The Crime Club

by Frank Froest

  He could see his two men arrange themselves one on each side of the door. One calmly stuck out a foot as Vernet emerged. The other caught him as he tripped. He was as helpless as a child in their hands. Not a word was spoken as he was marched with business-like haste back into the office.

  ‘Vernet,’ said Heldway, as he again confronted the trickster, ‘you will be charged with attempting to obtain money by means of a trick. You may volunteer any statement, but, remember, anything you say may be used against you. One of you two fetch a cab.’

  Returning from the police station, Heldway accepted one of Fleeting’s choice cigars, and explained.

  ‘There are a lot of people,’ he said, ‘who believe that when you know a man’s guilty, all you’ve got to do is to arrest him. Those same people would raise Cain, of course, if one really did so. I believe Vernet was a wrong ’un from the start, but when you told me of your inquiries, I was not quite certain. He wasn’t in our records, nor could I find any of our men who recognised him. Of course I cabled to France and had a little investigation made there. The French police got hold of Vernet’s bankers, who assured them that he had last been in touch with their agents at Cairo. That was only five weeks ago.’

  ‘But,’ remonstrated Fleeting, ‘Vernet was—’

  ‘Wait a minute, please. It was clear there were two Vernets. I asked the French people to procure me a photograph or a description of their Vernet, and at the same time posted them a copy of the portrait of ours. You see, it didn’t matter very much whether the man was an impostor or not until I could prove that our man was trying to defraud you. I came down to Haslemere pretty positive in my own mind. Vernet—our Vernet—showed pretty clearly that he knew I was gunning for him, and that worried me a little, for it showed he was confident of getting away with his game in spite of me. Bear in mind that I had nothing against him that was definite. I wanted to get hold of the reserve diamonds that he was planting on you. I put up the burglary hoping to get them, take a record of them and put them back. However, that fell through.

  ‘This morning, when we came up, I had arranged for a couple of men to pick up Vernet at Waterloo. They shadowed him to the bar of a public-house in Shaftesbury Avenue. There he met a crook well known to us—a man called Wiggins. They had a drink together, and then Vernet took out his cigarette-case. It was empty. Wiggins at once produced his. “Take two or three,” he said; “you’ll like them. They’re a special brand.”

  ‘I had waited at the Yard, and one of my men reported this over the ’phone. Things began to take shape and I took a chance. I ordered them to detain Wiggins on suspicion the moment the two separated. Meanwhile, there was a batch of correspondence from France for me. They had identified the photograph I sent over as that of a young Englishman named Meldrum who had once been a sort of companion to Vernet. They had broken off association over some card-cheating business. You see, you had made the mistake of confining your attention to Vernet’s standing, and as the man you were dealing with was not Vernet, you were deceived by Vernet’s good reputation.

  ‘When I came on here I knew what I had to look for. It was now merely a question of catching Meldrum in the act. I waited until the last moment, took the cigarette from him, and—there we were. Of course, Wiggins and he had concocted the idea together, and Meldrum was laying for you at Chamonix.’

  Fleeting looked rueful. ‘I must seem rather a fool,’ he said.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Heldway politely.

  V

  CREEPING JIMMIE

  CREEPING JIMMIE had invested one shilling on a cigar and nine shillings on a first-class ticket to Townsford. Both of these events advertised an exceptional occasion, for he was a careful man. Besides, he did not like cigars. He preferred cigarettes.

  Nevertheless, one must keep up appearances. What was a shilling cigar—what, for the matter of that, was a nine-shilling fare—with the rosy prospect of £5000 or its equivalent in diamonds in the imminent distance?

  So Jimmie, ponderous and prosperous, strode the platform at Waterloo, his little beady eyes alert and a comfortable glow of anticipation beneath his well-cut lounge jacket. For many long weeks he had been an habitué of Hatton Garden cafés, and the fruits of that vigil were ripening at last.

  Mr Lawrence Sheet and Mr R. K. Adhurst stepped into the picture at the same moment. But Sheet was then the only person who interested Jimmie. He breathed out a thankful cloud of smoke and picked up his suit-case.

