayn’t we get our bodies in the same way? Our faces — our legs — our heads — they aren’t completely ours. We don’t make ’em. They come to us. And couldn’t ideas come into our bodies like ideas come into our minds? Eh? Can’t ideas live in nerve and muscle as well as in brain? Couldn’t it be that parts of our bodies aren’t really us, and couldn’t ideas come into those parts all of a sudden, like ideas come into... into” — he shot his arms out, showing the great white-gloved hands and hairy wrists; shot them out so swiftly to the journalist’s throat that his eyes never saw them — “into my hands!”

“His Lady” to the Rescue Bruce Graeme

Graham Montague Jeffries (1900–1982), pseudonym Bruce Graeme, was working as a young literary agent and submitted his own novel to a publisher. When it was rejected, he tried writing a short story, a ten-thousand-word Blackshirt adventure, which was immediately accepted by a magazine, with a commission to write seven more. The British publishing house T. Fisher Unwin used the eight Blackshirt stories to launch a series of cheap “novels” in 1925 and sold more than a million copies of Blackshirt over the next fifteen years. The sequel, The Return of Blackshirt (1927), sold just as well.

Richard Verrell is known as Blackshirt because of the costume he affects when on a safecracking job, dressing entirely in black, including his mask. By day Verrell is a wealthy member of high society; at night he is an audacious burglar. A bestselling author, he continues his life of crime in the name of adventure.

Secure in his anonymity, his tranquility is shattered when his identity is discovered by a beautiful young woman who anonymously calls him on the telephone. Threatening to expose him, she forces him to change from a mere thief to a kind of Robin Hood. He soon thinks of her as his “Lady on the Phone.” By the second volume in the series, they are married with a son, who has similar adventures.

“ ‘His Lady’ to the Rescue” was originally published in New Magazine in 1925; it was first collected in Blackshirt (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1925).

Richard Verrell, the author, suddenly realised that although at least two hours had elapsed since he had lain his head upon the pillow, he had not yet fallen asleep. He referred to his watch, and found that his imaginary two hours was in reality only a matter of forty to forty-five minutes. Nevertheless, this was unusual, because as a general rule he automatically dropped asleep as soon as he switched off the light of his reading-lamp. Up to the present time the fact that he, a well-known novelist, was at the same time Blackshirt, now of a sudden as equally notorious, had given him no undue qualms of conscience; but tonight he felt strangely stirred, moved by some new emotion which he found impossible to define.

Restless, sleepless, he lit a cigarette and gave his chaotic thoughts full play; analysed his individuality, dissected his personality. In this turmoil there comes to him flashes of his boyhood, memories of dismal surroundings, of cruel and hated foster-parents. He lives again the night when he became lost in a maze of streets, parted from parents of whom now he had no memory. He dares not ask the people who pass, who, to his terrified imagination, assume the stature of giants, whilst he runs helter-skelter from the one man who would have been his salvation — the man in blue, the policeman at the corner. This man to the childish imagination, instilled into it by a stupid seventeen-year-old nursemaid, is an ogre from whom all good boys who say their prayers properly every night should shrink, for is he not the punisher of sins?

He glimpses himself shrinking into the shadows, sick with fear; a hairy hand gripping his shoulder till he shrieks with pain, and a beery voice mumbling incoherently; then a whirlwind of motion, clattering horses, jostling people, yells and shouts, and countless ogres, from whom, too, the man of the hairy hand also shrinks.

Next, a broken-down hovel, a slatternly woman, high words, and, if he could have only understood it then, a dawning look of comprehension and admiration on the woman’s face as she whispers: “You aren’t ’alf a slick ’un, Alf, after all.”

Then a pseudo word of comfort to the trembling boy.

Follows then a faint, misty remembrance of brutal blows, of lessons in the art of picking pockets. With frequent practice his arms become quick and his fingers nimble. A turned back, a hasty dig from his tormentor, and the next moment an apple, a cake, a cheap piece of jewellery — anything upon which he can lay his hands — is transferred into his small pocket.

Through a hazy recollection of lessons and more lessons, of scaling walls, of slipping window-catches, he pictures himself growing taller and stronger. He remembers the pride with which he discovered one day that his head was actually level with the mantelpiece.

Then follows the period when his soul awakens from the emancipation of a shivering, nervous boy to a youth with a growing intuition of virile manliness, conscious also that his recent hatred of his unlawful escapades has turned to a joyful eagerness to embark more and more upon these nocturnal adventures, which inclination becomes emphasised as he grows older.

Even then, however, it was not for what he secured that he carried on, but for the thrill, the excitement, the risk in the obtaining thereof. Then the day that he is free of his tyrants, no more to witness with disgust the drunken orgies, to listen to their fights, their vile language. His finer feelings are urging him to escape his environment, to leave behind the sordid slums. He does so, and his finely keyed intelligence becomes aware that he is ignorant, uneducated, and uncouth.

Then years of study, with interludes of more thrills and more excitements, for which his soul craves, during which he becomes possessed of the wherewithal to live and carry on.

So the years pass until the transition is complete, and the slum-bred grub emerges into the polished, educated gentleman of the West End, perhaps, for all he knew, the ultimate position to which he had been predestined by virtue of his birth.

He stirred uneasily in his bed. Had he, however, achieved that ultimate end? Was he the man his birth demanded? As Richard Verrell, well-known author, decidedly yes; but as Blackshirt — Blackshirt, the mysterious man upon whom the detectives of Scotland Yard had long wished to lay hands; the man who robbed how, when, and where he could, matching his perfect solo-play against the team-work of the myrmidons of the law, and winning by the superiority of his wits, his subtlety, and his counter-play — Verrell shook his head. If he had been the natural-born son of the man and woman who were so long his foster-parents, and who were not even married, then, indeed, even as Blackshirt he had raised himself in life; for, though a criminal, he was at least better than the drunken, cringing sycophants that were his foster-parents.

He smiled sarcastically, and wondered why these twinges of conscience were suddenly inflicting themselves upon him, but his smile softened as he remembered a telephone conversation of a night or two before.

“Why do you do it?” had asked his Lady of the ’Phone.

He had thought and turned the matter over in his mind, but in the end he shrugged his shoulders, to confess weakly that he knew not why, which had been no more than the truth.

Why was he what he was? How was it that he lived a double life — on the one hand a gentleman, a respected member of society; and on the other an outlaw, a thief of the night?

He did not attempt to mince his language. He could not, for, whatever his faults, his sins of commission and omission, he abhorred hypocrisy — he that lived a life of hypocrisy, his one life a living lie to the other. He himself knew not why, why he was this, a man of dual personality; but one who could have known him well would have instantly laid his finger on the root of the trouble. His hidden life was nothing more or less than his excessive craving for excitement, an outlet of his dynamic forces, an opportunity to play a living game of chess. As a thief he was superb; as a detective he would have been prominent; but Fate had cast him on the wrong side of the law, and if any one person other than himself was to be blamed for his misdeeds, it was the seventeen-year-old nursemaid who had one day neglected her charge for the more amusing, if less onerous, distraction of a passing Grenadier Guardsman.

The throbbing boom of an adjacent church clock echoed twice through the quiet, still air, and still Verrell had not yet succeeded in sleeping; in fact, he was more wide awake than ever.

He switched on the reading-lamp, lit another cigarette, and picked up the book which he had been reading earlier in the evening; but, after having read two or three pages, and discovering that he had not consciously assimilated a single word, he threw the book away from him in disgust.

His nerves were tingling with a throbbing sensation, which he was too well aware was usually a prelude to one of his night excursions. The pounding of his heart seemed almost to call continually to him: “Come, come, come!”

Resolutely he attempted to ignore the call, and picked up an evening paper which lay folded and so far unread on the table next his bed. He opened it out, and as he did so his gaze was arrested by startling headlines, in which stood out one word — “Blackshirt.”

With a feeling of amusement, not unmixed with a tinge of anxiety, for the first time he commenced to read about himself in print; that is to say, his secret self:

There was much more to this effect, and by the time he had finished reading he was shaking in silent merriment. The Evening Star was the yellowest of the yellow journals, and the writer had not hesitated to draw upon his imagination.

For instance, it was the first time that Blackshirt became aware he had ever impersonated a policeman, though it was the truth that he had once taken the part of a foreigner — an Italian.

He flung the paper away in disgust. The Yellow Press could always be depended upon to make out the worst of a man and ignore the best.

An insidious, insistent voice was calling, and with a gesture of impotence he flung the bedclothes from him. He knew it was useless to struggle further.

A few minutes later Richard Verrell disappeared, and in his place stood Blackshirt. Outwardly he was dressed as a man about town, with the regulation silk hat, dress overcoat, and scarf, but this last-named article did more than keep his collar clean, for it hid his black shirt underneath, just as his shirt covered a broad elastic belt containing a complete outfit for opening any kind of door, window, or safe.

The next question which he had to consider was where to go, and as he stood hesitatingly at the window of his apartment the church clock struck the half-hour.

He grinned suddenly. He was still boyish enough to appreciate a joke, and he determined that he would walk aimlessly about until his wrist-watch showed three o’clock. Whichever house he should be nearest at that time he would enter. He was about to leave when he caught sight of the crumpled newspaper. Once again he smiled. He would tear out the columns about Blackshirt and leave it in place of whatever goods he should purloin, as a mute and poignant reminder that Blackshirt was still at large.

A clock near by struck the hour of three, and Blackshirt halted. He had wandered aimlessly up this road and down the next, caring not whether he went north, south, east, or west.

Relegating the fact that when three o’clock struck he had other work to do to the background, he had spent a happy half-hour in dreaming of his Lady of the ’Phone.

To him she was just a voice which was beginning to mean all the world to him; even now he hung upon every word she spoke, memorising every syllable, every intonation of the sweet music of her conversation.

For a full half-hour he had dreamed dreams in which appeared but two people, himself and his Lady of the Voice, as he imagined her to be — an unknown, mystical figure.

As the last stroke of the clock echoed away in the distance his dreams were banished, and he became once more his alert self, keen in his work, happy in its dangers.

He found himself in a short road, evidently an avenue, judging by the fact that plane trees lined it. There were but few houses, each one detached, standing in its own grounds. Obviously a rich neighbourhood.

Blackshirt chuckled to himself. He would have more pleasure in helping himself to a rich man’s goods.

He gave a quick, searching glance up and down the road, and noted with satisfaction that there was not a soul to be seen. With a quick athletic spring he vaulted the low brick wall, and emerged into the shadows of the other side.

He covered his face with a black silk mask, and encased his hands in a pair of black silk gloves, thus making himself more invisible than ever, so that he appeared merely a black blur which crept noiselessly across the small lawn.

At the edge of the lawn he paused a moment, memorising the geography of the front of the house, and then proceeded to the back, where he hoped he would be more secluded and less likely to be seen.

In this he was not disappointed, for the back of the house was hidden from the adjacent households by a ring of trees.

He noted several points of similarity between the back and the front of the house, and concluded from this that the lower rooms stretched the whole length of the house; one, which he surmised to be a reception-room, opened out on to a small balcony through long, handsome French windows.

He judged the balcony to be undoubtedly his best means of entry into the house, and before another twenty seconds had elapsed he was standing in front of one of the windows.

There was a slight click as the latch was forced back by an instrument which he pulled from his elastic waist-belt, but he was disappointed, for the window did not give way immediately. It was evident that it was bolted as well as latched.

Another tool came into play, and presently the windows opened noiselessly inwards, and the black shadow that was Blackshirt entered and closed them behind him.

For a time he stood there, his ears alert for the slightest sound, but the house seemed absolutely silent.

Next a tiny pin-prick of light from his pocket-torch travelled round the room, moving on from one object to another.

He was surprised to note that, notwithstanding the fact that the house was built apparently in the early Victorian era, it was scarcely typical of this country, and the furnishing seemed to Blackshirt to hint somewhat of the Continent; nothing tangible, nothing which he could positively say belonged to any other country than his own, yet, nevertheless, he was distinctly of the impression that he was in the residence of a foreigner.

His light came to rest eventually on a handsome, ornate secretaire, and the artist within him gazed with delight at its graceful lines, its exquisite inlaid pattern. Obviously an objet d’art, the possession of a connoisseur.

Blackshirt wished that he could have taken the desk away with him. He would cheerfully have left everything else could he have done this.

He tried to draw his attention away from the desk, but each time his eyes wandered glitteringly back to it, and at length he determined that he would at least glance within, not so much in search of anything that might be there — for he did not believe that it contained anything of any value — but more to taste of the splendid work which he knew would be carried out inside as well as externally.

He found it locked, but anticipated no difficulty in opening it, suspecting that it was kept closed by the usual type of lock.

To his surprise he discovered that the lock was of an unusually intricate pattern, and it was only after great difficulty that he was successful in forcing it, but he did not regret the waste of time. Undoubtedly the desk was one of the most beautiful he had seen.

Within were scattered papers and letters. With a smile he picked up one, as he thought to himself he might just as well know exactly where he was. The envelope was addressed to:

Count de Rogeri,

 Versailles House,

  Maddox Gardens.

Blackshirt raised his eyebrows. Maddox Gardens! Why, he had heard of this neighbourhood often, but, although he knew whereabouts it was, this was the first time he had actually set foot here.

He had indeed come to an affluent district.

What was wealth compared to the desk? If ever Blackshirt regretted having to leave anything behind he did so this time. His supple hands wandered lovingly over the carving, whilst his flashlight revealed its extravagant design.

His sensitive finger-tips came in contact with a slack panel, and he frowned. Evidently its owner was careless. He wondered how loose it was, and moved it slightly.

