Sherlock's Sisters

by Nick Rennison

  ‘But I am going to say something about your work in this matter, Miss Strange. The big detectives about here will have to look sharp if –’

  ‘Don’t, please! Not yet.’ A smile softened the asperity of this interruption. ‘The man has yet to be caught and identified. Till that is done I cannot enjoy anyone’s congratulations. And you will see that all this may not be so easy. If no one happened to meet the desperate wretch before he had an opportunity to retie his shoelaces, there will be little for you or even for the police to go upon but his wounded foot, his undoubtedly carefully prepared alibi, and later, a woman’s confused description of a face seen but for a moment only and that under a personal excitement precluding minute attention. I should not be surprised if the whole thing came to nothing.’

  But it did not. As soon as the description was received from Mrs Amidon (a description, by the way, which was unusually clear and precise, owing to the peculiar and contradictory features of the man), the police were able to recognise him among the many suspects always under their eye. Arrested, he pleaded, just as Miss Strange had foretold, an alibi of a seemingly unimpeachable character; but neither it, nor the plausible explanation with which he endeavoured to account for a freshly healed scar amid the callouses of his right foot, could stand before Mrs Amidon’s unequivocal testimony that he was the same man she had seen in Mrs Doolittle’s upper room on the afternoon of her own happiness and of that poor woman’s murder.

  The moment when, at his trial, the two faces again confronted each other across a space no wider than that which had separated them on the dread occasion in Seventeenth Street, is said to have been one of the most dramatic in the annals of that ancient court room.

  MISS NORA VAN SNOOP

  Created by Clarence Rook (1862-1915)

  Born in Kent and educated at Oxford, Clarence Rook became a journalist and worked on a variety of newspapers and periodicals in the 1890s, from The Illustrated London News to The Idler, the magazine founded by the humourist Jerome K Jerome. The work for which he is best known is The Hooligan Nights, first published in 1899, which purports to tell the story of ‘Young Alf’, a hoodlum from Lambeth, mostly in his own words. (The book is subtitled ‘Being the Life and Opinions of a Young and Impertinent Criminal Recounted by Himself and Set Forth by Clarence Rook’.) In all likelihood, Young Alf’s adventures were largely invented by Rook. He may have had contacts among London’s street gangs but his book has some suspicious resemblances to other, undoubtedly fictional tales of the city’s slums such as Arthur Morrison’s Tales of Mean Streets. The Hooligan Nights may not be the direct reportage it claims to be but it is certainly well written and still deserves to be read. Once praised by George Bernard Shaw as ‘a very clever fellow’, Rook also wrote much else, including a volume of sketches of London life (London Sidelights), a guide to Switzerland and a number of short stories. One of the latter was ‘The Stir Outside the Café Royal’ which first appeared in The Harmsworth Magazine in September 1898. This is not a conventional detective story, in that it contains no great mystery to which a solution is discovered, but it deserves its place in this anthology because of its resourceful heroine Nora Van Snoop who is also shrewd enough to outwit a supposed master criminal.

  THE STIR OUTSIDE THE CAFÉ ROYAL

  Colonel Mathurin was one of the aristocrats of crime; at least Mathurin was the name under which he had accomplished a daring bank robbery in Detroit which had involved the violent death of the manager, though it was generally believed by the police that the Rossiter who was at the bottom of some long firm frauds in Melbourne was none other than Mathurin under another name, and that the designer and chief gainer in a sensational murder case in the Midlands was the same mysterious and ubiquitous personage.

  But Mathurin had for some years successfully eluded pursuit; indeed, it was generally known that he was the most desperate among criminals, and was determined never to be taken alive. Moreover, as he invariably worked through subordinates who knew nothing of his whereabouts and were scarcely acquainted with his appearance, the police had but a slender clue to his identity.

