The Crime Club

by Frank Froest

  ‘Oh, blazes! How’d you find out anything? Gun-play didn’t quite agree with Jimmie’s record, but it seemed a smashing case against him till I had a look at the compartment in which the murder took place. The local people here had taken the chief’s wire, that Sheet had been seen travelling with a notorious crook, too much at its face value. If Jimmie hadn’t complicated matters, the possibility of the murder having been committed by someone who was not travelling on the train might have occurred to them. There was only one bullet hole in the window, and I suppose a natural conclusion would be, that if a bullet passed through a man’s head from the outside of the train it would have left a hole somewhere else. But that hole in the window seemed suspiciously low down, and when I came to look at it, there were tiny shreds of glass inwards.

  ‘Well, it seems that they had carried the body to the doctor instead of bringing the doctor to the body. If he had known which way the man had been sitting he could have told them at once that it was no one inside the compartment who fired the shot, for the bullet had entered from the right and not from the left.

  ‘That cleared Jimmie in my mind. That left two possibilities. One was that it was an accidental shot fired by some fool near the line; the other, that someone had an interest in removing Sheet. It was worth looking into. So I made some inquiries both through our people in town and down here. I found that Sheet had married a girl much younger than himself about whom very little was known, and that they did not get on well together. You know your own inquiries about Sheet in town showed that both Livrey and his sister had none too savoury a reputation before they entrapped Sheet into marriage. That confirmed local gossip about quarrels.

  ‘Then I heard that Mrs Sheet and Livrey were out on a motor drive by themselves and did not return till after the murder had been discovered. I bought a shilling ordnance map and studied it out. Where the line ran by a lonely road some miles out seemed a likely spot, and when I heard that the down train was sometimes held up there, I gathered I was on a scent.

  ‘The further I went the more it fitted in. There were people along that road who had seen the two in a car—and others who had seen Mrs Sheet waiting in the car a mile away from the stretch where the murder took place.

  ‘We searched the place and found a clump of bushes where someone had been recently lying. A yard or two away was a footprint, of which we took a plaster cast. It corresponded with Livrey’s boot. We ran out a train, as you know, and with a little juggling with a line found that from the spot where the murderer lay to the approximate position in which the train would have stopped, a bullet would have travelled through one window and out through the open window on the other side.

  ‘When we reached this place we found a powerful air-rifle in the gun-room, and some letters from Livrey to Mrs Sheet which more than hint at the scheme of the whole tragedy.’

  ‘But,’ objected Grenfell, ‘where are the diamonds that Sheet was carrying?’

  ‘In a secret pocket in the waistband of his trousers. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Well,’ said Grenfell, ‘I’ll reckon you’ll have to stay down here to give evidence.’

  Adhurst winked. ‘Not me, sonny. The official arrests were made by Trelway. All the other facts are proved by different experts and witnesses. Little old London is good enough for me. I should fall a victim to mental paralysis if I had to stay in Townsford a week.’

  VI

  THE MAYOR’S DAUGHTER

  IT was all done very nicely and politely, but the Brigade de Sûreté left no doubt of its opinion of Mulberry Street, and Mulberry Street, justly hurt, neatly paraphrased into smooth official terms the retort that the whole of the French detective service was not worth a hill of beans.

  Now this regrettable interchange of amenities between two great criminal investigation bureaux could not have arisen had they not both been a little strained by outside influences. It was a little matter of forgery. There had been an import of forged French notes of exquisite workmanship, and the Brigade de Sûreté had convinced themselves that the point of origination was in the United States. Mulberry Street was approached in form to ‘see to it.’

  It so happened that Mulberry Street was very busy. It pointed out to its French confrère that New York was a big place, and the United States a bigger. Wouldn’t it be as well for the Brigade de Sûreté to catch the swindlers who were actually passing the notes? The Brigade de Sûreté replied that this had been attempted—vainly. ‘The matter shall have our attention,’ said Mulberry Street, and detailed two men who, for a time, made things extremely uncomfortable for persons who might reasonably be supposed to have leanings towards syndicated crime.

