The Crime Club

by Frank Froest

  ‘But’—Saxon’s eyebrows went up—‘I don’t quite see—’

  ‘Among the applications you will get,’ went on Yerk, ‘will be one from a man named Bronson—F. J. Bronson. You’ll engage him on a month’s trial.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ protested the other a little impatiently. ‘See here, Mr Yerk, I don’t want to be dry-nursed with a private guard tagging after me all day long.’

  ‘I understand,’ said the inspector with suave sympathy. ‘Don’t you worry. You’ll find him a very competent business man. He won’t be obtrusive. Now’—his voice became a little harder— ‘listen to me. If you were consulting a doctor or a lawyer you’d obey them unquestioningly. You’ve called me in in this business and you’ll do what I say or I’ll not be answerable.’

  Saxon made a gesture of resignation. ‘Oh! If you put it that way.’

  ‘I do. One other point. You’re carrying an automatic in your jacket pocket. That bulge is pretty obvious. I suppose you got it this morning?’

  Saxon clapped his hand to his pocket. ‘That’s so, I thought it as well.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve handled a firearm in your life before,’ observed the detective dryly. ‘You might as well—better—carry a pea-shooter. Get rid of it. It’s only giving you away as being scared. Now, if you don’t mind I’ll have a chat with Miss Jukes and perhaps some other of your people.’

  It was a very thoughtful chief detective inspector who returned to Scotland Yard some couple of hours later. As he adjusted himself to his desk and placed a little sheaf of notes in front of him, he ran his hand absently through his hair. He did not conceal from himself a feeling that Saxon had rather minimised, than exaggerated, the deadliness of his peril. Thrice, and even four times, he ran through his notes striving to catch some possibility on which he could fasten. The life or death of Harold Saxon would have meant little to him a day before. Now, however, he had a degree of responsibility, and, if the unknown should get the old man— He put the thought from him. Quick work was imperative.

  The notes he had made mainly bore on those persons engaged in the Saxon theatrical enterprises with whom the theatrical man came most in contact. From Button, the general manager, downwards, there was none he could justifiably suspect. But because he was a man who took nothing on trust, within the next ten minutes he had dispatched four subordinates to various parts of London to elaborate his own inquiries. Two more were detailed as shadows for Saxon—a matter of which he had not deemed it worth while to tell the latter, since they were less for the purposes of protection than to follow up any point of investigation that seemed worth while. Then he sought a young alert-eyed man, who ranked as detective-sergeant and answered to the name of Bronson, with whom he held a long and animated discussion. When the convention finished, Yerk lit a meditative pipe. For the moment everything had been done. He could now only wait on results.

  Results, however, were slow. As the days went by there gradually grew up in Yerk’s desk a mass of material collected by his subordinates, mostly of a negative nature. If Yerk had not known how often seemingly irrelevant evidence switches to a direct bearing he would have destroyed the great bulk of it. The most elaborate inquiries had shown no one person who had had the physical opportunities of making three attempts on Saxon’s life. Those who might have tampered with the trap-door in the theatre could not possibly have thrown the theatre owner from Brean Down.

  Saxon took the lack of progress equably. ‘If they’re going to croak me they’re going to croak me,’ he said philosophically. ‘I’ve put things in your hands, Mr Yerk, and I can’t do more. What’s the use of worrying? I’ve got to thank you, incidentally, for that man Bronson of yours. I don’t know what he’s like as a detective, but he’s a darn good personal assistant, and I don’t care how long I have him.’

  Yerk grinned. ‘As things are going it looks as if he’s a fixture for life,’ he admitted.

  The door slid quietly open and the subject of their conversation broke in on them. His face was deathly pale and his left arm dangled limp by his side. He closed the door and locked it.

  ‘’Phone to the stage door and the front,’ he gasped. ‘Tell them not to let anyone out of the house. See there’s someone at every exit.’ Saxon was busy with the telephone almost before he had finished speaking and Bronson addressed himself to Yerk.

  ‘Glad to find you here, sir, I’ve had a little trouble—a knife stab, I think. Somebody jumped out on me in the narrow passage leading from the stage door. The light’s out there and it’s as dark as the pit. I made a grab but I stumbled and whoever it was got away.’