  As a matter of fact, only two people beyond his immediate associates in crime could have sworn to Mathurin if they had met him face to face. One of them was the Detroit bank manager whom he had shot with his own hand before the eyes of his fiancée. It was through the other that Mathurin was arrested, extradited to the States, and finally made to atone for his life of crime. It all happened in a distressingly commonplace way, so far as the average spectator was concerned. But the story, which I have pieced together from the details supplied – firstly, by a certain detective sergeant whom I met in a tavern hard by Westminster; and secondly, by a certain young woman named Miss Van Snoop – has an element of romance, if you look below the surface.

  It was about half-past one o’clock, on a bright and pleasant day, that a young lady was driving down Regent Street in a hansom which she had picked up outside her boarding house near Portland Road Station. She had told the cabman to drive slowly, as she was nervous behind a horse; and so she had leisure to scan, with the curiosity of a stranger, the strolling crowd that at nearly all hours of the day throngs Regent Street. It was a sunny morning, and everybody looked cheerful. Ladies were shopping, or looking in at the shop windows. Men about town were collecting an appetite for lunch; flower girls were selling ‘nice vi’lets, sweet vi’lets, penny a bunch’; and the girl in the cab leaned one arm on the apron and regarded the scene with alert attention. She was not exactly pretty, for the symmetry of her features was discounted by a certain hardness in the set of the mouth. But her hair, so dark as to be almost black, and her eyes of greyish blue set her beyond comparison with the commonplace.

  Just outside the Café Royal there was a slight stir, and a temporary block in the foot traffic. A brougham was setting down, behind it was a victoria, and behind that a hansom; and as the girl glanced round the heads of the pair in the brougham, she saw several men standing on the steps. Leaning back suddenly, she opened the trapdoor in the roof.

  ‘Stop here,’ she said, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  The driver drew up by the kerb, and the girl skipped out.

  ‘You shan’t lose by the change,’ she said, handing him half-a-crown.

  There was a tinge of American accent in the voice; and the cabman, pocketing the half-crown with thanks, smiled.

  ‘They may talk about that McKinley tariff,’ he soliloquised as he crawled along the kerb towards Piccadilly Circus, ‘but it’s better ‘n free trade – lumps!’

  Meanwhile the girl walked slowly back towards the Café Royal, and, with a quick glance at the men who were standing there, entered. One or two of the men raised their eyebrows; but the girl was quite unconscious, and went on her way to the luncheon-room.

  ‘American, you bet,’ said one of the loungers. ‘They’ll go anywhere and do anything.’

  Just in front of her as she entered was a tall, clean-shaven man, faultlessly dressed in glossy silk hat and frock coat, with a flower in his button-hole. He looked around for a moment in search of a convenient table. As he hesitated, the girl hesitated; but when the waiter waved him to a small table laid for two, the girl immediately sat down behind him at the next table.

  ‘Excuse me, madam,’ said the waiter, ‘this table is set for four; would you mind –’

  ‘I guess,’ said the girl, ‘I’ll stay where I am.’ And the look in her eyes, as well as a certain sensation in the waiter’s palm, ensured her against further disturbance.

  The restaurant was full of people lunching, singly or in twos, in threes and even larger parties; and many curious glances were directed to the girl who sat at a table alone and pursued her way calmly through the menu. But the girl appeared to notice no one. When her eyes were off her plate they were fixed straight ahead – on the back of the man who had entered in front of her. The man, who had drunk a half-bottle of champagne with his lunch, o
rdered a liqueur to accompany his coffee. The girl, who had drunk an aerated water, leaned back in her chair and wrinkled her brows. They were very straight brows that seemed to meet over her nose when she wrinkled them in perplexity. Then she called a waiter.

  ‘Bring me a sheet of notepaper, please,’ she said, ‘and my bill.’

  The waiter laid the sheet of paper before her, and the girl proceeded, after a few moments thought, to write a few lines in pencil upon it. When this was done, she folded the sheet carefully, and laid it in her purse. Then, having paid her bill, she returned her purse to her dress pocket, and waited patiently.

  In a few minutes the clean-shaven man at the next table settled his bill and made preparations for departure. The girl at the same time drew on her gloves, keeping her eyes immovably upon her neighbour’s back. As the man rose to depart, and passed the table at which the girl had been sitting, the girl was looking into the mirror upon the wall, and patting her hair. Then she turned and followed the man out of the restaurant, while a pair at an adjacent table remarked to one another that it was a rather curious coincidence for a man and woman to enter and leave at the same moment when they had no apparent connection.