  The Chef de Sûreté, stirred thereto by reports that notes were still being negotiated and longing for someone to kick, dictated the note already referred to, and the Assistant Commissioner of New York’s police, also pleased to kick, made his reply. So a stimulant to efforts on both sides of the Atlantic was afforded.

  Then it was that Grenfell of New Scotland Yard, London, who had been sent over to arrange the extradition of an embezzler, happened into Mulberry Street, and to him as an unprejudiced and sympathetic outsider many people opened their souls.

  The kick administered by the Brigade de Sûreté had been passed on after due reflection to Detective-Sergeant McFall, who, pining for a kind word, met Grenfell as he was coming down the steps from the Assistant Commissioner’s office.

  ‘Hello, you?’ he exclaimed, thrusting out a heavy fist. ‘How’d you find the boss? Did y’ mention forgery to him?’

  ‘No. He did all the mentioning,’ said Grenfell.

  McFall fell into step with him and spat viciously. ‘Hell’s an ice-box to the chief when he gets going,’ he said, with a touch of admiration. ‘He had Gann and me up this morning, and you may have noticed the scorch marks on the carpet where he frizzled us. Yes, we were burnt-offerings all right by the time he was through. He told you that someone was handing out bad paper in France, I suppose?’

  Grenfell slapped him on the back. ‘Come and have a tonic,’ he said.

  They had a tonic. They had two. And on the second McFall spoke more freely. He was feeling bitter because he had been unjustly blamed. He was an able man, and it was because of his ability that he had been one of the two selected to unearth the forgers. ‘’Tisn’t as if we had anything to work on,’ he declared. ‘We’ve had a line on every crook in little old New York, and we’ve pulled down a dozen if we’ve pulled one. The stuff goes over by mail, but we’ve kept our eye on the letters sent out by every likely bird. None of the boys is in it—that I’ll swear.’

  ‘How do you know they go out by mail?’ asked Grenfell.

  McFall lifted his shoulders. ‘Same way as the French people know the stuff comes from here. There was a package at Rennes—R. J. Tupper, Poste Restante—New York postmark—typewritten address—fifty one-hundred franc notes inside and nothing else. No one ever called for them, and they were handed over to the police. That’s how. Now’—he smashed a fist down on the counter—‘the chief, he says, “I want you to find out who’s marketing the dope, and to find out quick.” And because I can’t work miracles I get it in the neck—some,’ he concluded bitterly.

  The Central Detective Bureau of New York is a wonderfully efficient body, and it expects its men to be efficient. It does not like excuses. Like all police bodies it has a keen esprit de corps. It considers itself without peer in the wide, wide world—again like every detective organisation that ever existed. Grenfell could understand. If it had been merely a matter of internal crime, McFall’s failure would not have mattered. No detective outside fiction can work miracles. This, however, was an international matter—a question, in a sense, of rivalry.

  ‘Hard lines, old son,’ condoled Grenfell. ‘Cheer up, there’s worse troubles at sea. Get a week’s leave and come with me fishing somewhere. I’ve got to hang about for that time before my extradition case comes on again.’

  ‘I wish I could,’
said McFall dolefully. ‘I wish I could. I can see the boss’s face if I asked for leave just now. No, I’ve got to keep busy.’

  Detective-Inspector Grenfell made his fishing excursion alone. The place he selected was a flourishing little seaside town, which as yet had scarcely realised that it had the making of a ‘resort’. He gave his holiday feeling full bent. London was many hundred miles away; the whole of it might be blown up, the Crown jewels stolen, the Cabinet assassinated—and he could not be recalled. His mission was almost automatic. There was nothing on earth that could prevent him throwing off the cares of his profession and forgetting that such a place as Scotland Yard existed.

  It is at such self-congratulatory moments as this that fate loves to interfere—fate in this instance in the shape of a sportive puppy dog, of no particular pedigree, and a woman’s handbag.

  Grenfell had noticed the young woman, an oval-featured, fair-haired girl in white, as he strolled on the beach. She was reclining in a deck-chair, sunning herself, the hand with the bag listlessly dangling. The puppy arrived at a gallop, and in the next few moments was a hundred yards along the shore, growling ferociously as he strove to tear his loot to pieces.