  Already Yerk had led the other to a chair and with quick deft fingers was slitting his sleeve with a pocket knife. In a couple of minutes he had made a business-like bandage with three handkerchiefs and Saxon was administering brandy to the injured man.

  ‘Not so bad as it might have been,’ he observed. ‘You’ll have to take a taxi down to Bow Street and see the divisional surgeon.’

  ‘One other thing first,’ said Bronson fumbling in his pocket. ‘I found this lying on my desk ten minutes ago.’ He produced a quarto sheet of paper with a few lines of typewriting upon it.

  ‘We’re on to you, you sneaking spy. If you and Yerk try any funny business it will be the worse for you both. Look out.’

  The chief inspector whistled between his teeth. ‘This can wait,’ he exclaimed. ‘We’ve got something else to see to at the moment. Just see him into a cab, Saxon, will you, while I ’phone the Yard.’

  It was a matter of minutes before those members of the Flying Squad who happened to be available at headquarters reached the theatre. With every means of egress barred they conducted a rigorous search of the place. As Yerk expected, there were only the stage hands and clerical staff. No one, as far as could be ascertained, had attempted to leave the building, except in the ordinary course of routine. One by one the chief inspector put under a keen, but guarded cross-examination, every person in the place.

  He shook his head when he and Saxon were once more alone. ‘Nothing very tangible there,’ he remarked, ‘except—well, I don’t quite know. It’s plain whoever’s mixed up in this is getting more daring—or more desperate. They know we know—and that an apparent accident, as far as you are concerned, won’t mislead us. So they’re coming into the open—chancing their arm.’

  ‘Well,’ drawled Saxon, ‘I’m sorry for Bronson, of course, but apart from that, I don’t complain. Things were getting a bit monotonous. I’ve been missing my unknown friends’ attempts at assassination.’

  The satire was not lost on Yerk. ‘You’ve been reading about detectives who pull a criminal out of their sleeves, as a conjurer does a rabbit,’ he replied, with some asperity. ‘I’m just a plain police-officer—an ordinary human being, even if I have got a big machine behind me, and I can’t do those sort of tricks. Don’t forget we’re looking for an unknown person with an unknown motive, and you can’t make bricks without straw. We’re doing our best. I’m too old a hand to ever be certain but it looks as if we’ve made a start at last.’

  Saxon crossed over and patted the detective on the shoulder. ‘My dear boy,’ he protested, ‘I meant no reflection on you. I know your people are doing all that’s possible.’

  Yerk gave an abrupt nod and dropped the subject. ‘I’d like to see every typewriting machine you’ve got in the place,’ he said. ‘I’d also like to have, if you’ll trust me with ’em, every typewritten letter that you’ve received for the last month.’

  ‘Just as you say,’ agreed the other.

  Yerk was no typist, but from every machine that he inspected he contrived to clumsily thump out an incoherent string of words containing most of the letters of the alphabet. With these and a big wad of correspondence he made his way back to Scotland Yard.

  With the anonymous note that Bronson had received spread in front of him, he methodically compared every example of typewriting that had been given to him. Only those that were tota
lly distinct did he place aside. When he had finished he had twenty-two letters and three of the scraps that he himself had typed.

  Now the print from no two typewriters—even those of the same make and with the same type—is alike. To the trained eye minute differences are as palpable between one and another as the individuality in handwriting. Yerk gave a few instructions and in a couple of hours his specimens were transferred to lantern slides and in the big room which Scotland Yard keeps for such purposes, thrown in vivid enlargement on a screen. Word by word, letter by letter, down even to the punctuation marks, Yerk, and those men he had called in to assist him made comparisons. It was a long tedious job, necessitating often fresh reference to the originals, but at length it was finished. Yerk carefully pinned two papers together and placed them in his pocket.

  ‘That looks promising,’ he observed.

  Away in Wimpole Street, where those prime ministers of medicine who have overflowed from Harley Street dwell, Chief Detective Inspector Yerk, accompanied by letters of introduction from the medical scientists attached to the Home Office, had a strenuous interview with Sir Ian Pressland, who was a masterful man with pronounced views on the ethics of the profession of medicine. Yerk, a man who liked to get his own way, wiped the perspiration from his brow as the specialist finally spoke.