  But what happened outside was even more curious.

  The man halted for a moment upon the steps at the entrance. The porter, who was in conversation with a policeman, turned, whistle in hand.

  ‘Hansom, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said the clean-shaven man.

  The porter was raising his whistle to his lips when he noticed the girl behind.

  ‘Do you wish for a cab, madam?’ he asked, and blew upon his whistle.

  As he turned again for an answer, he plainly saw the girl, who was standing close behind the clean-shaven man, slip her hand under his coat, and snatch from his hip pocket something which she quickly transferred to her own.

  ‘Well, I’m –’ began the clean-shaven man, swinging round and feeling in his pocket.

  ‘Have you missed anything, sir?’ said the porter, standing full in front of the girl to bar her exit.

  ‘My cigarette-case is gone,’ said the man, looking from one side to another.

  ‘What’s this?’ said the policeman, stepping forward.

  ‘I saw the woman’s hand in the gentleman’s pocket, plain as a pikestaff,’ said the porter.

  ‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ said the policeman, coming close to the girl. ‘I thought as much.’

  ‘Come now,’ said the clean-shaven man, ‘I don’t want to make a fuss. Just hand back that cigarette-case, and we’ll say no more about it.’

  ‘I haven’t got it,’ said the girl. ‘How dare you? I never touched your pocket.’

  The man’s face darkened.

  ‘Oh, come now!’ said the porter.

  ‘Look here, that won’t do,’ said the policeman, ‘you’ll have to come along of me. Better take a four-wheeler, eh, sir?’

  For a knot of loafers, seeing something interesting in the wind, had collected round the entrance.

  A four-wheeler was called, and the girl entered, closely followed by the policeman and the clean-shaven man.

  ‘I was never so insulted in my life,’ said the girl.

  Nevertheless, she sat back quite calmly in the cab, as though she was perfectly ready to face this or any other situation, while the policeman watched her closely to make sure that she did not dispose in any surreptitious way of the stolen article.

  At the police station hard by, the usual formalities were gone through, and the clean-shaven man was constituted prosecutor. But the girl stoutly denied having been guilty of any offence.

  The inspector in charge looked doubtful.

  ‘Better search her,’ he said.

  And the girl was led off to a room for an interview with the female searcher.

  The moment the door closed the girl put her hand into her pocket, pulled out the cigarette-case, and laid it upon the table.

  ‘There you are,’ she said. ‘That will fix matters so far.’

  The woman looked rather surprised.

  ‘Now,’ said the girl, holding out her arms, ‘feel in this other pocket, and find my purse.’

  The woman picked out the purse.

  ‘Open it and read the note on the bit of paper inside.’

  On the sheet of paper which the waiter had given her, the girl had written these words, which the searcher read in a muttered undertone:

  ‘I am going to pick this man’s pocket as the best way of getting him into a police station without violence. He is Colonel Mathurin, alias Rossiter, alias Connell, and he is wanted in Detroit, New York, Melbourne, Colombo, and London. Get four men to pin him unawares, for he is armed and desperate. I am a member of the New York detective force – Nora Van Snoop.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Miss Van Snoop, quickly, as the searcher looked up at her after reading the note. ‘Show that to the boss – right away.’

  The searcher opened the door. After whispered consultation the inspector appeared, holding the note in his hand.

  ‘Now then, be spry,’ said Miss Van Snoop. ‘Oh, you needn’t worry! I’ve got my credentials right here,’ and she dived into another pocket.

  ‘But do you know – can you be sure,’ said the inspector, ‘that this is the man who shot the Detroit bank manager?’

  ‘Great heavens! Didn’t I see him shoot Will Stevens with my own eyes! And didn’t I take service with the police to hunt him out?’

  The girl stamped her foot, and the inspector left. For two, three, four minutes, she stood listening intently. Then a muffled shout reached her ears. Two minutes later the inspector returned.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘We have found enough evidence on him to identify him. But why didn’t you give him in charge before to the police?’