  Now the senior partner of a Hatton Garden firm of diamond merchants who travels third class is a mean man. He is not only mean but cautious, since the publicity of the more democratic carriage is a safeguard usually as effective to the bearer of a precious burden as steel bars. Jimmie was too old a hand to swear aloud, but he was chagrined. It was at least a clean loss of four-and-sixpence, and, as if with deliberate perversity, Mr Sheet had selected a non-smoker.

  Jimmie dropped ninepennyworth of cigar on the asphalt, and with a sigh followed an athletic young parson into Sheet’s carriage. But R. K. Adhurst, sauntering slowly by, came to a dead halt. Jimmie’s luck was dead out.

  ‘Why, Jimmie, lad. Fancy meeting you.’ There was a joyousness in Mr Adhurst’s voice that aroused no response in Jimmie’s face.

  He stared blankly at the detective. Beneath that round mask of a face he was swiftly considering the best way to meet the situation. He met Adhurst’s greeting blankly, with a stony stare of non-recognition.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said frigidly. ‘I think you’ve made a mistake.’

  Adhurst grinned confidently. ‘Not on your life, Jimmie. Never mind. There’s nothing doing.’ And he sauntered away.

  There is coincidence sometimes in the affairs of the Criminal Investigation Department, but it is coincidence born of organisation. Jimmie mentally cursed the luck that had brought about the conjunction of Sheet and Adhurst. Casting his mind back he could see no flaw in the arrangements he had made for the relieving of Sheet of the small tissue-paper parcel stowed away somewhere on the person of the dapper diamond merchant. He had spent much time and patience in selecting a man who lived out of town, and who followed a not unusual custom among the jewel firms of carrying his stock about with him instead of entrusting it to a safe. By methods all his own he had found out the day when Sheet’s cargo was likely to be more valuable than usual—and now everything looked like being spoilt. Sheet—whom he knew held a first-class season—was perversely travelling third, and to crown it all Adhurst had butted in.

  Shrewd as he was he did not connect the two events. How should he have known that his discreet inquiries had reached the ears of the destined victim, and that Sheet was travelling third-class on the advice of Adhurst?—that, in fact, the divisional detective-inspector was there by request, merely to see Sheet off and, incidentally, to observe who were his fellow passengers. The engine gave a preliminary snort and the train drew smoothly out. Two hours later a white-lipped porter at Townsford was babbling incoherently to the station-master that Mr Lawrence Sheet, of the Red House, was dead in a third-class compartment with a bullet through his heart.

  If you had scooped twenty or thirty men haphazard out of the street you would not have found a more mixed lot. There was not a pair of handcuffs among them. At the risk of discrediting an estimable body of men it must in candour be added that there was probably nothing more efficacious for purposes of disguise than a pocket comb.

  As they lounged about the lofty room, distempered in two shades of green which Scotland Yard affects, you—if you are an astute reader of detective fiction—would readily have diagnosed them as butchers, bakers, barristers, stockbrokers, actors, or millionaires—anything you chose except the hawk-eyed sleuth.

  In the mass they looked eminently commonplace respectable men—fathers of families who lived in trim suburban villas and played golf, motored, or rolled the lawn on Sundays, according to their means.

  Yet this was a big council of crime—the fortnightly meeting of divisional heads of the detec
tive force of London—at which any newspaper man would have given his ears to be present. They were placid business men everyone, and their business happened to be matters of crime. In every respect they were very much human beings with, outside of business, diverse tastes and interests. Only in office hours were they enthusiasts. One does not become even a divisional detective-inspector without enthusiasm and many years of experience.

  Experience—and the qualities begot of experience—were there in plenty. There was not a corner of the world, however remote, which someone in that room had not visited, not a civilised language which was not understood. But first of all there was not a man who did not know where to go for information on any point that was ever likely to concern him. The super-detective who knows everything is a rarity in the Criminal Investigation Department.

  Now and again Foyle, the spruce blue-eyed superintendent who presided, would join in some discussion, and the talk ranged widely from the recent release of Banjo Pete, to the suspicion that, somewhere in London, Russian paper currency was being forged and to the possibilities underlying the recent epidemic of burglaries at Brixton. This informal comparison of notes had more than once had deadly effect on the promising operations of some ingenious scoundrel.