The next moment there was a click, and Blackshirt spun round, his light disappearing as he did so. He stood there, tense with nervous excitement, but could hear nothing; no voice was challenging him, no revolver threatening him, all was dark, still, and silent.

Uneasily he turned again towards the desk. He did not like mysterious sounds, but as he resumed his examination of the bureau the cause of the noise was revealed to him as, where before had been a plain piece of panelling, there was now an open drawer.

By the merest coincidence Blackshirt had discovered a secret recess.

With sparkling eyes, which were synonymic of the happy excitement he felt in this discovery, he noted that there were papers within.

Curiosity urged him to glance through them, but on opening the first one he was annoyed to find the contents in German. Of this language he knew a little, though not much, so he was about to thrust them back into the drawer when two or three stray words which he recognised caught his eye and arrested his attention.

For the next few minutes his puzzled brain was gradually translating the manuscript. When he had finished he remained motionless, unable to connect his thoughts together coherently, his discovery numbing his senses.

When Marshall retired from the C.I. Department of Scotland Yard he was fortunate in securing a small, self-contained flat over a greengrocer’s shop in Shepherd’s Bush, and here he settled down to finish the rest of his days. He was not entirely happy in his new occupation of a retired gentleman of leisure, for he was that type of man whose enjoyment was solely in his work, and this was particularly so where he was concerned, who considered his employment the spice of life.

He missed the routine, the discipline, and, above all, the interest. There was to him as much pleasure in capturing a criminal as there is in discovering a piece of Chippendale to an antique collector.

Every now and again he was fortunate in being engaged as a private detective, but cases in which he really took interest happened so few and far between that they were not nearly enough to keep him satisfied. Most of his undertakings seemed to be in connection with divorce, in which, apart from the simplicity of the work, he discovered that usually his sympathy was with the poor, misguided people he shadowed. Eventually he came to the conclusion that if all husbands and wives were all like the people who employed him, he would remain better off as he was — single.

He lived by himself, attended only by a housekeeper, who came every morning; but as he was usually out most of the day, and very often during the night as well, he did not suffer from loneliness.

This night, for once, he had found himself what he would have termed “at a loose end,” and when ten-thirty struck he went to bed in disgust, and very soon dropped into a heavy slumber.

Presently he dreamed — a weird, monstrous nightmare, in which the main plot was that everybody he knew would pick him up and throw him about, till he tired of this, and awoke to find himself looking into the muzzle of a revolver.

“Good God!” he muttered, and then glanced at the man who sat on the side of his bed, shaking him by the shoulder with his free hand.

There was no mistaking the black mask, the black shirt.

“Blackshirt!” he gasped involuntarily.

“At your service, Marshall,” mocked the other.

“What the hell are you doing here?” exploded the detective.

“My dear Marshall, that is precisely what I am about to explain; but in the meantime please do not make any movement, as I happen to be, as you will observe, covering you with a revolver, which, by the way, is your own, and which I took the liberty of borrowing from beneath your pillow. I hope you do not object?”

Marshall did not answer, but merely grunted with an amazed air.

“Thank you,” continued Blackshirt; “then I may take it you do not object. To continue, I have a great admiration for you, Marshall, and when I say this I want you to believe that I mean it sincerely; I am not just mocking you. I have several things about which I wish to speak to you, and I am not particularly keen to tire my arm out holding this gun out in this threatening attitude. Give me your word, Marshall, that you will make no attempt at my capture until I have left this building, and I will talk to you as man to man on a matter beside which my capture and your fame are as nothing, for it concerns what is more important to both of us — our own country.”

The detective thought rapidly. Should he or should he not give the required promise, and if he did, would he keep it? On this latter point he very soon made up his mind. He knew, come what might, he could not break his word to any man, not even to Blackshirt, for whose capture he would give his right hand. On the other hand, if he did not give the undertaking Blackshirt asked he might, by awaiting his opportunity, turn the tables.

Blackshirt read his mind. “It’s no good your thinking that, Marshall, for unless you agree I shall clear out now. I think you know me better than to give you the chance which you think might be yours if you don’t do as I wish.”

The detective shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I suppose you’re right. Yes, I give you my assurance.”

Blackshirt seemed relieved, and cast the revolver down on the bed beside Marshall.

“Thanks, Marshall; though I took the trouble to extract your ammunition beforehand.”

“Hang!” muttered the detective. “If I’d known that—”

“Yes, I dare say,” interrupted Blackshirt, not giving him time to finish, and smiled in his winning way, which even the black mask could not entirely cover. “I felt sure that I would arouse your curiosity sufficiently.”

Marshall gazed at him admiringly. “You’re a cool card, whatever else you may be. However, what is it you want to tell me, and will you have a whisky-and-soda while you are saying it?”

Blackshirt laughed. “Not for me; thanks all the same, though. It’s apt to spoil one’s work to imbibe in the middle of it. But now to business.

“Tonight I went to bed — for a change, you are no doubt thinking; but, nevertheless, I do sometimes act as any other law-abiding citizen.

“For some reason or other I was restless, and was not successful, as novelists say, in the wooing of Morpheus, so I picked up an evening newspaper, and, greatly to my delight and amusement, had the pleasure of reading all about myself.”

“Yes, I read all that, too. They made it a bit hot towards the end.” Marshall grinned.

“Ah, well, that’s the penalty of being famous, eh, Marshall? To continue. The article had an unfortunate effect upon me, I confess, for it roused me to action. So you can therefore imagine me, an hour or so back, getting inside this picturesque outfit of mine, which has its uses. It will be a boon to the cartoonist in tomorrow’s paper.

“Having no fixed destination in mind, I determined to wander around until a clock struck three, and then to break into the nearest mansion, help myself to the valuables in the accredited way, and go back home to bed a richer and more sleepy man.”

His voice suddenly dropped its bantering tone, and Marshall sensed that he was coming to the point to which he owed this unexpected visit.

“Marshall, by some stroke of Fate, when the clock struck three I was outside what I afterwards discovered to be the residence of Count de Rogeri, who lives at Versailles House, Maddox Gardens.

“A few minutes later I was inside and examining a wonderful desk, an example of Italian art in the sixteenth century. Whilst doing so, by pure accident I touched a hidden spring, and a secret drawer was exposed to my view. There were papers within, and my curiosity urged me to look through them, to find they were in German.”

He paused, and unconsciously Marshall uttered an impatient “Go on, man!” so intent was he upon the narrative which was slowly being unfolded.

“I read those papers, though my knowledge of German is none too good, but it was sufficient for me to realise that what I held in my hand were the plans and specifications of the latest R.A.F. machine.”

“Good heavens! A spy!”

“Precisely.”

Again the silence, whilst the two men revolved in their minds the sudden revelation.

Presently Marshall spoke. “Why have you come to me?” he asked curiously.

“For several reasons, one of which I have already explained to you — that I trust you. Secondly, this spy must be unmasked. Obviously, were I, as Blackshirt, to write and inform Scotland Yard of this fact, the probability is that they would give no credence to my accusation. On the other hand, if I were to sign the name by which I am known to the world at large — such few people as I do know — my identity would be revealed, and Blackshirt would promptly see the inside of a prison, which is the last thing I desire.

“Again, there is no knowing when the Count is likely to go to that desk again. Perhaps by the time Scotland Yard had made up its mind, and arrived at his house for the proof, these papers might be on the way to Germany, and then there would be just my accusations against Count de Rogeri’s word. I have, therefore, brought the papers with me.”

Marshall shook his head. “You were wrong to do that. As it happens I was on the Special Section of the C.I. Department during the war, which, as perhaps you may know, devoted itself to spies, so that I learned quite a lot of the methods of this country in dealing with foreign agents.

“During the war it was just a question of capture, trial and execution; but in peace-time, no. We play a far more subtle game than that. Once a man is identified as a spy to our certain knowledge, from that time forward he is watched day and night. Every letter he writes, every parcel he sends, is intercepted, whilst every communication to him is copied before he receives it. In this way, not only does our own Secret Service become aware of every scrap of information which may be sent out of the country, but it also discovers the names and addresses of other spies who may get into touch with the one who was originally watched.

“Blackshirt — for this is the only name I can call you — by hook or by crook you must return those papers, and leave everything as you found it, so that your presence there will be positively unsuspected.

“Tomorrow I shall go to the Yard. In the meantime, for heaven’s sake get them back again.”

Blackshirt glanced at his watch. The time was twelve minutes past four. He pursed his lips.

“It can’t be done, Marshall. It’s too late. For all we know some of the maids may already be astir.” But Marshall knew that, despite what he said, he had already determined in his mind to act as the detective suggested.

Like a shadow Blackshirt disappeared, and a few seconds later Marshall heard the whir of an electric starter. Evidently Blackshirt had a car. He felt tempted to rush to the window and note the number, but he resisted. He could not play the dirty on the other, as he so aptly put it to himself.

Meanwhile, Blackshirt was speeding back towards Maddox Gardens. The car was a borrowed one. At the end of Maddox Road was a garage, from which Blackshirt had helped himself.

It was still dark when he was back at Versailles House once more, having returned the automobile, but there was a suspicious greyness in the east, and he calculated that the first streaks of daylight would be showing within half an hour.

Once again he crept across the lawn and round to the back of the house, and once more climbed up on to the balcony and entered the room through the tall French windows.

He listened intently, but there was not a sound. The tiny pin-prick of light from his torch travelled slowly round the room, but nothing had been moved. He breathed a sigh of relief. Apparently his presence had not been discovered, so that it would be a simple matter to return the papers.

With a quick, silent step he crossed the room, and, opening the desk, which he had left unlocked, he returned the papers to their hiding-place.

This time he knew it would be necessary to re-lock the desk, and he knelt down before it. He brought his delicate little instruments to work, and presently a faint click informed him that he had been successful.

No sooner had this occurred when he experienced an extraordinary sensation. At the back of his brain he felt an intuition that something had gone wrong. This communicated itself to the rest of his body, and his sensitive nerves jumped in unison.

He could not define what it was, but he seemed to sense that someone was watching him, that there was somebody else present in the room besides himself.

He listened acutely; there was not a sound to be heard. The house was as silent as a graveyard; yet the feeling became more insistent, till at last he became positively assured that he was under observation.

He almost groaned, for, were this indeed the case, and the unseen watcher the Count himself, what Marshall feared most would probably happen. Undoubtedly the Count’s suspicions would be aroused on seeing a man before the desk, when there was more valuable booty in another part of the room.

What must he do to allay this supposition? Before he could act the room was suddenly flooded with light.

He whirled round; the room was still empty. Incredulous and bewildered, he gazed in every direction, and confirmed that fact that only he himself was present. Instinctively, as he realised this fact, he stepped towards the window, but—

“Ah, so you are not armed!”

The heavy portière was flung aside, to reveal a man in evening dress.

“Good evening,” he said, with a pleasant smile, which was contradicted by the glitter in his eyes, and the menacing revolver which he held in his hand, pointing with unpleasant directness at the pit of Blackshirt’s stomach.

Despite the seriousness of his position, it flashed through Blackshirt’s mind that it was not an entirely dissimilar situation to that in which he had been less than an hour ago, but then it was he who held the whip-hand.

He glanced at the newcomer, and gathered, as he had assumed, that he was Count de Rogeri himself. Dressed and groomed immaculately in the English style, there was to be recognised a faint soupçon of foreign blood, and Blackshirt wondered if he were not of mixed parentage, possibly French and German. A correct supposition, could he have known it, the Count’s mother being an Alsatian Frenchwoman, and his father a Prussian.

“Why, may I ask, have I the honour of this visit?” There was a fixed intensity in the Count’s voice, which confirmed the suspicion in his eyes.

Blackshirt turned over in his mind on what grounds he should meet the Count. Should he be an ignorant housebreaker, or should he remain just Blackshirt? He decided upon the latter course. With any luck the Count had read the papers.

Blackshirt shrugged his shoulders. “Why does one usually break into other people’s houses?”

The Count raised his eyebrows. “An educated voice, I observe. Forgive me if I smoke?” he asked with irony, and with his left hand he took out a handsome gold cigarette-case from his coat pocket, snapped it open, and placed a cigarette in his mouth, which he afterwards lit, never for a moment allowing his revolver to waver a hair’s breadth from the direction of Blackshirt’s body.

“I regret I cannot offer you one also,” he remarked presently, “but I prefer to see your hands remain where they are.” He paused. “Really, you look remarkably picturesque for an ordinary burglar.”

“But then, you see, my dear sir, I like to think that I am not an ordinary housebreaker.”

“Ah, I see. An Arsène Lupin!”

“And you, Ganimand!”

“Your choice of books is evidently picked with care, for I judge you have read the book.”

“In the original.”

“Ah, my admiration for you increases every moment! You are indeed worthy to be captured. If I talk much longer to you I shall almost regret having to call your big, flat-footed policemen.”

“There’s many a slip, my dear Count, many a slip.”

“Banal.” The Count paused, and then with startling suddenness he asked: “How did you know my name?”

If he thought to catch Blackshirt off his guard he was mistaken, for by this time the prisoner had planned his campaign, though with a sinking heart he realised that even if he were successful in persuading the Count that he was there only for a commonplace burglary, the more he did so the more likely it would be that the Count would have him arrested.

For a brief moment he thought of buying his liberty with his knowledge of the Count’s secret intrigues, but this he dismissed almost as soon as it occurred to him.

“An up-to-date and modern housebreaker plans his attack with as much care and foresight as a field-marshal directing his army. I have been watching this house for the last two or three weeks, so naturally I knew who you were directly you appeared so disconcertingly from behind the portière.”