  ‘I wanted to arrest him myself,’ said Miss Van Snoop, ‘and I have. Oh, Will! Will!’

  Miss Van Snoop sank into a cane-bottomed chair, laid her head upon the table, and cried. She had earned the luxury of hysterics. In half an hour she left the station, and, proceeding to a post office, cabled her resignation to the head of the detective force in New York.

  HILDA WADE

  Created by Grant Allen (1848-1899)

  Although largely forgotten today, Grant Allen was a popular and versatile writer who published books, both non-fiction and fiction, on a wide variety of subjects and in a number of different genres. His best known and most notorious book, The Woman Who Did, appeared in 1895 and attracted controversy because of its portrait of an independent woman who defies convention to live as a single mother. Allen’s feminist sympathies were also in evidence in many of his short stories. For The Strand Magazine he created Lois Cayley, a Cambridge-educated ‘New Woman’ who is left almost penniless after the deaths of her mother and her stepfather. Undeterred, she sets out on a series of adventures which take her halfway round the world and involve her in the solution of crimes which she needs all her wit and intelligence to expose. Hilda Wade is another young woman of brilliant gifts. Her almost photographic memory is astonishing and her powers of deduction remarkable. She works as a nurse at the same hospital as her admirer, Dr Cumberledge, who is the narrator of the stories in which she features. Nursing is not her vocation. It is the means by which she can get close to the man she believes to be responsible for the death of her father. Hilda Wade: A Woman with Tenacity of Purpose is a novel, or (more accurately) a collection of interlinked stories, which takes Allen’s heroine and her would-be lover from their London hospital to the remoter regions of southern Africa in her quest for justice. Grant Allen died before he could finish it and the last chapter was completed by his friend and neighbour Arthur Conan Doyle.

  THE EPISODE OF THE NEEDLE THAT DID NOT MATCH

  ‘Sebastian is a great man,’ I said to Hilda Wade, as I sat one afternoon over a cup of t
ea she had brewed for me in her own little sitting-room. It is one of the alleviations of a hospital doctor’s lot that he may drink tea now and again with the Sister of his ward. ‘Whatever else you choose to think of him, you must admit he is a very great man.’

  I admired our famous Professor, and I admired Hilda Wade: ’twas a matter of regret to me that my two admirations did not seem in return sufficiently to admire one another. ‘Oh, yes,’ Hilda answered, pouring out my second cup; ‘he is a very great man. I never denied that. The greatest man, on the whole, I think, that I have ever come across.’

  ‘And he has done splendid work for humanity,’ I went on, growing enthusiastic.

  ‘Splendid work! Yes, splendid! (Two lumps, I believe?) He has done more, I admit, for medical science than any other man I ever met.’

  I gazed at her with a curious glance. ‘Then why, dear lady, do you keep telling me he is cruel?’ I inquired, toasting my feet on the fender. ‘It seems contradictory.’

  She passed me the muffins, and smiled her restrained smile.

  ‘Does the desire to do good to humanity in itself imply a benevolent disposition?’ she answered, obliquely.

  ‘Now you are talking in paradox. Surely, if a man works all his life long for the good of mankind, that shows he is devoured by sympathy for his species.’

  ‘And when your friend Mr Bates works all his life long at observing, and classifying ladybirds, I suppose that shows he is devoured by sympathy for the race of beetles!’

  I laughed at her comical face, she looked at me so quizzically. ‘But then,’ I objected, ‘the cases are not parallel. Bates kills and collects his ladybirds; Sebastian cures and benefits humanity.’

  Hilda smiled her wise smile once more, and fingered her apron. ‘Are the cases so different as you suppose?’ she went on, with her quick glance. ‘Is it not partly accident? A man of science, you see, early in life, takes up, half by chance, this, that, or the other particular form of study. But what the study is in itself, I fancy, does not greatly matter; do not mere circumstances as often as not determine it? Surely it is the temperament, on the whole, that tells: the temperament that is or is not scientific.’