  ‘Mind you, I’ve my reputation to consider, Mr Yerk—my standing in my profession. It’s a big thing you’re asking me but since you say it’s in the interests of justice I’ll go part of the way with you.’ He emphasised the remark with a longer slender forefinger. ‘You’ll use my name with discretion—the most marked discretion or’—he waved his pince-nez towards the detective—‘I’ll repudiate the whole affair.’

  Always thankful for half a loaf rather than no bread, Yerk withdrew. He was not even sure that he had not attained the whole loaf.

  He read with serene detachment the following day a three-line paragraph in the newspapers that, consequent upon Mr Harold Saxon’s illness, that gentleman’s new London production had been indefinitely postponed. Mr Saxon, it was understood, was suffering from asthma, which had induced serious heart trouble. Curiously enough, the specialist called in was none other than Sir Ian Pressland, who had ordered the patient away to Montreux in France for treatment.

  He was whistling happily when the superintendent of the Central Criminal Investigation Department poked his head through the doorway.

  ‘I see there’s a little bit of news about Saxon in this morning’s paper. Did you get it?’

  Yerk grinned cheerfully. ‘Was just glancing at it as you spoke.’

  The steel blue eyes of the superintendent twinkled. He had not reached his present rank without learning a great deal of tact. ‘Wasn’t quite sure whether it would affect you or not. I’m asking no questions. You won’t be free to handle another case just yet?’

  ‘Hope to be clear in from three days to a week. I don’t think Saxon’s illness will last long.’

  There was an enigmatic quality in the chief inspector’s tone that caused the superintendent to jerk his head whimsically sideways as he vanished from the room.

  Yerk was right. Saxon’s illness did not last long. With dramatic suddenness the news reached his enterprises, four days later, that he had succumbed to a severe heart attack. A wire had early apprised the chief inspector of the fact and he sent Bronson, now once more on duty although his left arm was still in a sling, in a car down to Croydon to catch the next aeroplane for France. For himself he had other work to do.

  A taxi-cab bore him to the firm of lawyers who had had charge of the professional and private interests of the dead man. Accompanied by the head of the firm, he first of all paid a visit to the flat of the dead man, and thence proceeded to the offices of the Saxon Syndicate at the Regal Theatre.

  Button, the general manager, greeted them with a chastened affability, although Yerk thought he observed an involuntary lift of the eyebrows. Apparently he had not expected the lawyer and the detective to call together.

  ‘Terrible affair, Mr Ladd, isn’t it,’ he remarked addressing the former. ‘So tragically sudden. It’s going to make a difference to all of us. Poor old Uncle Harold.’

  ‘The last thing in the world that I expected,’ said the lawyer.

  Button’s eyes were full on Yerk. ‘Of course, I know something of what your business had been, Mr Yerk. Mr Saxon had few secrets from me. I feel it,’—his emotion almost overcame him—‘as if I had lost an elder brother. I suppose there’s no suspicion of foul play?’

  ‘Not so far as I can see,’ responded Yerk, fondling his chin. ‘As you know, Mr Button, there have been these mysterious attempts on his life, but these heart attacks from which he suffered were, the doctors say, perfectly normal. As I’m on the job, however, I’ve got to be dead certain. That’s why I’m with Mr Ladd, who, as one of the executors, is looking after things.’

  ‘I want to take charge of any private papers he had,’ interposed the lawyer. ‘Have you the keys of his safe?’

  ‘Miss Jukes, his confidential secretary, has them. I will ask her.’

  The girl, her face pale and with large hollows under the eyes as though she had suffered from lack of sleep, surrendered the keys with a word or two of explanations and led the way to the private office. There, with a sort of listless efficiency, she busied herself with assisting the lawyer and the detective as they examined certain of the documents and books in the safe and the drawers of the desk. Button, lounging against the doorway, lit a cigar and looked on.

  For half an hour the systematic examination went on. Then from an inner drawer of the safe the lawyer drew a large envelope and gave a low sibilant intake of the breath.

  ‘Ah! This is what I’ve wanted to find.’ He displayed the inscription on the envelope: ‘The last will and testament of Harold Saxon.’

  Button’s hand shook a little as he removed his cigar from his mouth. ‘His will. Now I’d be interested to know what he’s done with his money.’