The Count blew a swirling, eddying smoke-ring into the air, and, watching it, he inquired casually: “And the desk, monsieur — did you expect to find many Bank of England notes there?”

Blackshirt laughed scornfully.

“Scarcely. There are sometimes papers which are more valuable than banknotes.”

He was watching the Count intently, and saw him stiffen up with an infinitesimal start. For a moment his glance rested piercingly upon his unexpected visitor, only to look casually away again, and Blackshirt knew that the Count’s suspicions were now thoroughly aroused, a point to which he had been working.

“Papers!” asked the Count. “What kind of papers?”

“Letters, Count de Rogeri, letters! You are a woman’s man.”

It was a shot in the dark, but it hit home.

“Perhaps, and so—”

“Sometimes letters pass between a man and his mistress. Such letters are valuable.”

“Blackmail!” The Count laughed sneeringly, but Blackshirt detected the note of relief in his voice. His suspicions, roused to a point when they became almost certainties, were suddenly allayed. Even so he meant to take no chances.

“And may I ask whether you were successful?”

Blackshirt became suddenly despondent.

“I regret to say you arrived about five or ten minutes too soon. That pretty desk of yours has an unusually tough lock, and I had been unable to crack it when you made your appearance.”

Still keeping Blackshirt covered, the Count warily crossed to the desk and tried it, and notwithstanding his expressionless face, Blackshirt caught the relief which he could not keep from his eyes.

With the knowledge that he was safe he became instantly more domineering, more the man with the whip-hand. Before he had been merely fencing, not sure of his ground.

“Now we will quit fooling. What is your name?”

“That, Count de Rogeri, is a thing that many would like to know, which many have tried to discover. They have been singularly unsuccessful.”

“Perhaps they did not have you at the wrong end of a revolver, as have I.”

“A forcible argument, I admit. Under the circumstances I suppose it is necessary for me to tell you that my name is Blackshirt.”

“Ah, Blackshirt! I had the pleasure of reading about you in tonight’s paper. Well, well! Supposing you take off that mask! I remember now that the paper stated that you had never been seen without a mask.”

“I regret I must refuse, however much it might be my pleasure to do you the honour, Count de Rogeri, of being the first one of having that privilege.”

The Count thrust his chin a little forward. “You will take that mask off, or—” He patted his revolver significantly. “It would be quite easy for me to look at your face afterwards.”

“That would be murder, and murder is a hanging matter in England.”

The Count chuckled unpleasantly. “Not murder, my dear Blackshirt, but justifiable manslaughter. I have another revolver upstairs. It would be only necessary to put it in your hand to prove my point.”

Blackshirt felt tiny beads of perspiration forcing themselves through his skin, and despair took hold of him. Unfortunately he knew that what the Count had said was only too true. There would be no witnesses to prove that he had been deliberately murdered. In his own mind he believed the Count thoroughly capable of doing what he had threatened. Discovery seemed inevitable. His glance wandered desperately away from the penetrating gaze of his captor.

What was it he had just said to himself? “Discovery seemed inevitable!” Perhaps; but not this evening, for he had just seen a tiny, shapely hand creeping slowly round the edge of the portière and shake a warning to him.

At all costs he must delay the evil moment for unmasking for just a few seconds. Perhaps rescue was at hand, for otherwise why the stealthy attitude of the person behind the curtain?

“Count de Rogeri, I admit defeat. You have got the better of me.”

“Very kind of you to grant me that,” answered the other sarcastically, “but the mask — I am waiting.”

Whoever was behind the curtain was gradually advancing into view, and Blackshirt suddenly thrilled. It was a woman.

“Please give me half a minute,” he asked desperately, “while I explain my circumstances to you. Count de Rogeri, I am rich and wealthy. I move in your own circle. I, too, am a gentleman, and I carry on my midnight adventures for the sake of excitement only.”

The woman was heavily veiled. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed this fact, and saw, too, that she was still steadily moving forward. Another three yards — no, two and a half yards, and she would be behind the Count.

“You would not like to go to prison any more than I. It must be hateful! Think of it, seven years of torture; seven years of damnation, perhaps more, and it will be on your conscience that you have sent me there. Please, please,” he cried, in an agonised voice, “let me go!”

The woman was almost behind the Count now; another step or two, and the scarf which she was holding in both hands would be around her quarry.

“Bah! A coward!” The scorn in his voice was galling, and, acting up to his part, Blackshirt straightened up suddenly as if the moral blow had gone home, glanced despairingly at the revolver, and slumped again into a dejected attitude.

The Count sneered again, and relaxed the tension of the hand which was holding the weapon.

At that moment the mysterious new-comer stretched out her arms and enveloped the Count’s face with a scarf, and simultaneously Blackshirt sprang forward and wrested the revolver from the Count’s grasp. The tables were turned.

“You can let him go,” said Blackshirt to his unknown rescuer, and covered the Count with the pistol.

Trembling with rage and fury, the Count gazed evilly at him.

“Not quite such a coward, eh, Count de Rogeri?” mocked Blackshirt, and the Count realised that his late captive had been acting a part.

“I am sorry I can’t ask you to unmask or anything of that sort,” continued Blackshirt, “but I am afraid it will be necessary for me to request that you sit on one of those chairs, and perhaps my lady friend, as she has evidently come here to rescue me, will kindly tie your arms and legs securely. No, not that scarf. It doesn’t do to leave behind a possible clue. His own silk handkerchief will do quite well, whilst I can supply another one which is absolutely unmarked.”

In another few seconds, Count de Rogeri was trussed hand and foot to one of his own chairs, and gagged by one of his own cushion-covers.

Blackshirt gazed at their joint work admiringly. “I trust that you are perfectly comfortable, Count de Rogeri, for I am afraid you will be under the painful necessity of remaining in the same attitude until your servants awake to release you, and as you are a ladies’ man, and probably sleep late, it would not surprise me if they were not more or less later than the usual household.

“I am sorry that I was not able to unmask, but had I done so I should have felt more like Cinderella, who was changed from the belle of the ballroom, dressed in silks and jewellery, into a poor little scullery-maid. So should I have ceased to be unknown, and doubtless would have spent seven long years in prison through your instrumentality. Au revoir, Monsieur le Comte, or should I say ‘Adieu’?” The next moment Blackshirt and his rescuer disappeared.

In the front, securely hidden from prying eyes by a large elm tree, they stopped.

“Say, I’ll tell the world that that was the cutest piece of play I have ever seen!” said the woman suddenly.

Blackshirt started with delight. “My Lady of the ’Phone!” he muttered involuntarily.

“Say, is that what you call me? Well, now, isn’t that sweet?”

Blackshirt felt his cheeks flushing, and was glad of the protecting darkness.

“You may remove your mask, Mr. Verrell,” continued the other, “and we had best be on our way before any further unpleasant events transpire.”

“And if I do,” he whispered softly, “will you not lift your veil?”

“I should say not!” she answered decisively.

“Oh, won’t you, please?” he pleaded, but she shook her head.

“Then you will ’phone me up?”

“I will.”

“Very often?” he said, catching her hand within his own.

For a moment she left it there, and Blackshirt felt the warmth of her soft fingers stealing into his, even through his gloves; then she withdrew it.

“Perhaps,” she whispered, so softly that it sounded more like the sighing of the wind.

He swayed towards her, and the magic of the moment gripped them both. Shaking in every limb, his arms crept slowly towards and around her, and for one brief moment she stood there, a trembling, palpitating woman. Just then a distant church clock struck the hour of five.

She pushed him away sharply.

“Quick! You go along to the wall and see if the coast is clear, and I will follow you, and you can help me over.”

“Yes, yes, I will do that; but before we go tell me how did you know where I was, and that I was in such an awkward situation?”

“That is my secret,” she answered gaily. “Now go.”

“But you must tell me,” he commanded.

“I will — one day.” And she pushed him forward with her hands, and he knew her answer was final.

He crept towards the wall, and, observing that there was no one near, he leapt lightly over and turned round to assist his Lady of the ’Phone, but she had disappeared. He waited half a minute, but when there was still no sign of her he knew that she intended to remain the mystery that she was.

He tore off the mask from his face, and slipped off his black silk gloves, turned up the collar of his light rainproof, and sprung out his opera hat, which fitted into a special pocket of the coat. This he set rakishly upon his head, and became once again a gentleman of the world as he started home.

“Curse that clock!” he muttered savagely.

In the garage at the end of Maddox Gardens a bewildered chauffeur scratched his head and gazed, bewitched, at the car in front of him. “Well, I never!” he muttered, “but I could have swore that I cleaned the car last night!”

On Getting an Introduction Edgar Wallace

“Anthony Newton was a soldier at sixteen; at twenty-six he was a beggar of favors.” Thus Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) introduces the young man who finds success as a con man and thief. After his military service, Newton makes every effort to gain honest employment but without luck. He does find that his quick wit and amusing tongue make him a successful scam artist, so he devotes his energies to that endeavor.

Newton is merely one of many rogues created by Wallace. As a populist writer, Wallace found that common people related to his rogues — criminals who were not violent or physically dangerous but whose talents and inclinations led them to the other side of the law. Others include Anthony Smith (The Mixer, 1927), “Elegant” Edward Farthindale (Elegant Edward, 1928), and Four Square Jane (Four Square Jane, 1929). Readers rooted for these and other of Wallace’s numerous literary criminals, who always stole from the wealthy and powerful.

The prolific Wallace reputedly wrote one hundred seventy novels, eighteen stage plays, nine hundred fifty-seven short stories, and elements of numerous screenplays and scenarios, including the first British sound version of The Hound of the Baskervilles; one hundred sixty films, both silent and sound, have been based on his books and stories.

“On Getting an Introduction” was first published in The Brigand (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1927).

Polite brigandage has its novel aspects and its moments of fascination. Vulgar men, crudely furnished in the matter of ideas, may find profit in violence, but the more subtle and the more delicate nuances of the art of gentle robbery had an especial attraction for one who, in fulfilment of the poet’s ambition, could count the game before the prize.

So it came about that Mr. Newton found himself in an awkward situation. The two near wheels of his car were in a ditch; he with some difficulty had maintained himself at the steering wheel, though the branches of the overhanging hedge were so close to him that he had to twist his head on one side. Nevertheless, he maintained an attitude of supreme dignity as he climbed out of his car, and the eyes that met the girl’s alarmed gaze were full of gentle reproach.

She sat bolt upright at the wheel of her beautiful Daimler, and for a while was speechless.

“You were on the wrong side of the road,” said Tony gently.

“I’m awfully sorry,” she gasped. “I sounded my horn, but these wretched Sussex lanes are so blind...”

“Say no more about it,” said Anthony. He surveyed the ruins of his car gravely.

“I thought you would see me as you came down the hill,” she said in excuse. “I saw you and I sounded my horn.”

“I didn’t hear it,” said Anthony, “but that is beside the question. The fault is entirely mine, but I fear my poor car is completely ruined.”

She got out and stood beside him, the figure of penitence, her eyes fixed upon the drunken wreck.

“If I had not turned immediately into the ditch,” said Anthony, “there would have been a collision. And it is better that I should ruin my car than I should occasion you the slightest apprehension.”

She drew a quick sigh.

“Thank goodness it is only an old car,” she said. “Of course, Daddy will—”

Anthony could not allow the statement to pass unchallenged.

“It looks old now,” he said gently; “it looks even decrepit. It has all the appearance of ruin which old age, alas, brings, but it is not an old car.”

“It is an old model,” she insisted. “Why, that’s about twenty years old — I can tell from the shape of the wing.”

“The wings of my car,” said Anthony, “may be old fashioned. I am an old fashioned man, and I like old fashioned wings. In fact, I insisted upon having those old fashioned wings put on this perfectly new car. You have only to look at the beautiful coach work — the lacquer—”

“You lacquered it yourself,” she accused him. “Anybody can see that that has been newly done.” She touched the paint with her finger, and it left a little black stain. “There,” she said triumphantly, “It has been done with ‘Binko,’ you can see the advertisements in all the papers: ‘Binko dries in two hours.’ ” She touched the paint again and looked at the second stain on her finger. “That means you painted it a fortnight ago,” she said, “it always takes a month to dry.”

Anthony said nothing. He felt that her discovery called for silence. Moreover, he could not, for the moment, think of any appropriate rejoinder.

“Of course,” she went on more warmly, “it was very fine of you to take such a dreadful risk. My father, I know, will be very grateful.”

She looked at the car again.

“You don’t think you could get it up,” she said.

Anthony was very sure he could not restore the equilibrium of his car. He had bought it a week before for thirty pounds. The owner had stuck out for thirty-five, and Anthony had tossed him thirty pounds or forty, and had won. Anthony always won those tosses. He kept a halfpenny in his pocket which had a tail on each side, and since ninety-nine people out of a hundred say “heads” when you flip a coin in the air, it was money for nothing.

“Shall I drive you into Pilbury?” she said.

“Is there anywhere I can find a telephone?” asked Anthony.

“I’ll take you back to the house,” said Jane Mansar suddenly. “It’s quite near, you can telephone from there, and I’d like you to have a talk with father. Of course, we will not allow you to lose by your unselfish action, though I did sound my horn as I came round the corner.”

“I didn’t hear it,” said Anthony gravely.

He climbed in, and she backed the car into a gateway, turned and sped at a reckless pace back the way she had come. She turned violently from the road, missed one of the lodge gates by a fraction of an inch and accelerated up a broad drive to a big white house that showed sketchily between the encircling elms. She braked suddenly and Anthony got out with relief.

