The Big Book of Female Detectives

by The Big Book of Female Detectives (retail) (epub)

  Mr. Tung took it as if it were some dangerous thing, hesitated, glanced at the men beside him, tore it open, read what was on the flimsy sheet of pink paper, and walked so quickly out of the building that his gait almost approached a run. His companions went after him as if they were giving chase. My wire had finished what those few plain words on the sheet of paper had begun.

  I was lingering in the hall, rather at a loss as to what was the next step that I had better take, when the woman in the grey dress came out of the lift, which had just descended. A cab was at the door, on which was luggage. Although she must have seen me very clearly, she did not recognize my presence, but passed straight out to the cab. She was going up to London by the five-five train.

  I no longer hesitated what to do. I, too, quitted the hotel and got into a cab. It still wanted ten minutes to five when I reached the station. The train was standing by the platform; the grey-frocked lady was superintending the labelling of her luggage—apparently she had no maid. She was escorted by a porter, who had her luggage in charge, to a first-class carriage. On the top of her luggage was the tell-tale thing which has probably done more harm than good—the dressing-bag which is so dear to the hearts of many women, which ostentatiously proclaims the fact that it contains their jewels, probably their money, all that they are travelling with which they value most. One has only to get hold of the average travelling woman’s dressing-bag to become possessed of all that she has—from the practical thief’s point of view—worth taking—all contained in one portable and convenient package.

  At the open door of the compartment next to the one to which the porter ushered her, the big, burly man was standing—rather to my surprise. I thought I had startled him more than that. Presently who should come strolling up but his more slightly built acquaintance. Apparently he did not know him now; he passed into the compartment at whose door he was standing, without a nod or sign of greeting. My glance travelling down the platform, I saw that standing outside a compartment only a few doors off was Mr. John Tung.

  This did not suit me at all. I did not propose that those three gentlemen should travel with the grey-frocked lady by the five-five train to town. Rather than that I would have called in the aid of the police, though it would have been a very queer tale that I should have had to tell them. Perhaps fortunately, I hit upon what the old-time cookery books used to call “another way.” I had done so well with one unexpected message that I thought I would try another. There were ten minutes before the train started—still time.

  I rushed to the ladies’ waiting-room. I begged a sheet of paper and an envelope from the attendant in charge. It was a sheet of paper which she gave me—and on it I scribbled:—

  “You are watched. Your intentions are known.

  “The police are travelling by the five-five train to London in attendance on the lady in the grey dress. If they do not take you on the road they will arrest you when you reach town.

  “Then heigh-ho for the gallows!”

  I was in doubt whether or not to add that last line. I daresay if I had had a second or two to think I should not have added it; but I had not. I just scrawled it off as fast as I could, folded the sheet of paper, slipped it into the envelope, which I addressed in large, bold letters to Mr. John Tung. The attendant had a little girl with her, of, perhaps, twelve or thirteen years old, who was acting as her assistant. I took her to the waiting-room door, pointed out Mr. Tung, and told her that if she would slip that envelope into the gentleman’s hand and come back to me without having told him where she got it from, I would give her a shilling.

  Officials were examining tickets, doors were being closed, preparations were being made to start, when that long-legged young person ran off on her errand. She gave Mr. Tung the envelope as he was stepping into the carriage. He had not time even to realize that he had got it before she was off again. I saw him glance with a startled face at the envelope, open it, hurriedly scan what was within, then make a dart into the compartment by which he was standing, emerge with a bag in his hand, and hurry from the station. Conscience had been too much for him again. The big, burly man, seeing him going, went hurrying after him, as the train was in the very act of starting. As it moved along the platform the face of the third man appeared at the window of his compartment, gazing in apparent astonishment after the other two. He might go to London by the five-five if he chose. I did not think it mattered if he went alone. I scanned the newspapers very carefully the next day; as there was no record of anything unusual having happened during the journey or afterwards I concluded that my feeling that nothing was to be feared from that solitary gentleman had been well founded, and that the lady in the grey dress had reached her destination in comfort and safety.