  It was on this gathering that Adhurst entered—a lank, stoop-shouldered man, with greying moustache and untidy brown hair. He moved straight to the superintendent with a sheet of paper in one hand, a yellow A.B.C. in the other. Even among his colleagues a long-cultivated habit of caution prevailed and he lowered his voice.

  ‘Home Office message,’ he said laconically. ‘Job for someone. It looks like Creeping Jimmie.’

  Foyle wrinkled his brows as he read: ‘Chief Constable Blankshire requests assistance Scotland Yard officer in connection with murder of Lawrence Sheet found shot in train today. Wire time arrival Blake Townsford.’

  ‘There’s a train from Waterloo in quarter of an hour, sir,’ said Adhurst. ‘I’ve ordered a taxi.’

  The superintendent wasted no unnecessary words. ‘You’d better catch it yourself, old man,’ he said crisply. ‘You’ll want some money. Let’s go and raid the war-chest.’

  They moved out together. In the big safe in Foyle’s room there was always sufficient money to take a man to the ends of the earth if need be, and there was a musical tinkle as the inspector slipped twenty sovereigns in his pocket.

  Foyle paused long enough to write a message with the mystic letters ‘A. S.’ in the corner. That message told a great deal of Creeping Jimmie. In five or ten minutes the tickers in the two hundred police stations of London would be insistently calling twenty thousand men to find him if he was anywhere within the seven hundred square miles of the metropolis. The superintendent strolled back to the conference.

  ‘Bad case of murder broken loose at Townsford.’ he observed calmly. ‘Anyone running across Creeping Jimmie had better detain him on suspicion. Adhurst has gone down. You’d better handle the thing from this end, Grenfell.’

  In the ordinary way a murder in the provinces has no more to do with Scotland Yard than a burglary in Timbuctoo. Only by request of the local police through the Home Office does a metropolitan detective investigate a criminal case that has occurred outside London. Even then, technically, he is only an adviser to the local police.

  Adhurst, as he took his seat in a second-class smoker, was not enamoured of his job. Human nature being what it is—even in police circles—it was a toss-up whether the executive officers of the county constabulary would resent his intrusion or work loyally in co-operation with him. Luckily the case looked simple. Although pre-conceived opinions are apt to be dangerous to a police officer he had little doubt that Jimmie was the murderer, and equally little doubt that he would almost instantly be hunted down.

  It was five o’clock on a blazing summer’s day when he reached Townsford, and a little group of men moved forward as he descended to the platform. He held out his hand to an erect soldierly looking man he diagnosed as the chief constable.

  ‘Major Borden, I presume. My name’s Adhurst. My people wired you I was coming.’

  The chief constable shook hands. ‘Yes. I’ve just been speaking to Foyle on the phone. I’m afraid you’ve had rather a wasted journey.’

  ‘Oh?’ Adhurst’s tone was interrogative.

  ‘That man you saw—er—Creeping Jimmie, was arrested as he returned to Waterloo. You must have actually passed him on the line on your way down.’

  Adhurst sucked in his under-lip thoughtfully. ‘That’s not like Jimmie,’ he said, ‘unless he absolutely lost his head. I can’t imagine him rushing back to London by the next train and putting his head straight away in the lion’s jaws. Were the diamonds found on him—or a weapon?’

  ‘Nothing; but he’d hardly keep them about him in the circumstances. By the way, I was forgetting. Mr Adhurst—Superintendent Trelway, Inspector Penn. This is Mr Livrey, Mr Sheet’s brother-in-law.’

  The detective gravely acknowledged the introductions. As he gripped Livrey’s hand it lay for a second very cold in his own, and he surprised a keen flicker of surmise in the other’s eyes.

  ‘This is a terrible business, Mr Adhurst. Fortunately I was staying here on a short visit. My sister is naturally much distressed.’

  ‘Naturally,’ agreed Adhurst.

  ‘She asked me to say that, should you care to stay at the Red House during your investigations here, she would be most pleased.’