Mr. Gerald Mansar was a stout, bald man, whose fiery countenance was relieved by a pure white moustache and bristling white eyebrows. He listened with thunderous calm whilst his pretty daughter told the story of her narrow escape.

“You sounded your horn?” he insisted.

“Yes, father, I am sure I sounded the horn.”

“And you were going, of course, at a reasonable pace,” said Mr. Mansar.

In his early days he had had some practice at the law in the County Courts. Anthony Newton recognised the style and felt it was an appropriate moment to step in.

“You quite understand, Mr. Mansar, that I completely exonerate Miss Mansar from any responsibility,” he interjected. “I am perfectly sure she sounded the horn, though I did not hear it. I am completely satisfied and can vouch for the fact that she was proceeding at a very leisurely pace, and whatever fault there was, was mine.”

Anthony Newton was a very keen student of men, particularly of rich men. He had studied them from many angles, and one of the first lessons he learnt in presenting a claim, was to exonerate these gentlemen from any legal responsibility. The rich hate and loathe the onus of legal responsibility. They will spend extravagant sums in law costs to demonstrate to the satisfaction of themselves and the world that they are not legally responsible for the payment of a boot-black’s fee. The joy of wealth is generosity. There was never a millionaire born who would not prefer to give a thousand than to pay a disputed penny.

Mr. Mansar’s puckered face relaxed.

“I shall certainly not allow you to be the loser, Mr.—”

“Newton is my name.”

“Newton. You are not in the firm of Newton, Boyd, and Wilkins, are you, the rubber people?”

“No,” said Anthony. “I never touch rubber.”

“You are not the pottery Newton, are you?” asked Mr. Mansar hopefully.

“No,” said Anthony gravely, “we have always kept clear of pots.”

After Mr. Mansar had, by cross-examination, discovered that he wasn’t one of the Warwickshire Newtons, or Monmouth Newtons, or a MacNewton of Ayr, or one of those Irish Newtons, or a Newton of Newton Abbot, but was just an ordinary London Newton, his interest momentarily relaxed.

“Well, my dear,” he said, “what shall we do?”

The girl smiled.

“I think at least we ought to ask Mr. Newton to lunch,” she said and the old man, who seemed at a loss as to how the proceedings might reasonably be terminated or developed, brightened up at the suggestion.

“I noticed that you mentioned me by name. Of course, my daughter told you—” he said.

Anthony smiled.

“No, sir,” he replied, “but I know the city rather well and, of course, your residence in this part of the world is as well known as—”

“Naturally,” said Mr. Gerald Mansar. He had no false ideas as to his fame. The man who had engineered the Nigerian oil boom, the Irish linen boom, who floated the Milwaukee paper syndicate for two millions, could have no illusions about his obscurity.

“You are in the city yourself, Mr. Newton?”

“Yes,” admitted Anthony.

He was in the city to the extent of hiring an office on a first floor of a city building; and it was true he had his name painted on the door. It was an office not big enough to swing a cat, as one of his acquaintances had pointed out. Anthony however, did not keep cats. And if he had kept them, he would certainly have never been guilty of such cruelty.

The lunch was not an unpleasant function, for a quite unexpected factor had come into his great scheme. Nobody knew better than Anthony Newton that it was Mr. Mansar himself who every Saturday morning drove the Daimler into Pullington, and when Anthony had purchased his racketty car, spending many hours in the application of “Binko” to endow it with a more youthful complexion, he had not dreamt that the adventure would end so pleasantly. He knew that Mr. Millionaire Mansar had a daughter — he had a vague idea that somebody had told him she was pretty. He did not anticipate when he engineered his accident so carefully, that it would be at her expense.

For, whatever else he was, Anthony Newton was an honest adventurer. He had decided that there was money in honest adventure; he had reached this conclusion after he had made a careful study of the press. There were other adventurers whose names figured conspicuously in the police court reports. They were all ingenious and painstaking men, but their ingenuity and foresight were employed in ways which made no appeal to one who had strict, but not too strict, views on the sacredness of property.

Some of these adventurers had walked into isolated post offices, a mask over their faces and a revolver in their hands and had carried off the contents of the till, amidst the loud protests of postal officials who were on the spot. Others had walked into banks similarly disguised and had drawn out balances which were certainly not due to them.

And Anthony, thinking out the matter, decided that it was quite possible, by the exercise of his mental talent, to secure quite a lot of money without taking the slightest risks.

He wished to know Mr. Mansar. Mr. Mansar, in ordinary circumstances, was unapproachable. To step into his office and demand an interview was almost as futile as stepping up to the stamp counter in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, and asking to see the Postmaster-General. Mr. Mansar was surrounded by guards, inner and outer, by secretaries, by heads of departments, by general managers and managing directors, to say nothing of commissionaires, doorkeepers, messengers, and plain clerks.

There are two ways of getting acquainted with the great. One is to discover their hobbies, which is the weakest side of their defence, and the other is to drop in upon them on their holidays. The man you cannot meet in the City of London is very accessible in the Hotel de la Paix.

But apparently Mr. Mansar never took a holiday, and his only hobby was keeping alive an illusion of his profound genius.

Lunch over, and Anthony’s object achieved, there seemed no excuse for his lingering. He awaited, with some confidence, the grave intimation that a car was ready to take him to the station, and that Mr. Mansar would be glad if he would dine with him at his London house on Thursday. Maybe it would be Wednesday. Possibly, thought Anthony, the function might be deferred for a week or two. But the intimation did not come. He was treated as though he had arrived for a permanent stay.

Mr. Mansar showed him the library, and told him to make himself comfortable, pointing out certain books which had amused him (Mr. Mansar) in his moments of leisure.

Anthony Newton cooed and settled himself, not perhaps to read, but to think large and beautiful thoughts of great financial coups which he might engineer with this prince of financiers, of partnerships maybe, certainly of profits.

There was a big window looking out upon a marble terrace and as he read, or pretended to read, Mr. and Miss Mansar paced restlessly along the paved walk. They were talking in a low voice and Anthony, having surrendered all sense of decorum, crept nearer to the window and listened as they passed.

“He is much better looking than the last one,” murmured Jane, and he saw Mr. Mansar nod.

Much better looking than the last one? Anthony scratched his head.

Presently they came back.

“He has a very clever face,” said Jane, and Mr. Mansar grunted.

Anthony had not the slightest doubt as to whom they were talking about. When she said “clever face” he knew it was himself.

They did not return again, and Anthony waited on, a little impatient, a little curious; he had decided that he himself would make a move to go, when Mr. Mansar came into the library and carefully closed the door behind him.

“I want a little talk with you, Mr. Newton,” he said solemnly. “It has occurred to me that you might be of the very greatest service to my firm.”

Anthony cleared his throat. The same thought had occurred to him also.

“Do you know Brussels at all?”

“Intimately,” said Anthony promptly. He had never been to Brussels, but he knew that he could get a working knowledge of the city from any guide book.

Mr. Mansar stroked his chin, pursed his lips, frowned, and then:

“It is providential, your arriving,” he said. “I have a very confidential mission which I have been looking for somebody to undertake. In fact, I thought of going to town this afternoon to find a man for the purpose but, as I say, your arrival has been miraculously providential. I have been discussing it with my daughter, I hope you will forgive that little impertinence,” he said, courteously.

Anthony Newton forgave him there and then.

“My daughter, who is a judge of character, is rather impressed by you.”

It was clear to Anthony now that he had been the subject of the conversation he had overheard. He was tingling with curiosity to discover exactly the nature of the mission which was to be entrusted to him. Mr. Mansar did not keep him waiting long.

“I want you to go by tonight’s train to Brussels. You will arrive on Sunday morning, and remain there until Wednesday morning. Have you sufficient money for your journey?”

“Oh, yes,” said Anthony, airily.

“Good.” Mr. Mansar nodded gravely, as though he had never had any doubt upon the matter. “You will carry with you a sealed envelope, which you will open on Wednesday morning in the presence of my Brussels agent, Monsieur Lament, of the firm of Lament and Lament, the great financiers, of whom you must have heard.”

“Naturally,” said Anthony.

“I want you to keep your mission a secret, tell nobody, you understand?”

Anthony understood perfectly.

“I leave the method of travel to you. There is a train to London in half an hour; here is the letter.”

He took it from his inside pocket. It was addressed to Mr. Anthony Newton, and marked “To be opened in the presence of Monsieur Cecil Lament, 119, Rue Partriele, Brussels.”

“I do not promise you that you will be paid very well or even be paid at all, for undertaking this mission,” said the millionaire. “But I rather fancy this experience will be useful to you in more ways than one.”

Anthony detected a certain significance in this cautious promise and smiled happily.

“I think I’ll go along now, sir,” he said briskly. “When I carry out these missions — and as you may guess, this is not the first time that I have been — entrusted with important errands — I prefer that I should lose no time.”

“I think you’re wise,” said Mr. Mansar soberly.

Anthony hoped to see the girl before he went, but here he was disappointed. It was a very ordinary chauffeur who drove him to the station and, passing the wreckage of his car stranded in the ditch, Anthony did not regret one single penny of his expenditure. Anyway, the car would still sell for the price of old iron.

He reached Brussels in time for breakfast on Sunday morning, and on the Monday he made a call at Monsieur Lament’s office. Monsieur Lament was a short, stout man, with a large and bushy beard, and seemed surprised at the advent of this spruce and mysterious young Englishman.

“From M’sieur Mansar,” he said with respect, even veneration. “M’sieur Mansar did not tell me he was sending anybody. Is it in connection with the Rentes?”

“I am not at liberty to say,” said Anthony discreetly. “In fact, sir, I am, so to speak, under sealed orders.”

Monsieur Lament heard the explanation and nodded.

“I honour your discretion, M’sieur,” he said. “Now is there anything I can do for you while you are in Brussels? Perhaps you would dine with me tonight at my club.”

Anthony was very happy to dine with him at his club, because he had brought with him a grossly insufficient sum to pay his expenses.

Over the dinner that night, Monsieur Lament spoke reverently of the great English financier.

“What a wonderful man,” he said, with an expressive gesture. “You are a friend of his, M’sieur Newton?”

“Not exactly a friend,” said Anthony carefully, “how can one be a friend of a monument? One can only stand at a distance and admire.”

“True, true,” said the thoughtful Monsieur Lament. “He is indeed, a remarkable character. And his daughter—” he kissed the tips of his fingers, “what charm, what intelligence, what beauty!”

“Ah!” said Anthony, “what!”

So charming a companion was he, that Monsieur Lament asked him to lunch with him the next day, and this time the Belgian showed some curiosity as to the object of Anthony’s visit.

“Is it in connection with the Turkish loan?” he asked.

Anthony smiled.

“You will, I am sure, agree with me that I must maintain the utmost secrecy,” he said firmly.

“Naturally! Of course! Certainly!” said Monsieur Lament hastily. “I honour your discretion. But if it is in connection with the Turkish loan, or the Viennese Municipal loan—”

Anthony raised his hand with a gesture of gentle insistence.

Monsieur Lament dissolved into apologies.

Anthony was himself curious and he attended M. Lament’s office on Wednesday morning with a joyous sense of anticipation.

In that rosewood-panelled room standing with his back to the white marble fireplace, he tore the flap of the envelope with fingers that shook, for he realised that he might be at the very crisis of his career; and that his good plan to drop into financial society had succeeded beyond his wildest hope.

To his amazement, the letter was from Jane Mansar, and he read it, open-mouthed.

Anthony read the letter three times, and then looked mechanically at the slip of paper which was enclosed. It ran:

Monsieur Lament was watching the dazed young man.

“Is it important?” he asked eagerly. “Is it to be communicated to me?”

Anthony was never wholly overcome by the most tremendous circumstances. He folded the letter, put it in his pocket, looked at the slip again.

“I regret that I cannot tell you all that this contains,” he said. “I am leaving immediately for Berlin. From Berlin I go to Vienna, from Vienna to Istanbul; from there I must make a hurried journey to Rome, and from Rome I have to get to Tangier. Then I shall reach Gibraltar in a month’s time, and fly to England.”

He handed the slip to Monsieur Lament.

“Pay Mr. Anthony Newton a sufficient sum to enable him to reach London and support him on the journey.”

Monsieur Lament looked at Anthony. “How much will you require, M’sieur?” he asked respectfully.

“About nine hundred pounds, I think,” said Anthony softly.

Monsieur Lament gave him the money then and there and when Mansar got the account he was justifiably annoyed.

He came into Jane, storming.

“That... that...” he spluttered, “rascal...”

“Which rascal, Daddy, you know so many,” she was half smiling.

“Newton... as you know, I gave Lament an order to pay his expenses to London?”

She nodded.

“Well, he drew nine hundred pounds.”

The girl opened her eyes with joyous amazement.

“He told Lament that he was coming home by way of Berlin, Vienna, Istanbul, and Rome,” groaned Mr. Mansar. “Thank God the trans-Siberian railway isn’t working!” he added. It was the one source of comfort he had.

The Fifteen Murderers Ben Hecht

The remarkable Ben Hecht (1894–1964) was a child prodigy on the violin, giving a concert in Chicago at the age of ten. As a young teenager, he spent his summer vacations in Wisconsin touring as an acrobat with a small circus. He ran away to Chicago at sixteen, owning and managing an “art theater” before becoming a successful journalist, first as a crime reporter and then as a foreign correspondent.