  What became of Mr. Tung when he left the station I do not know; I can only say that he did not return to the hotel. That Buxton episode was in August. About a month afterwards, towards the close of September, I was going north. I started from Euston station. I had secured my seat, and, as there were still several minutes before the train went off, I strolled up and down the platform. Outside the open door of one of the compartments, just as he had done at Buxton station, Mr. Tung was standing!

  The sight of him inspired me with a feeling of actual rage. That such a dreadful creature as I was convinced he was should go through life like some beast of prey, seeking for helpless victims whom it would be safe to destroy—that he should be standing there, so well dressed, so well fed, so seemingly prosperous, with all the appearance about him of one with whom the world went very well—the sight of him made me positively furious. It might be impossible, for various reasons, to bring his crimes home to him, but I could still be a thorn in his side, and might punish him in a fashion of my own. I had been the occasion to him of one moment in which conscience had mastered him and terror held him by the throat. I might render him a similar service a second time.

  I was seized with a sudden desire to give him a shock which would at least destroy his pleasure for the rest of that day. Recalling what I had done at Buxton, I went to the bookstall and purchased for the sum of one penny an envelope and a sheet of paper. I took these to the waiting-room, and on the sheet of paper I wrote three lines—without even a moment’s consideration:—

  “You are about to be arrested. Justice is going to be done.

  “Your time has come.

  “Prepare for the end.”

  I put the sheet of paper containing these words into the envelope, and, waylaying a small boy, who appeared to have been delivering a parcel to someone in the station, I instructed him to hand my gentleman the envelope and then make off. He did his part very well. Tung was standing sideways, looking down the platform, so that he did not see my messenger approaching from behind; the envelope was slipped into his hand almost before he knew it, and the boy was off. He found himself with an envelope in his hand without, I believe, clearly realizing whence it had come—my messenger was lost in the crowd before he had turned; it might have tumbled from the skies for all he could say with certainty.

  For him the recurrence of the episode of the mysterious envelope was in itself a shock. I could see that from where I stood. He stared at it, as he had done before, as if it had been a bomb which at any moment might explode. When he saw his own name written on the face of the envelope, and the fashion of the writing, he looked frantically around, as if eagerly seeking for some explanation of this strange thing. I should say, for all his appearance of sleek prosperity, that his nerves were in a state of jumps. His lips twitched; he seemed to be shaking; he looked as if it would need very little to make him run. With fingers which I am sure were trembling he opened the envelope; he took out the sheet of paper—and he read.

  When he had read he seemed to be striving to keep himself from playing the cur; he looked across the platform with such an expression on his face and in his eyes! A constable was advancing towards him, with another man by his side. The pr
obability is that, scared half out of his senses, conscience having come into its own, he misinterpreted the intention of the advancing couple. Those three lines, warning him that he was about to be arrested, that his time had come, to prepare for the end, synchronized so perfectly with the appearance of the constable and his companion, who turned out to be a “plain clothes man” engaged in the company’s business, that in his suddenly unnerved state he jumped to the conclusion that the warning and its fulfilment had come together—that those two officers of the law were coming to arrest him there and then.

  Having arrived at that conclusion, he seems to have passed quickly to another—that he would not be taken alive. He put his hand into his jacket pocket, took out a revolver, which had no doubt been kept there for quite another purpose, put the muzzle to his brow, and while the two men—thinking of him not at all—were still a few yards off, he blew his brains out. He was dead before they reached him—killed by conscience.