  Ladd withdrew a parchment paper from the envelope and unfolded it. He rapidly glanced down the legal verbiage and his thin lips compressed to a tight line. With a swift motion he refolded it and placed it in an inside pocket.

  ‘This is scarcely the place or the occasion,’ he said dryly. ‘I will read it to anyone interested, in my office, at five o’clock this afternoon. If you care to be present’—he turned as if by an afterthought to the secretary—‘and Miss Jukes, I shall be delighted. Now’—he lifted his hat and stick—‘this practically ends my mission here. I don’t know if you, Mr Yerk—’

  ‘No,’ said the detective. ‘I guess I’ll be going too.’

  The inscrutability on the lawyer’s face gave way to a look of bewilderment as Yerk and he took their seats in a taxi-cab.

  ‘This will interest you,’ he said tossing the will into his companion’s lap. ‘I don’t understand it but it is perhaps what you have been looking for.’

  Yerk did not immediately trouble to open it. He thrust his head through the window and ordered the driver to change their destination and to take them to Scotland Yard.

  Eight or nine people had gathered in the private office of the senior partner of Ladd, Stone, Lincoln & Ladd. The senior partner played a quiet tattoo with his pen on his blotting pad while he waited for them to adjust themselves. Miss Jukes sat immediately facing him. Button, impassive, sat by her side. Yerk was accompanied by Winter, the superintendent of the Central Criminal Investigation Department. The only other woman present besides Miss Jukes was Saxon’s housekeeper, a stiff rustling dame, of advanced middle-age. The few men scattered about Button took to be representatives of various charities.

  ‘H’m.’ The lawyer cleared his throat. ‘I have asked you here, ladies and gentlemen, at the earliest possible moment, to read what purports to be the last will and testament of my late client, Mr Harold Saxon. I should say that, until today, I had no knowledge that this will existed. If this is admitted to probate it destroys all the testamentary
dispositions of a will that was deposited with me.’

  The lawyer wiped his pince-nez and in a low droning monotone began to recite steadily. There were a few subsidiary legacies and then the will went on:

  ‘… And I furthermore give and bequeath to my dear friend and colleague, to whose loyalty and friendship I owe much, Mr Francis James Button, all the residue of my real and personal estate.… ’

  Yerk had risen and, noiselessly as some jungle creature, had taken two steps forward.

  ‘… And I hereby appoint as my executors under this my last will and testament, Miss Eleanor May Jukes and …’

  A hand like steel gripped Button’s shoulder and a frigid passionless voice interrupted. ‘That will do, sir. Button, you are under arrest for forgery. Anything you …’

  The manager wrenched himself round and swung his fist. Yerk gave a flick of the head and the blow passed harmlessly by. Somebody sprang forward. Button felt his arms pinioned while deft fingers encircled handcuffs on his wrists.

  Yerk imperturbably completed the formal warning, … ‘may say may be used in evidence against you.’

  Button glared round the room in an ecstasy of passion. ‘What utter nonsense,’ he declared. ‘You’ll pay for this.’

  ‘I’ll take the risk,’ answered Yerk quietly. ‘Sit still please, Miss Jukes—or shall I say Mrs Button? You also are under arrest. I should hate to use violence to a woman. Most of these gentlemen here are police officers so you will see resistance is futile.’

  ‘Utter ridiculous nonsense,’ repeated Button passionately.

  ‘Quietly!’ urged Yerk suavely. ‘You’ve been clever over this business, you people, and I’ll admit that you nearly had me throwing in my hand. But you made one or two stupid mistakes. The first was when this young lady typed an apparently illiterate anonymous message on her private machine at home trying to scare off the investigation. You may be a little surprised to hear that you can no more hide the characteristics of a typewriter than you can of your own writing. I discovered a note she had written to Mr Saxon among some papers he gave to me and that started some very close inquiries. We know that she was secretly married to you and we found out that you had been plunging heavily for a year. That showed you needed money. You’—he pointed a long forefinger at the male prisoner—‘were away from the office when someone made an attempt on Saxon’s life at Brean Down. A man answering to your description had lunch at a Weston hotel and was seen walking towards the Down later. I have no doubt we shall be able to get witnesses to prove your identity. You had the opportunity of committing the other attempts. You had the motive and you had the opportunity.’