He was an integral part of the Chicago literary renaissance in the 1920s, writing newspaper columns, short stories, novels, and dramas. Cowriting The Front Page with Charles MacArthur made him famous and wealthy; it has been produced on the stage frequently since it opened in New York in 1928 and has served as the basis for numerous motion pictures under its original title and others, including His Girl Friday.

It is fair to say that Hecht was the most successful screenwriter in Hollywood history, both critically and in terms of the popularity of his films. Among his nearly one hundred screen credits are Underworld (1927), winner of the first Academy Award for Original Screenplay, The Front Page (1931), Scarface (1932), Gunga Din (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939), It’s a Wonderful World (1939), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), and Kiss of Death (1947). Films on which he worked extensively but did not receive screen credit include Stagecoach (1939), Gone With the Wind (1939), Foreign Correspondent (1940), The Thing from Another World (1951), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956), and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).

“The Fifteen Murderers” was first published in the January 16, 1943, issue of Collier’s Magazine. It was first collected in The Collected Stories of Ben Hecht as “The Miracle of the Fifteen Murderers” (New York, Crown, 1945).

There is always an aura of mystery to the conclaves of medical men. One may wonder whether the secrecy with which the fraternity surrounds its gatherings is designed to keep the layman from discovering how much it knows or how much it doesn’t know. Either knowledge would be unnerving to that immemorial guinea pig who submits himself to the abracadabras of chemicals, scalpels, and incantations under the delusion he is being cured rather than explored.

Among the most mysterious of medical get-togethers in this generation have been those held in New York City by a group of eminent doctors calling themselves the X Club. Every three months this little band of healers have hied them to the Walton Hotel overlooking the East River and, behind locked doors and beyond the eye of even medical journalism, engaged themselves in unknown emprise lasting till dawn.

What the devil had been going on in these conclaves for twenty years no one knew, not even the ubiquitous head of the American Medical Association, nor yet any of the colleagues, wives, friends, or dependents of the X Club’s members. The talent for secrecy is highly developed among doctors who, even with nothing to conceal, are often as close-mouthed as old-fashioned bomb throwers on their way to a rendezvous.

How then do I know the story of these long-guarded sessions? The answer is — the war. The war has put an end to them, as it has to nearly all mysteries other than its own. The world, engaged in re-examining its manners and its soul, has closed the door on minor adventure. Nine of the fifteen medical sages who comprised the X Club are in uniform and preside over combat-zone hospitals. Deficiencies of age and health have kept the others at home — with increased labors. There is a part of science which retains a reluctant interest in the misfortunes of civilians and has not yet removed its eye entirely from the banal battlefields on which they ignominiously keep perishing.

“Considering that we have disbanded,” Dr. Alex Hume said to me at dinner one evening, “and that it is unlikely we shall ever assemble again, I see no reason for preserving our secret. Yours is a childish and romantic mind, and may be revolted by the story I tell you. You will undoubtedly translate the whole thing into some sort of diabolical tale and miss the deep human and scientific import of the X Club. But I am not the one to reform the art of fiction, which must substitute sentimentality for truth, and Cinderella for Galileo.”

And so on. I will skip the rest of my friend’s all-knowing prelude. You may have read Dr. Hume’s various books, dealing with the horseplay of the subconscious. If you have, you know this baldheaded mastermind well enough. If not, take my word for it that he is a genius. There is nobody I know more adept at prancing around in the solar-plexus swamps out of which most of the world’s incompetence and confusion appear to rise. He has, too, if there is any doubt about his great talent, the sneer and chuckle which are the war whoop of the superpsychologist. His face is round and his mouth is pursed in a chronic grimace of disbelief and contradiction. You can’t help such an expression once you have discovered what a scurvy and detestable morass is the soul of man. Like most subterranean workers, my friend is almost as blind as a bat behind his heavy glasses. And like many leading psychiatrists, he favors the short and balloonlike physique of Napoleon.

The last dramatic meeting of the X Club was held on a rainy March night. Despite the hostile weather, all fifteen of its members attended, for there was an added lure to this gathering. A new member was to be inducted into the society.

Dr. Hume was assigned to prepare the neophyte for his debut. And it was in the wake of the round-faced soul fixer that Dr. Samuel Warner entered the sanctum of the X Club.

Dr. Warner was unusually young for a medical genius — that is, a recognized one. And he had never received a fuller recognition of his wizardry with saw, ax, and punch hole than his election as a member of the X Club. For the fourteen older men who had invited him to be one of them were leaders in their various fields. They were the medical peerage. This does not mean necessarily that any layman had ever heard of them. Eminence in the medical profession is as showy at best as a sprig of edelweiss on a mountaintop. The war, which offers its magic billboards for the vanities of small souls and transmutes the hunger for publicity into sacrificial and patriotic ardors, has not yet disturbed the anonymity of the great medicos. They have moved their bushels to the front lines and are busy under them, spreading their learning among the wounded.

The new member was a tense and good-looking man with the fever of hard work glowing in his steady dark eyes. His wide mouth smiled quickly and abstractedly, as is often the case with surgeons who train their reactions not to interfere with their concentration.

Having exchanged greetings with the eminent club members, who included half of his living medical heroes, Dr. Warner seated himself in a corner and quietly refused a highball, a cocktail, and a slug of brandy. His face remained tense, his athletic body straight in its chair as if it were poised for a sprint rather than a meeting.

At nine o’clock Dr. William Tick ordered an end to all the guzzling and declared the fifty-third meeting of the X Club in session. The venerable diagnostician placed himself behind a table at the end of the ornate hotel room and glared at the group ranged in front of him.

Dr. Tick had divided his seventy-five years equally between practising the art of medicine and doing his best to stamp it out — such, at least, was the impression of the thousands of students who had been submitted to his irascible guidance. As Professor of Internal Medicine at a great Eastern medical school, Dr. Tick had favored the Education by Insult theory of pedagogy. There were eminent doctors who still winced when they recalled some of old bilious-eyed, arthritic, stooped Tick’s appraisals of their budding talents, and who still shuddered at the memory of his medical philosophy.

“Medicine,” Dr. Tick had confided to flock after flock of students, “is a noble dream and at the same time the most ancient expression of error and idiocy known to man. Solving the mysteries of heaven has not given birth to as many abortive findings as has the quest into the mysteries of the human body. When you think of yourselves as scientists, I want you always to remember everything you learn from me will probably be regarded tomorrow as the naïve confusions of a pack of medical aborigines. Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.

“There are two handicaps to the practice of medicine,” Tick had repeated tenaciously through forty years of teaching. “The first is the eternal charlatanism of the patient who is full of fake diseases and phantom agonies. The second is the basic incompetence of the human mind, medical or otherwise, to observe without prejudice, acquire information without becoming too smug to use it intelligently, and most of all, to apply its wisdom without vanity.”

From behind his table old Tick’s eyes glared at the present group of “incompetents” until a full classroom silence had arrived, and then turned to the tense, good-looking face of Dr. Warner.

“We have a new medical genius with us tonight,” he began, “one I well remember in his prewizard days. A hyperthyroid with kidney disfunction indicated. But not without a trace of talent. For your benefit, Sam, I will state the meaning and purpose of our organization.”

“I have already done that,” said Dr. Hume, “rather thoroughly.”

“Dr. Hume’s explanations to you,” Tick continued coldly, “if they are of a kind with his printed works, have most certainly left you dazed if not dazzled.”

“I understood him quite well,” Warner said.

“Nonsense,” old Tick said. “You always had a soft spot for psychiatry and I always warned you against it. Psychiatry is a plot against medicine. And who knows but it may someday overthrow us? In the meantime it behooves us not to consort too freely with the enemy.”

You may be sure that Dr. Hume smiled archly at this.

“You will allow me,” Tick went on, “to clarify whatever the learned Hume has been trying to tell you.”

“Well, if you want to waste time.” The new member smiled nervously and mopped his neck with a handkerchief.

Dr. Frank Rosson, the portly and distinguished gynecologist, chuckled. “Tick’s going good tonight,” he whispered to Hume.

“Senility inflamed by sadism,” said Hume.

“Dr. Warner,” the pedagogue continued, “the members of the X Club have a single and interesting purpose in their meeting. They come together every three months to confess to some murder any of them may have committed since our last assembly. I am referring, of course, to medical murder. Although it would be a relief to hear any one of us confess to a murder performed out of passion rather than stupidity. Indeed, Dr. Warner, if you have killed a wife or polished off an uncle recently, and would care to unbosom yourself, we will listen respectfully. It is understood that nothing you say will be brought to the attention of the police or the A.M.A.”

Old Tick’s eyes paused to study the growing tension in the new member’s face.

“I am sure you have not slain any of your relatives,” he sighed, “or that you will ever do so except in the line of duty.

“The learned Hume,” he went on, “has undoubtedly explained these forums to you on the psychiatric basis that confession is good for the soul. This is nonsense. We are not here to ease our souls but to improve them. Our real purpose is scientific. Since we dare not admit our mistakes to the public and since we are too great and learned to be criticized by the untutored laity and since such inhuman perfection as that to which we pretend is not good for our weak and human natures, we have formed this society. It is the only medical organization in the world where the members boast only of their mistakes.

“And now,” Tick beamed on the neophyte, “allow me to define what we consider a real, fine professional murder. It is the killing of a human being who has trustingly placed himself in a doctor’s hands. Mind you, the death of a patient does not in itself spell murder. We are concerned only with those cases in which the doctor, by a wrong diagnosis or by demonstrably wrong medication or operative procedure, has killed off a patient who, without the aforesaid doctor’s attention, would have continued to live and prosper.”

“Hume explained all this to me,” the new member muttered impatiently, and then raised his voice: “I appreciate that this is my first meeting and that I might learn more from my distinguished colleagues by listening than by talking. But I have something rather important to say.”

“A murder?” Tick asked.

“Yes,” said the new member.

The old Professor nodded. “Very good,” he said. “And we shall be glad to listen to you. But we have several murderers on the docket ahead of you.”

The new member was silent and remained sitting bolt upright in his chair. It was at this point that several, including Hume, noticed there was something more than stage fright in the young surgeon’s tension. The certainty filled the room that Sam Warner had come to his first meeting of the X Club with something violent and mysterious boiling in him.

Dr. Philip Kurtiff, the eminent neurologist, put his hand on Warner’s arm and said quietly, “There’s no reason to feel bad about anything you’re going to tell us. We’re all pretty good medical men and we’ve all done worse — whatever it is.”

“If you please,” old Tick demanded, “we will have silence. This is not a sanatorium for doctors with guilt complexes. It is a clinic for error. And we will continue to conduct it in an orderly, scientific fashion. If you want to hold Sam Warner’s hand, Kurtiff, that’s your privilege. But do it in silence.”

He beamed suddenly at the new member.

“I confess,” he went on, “that I’m as curious as anybody to hear how so great a know-it-all as our young friend Dr. Warner could have killed off one of his customers. But our curiosity will have to wait. Since five of you were absent from our last gathering I think that the confession of Dr. James Sweeney should be repeated for your benefit.”

Dr. Sweeney stood up and turned his lugubrious face and shining eyes to the five absentees. Of all present, Sweeney was considered next to old Tick the ablest diagnostician in the East.

“Well,” he said in his preoccupied monotone, “I told it once, but I’ll tell it again. I sent a patient to my X-ray room to have a fluoroscopy done. My assistant gave him a barium meal to drink and put him under the fluoroscope. I walked in a half hour later to observe progress and when I saw the patient under the fluoroscopic screen I observed to my assistant, Dr. Kroch, that it was amazing and that I had never seen anything like it. Kroch was too overcome to bear me out.

“What I saw was that the patient’s entire stomach and lower esophagus were motionless and dilated, apparently made out of stone. And as I studied this phenomenon, I noticed it was becoming clearer and sharper. The most disturbing factor in the situation was that we both knew there was nothing to be done. Dr. Kroch, in fact, showed definite signs of hysteria. Shortly afterward the patient became moribund and fell to the floor.”

“Well, I’ll be damned!” several of those who had been absent cried in unison, Dr. Kurtiff adding, “What was it?”

“It was simple,” said Sweeney. “The bottom of the glass out of which the patient had drunk his barium meal was caked solid. We had filled him up with plaster of Paris. I fancy the pressure caused a fatal coronary attack.”

“Good Lord,” the new member said. “How did it get into the glass?”

“Through some pharmaceutical error,” said Sweeney mildly.

“What, if anything, was the matter with the patient before he adventured into your office?” Dr. Kurtiff inquired.

“The autopsy revealed chiefly a solidified stomach and esophagus,” said Sweeney. “But I think from several indications that there may have been a little tendency to pyloric spasm, which caused the belching for which he was referred to me.”

“A rather literary murder,” said old Tick. “A sort of Pygmalion in reverse.”

The old Professor paused and fastened his red-rimmed eyes on Warner. “By the way, before we proceed,” he said, “I think it is time to tell you the full name of our club. Our full name is the X Marks the Spot Club. We prefer, of course, to use the abbreviated title as being a bit more social sounding.”

“Of course,” said the new member, whose face now appeared to be getting redder.

“And now,” announced old Tick, consulting a scribbled piece of paper, “our first case on tonight’s docket will be Dr. Wendell Davis.”

There was silence as the elegant stomach specialist stood up. Davis was a doctor who took his manner as seriously as his medicine. Tall, solidly built, gray-haired and beautifully barbered, his face was without expression — a large, pink mask that no patient, however ill and agonized, had ever seen disturbed.