  They found his luggage in the compartment in which he had been about to travel. The contents of his various belongings supplied sufficient explanation of his tragic end. He lived in a small flat off the Marylebone Road—alone; the address was contained in his bag. When the police went there they found a miscellaneous collection of articles which had certainly, in the original instance, never belonged to him. There were feminine belongings of all sorts and kinds. Some of them were traced to their former owners, and in each case the owner was found to have died in circumstances which had never been adequately explained. This man seemed to have been carrying on for years, with perfect impunity, a hideous traffic in robbery and murder—and the victim was always a woman. His true name was never ascertained. It was clear, from certain papers which were found in his flat, that he had spent several years of his youth in the East. He seemed to have been a solitary creature—a savage beast alone in its lair. Nothing was found out about his parents or his friends; nor about two acquaintances of whom I might have supplied some particulars. Personally, I never saw nor heard anything of either of them again.

  I went on from Euston station by that train to the north. Just as we were about to start, a girl came bundling into my compartment whom I knew very well.

  “That was a close shave,” she said, as she took her seat. “I thought I should have missed it; my taxi-cab burst a tyre. What’s this I heard them saying about someone having committed suicide on the platform? Is it true?”

  “I believe there was something of the kind; in fact, I know there was. It has quite upset me.”

  “Poor dear! You do look out of sorts. A thing like that would upset anyone.” She glanced at me with sympathetic eyes. “I was talking about you only yesterday. I was saying that a person with your power of what practically amounts to reading people’s thoughts ought to be able to do a great deal of good in the world. Do you think you ever do any good?”

  The question was asked half laughingly. We were in a corridor carriage. Two women at the other end of it suddenly got up and went, apparently, in search of another. I had been in no state to notice anything when I had got in; now I realized that one of the women who had risen was the one who had worn the grey dress at Buxton. She had evidently recognized me on the instant. I saw her whisper to her companion in the corridor, before they moved off:—

  “I couldn’t possibly remain in the same compartment with that half-bred gipsy-looking creature. I’ve had experience of her before.”

  I was the half-bred gipsy-looking creature. The experience she had had of me was when I saved her life at Buxton. That I did save her life I am pretty sure. I said to my friend, when they had gone:—

  “I hope that sometimes I do do a little good; but even when I do, for the most part it’s done by stealth, and not known to fame; and sometimes, even, it’s not recognized as good at all.”

  “Is that so?” replied my friend. “What a very curious world it is.”

  When I thought of what had happened on the platform which we were leaving so rapidly behind, I agreed with her with all my heart and soul.

  DETECTIVE: DORA MYRL

  THE HIDDEN VIOLIN

  M. McDonnell Bodkin

  MATTHIAS MCDONNELL BODKIN (1850–1933) created two significant characters in the history of the detective story. The first was Paul Beck (named Alfred Juggins when he first appeared in Pearson’s Magazine in 1897) in Paul Beck, the Rule of Thumb Detective (1898). He claims to be not very bright, saying, “I just go by the rule of thumb, and muddle and puzzle out my cases as best I can.” He also appears in The Quests of Paul Beck (1908), The Capture of Paul Beck (1909), Young Beck, a Chip off the Old Block (1911, in a minor role), Pigeon Blood Rubies (1915), and Paul Beck, Detective (1929).

  Dora Myrl, Lady Detective (1900) introduces a modern woman who works as a private inquiry agent, a highly unsavory job for a female in the Victorian age. Her arsenal as a crime fighter includes exceptional skill at disguise, the ability to ride a bicycle at high speeds, and a small revolver she carries in her purse. She is young, pretty, smart (she graduates from Cambridge University, is expert at math, and has a medical degree), and witty, and she meets Paul Beck halfway through The Capture of Paul Beck. He is twice her age and taken by her beauty, while she admires him as “the greatest detective in the world.” They are on opposite sides of the case, but both see that justice is done. They fall in love (Dora having “captured” him) and have a son, who stars in the stories collected as Young Beck; Dora makes a cameo appearance, but her career has ended.

  Bodkin, whose primary career was as a barrister, was appointed a judge in County Clare, Ireland, served as a Nationalist member of Parliament, and wrote of his courtroom episodes in Recollections of an Irish Judge (1914).