  ‘That is very kind of her. If it is not inconvenient I shall gratefully take advantage of the offer. It is unlikely, however, that I shall be here long. The case seems very straightforward.’ He turned to the chief constable. ‘And now, sir, it might save time if I had a look at the railway carriage in which the body was found.’

  ‘Shall I be in the way if I come?’ asked Livrey deprecatingly. ‘I have a motor here, and we might go back together.’

  ‘By all means,’ agreed Adhurst. ‘I don’t expect to be free for some little time, though. We’—he spoke significantly in the plural, so that it should not be assumed that he was running the affair—‘must fix up one or two matters before I can take it easy. I’ll get you to take my bag back, though, if you will.’

  The carriage had been detached from the train and lay in a siding. Headed by the stationmaster the group of men moved down across the metals towards it. Once again Adhurst, apparently languidly indifferent, caught Livrey surveying him with a certain quality of speculation in his gaze.

  The chief constable and Adhurst climbed aboard. ‘Nothing much to be learned here,’ said Borden perfunctorily. ‘Sheet was sitting in that corner. The murderer must have been sitting in that farther corner on the opposite side when he fired. The bullet passed clean through Sheet’s head and then through the window. There’s the bullet-hole in the glass.’

  ‘H’m,’ grunted Adhurst. His forehead corrugated into a frown, and, thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets, he dropped lazily into the corner that had been occupied by the murdered man. He turned his eyes wearily to the window and stood up again with a yawn.

  ‘You’re right. This doesn’t seem to carry us far. I think, though, it might be locked for a while and a man put here to see that it isn’t interfered with till after the inquest. Now, if you don’t mind, we’ll see the doctor, and perhaps we can hunt up one or two passengers who came by this train.’

  For an hour or more Adhurst kept those officers of the local police who were available hard at work, though he was very careful to pass all orders through the superintendent. He knew that a little loss of tact might result in blunders and difficulties which would be hard to counter. They were able, intelligent men, but a provincial force gets small practice in detective work, and their perspective had to be continually adjusted. He sighed for the trained men who would have been available in London or any other big city. Only the fashionable amateur detective of the romances can work effectively single-handed.

  In a dozen or twenty towns along the line the telephone stirred pol
ice inquiries, for Creeping Jimmie had not been seen to alight at Townsford. Also there was the young clergyman he had seen in the carriage with the two of them to be found. So far as London was concerned Adhurst was easy. Grenfell could be relied on to pick up every fact there—from Sheet’s office, his solicitors, his bank, and any by-line that might suggest itself.

  Once a wire interrupted him. It came from Grenfell. ‘Bringing our man down 7.40 train,’ it said. Adhurst passed it across to the chief constable without comment.

  Borden raised his eyebrows. ‘Kind of him to take that trouble,’ he said. ‘Why couldn’t they have held him till we sent an escort?’

  ‘I reckon,’ said Adhurst slowly, ‘that Dicky Grenfell has stumbled across something and wants to put us wise. There’s no other reason why he should want to bring the prisoner down. And now, sir, about the doctor? It seems to me that a great deal is going to turn on the medical evidence.’

  ‘Eh? What’s that? I thought everything was plain enough. You got a statement from the doctor, didn’t you, Trelway?’

  Instantly Adhurst saw his mistake. By no means had he intended to hint that any routine matter had been insufficiently covered. The grizzled superintendent could not repress a sneer. ‘Perhaps I’m not quite up to Scotland Yard mark, sir. I saw him myself when he examined the body. Mr Adhurst has seen the statement I took.’

  Behind his untidy moustache the detective hid a smile. He dropped a friendly hand on the provincial man’s shoulder. ‘We’re old hands, both of us, Mr Trelway,’ he said genially. ‘You know how it is. They might ask me up there’—he jerked a thumb vaguely over his shoulder to indicate superior authority—‘why I didn’t see the doctor person myself. Just a matter of form, that’s all. Well, I can’t help you any more just now, can I? I’ll see the doctor and cut along to the Red House for an hour or two. I’ll be back in time to meet Grenfell.’