“I was called late last summer to the home of a workingman,” he began. “Senator Bell had given a picnic for some of his poorer constituency. As a result of this event, the three children of a steamfitter named Horowitz were brought down with food poisoning. They had overeaten at the picnic. The Senator, as host, felt responsible, and I went to the Horowitz home at his earnest solicitation. I found two of the children very sick and vomiting considerably. They were nine and eleven. The mother gave me a list of the various foods all three of them had eaten. It was staggering. I gave them a good dose of castor oil.

“The third child, aged seven, was not as ill as the other two. He looked pale, had a slight fever, felt some nausea — but was not vomiting. It seemed obvious that he too was poisoned to a lesser degree. Accordingly I prescribed an equal dose of castor oil for the youngest child — just to be on the safe side.

“I was called by the father in the middle of the night. He was alarmed over the condition of the seven-year-old. He reported that the other two children were much improved. I told him not to worry, that the youngest had been a little late in developing food poisoning but would unquestionably be better in the morning, and that his cure was as certain as his sister’s and brother’s.

“When I hung up I felt quite pleased with myself for having anticipated the youngest one’s condition and prescribed the castor oil prophylactically. I arrived at the Horowitz home at noon the next day and found the two older children practically recovered. The seven-year-old, however, appeared to be very sick indeed. They had been trying to reach me since breakfast. The child had 105 degrees’ temperature. It was dehydrated, the eyes sunken and circled, the expression pinched, the nostrils dilated, the lips cyanotic and the skin cold and clammy.”

Dr. Davis paused. Dr. Milton Morris, the renowned lung specialist, spoke. “It died within a few hours?” he asked.

Dr. Davis nodded.

“Well,” Dr. Morris said quietly, “it seems pretty obvious. The child was suffering from acute appendicitis when you first saw it. The castor oil ruptured its appendix. By the time you got around to looking at it again, peritonitis had set in.”

“Yes,” said Dr. Davis slowly. “That’s exactly what happened.”

“Murder by castor oil,” old Tick cackled, “plus an indifference to the poor.”

“Not at all,” Dr. Davis said. “All three children had been at the picnic, overeaten alike and revealed the same symptoms.”

“Not quite the same,” Dr. Hume said.

“Oh, you would have psychoanalyzed the third child?” Dr. Davis smiled.

“No,” said Hume. “I would have examined its abdomen like any penny doctor, considering that it had some pain and nausea, and found it rigid with both direct and rebound tenderness.”

“Yes, it would have been an easy diagnosis for a medical student,” Dr. Kurtiff agreed. “But unfortunately, we have outgrown the humility of medical students.”

“Dr. Davis’s murder is morally instructive,” old Tick announced, “but I find it extremely dull. I have a memo from Dr. Kenneth Wood. Dr. Wood has the floor.”

The noted Scotch surgeon, famed in his college days as an Olympic Games athlete, stood up. He was still a man of prowess, large-handed, heavy-shouldered and with the purr of masculine strength in his soft voice.

“I don’t know what kind of murder you can call this.” Dr. Wood smiled at his colleagues.

“Murder by butchery is the usual title,” Tick said.

“No, I doubt that,” Dr. Morris protested. “Ken’s too skillful to cut off anybody’s leg by mistake.”

“I guess you’ll have to call it just plain murder by stupidity,” Dr. Wood said softly.

Old Tick cackled. “If you’d paid a little more attention to diagnosis than to shot-putting you wouldn’t be killing off such hordes of patients,” he said.

“This is my first report in three years,” Wood answered modestly. “And I’ve been operating at the rate of four or five daily, including holidays.”

“My dear Kenneth,” Dr. Hume said, “every surgeon is entitled to one murder in three years. A phenomenal record, in fact — when you consider the temptations.”

“Proceed with the crime,” Tick said.

“Well” — the strong-looking surgeon turned to his hospital colleague, the new member — “you know how it is with these acute gall bladders, Sam.”

Warner nodded abstractedly.

Dr. Wood went on: “Brought in late at night. In extreme pain. I examined her. Found the pain in the right upper quadrant of the abdomen. It radiated to the back and right shoulder. Completely characteristic of gall bladder. I gave her opiates. They had no effect on her, which, as you know, backs up any gall-bladder diagnosis. Opiates never touch the gall bladder.”

“We know that,” said the new member nervously.

“Excuse me,” Dr. Wood smiled. “I want to get all the points down carefully. Well, I gave her some nitroglycerin to lessen the pain then. Her temperature was 101. By morning the pain was so severe that it seemed certain the gall bladder had perforated. I operated. There was nothing wrong with her gall bladder. She died an hour later.”

“What did the autopsy show?” Dr. Sweeney asked.

“Wait a minute,” Wood answered. “You’re supposed to figure it out, aren’t you? Come on — you tell me what was the matter with her.”

“Did you take her history?” Dr. Kurtiff asked after a pause.

“No,” Wood answered.

“Aha!” Tick snorted. “There you have it! Blind man’s buff again.”

“It was an emergency.” Wood looked flushed. “And it seemed an obvious case. I’ve had hundreds of them.”

“The facts seem to be as follows,” Tick spoke up. “Dr. Wood murdered a woman because he misunderstood the source of a pain. We have, then, a very simple problem. What besides the gall bladder can produce the sort of pain that that eminent surgeon has described?”

“Heart,” Dr. Morris answered quickly.

“You’re getting warm,” said Wood.

“Before operating on anyone with so acute a pain, and in the absence of any medical history,” Tick went on, “I would most certainly have looked at the heart.”

“Well, you’d have done right,” said Wood quietly. “The autopsy showed an infraction of the descending branch of the right coronary artery.”

“Which a cardiogram would have told you,” said old Tick. “But you didn’t have to go near a cardiograph. All you had to do is ask one question. If you had even called up a neighbor of the patient she would have told you that previous attacks of pain came on exertion — which would have spelled heart, and not gall bladder.

“Murder by a sophomore,” old Tick pronounced wrathfully.

“The first and last,” said Wood quietly. “There won’t be any more heart-case mistakes in my hospital.”

“Good, good,” old Tick said. “And now, gentlemen, the crimes reported thus far have been too infantile for discussion. We have learned nothing from them other than that science and stupidity go hand in hand, a fact already too well known to us. However, we have with us tonight a young but extremely talented wielder of the medical saws. He has been sitting here for the last hour, fidgeting like a true criminal, sweating with guilt and a desire to tell all. Gentlemen, I give you our new and youngest culprit, Dr. Samuel Warner.”

Dr. Warner faced his fourteen eminent colleagues with a sudden excitement in his manner. His eyes glittered and the dusty look of hard work and near exhaustion already beginning to mark his youth lifted from his face.

The older men regarded him quietly and with various degrees of irritation. They knew, without further corroboration than his manner, that this medico was full of untenable theories and half-baked medical discoveries. They had been full of such things themselves once. And they settled back to enjoy themselves. There is nothing as pleasing to a graying medical man as the opportunity of slapping a dunce cap on the young of science. Old Tick, surveying his colleagues, grinned. They had all acquired the look of pedagogues holding a switch behind their backs.

Dr. Warner mopped his neck with his wet handkerchief and smiled knowingly at the medical peerage.

“I’ll give you this case in some detail,” he said, “because I think it contains as interesting a problem as you can find in practice.”

Dr. Rosson, the gynecologist, grunted, but said nothing.

“The patient was a young man, or rather a boy,” Warner went on eagerly. “He was seventeen, and amazingly talented. He wrote poetry. That’s how I happened to meet him. I read one of his poems in a magazine, and it was so impressive I wrote him a letter.”

“Rhymed poetry?” Dr. Wood asked, with a wink at old Tick.

“Yes,” said Warner. “I read all his manuscripts. They were sort of revolutionary. His poetry was a cry against injustice. Every kind of injustice. Bitter and burning.”

“Wait a minute,” Dr. Rosson said. “The new member seems to have some misconception of our function. We are not a literary society, Warner.”

“And before you get started,” Dr. Hume grinned, “no bragging. You can do your bragging at the annual surgeons’ convention.”

“Gentlemen,” Warner said, “I have no intention of bragging. I’ll stick to murder, I assure you. And as bad a one as you’ve ever heard.”

“Good,” Dr. Kurtiff said. “Go on. And take it easy and don’t break down.”

“Yes.” Dr. Wood grinned. “I remember when Morris here made his first confession. We had to pour a quart of whisky into him before he quit blubbering.”

“I won’t break down,” Warner said. “Don’t worry. Well, the patient was sick for two weeks before I was called.”

“I thought you were his friend,” Dr. Davis said.

“I was,” Warner answered. “But he didn’t believe in doctors.”

“No faith in them, eh?” old Tick cackled. “Brilliant boy.”

“He was,” said Warner eagerly. “I felt upset when I came and saw how sick he was. I had him moved to a hospital at once.”

“Oh, a rich poet,” Dr. Sweeney said.

“No,” said Warner. “I paid his expenses. And I spent all the time I could with him. The sickness had started with a severe pain on the left side of the abdomen. He was going to call me, but the pain subsided after three days, so the patient thought he was well. But it came back in two days and he began running a temperature. He developed diarrhea. There was pus and blood, but no amoeba or pathogenic bacteria when he finally sent for me.

“After the pathology reports I made a diagnosis of ulcerative colitis. The pain being on the left side ruled out the appendix. I put the patient on sulfaguanidin and unconcentrated liver extract, and gave him a high protein diet — chiefly milk. Despite this treatment and constant observation the patient got worse. He developed generalized abdominal tenderness, both direct and rebound, and rigidity of the entire left rectus muscle. After two weeks of careful treatment the patient died.”

“And the autopsy showed you’d been wrong?” Dr. Wood asked.

“I didn’t make an autopsy,” said Warner. “The boy’s parents had perfect faith in me. As did the boy. They both believed I was doing everything possible to save his life.”

“Then how do you know you were wrong in your diagnosis?” Dr. Hume asked.

“By the simple fact,” said Warner irritably, “that the patient died instead of being cured. When he died I knew I had killed him by a faulty diagnosis.”

“A logical conclusion,” said Dr. Sweeney. “Pointless medication is no alibi.”

“Well, gentlemen,” old Tick cackled from behind his table, “our talented new member has obviously polished off a great poet and close personal friend. Indictments of his diagnosis are now in order.”

But no one spoke. Doctors have a sense for things unseen and complications unstated. And nearly all the fourteen looking at Warner felt there was something hidden. The surgeon’s tension, his elation and its overtone of mockery, convinced them there was something untold in the story of the dead poet. They approached the problem cautiously.

“How long ago did the patient die?” Dr. Rosson asked.

“Last Wednesday,” said Warner. “Why?”

“What hospital?” asked Davis.

“St. Michael’s,” said Warner.

“You say the parents had faith in you,” said Kurtiff, “and still have. Yet you seem curiously worried about something. Has there been any inquiry by the police?”

“No,” said Warner. “I committed the perfect crime. The police haven’t even heard of it. And even my victim died full of gratitude.” He beamed at the room. “Listen,” he went on, “even you people may not be able to disprove my diagnosis.”

This brash challenge irritated a number of the members.

“I don’t think it will be very difficult to knock out your diagnosis,” said Dr. Morris.

“There’s a catch to it,” said Wood slowly, his eyes boring at Warner.

“The only catch there is,” said Warner quickly, “is the complexity of the case. You gentlemen evidently prefer the simpler malpractice type of crime, such as I’ve listened to tonight.”

There was a pause, and then Dr. Davis inquired in a soothing voice, “You described an acute onset of pain before the diarrhea, didn’t you?”

“That’s right,” said Warner.

“Well,” Davis continued coolly, “the temporary relief of symptoms and their recurrence within a few days sounds superficially like ulcers — except for one point.”

“I disagree,” Dr. Sweeney said softly. “Dr. Warner’s diagnosis is a piece of blundering stupidity. The symptoms he has presented have nothing to do with ulcerative colitis.”

Warner flushed and his jaw muscles moved angrily. “Would you mind backing up your insults with a bit of science?” he said.

“Very easily done,” Sweeney answered calmly. “The late onset of diarrhea and fever you describe rule out ulcerative colitis in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. What do you think, Dr. Tick?”

“No ulcers,” said Tick, his eyes studying Warner.

“You mentioned a general tenderness of the abdomen as one of the last symptoms,” said Dr. Davis smoothly.

“That’s right,” said Warner.

“Well, if you have described the case accurately,” Davis continued, “there is one obvious fact revealed. The general tenderness points to a peritonitis. I’m certain an autopsy would show that this perforation had walled off and spilled over and that a piece of intestine was telescoped into another.”

“I don’t think so,” Dr. William Zinner, the cancer-research man, said. He was short, bird-faced and barely audible. Silence fell on the room, and the others waited attentively for his soft voice.

“It couldn’t be an intussusception such as Dr. Davis describes,” he went on. “The patient was only seventeen. Intussusception is unusual at that age unless the patient has a tumor of the intestines. In which case he would not have stayed alive that long.”

“Excellent,” old Tick spoke.

“I thought of intussusception,” said Warner, “and discarded it for that very reason.”

“How about a twisted gut?” Dr. Wood asked. “That could produce the symptoms described.”

“No,” said Dr. Rosson. “A volvulus means gangrene and death in three days. Warner says he attended his patient for two weeks and that the boy was sick for two weeks before Warner was called. The length of the illness rules out intussusception, volvulus, and intestinal tumor.”

“There’s one other thing,” Dr. Morris said. “A left-sided appendix.”

“That’s out, too,” Dr. Wood said quickly. “The first symptom of a left-sided appendix would not be the acute pain described by Warner.”

“The only thing we have determined,” said Dr. Sweeney, “is a perforation other than ulcer. Why not go on with that?”