  The detective and the dog’s owner raced to the rescue, but it was the latter who retrieved the handbag, now chewed to almost unrecognisable pulp, and returned it to its owner. Grenfell slackened his pace and the breeze blew a scrap of paper to his feet—a relic of the ruin the puppy had wrought. He stooped, picked it up, and mechanically crumpled it in his hand to throw away again. Then something about the pellet he had fashioned caught his attention. He straightened it out and examined it and looked round for the girl. She had vanished.

  ‘May I be dodgasted!’ exclaimed Grenfell, and with long, quick strides, returned to his hotel and wrote a short letter, in which he enclosed the scrap of paper.

  Thus far he was only acting with the courtesy of the man who, having stumbled across a piece of information, passes it on to the one more immediately concerned. But morning brought with it a wire from McFall which might have seemed incoherent to any but a student of Kipling.

  ‘The bleating of the lamb excites the tiger. Ten thousand dollars reward now offered. Coming first train.—MCFALL.’

  By eleven o’clock the burly Central Office man had reached the English detective. He was chuckling with glee. The despondency of the previous meeting was all gone. ‘We’re on to it, old fellow!’ he cried. ‘You lucky dog! That was the corner of a five-thousand franc note that you got hold of, and it’s turned out by a workman. Some folks are born lucky. I’ve been sweltering for weeks to get a line on the case, and you, without any interest in it, come over, and an end falls in your lap. Where’s the lady?’

  The Englishman shook his head. ‘Never saw the going of her, Mac. To tell the truth, I haven’t worried much about it. I thought I’d give you a tip. Now it’s your funeral.’

  McFall’s lower jaw dropped and he whirled furiously on his friend. ‘None of that,’ he snarled. ‘I ain’t expecting no presents, and don’t you forget it. There’s ten thousand dollars that the French banks are offering hanging to this case, my son, and you’ll dip your fingers in it, or I’ll know why. You can’t shunt out of it. Now, will you be good?’

  ‘I’ll be good,’ smiled Grenfell. ‘Where do we stand?’

  McFall became serious. He unlocked his suitcase and took out a dozen photographs. ‘I brought these on the off-chance,’ he explained. ‘There’s no one in the gallery that answers your description, but I guess these are all the young women likely to be in a big job.’

  Although he had only a few moments’ view of the girl on the beach, Grenfell was a trained observer, and what he remembered of her features he remembered accurately. He shook his head over the photographs. ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘May be a raw hand,’ he reflected.

  ‘She may be,’ agreed McFall; ‘but it’s no beginner who is turning out the dope. See here, Grenfell, this show isn’t being run single-handed. It needs appliances and skill to run a show like this. A pickpocket or a burglar can shift around as he wants to. A forger wants definite headquarters. He’s got to be fixed somewhere. Now I don’t admire this town for a residence, but if I were turning out phony paper I wouldn’t ask for a better place. It’s out of the way, and it’s handy to New York—what?’

  ‘That’s so,’ agreed Grenfell. ‘How do you propose to locate them? I’m in your hands.’

  McFall wiped the perspiration from his broad forehead. ‘We’ll get them,’ he declared. ‘We’ll get them if we have to go through the State with a fine-tooth comb. Gann and Wills are coming this afternoon. Meanwhile we might go and have a chat with the chief of police here. We might want his help yet.’

  If Grenfell had not had some knowledge of the free-and-easy ways of the American police he might have been a little astonished to meet an important functionary on duty in his shirt-sleeves, with his chair tilted back, his heels on his desk, and a cigar between his teeth. The chief paid them the compliment of bringing his feet to the floor and passing the cigar box.

  He readily promised his assistance in searching the district, but scratched his head with a pen-holder as Grenfell described the girl. She could, he declared, be duplicated fifty times in the town. ‘Might be anyone,’ he added, a fact which the two detectives had reached for themselves long before. And then the door opened wide enough to admit a head and shoulders and Grenfell found himself looking into the face of a girl—the girl.