  “The Hidden Violin” was first collected in Dora Myrl, Lady Detective (London, Chatto & Windus, 1900).

  The Hidden Violin

  M. MCDONNELL BODKIN

  “I SHOULD LIKE TO, SYLVIA, BUT I CAN’T.”

  “You must, Dora.”

  “Must is a strong word, my dear, but it is on my side this time, not yours. There is a tough case there that insists on being finished tomorrow. I can’t go.”

  “But you will, whether you can or not.”

  She whisked away with a rustling of silk to the other end of Dora Myrl’s bright little sitting-room, where the two girls had been sitting in a cosy corner for a cosy cup of afternoon tea. Brightening her eyes and dimpling her cheeks, there was some pleasant surprise which she could hardly hold back.

  Dora Myrl’s eye followed her keenly.

  “They call me a detective, Sylvia, when they want to flatter me. But I don’t pretend to guess your conundrum. What is it? You have got a stone up that new-fashioned silk sleeve. Take it out and throw it.”

  Sylvia stood before her dramatically, her hands close to her sides, her blue eyes dancing with excitement.

  “Signor Nicolo Amati is to play there!”

  Dora Myrl surrendered at discretion.

  “I will go, of course,” she said, smilingly.

  “Whether you can or not.”

  “Whether I can or not.”

  For here was a chance which no girl—and least of all a girl like Dora Myrl, full of vitality to her finger-tips—would miss.

  All London—that is to say, literary and artistic London, or the London that thought itself, or wanted other people to think it, literary and artistic—was still brimming over with the story how that famous musical connoisseur, Lord Mellecent, travelling in Northern Italy with his daughter Sylvia, had lit, amid the embowering vines of a little village on the banks of the Po, on a miraculous violin and violinist. He very quickly convinced himself that the violin was the masterpiece of Antonio Stradivarius, and the player a direct descendant of Nicolo Amati, whose name he bore.

  For ages this priceless violin had discoursed exquisite music for the simple villagers. Its strings had danced at their weddings an
d wept at their graves in the hands of generation after generation of the gifted family of the Amati. But young Nicolo was declared, even by the lovers of old times, to be the most wonderful of them all. Beneath his flying fingers this wonderful violin made music more sweet than the song birds in spring-time, more sad than the meaning of the autumn winds.

  Lord Mellecent was in a very frenzy of rapture. He loitered about the sunshiny village for a month, till at last he succeeded in carrying violin and violinist away with him to smoky London. It was vaguely hinted that his golden-haired, blue-eyed daughter, Sylvia, aided and abetted in the capture.

  Nicolo Amati had known nothing of the science of music. The marvellous melody of which he was master had come to him from—if we may use the phrase—aural tradition alone. His soul was full of sweet sounds which he poured forth from his sympathetic violin as spontaneously as the nightingale. The masterpieces of the great composers were to him the entering on a new region of undreamt delights.

  He had come to London in the spring, and London was thrown into a ferment of restless anticipation by the announcement that in the early autumn he would play for the first time in public.

  That this public appearance was to be anticipated by a musical “at home” at the house of Lord Mellecent was the exciting news that the Earl’s daughter carried to Dora Myrl.

  They were at school together, these two, when the three years’ difference in their age seemed like an eternity. Dora, the brilliant leader of the school, alike in the playground and in the study, had been kind to the shy, golden-haired girl just arrived, and helped her and petted her into happiness. So a warm friendship had sprung up between the two.

  For Sylvia, Dora was still and always “the head girl.” The Earl’s daughter looked up to the lady detective with a reverence tempered by affection. But of late the wonderful Italian had shared that homage, and they had many talks together about Signor Nicolo Amati. Dora was keenly anxious to see and hear him, on Sylvia’s account and on her own, for she was passionately fond of music, and she wished to judge for herself if the new idol was worthy of his incense.