“Yes,” said Dr. Morris. “Ulcerative colitis is out of the question considering the course taken by the disease. I’m sure we’re dealing with another type of perforation.”

“The next question,” announced old Tick, “is what made the perforation?”

Dr. Warner mopped his face with his wet handkerchief and said softly, “I never thought of an object perforation.”

“You should have,” Dr. Kurtiff stated.

“Come, come,” old Tick interrupted. “Let’s not wander. What caused the perforation?”

“He was seventeen,” Kurtiff answered, “and too old to be swallowing pins.”

“Unless,” said Dr. Hume, “he had a taste for pins. Did the patient want to live, Warner?”

“He wanted to live,” said Warner grimly, “more than anybody I ever knew.”

“I think we can ignore the suicide theory,” said Dr. Kurtiff. “I am certain we are dealing with a perforation of the intestines and not of the subconscious.”

“Well,” Dr. Wood spoke, “it couldn’t have been a chicken bone. A chicken bone would have stuck in the esophagus and never got through to the stomach.”

“There you are, Warner,” old Tick said. “We’ve narrowed it down. The spreading tenderness you described means a spreading infection. The course taken by the disease means a perforation other than ulcerous. And a perforation of that type means an object swallowed. We have ruled out pins and chicken bones. Which leaves us with only one other normal guess.”

“A fishbone,” said Dr. Sweeney.

“Exactly,” said Tick.

Warner stood listening tensely to the voices affirming the diagnosis. Tick delivered the verdict.

“I think we are all agreed,” he said, “that Sam Warner killed his patient by treating him for ulcerative colitis when an operation removing an abscessed fishbone would have saved his life.”

Warner moved quickly across the room to the closet where he had hung his hat and coat.

“Where are you going?” Dr. Wood called after him. “We’ve just started the meeting.”

Warner was putting on his coat and grinning.

“I haven’t got much time,” he said, “but I want to thank all of you for your diagnosis. You were right about there being a catch to the case. The catch is that my patient is still alive. I’ve been treating him for ulcerative colitis for two weeks and I realized this afternoon that I had wrongly diagnosed the case — and that he would be dead in twenty-four hours unless I could find out what really was the matter with him.”

Warner was in the doorway, his eyes glittering.

“Thanks again, gentlemen, for the consultation and your diagnosis,” he said. “It will enable me to save my patient’s life.”

A half hour later, the members of the X Club stood grouped in one of the operating rooms of St. Michael’s Hospital. They looked different from the men who had been playing a medical Halloween in the Walton Hotel. There is a change that comes over doctors when they face disease. The oldest and the weariest of them draw vigor from a crisis. The shamble leaves them and it is the straight back of the champion that enters the operating room. Confronting the problem of life and death, the tired, red-rimmed eyes become full of greatness and even beauty.

On the operating table lay the unconscious body of a Negro boy. Dr. Warner in his surgical whites stood over him.

The fourteen other X Club members watched Warner operate. Wood nodded approvingly at his speed. Rosson cleared his throat to say something, but the swift-moving hands of the surgeon held him silent. No one spoke. The minutes passed. The nurses quietly handed instruments to the surgeon. Blood spattered their hands.

Fourteen great medical men stared hopefully at the pinched and unconscious face of a colored boy who had swallowed a fishbone. No king or pope ever lay ill with more medical genius holding its breath around him.

Suddenly the perspiring surgeon raised something aloft in his forceps.

“Wash this off,” he muttered to the nurse, “and show it to these gentlemen.”

He busied himself placing drains in the abscessed cavity and then powdered some sulfanilamide into the opened abdomen to kill the infection.

Old Tick stepped forward and took the object from the nurse’s hand.

“A fishbone,” he said.

The X Club gathered around it as if it were a treasure indescribable.

“The removal of this small object,” old Tick cackled softly, “will enable the patient to continue writing poetry denouncing the greeds and horrors of our world.”

That, in effect, was the story Hume told me, plus the epilogue of the Negro poet’s recovery three weeks later. We had long finished dinner and it was late night when we stepped into the war-dimmed streets of New York. The headlines on the newsstands had changed in size only. They were larger in honor of the larger slaughters they heralded.

Looking at them you could see the death-strewn wastes of battles. But another picture came to my mind — a picture that had in it the hope of a better world. It was the hospital room in which fifteen famed and learned heroes stood battling for the life of a Negro boy who had swallowed a fishbone.

The Damsel in Distress Leslie Charteris

Simon Templar, the adventurer created by Leslie Charteris (1907–1993), although commonly known as the Saint, is anything but. He is a romantic hero who works outside the law and has grand fun doing it. Like so many crooks in literature, he is imbued with the spirit of Robin Hood, which suggests that it is perfectly all right to steal, so long as it is from someone with wealth. Most of the more than forty books about the Saint are collections of short stories or novellas, and in the majority of tales, he also functions as a detective. Unconstricted by being an official policeman, he steps outside the law to retrieve money or treasure that may not have been procured in an honorable fashion, either to restore it to its proper owner or to enrich himself. Not unlike James Bond, a remarkable number of his cases involve damsels in distress.

“Maybe I am a crook,” Templar muses, “but in between times I’m something more. In my simple way I am a kind of justice.”

In addition to the many books about the Saint, there were more than twenty films about him, the good ones starring George Sanders or Louis Hayward, as well as a comic strip, a radio series that ran for much of the 1940s, and a television series starring Roger Moore that was an international success with one hundred eighteen episodes.

Charteris was born in Singapore but spent most of his life in London, even after becoming an American citizen in 1946.

“The Damsel in Distress” was first published in the November 19, 1933, issue of Empire News under the title “The Kidnapping of the Fickle Financier.” It was first collected under its more familiar title in Boodle (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1934); the American title is The Saint Intervenes (New York, Doubleday, 1934).

“You need brains in this life of crime,” Simon Templar would say sometimes; “but I often think you need luck even more.”

He might have added that the luck had to be consistent.

Mr. Giuseppe Rolfieri was lucky up to a point, for he happened to be in Switzerland when the astounding Liverpool Municipal Bond forgery was discovered. It was a simple matter for him to slip over the border into his own native country; and when his four partners in the swindle stumbled down the narrow stairway that leads from the dock of the Old Bailey to the terrible blind years of penal servitude, he was comfortably installed in his villa at San Remo with no vengeance to fear from the Law. For it is a principle of international law that no man can be extradited from his own country, and Mr. Rolfieri was lucky to have retained his Italian citizenship even though he had made himself a power in the City of London.

Simon Templar read about the case — he could hardly have helped it, for it was one of those sensational scandals which rock the financial world once in a lifetime — but it did not strike him as a matter for his intervention. Four out of the five conspirators, including the ringleader, had been convicted and sentenced; and although it is true that there was a certain amount of public indignation at the immunity of Mr. Rolfieri, it was inevitable that the Saint, in his career of shameless lawlessness, sometimes had to pass up one inviting prospect in favour of another nearer to hand. He couldn’t be everywhere at once — it was one of the very few human limitations which he was ready to admit.

A certain Domenick Naccaro, however, had other ideas.

He called at the Saint’s apartment on Piccadilly one morning — a stout bald-headed man in a dark blue suit and a light blue waistcoat, with an unfashionable stiff collar and a stringy black tie and a luxuriant scroll of black moustache ornamenting his face — and for the first moment of alarm Simon wondered if he had been mistaken for somebody else of the same name but less respectable morals, for Signor Naccaro was accompanied by a pale pretty girl who carried a small infant swathed in a shawl.

“Is this-a Mr. Templar I have-a da honour to spik to?” asked Naccara, doffing his bowler elaborately.

“This is one Mr. Templar,” admitted the Saint cautiously.

“Ha!” said Mr. Naccaro. “It is-a da Saint himself?”

“So I’m told,” Simon answered.

“Then you are da man we look-a for,” stated Mr. Naccaro, with profound conviction.

As if taking it for granted that all the necessary formalities had therewith been observed, he bowed the girl in, bowed himself in after her, and stalked into the living-room. Simon closed the door and followed the deputation with a certain curious amusement.

“Well, brother,” he murmured, taking a cigarette from the box on the table. “Who are you, and what can I do for you?”

The flourishing bowler hat bowed the girl into one chair, bowed its owner into another, and came to rest on its owner’s knees.

“Ha!” said the Italian, rather like an acrobat announcing the conclusion of a trick. “I am Domenick Naccaro!”

“That must be rather nice for you,” murmured the Saint amiably. He waved his cigarette towards the girl and her bundle. “And is this the rest of the clan?”

“That,” said Mr. Naccaro, “is-a my daughter Maria. And in her arms she hold-as a leedle baby. A baby,” said Mr. Naccaro, with his black eyes suddenly swimming, “wis-a no father.”

“Careless of her,” Simon remarked. “What does the baby think about it?”

“Da father,” said Mr. Naccaro, contradicting himself dramatically, “is-a Giuseppe Rolfieri.”

Simon’s brows came down in a straight line, and some of the bantering amusement fell back below the surface of his blue eyes. He hitched one hip on to the edge of the table and swung his foot thoughtfully.

“How did this happen?” he asked.

“I keep-a da small-a restaurant in-a Soho,” explained Mr. Naccaro. “Rolfieri, he come-a there often to eat-a da spaghetti. Maria, she sit at-a da desk and take-a da money. You, signor, you see-a how-a she is beautiful. Rolfieri, he notice her. When-a he pay his bill, he stop-a to talk-a wis her. One day he ask-a her to go out wis him.”

Mr. Naccaro took out a large chequered handkerchief and dabbed his eyes. He went on, waving his hands in broken eloquence.

“I do not stop her. I think-a Rolfieri is-a da fine gentleman, and it is nice-a for my Maria to go out wis him. Often, they go out. I tink-a that Maria perhaps she make-a presently da good-a marriage, and I am glad for her. Then, one day, I see she is going to have-a da baby.”

“It must have been a big moment,” said the Saint gravely.

“I say to her, ‘Maria, what have-a you done?’ ” recounted Mr. Naccaro, flinging out his arms. “She will-a not tell-a me.” Mr. Naccaro shut his mouth firmly. “But presently she confess it is-a Rolfieri. I beat-a my breast.” Mr. Naccaro beat his breast. “I say, ‘I will keell-a heem; but first-a he shall marry you.’ ”

Mr. Naccaro jumped up with native theatrical effect.

“Rolfieri does-a not come any more to eat-a da spaghetti. I go to his office, and they tell me he is-a not there. I go to his house, and they tell me he is-a not there. I write-a letters, and he does-a not answer. Da time is going so quick. Presently I write-a da letter and say: ‘If you do not-a see me soon, I go to da police.’ He answer that one. He say he come soon. But he does-a not come. Then he is-a go abroad. He write again, and say he come-a to see me when he get back. But he does not-a come back. One day I read in da paper that he is-a da criminal, and da police are already look-a for him. So Maria she have-a da baby — and Rolfieri will-a never come back!”

Simon nodded.

“That’s very sad,” he said sympathetically. “But what can I do about it?”

Mr. Naccaro mopped his brow, put away his large chequered handkerchief, and sat down again.

“You are-a da man who help-a da poor people, no?” he said pleadingly. “You are-a da Saint, who always work-a to make justice?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then it is settled. You help-a me. Listen, signor, everyting, everyting is-a arrange. I have-a da good friends in England and in-a San Remo, and we put-a da money together to make-a this right. We kidnap-a Rolfieri. We bring him here in da aeroplane. But we do not-a know anyone who can fly. You, signor, you can fly-a da aeroplane.” Mr. Naccaro suddenly fell on his knees and flung out his arms. “See, signor — I humble myself. I kiss-a your feet. I beg-a you to help us and not let Maria have-a da baby wis-a no father!”

Simon allowed the operatic atmosphere to play itself out, and thereafter listened with a seriousness from which his natural superficial amusement did not detract at all. It was an appeal of the kind which he heard sometimes, for the name of the Saint was known to people who dreamed of his assistance as well as to those who lived in terror of his attentions, and he was never entirely deaf to the pleadings of those troubled souls who came to his home with a pathetic faith in miracles.

Mr. Naccaro’s proposition was more practical than most.

He and his friends, apparently, had gone into the problem of avenging the wickedness of Giuseppe Rolfieri with the conspiratorial instinct of professional vendettists. One of them had become Mr. Rolfieri’s butler in the villa at San Remo. Others, outside, had arranged the abduction down to a precise time-table. Mr. Naccaro himself had acquired an old farmhouse in Kent at which Rolfieri was to be held prisoner, with a large field adjoining it at which an aeroplane could land. The aeroplane itself had been bought, and was ready for use at Brooklands Aerodrome. The only unit lacking was a man qualified to fly it.

Once Rolfieri had been taken to the farmhouse, how would they force him through the necessary marriage?

“We make-a him,” was all that Naccaro would say, but he said it with grim conviction.

When the Saint finally agreed to take the job, there was another scene of operatic gratitude which surpassed all previous demonstrations. Money was offered; but Simon had already decided that in this case the entertainment was its own reward. He felt pardonably exhausted when at last Domenick Naccaro, bowing and scraping and yammering incoherently, shepherded his daughter, his illegitimate grandchild, and his own curling whiskers out of the apartment.

The preparations for his share in the abduction occupied Simon Templar’s time for most of the following week. He drove down to Brooklands and tested the aeroplane which the syndicate had purchased — it was an ancient Avro which must have secured its certificate of airworthiness by the skin of its ailerons, but he thought it would complete the double journey, given luck and good weather. Then there was a halfway refuelling base to be established somewhere in France — a practical necessity which had not occurred to the elemental Mr. Naccaro. Friday had arrived before he was able to report that he was ready to make the trip; and there was another scene of embarrassing gratitude.