  He half rose from his seat and then sank back again.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ she said hastily. ‘I am looking for father, Mr Burchnall. I thought he might be with you.’ She withdrew her head, and the door closed with a click.

  ‘Our mayor’s daughter,’ said the chief. ‘Isn’t she a peach?’

  Grenfell was doing some quick thinking. A more impulsive or less ready man might have blurted out something. But it had flashed across him that the mayor of an American city holds a considerable influence in police matters—extending to the appointment of even chiefs of police—and he had no wish to be laughed at. Even in a land where politics is a profession, the daughter of a high municipal official is unlikely to be concerned in a syndicated crime.

  The point, however, was gained that the girl was known. That, nevertheless, was far from simplifying the problem. In view of her position it was extremely unlikely that she had anything to do with a gang of forgers. On the other hand, why on earth should she have been carrying a French bank-note of high denomination?

  ‘Mac,’ he said, when they got outside, ‘the local police can’t help us.’

  ‘Never expected much,’ agreed McFall. ‘Still, it’s as well to get ’em interested.’

  ‘I don’t mean that. I’ve found the woman.’

  McFall was quick on the uptake. ‘The Mayor’s daughter?’ he inquired. And as Grenfell nodded, he gave a long, low whistle.

  Now that a scent had been defined, McFall took the lead. He was a busy man for a couple of hours, though his labours were more real than apparent. He lounged through the little town, visited the barber, and chatted as an inquisitive stranger on local affairs while he was being shaved. He also displayed the little shield under the lapel of his jacket to a big policeman, swinging his stick by the loop on a side-walk, and the policeman, flattered by the attention of the sleuth from New York, also talked.

  So did the editor of the local newspaper to whom McFall introduced hinself. None of these persons was aware that he was affording anything more than idle conversation.

  Yet McFall, when he returned to his friend at the hotel, had a budget of information. He dropped into a lounge wearily. ‘That kid’s name’s Prudence Fastlet,’ he said. ‘Playing the popularity game with a big “P” for her old man. He’s been here for seven years, and mayor three, and I guess wants to keep on the Dick Whittington act. Retired theatre manager from Columbus, Ohio. The villagers swear by him. Can’t see any fun in being mayor of a show like this myself.’
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  Grenfell mentioned a word. The other man rubbed a shiny cheek with his knuckles. ‘Nope. He ain’t grafting, and that’s the funny part of it. He’s straight. Working the popularity racket for all he’s worth—father of the city, and all that sort of thing. Where does he come in?’

  ‘Girl engaged?’

  ‘No. Say, Gann and Wills are about due. I’ll have a quick lunch and get a smart boy to slip ’em a note at the depot. We don’t want to know ’em if we see ’em.’ The eyelid nearest to Grenfell closed and opened again quickly. ‘The police chief here is sweet on the kid—see?’

  ‘I see,’ said Grenfell. He had gathered McFall’s idea. Burchnall would probably mention their visit either to the girl or her father, and the news of their presence in the town would certainly spread. It might be as well that any attention should be concentrated on them.

  Within an hour, two drummers had arrived in town and registered themselves at an hotel. The two detectives, lounging in deck-chairs on the veranda, paid them not the slightest attention. In about half an hour they emerged again, and Grenfell rose lazily. ‘Think I’ll go for a stroll,’ he said, and McFall grunted an indifferent assent.

  Grenfell’s sauntering took him by the mayor’s house on the front, and curiously enough, the two commercial travellers strolled at much about the same pace in the same direction, but fifty yards behind. The Scotland Yard man dropped on a patch of grass, and extracting a magazine from his pocket began to read. His face was in the direction of the house. Fifty yards away the commercial travellers also sat down. One of them found a piece of rock which he stuck up on end, and the pair amused themselves by shying pebbles at it.

  Half an hour or more elapsed. Then from the house there emerged a figure in white. Grenfell took off his hat and fanned himself. A glance sideways showed him one of the commercial travellers fumbling with a boot lace. He finished, and the pair strode away in the direction taken by the girl.