“I send-a da telegram to take Rolfieri on Sunday night,” was the essence of Mr. Naccaro’s share in the conversation; but his blessings upon the Saint, the bones of his ancestors, and the heads of his unborn descendants for generations, took up much more time.

Simon had to admit, however, that the practical contribution of the Naccaro clan was performed with an efficiency which he himself could scarcely have improved upon. He stood beside the museum Avro on the aerodrome of San Remo at dusk on the Sunday evening, and watched the kidnapping cortège coming towards him across the field with genuine admiration. The principal character was an apparently mummified figure rolled in blankets, which occupied an invalid chair wheeled by the unfortunate Maria in the uniform of a nurse. Her pale lovely face was set in an expression of beatific solicitude at which Simon, having some idea of the fate which awaited Signor Rolfieri in England, could have hooted aloud. Beside the invalid chair stalked a sedate spectacled man whose rôle was obviously that of the devoted physician. The airport officials, who had already checked the papers of pilot and passengers, lounged boredly in the far background, without a single disturbing suspicion of the classic getaway that was being pulled off under their noses.

Between them, Simon and the “doctor” tenderly lifted the mummified figure into the machine.

“He will not wake before you arrive, signor,” whispered the man confidently, stooping to arrange the blankets affectionately round the body of his patient.

The Saint grinned gently, and stepped back to help the “nurse” into her place. He had no idea how the first stage of the abduction had been carried out, and he was not moved to inquire. He had performed similar feats himself, no less slickly, without losing the power to stand back and impersonally admire the technique of others in the same field. With a sigh of satisfaction he swung himself up into his own cockpit, signalled to the mechanic who stood waiting by the propeller of the warmed-up engine, and sent the ship roaring into the wind through the deepening dusk.

The flight north was consistently uneventful. With a south wind following to help him on, he sighted the three red lights which marked his fuelling station at about half-past two, and landed by the three flares that were kindled for him when he blinked his navigating lights. The two men procured from somewhere by Mr. Naccaro replenished his tank while he smoked a cigarette and stretched his legs, and in twenty minutes he was off again. He passed over Folkestone in the early daylight, and hedge-hopped for some miles before he reached his destination so that no inquisitive yokel should see exactly where he landed.

“You have him?” asked Mr. Naccaro, dancing about deliriously as Simon climbed stiffly down.

“I have,” said the Saint. “You’d better get him inside quickly — I’m afraid your pals didn’t dope him up as well as they thought they had, and from the way he was behaving just now I shouldn’t be surprised if he was going to have-a da baby, too.”

He stripped off his helmet and goggles, and watched the unloading of his cargo with interest. Signor Giuseppe Rolfieri had recovered considerably from the effects of the drug under whose influence he had been embarked; but the hangover, combined with some bumpy weather on the last part of the journey, restrained him hardly less effectively from much resistance. Simon had never known before that the human skin could really turn green; but the epidermis of Signor Rolfieri had literally achieved that remarkable tint.

The Saint stayed behind to help the other half of the reception committee — introduced as Mr. Naccaro’s brother — wheel the faithful Avro into the shelter of a barn; and then he strolled back to the farmhouse. As he reached it the door opened, and Naccaro appeared.

“Ha!” he cried, clasping the Saint’s shoulders. “Meester Templar — you have already been-a so kind — I cannot ask it — but you have-a da car — will you go out again?”

Simon raised his eyebrows.

“Can’t I watch the wedding?” he protested. “I might be able to help.”

“Afterwards, yes,” said Naccaro. “But we are not-a ready. Ecco, we are so hurry, so excited, when we come here we forget-a da mos’ important tings. We forget-a da soap!”

Simon blinked.

“Soap?” he repeated. “Can’t you marry him off without washing him?”

“No, no, no!” spluttered Naccaro. “You don’t understand. Da soap, she is not-a to wash. She is to persuade. I show you myself, afterwards. It is my own idea. But-a da soap we mus’ have. You will go, please, please, signor, in your car?”

The Saint frowned at him blankly for a moment; and then he shrugged.

“Okay, brother,” he murmured. “I’d do more than that to find out how you persuade a bloke to get married with a cake of soap.”

He stuffed his helmet and goggles into the pocket of his flying coat, and went round to the barn where he had parked his car before he took off for San Remo. He had heard of several strange instruments of persuasion in his time, but it was the first time he had ever met common or household soap in the guise of an implement of torture or moral coercion. He wondered whether the clan Naccaro had such a prejudiced opinion of Rolfieri’s personal cleanliness that they thought the mere threat of washing him would terrify him into meeting his just obligations, or whether the victim was first smeared with ink and then bribed with the soap, or whether he was made to eat it; and he was so fascinated by these provocative speculations that he had driven nearly half a mile before he remembered that he was not provided with the wherewithal to buy it.

Simon Templar was not stingy. He would have stood any necessitous person a cake of soap, any day. In return for a solution of the mystery which was perplexing him at that moment, he would cheerfully have stood Mr. Naccaro a whole truckload of it. But the money was not in his pocket. In a moment of absent-mindedness he had set out on his trip with a very small allowance of ready cash; and all he had left of it then was two Italian lire, the change out of the last meal he had enjoyed in San Remo.

He stopped the car and scowled thoughtfully for a second. There was no place visible ahead where he could turn it, and he had no natural desire to back half a mile down that narrow lane; but the road had led him consistently to the left since he set out, and he stood up to survey the landscape in the hope that the farmhouse might only lie a short distance across the fields as the crow flies or he could walk. And it was by doing this that he saw a curious sight.

Another car, of whose existence nobody had said anything, stood in front of the farmhouse; and into it Mr. Naccaro and his brother were hastily loading the body of the unfortunate Signor Rolfieri, now trussed with several fathoms of rope like an escape artist before demonstrating his art. The girl Maria stood by; and as soon as Rolfieri was in the car she followed him in, covered him with a rug, and settled herself comfortably on the seat. Naccaro and his brother jumped into the front, and the car drove rapidly away in the opposite direction to that which the Saint had been told to take.

Simon Templar sank slowly back behind the wheel and took out his cigarette-case. He deliberately paused to tap out a cigarette, light it, and draw the first two puffs as if he had an hour to spare; and then he pushed the gear lever into reverse and sent the great cream and red Hirondel racing back up the lane at a speed which gave no indication that he had ever hesitated to perform the manœuvre.

He turned the car round in the farmhouse gates and went on with the cut-out closed and his keen eyes vigilantly scanning the panorama ahead. The other car was a saloon, and half the time he was able to keep the roof in sight over the low hedges which hid the open Hirondel from its quarry. But it is doubtful whether the possibility of pursuit ever entered the heads of the party in front, who must have been firm in their belief that the Saint was at that moment speeding innocently towards the village to which they had directed him. Once, at a fork, he lost them; and then he spotted a tiny curl of smoke rising from the grass bank a little way up one turning, and drove slowly up to it. It was the lighted stub of a cigar which could not have been thrown out at any place more convenient for a landmark, and the Saint smiled and went on.

In a few seconds he had picked up the saloon again; and very shortly afterwards he jammed on his brakes and brought the Hirondel to a sudden halt.

The car in front had stopped before a lonely cottage whose thatched roof was clearly visible. In a flash the Saint was out of his own seat and walking silently up the lane towards it. When the next turn would have brought him within sight of the car, he slipped through a gap in the hedge and sprinted for the back of the house. In broad daylight, there was no chance of further concealment; and it was neck or nothing at that point. But his luck held; and so far as he could tell he gained the lee of his objective unobserved. And once there, an invitingly open kitchen window was merely another link in the chain of chance which had stayed with him so benevolently throughout that adventure.

Rolfieri and the Naccaro team were already inside. He could hear the muffled mutter of their voices as he tiptoed down the dark passage towards the front of the house; and presently he stood outside the door of the room where they were. Through the keyhole he was able to take in the scene. Rolfieri, still safely trussed, was sitting in a chair, and the Naccaro brothers were standing over him. The girl Maria was curled up on the settee, smoking a cigarette and displaying a remarkable length of stocking for a betrayed virgin whose honour was at stake. The conversation was in Italian, which was only one language out of the Saint’s comprehensive repertoire; and it was illuminating.

“You cannot make me pay,” Rolfieri was saying; but his stubbornness could have been more convincing.

“That is true,” Naccaro agreed. “I can only point out the disadvantages of not paying. You are in England, where the police would be very glad to see you. Your confederates have already been tried and sentenced, and it would be a mere formality for you to join them. The lightest sentence that any of them received was five years, and they could hardly give you less. If we left you here, and informed the police where to find you, it would not be long before you were in prison yourself. Surely twenty-five thousand pounds is a very small price to pay to avoid that.”

Rolfieri stared sullenly at the floor for a while and then he said: “I will give you ten thousand.”

“It will be twenty-five thousand or nothing,” said Naccaro. “Come, now — I see you are prepared to be reasonable. Let us have what we ask, and you will be able to leave England again before dark. We will tell that fool Templar that you agreed to our terms without the persuasion of the soap, and that we hurried you to the church before you changed your mind. He will fly you back to San Remo at once, and you will have nothing more to fear.”

“I have nothing to fear now,” said Rolfieri, as if he was trying to hearten himself. “It would do you no good to hand me over to the police.”

“It would punish you for wasting so much of our time and some of our money,” put in the girl, in a tone which left no room for doubt that that revenge would be taken in the last resort.

Rolfieri licked his lips and squirmed in the tight ropes which bound him — he was a fat man, and they had a lot to bind. Perhaps the glimpse of his well-fed corporation which that movement gave him made him realise some of the inescapable discomforts of penal servitude to the amateur of good living, for his voice was even more half-hearted when he spoke again.

“I have not so much money in England,” he said.

“You have a lot more than that in England,” answered the other Naccaro harshly. “It is deposited in the City and Continental Bank under the name of Pierre Fontanne; and we have a cheque on that bank made out ready for you. All we require is your signature and a letter in your own hand instructing the bank to pay cash. Be quick and make up your mind, now — we are losing patience.”

It was inevitable that there should be further argument on the subject, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

The cheque was signed and the letter was written; and Domenick Naccaro handed them over to his brother.

“Now you will let me go,” said Rolfieri.

“We will let you go when Alessandro returns with the money,” said Domenick Naccaro. “Until then, you stay here. Maria will look after you while I go back to the farm and detain Templar.”

The Saint did not need to hear any more. He went back to the kitchen with soundless speed, and let himself out of the window by which he had entered. But before he left he picked up a trophy from a shelf over the sink.

Domenick Naccaro reached the farmhouse shortly after him, and found the Saint reading a newspaper.

“Rolfieri has-a marry Maria,” he announced triumphantly, and kissed the Saint on both cheeks. “So after all I keep-a da secret of my leedle trick wis-a da soap. But everyting we owe to you, my friend!”

“I guess you do,” Simon admitted. “Where are the happy couple?”

“Ha! That is-a da romance. It seems that Signor Rolfieri was always fond of Maria, and when he hear that she have-a da baby, and he see her again — presto! he is in love wis her. So now they go to London to get-a da clothes, queeck, so she can go wis him for da honeymoon. So I tink we drink-a da wine till they come back.”

They spent a convivial morning, which Simon Templar would have enjoyed more if caution had not compelled him to tip all his drinks down the back of his chair.

It was half-past one when a car drew up outside, and a somewhat haggard Rolfieri, a jubilant Alessandro Naccaro, and a quietly smiling Maria came in. Domenick jumped up.

“Everything is all right?” he asked.

“Pairfect,” beamed Alessandro.

That was as much as the Saint was waiting to hear. He uncoiled himself from his chair and smiled at them all.

“In that case, boys and girls,” he drawled, “would you all put up your hands and keep very quiet?”

There was an automatic in his hand; and six eyes stared at it mutely. And then Domenick Naccaro smiled a wavering and watery smile.

“I tink you make-a da joke, no?” he said.

“Sure,” murmured the Saint amiably. “I make-a da joke. Just try and get obstreperous, and watch me laugh.”

He brought the glowering Alessandro towards him and searched his pockets. There was no real question of anybody getting obstreperous, but the temptation to do so must have been very near when he brought out a sheaf of new banknotes and transferred them one-handed to his own wallet.

“This must seem rather hard-hearted of me,” Simon remarked, “but I have to do it. You’re a very talented family — if you really are a family — and you must console yourselves with the thought that you fooled me for a whole ten days. When I think how easily you might have fooled me for the rest of the way, it sends cold shivers up and down my spine. Really boys, it was a rather brilliant scheme, and I wish I’d thought of it myself.”

“You wait till I see you da next time, you pig,” said Domenick churlishly.

“I’ll wait,” Simon promised him.

He backed discreetly out of the room and out of the house to his car; and they clustered in the doorway to watch him. It was not until he pressed the starter that the fullest realisation dawned upon Signor Rolfieri.

“But what happens to me?” he screamed. “How do I go back to San Remo?”

“I really don’t know, Comrade,” answered the Saint callously. “Perhaps Domenick will help you again if you give him some more money. Twenty-five thousand quid instead of five years’ penal servitude was rather a bargain price, anyway.”

He let in the clutch gently, and the big car moved forward. But in a yard or two he stopped it again, and felt in one of his pockets. He brought out his souvenir of a certain fortunate kitchen, and lobbed it towards the empurpled Domenick.

“Sorry, brother,” he called back over his shoulder. “I forget-a da soap!”