“But that never worries us,” with an amused little laugh, “always provided that we don’t get caught. There’s no one to prosecute us because no one knows who to prosecute. We can tell ’em we’re the Adjusters, but that won’t help ’em.
“The only one of the Adjusters whom the public has ever seen is Daphne Wrayne. And Daphne Wrayne merely sits in this office like a good little girl. It’s her colleagues who pull the chestnuts out of the fire.”
The duchess regarded her helplessly. To look at the girl it all seemed so utterly preposterous. Anything less like the popular conception of the tread of a great criminal-hunting organization she found it impossible to imagine.
She studied the rose-leaf skin, the big, serious, brown eyes, the fair, curly hair, and the adorable little mouth. She looked at the slender bare arms, the slim, ringless hands—she looked at the wisp of a black frock that almost shrieked Bond Street in its expensive simplicity. She looked at the amber silk clad legs and the dainty little high-heeled shoes.
“I give it up,” she said.
Daphne laughed merrily.
“That’s right, my dear,” she answered. “Now have a cigarette and tell me what you want to see me about.”
THE PROFESSOR’S HOUSE
The duchess took the cigarette offered to her, lit it, and lay back in her chair.
“You saw, of course, that I had my jewels stolen last week?”
“I did.”
“I was at the Yard this morning. They haven’t got a clew and they told me so. Absolutely baffled. ‘I shall go to the Adjusters then,’ I said, thinking to annoy them.
“ ‘Can’t do better,’ said Montarthur, who’s in charge of the case. ‘If Miss Wrayne can’t find ’em, no one can.’ Frankly, my dear, I was amazed. How on earth have you managed it?”
“Oh, we’ve helped the Yard in one or two cases,” carelessly. “Sir Arthur Conroy’s a darling. So is Montarthur, for that matter. We’re huge pals. But let’s get back to your case.
“I saw it in the papers, of course, but I didn’t read it. I never read the newspaper reports of cases where I’m not consulted.”
“I’ve taken Professor Daventry’s house at Ascot for a month,” began the duchess, but Daphne stopped her.
“Who’s he?”
“A wealthy old recluse—half a dozen letters after his name—written a dozen books on abstruse mathematics, inventive wizard—you’ll find him in ‘Who’s Who’—half a page to his name. Lets his house every year for a month at an exorbitant fee and jogs off to the Riviera.”
“Is he there now?”
“He is.”
“Right. Go ahead.”
The duchess lighted another cigarette.
“Beautiful house called Forest Lodge, sumptuously furnished with every modern convenience imaginable—even down to burglar alarms. Don’t wonder at that. He’s got some fine pictures and china, too.”
“Well?”
“The first night I was there I went to bed and locked all my jewels away in the safe in my bedroom.”
“Oh, you’ve got a safe there?”
“Yes—the latest pattern let into the wall, behind one of the pictures. There are only two keys in existence. I have one and the professor has the other. Mine has never left my possession.”
ON MONDAY NIGHT
“And the professor’s on the Riviera,” smiled Daphne.
“Quite so.”
“Who else knows of the existence of this safe?” put in the girl. “Any of the servants in the house?”
“The butler, Daventry’s butler, admitted that he did. Incidentally I took over half a dozen of Daventry’s servants, but every one of ’em has been with him for years. I took my own maid with me, but I’d trust her with anything.”
“I see. Well, go on, duchess.”
“As I said I went to bed on Monday night after locking all my jewels up in the safe.”
“And the key?”
“Slept with it under my pillow.”
“Was it there next morning?”
“It was.”
“Your bedroom door locked?”
“It was.”
“Windows?”
“Both open at the top, but they’re fifty feet from the ground.”
“When did you next go to the safe?”
“The following evening before dinner. I took the key out of my vanity bag which had never left my hands all day, opened the safe and—everything gone!”
“What does everything include?”
“Six cases. My diamond necklace, my pearl necklace, my diamond tiara, my diamond pendant, and my two diamond bracelets. And if you put ’em at two hundred thousand pounds, my dear, you’re not a long way out.”
FOR AN OLD FRIEND
“And the police found nothing?” after a pause.
“All the police found, my dear, were footprints beneath my bedroom window and most of the burglar wires cut.”
Daphne’s eyebrows went up.
“That’s interesting,” she said.
For some moments she sat deep in thought frowning at her blotting pad. Then:
“I’ll run down and have a chat with Montarthur,” she said, “and I think I’ll get you to put me up for a day or two, duchess.”
“By all means, my dear,” with alacrity. “When shall I expect you?”
“Tonight probably,” after a little deliberation.
“Got a clew?”
Daphne threw back her head and laughed merrily.
“My dear duchess, I’m a girl, not a magician! You surely don’t expect me to have one so soon?”
* * *
—
“Frankly, inspector,” said Daphne Wrayne, as she and Montarthur sat together in the latter’s private room, “I’m only taking up this case because the Duchess of Arlington is an old friend.
“I don’t see the vaguest hope of succeeding where you people have failed, and I tell you so. But I can’t very well refuse, and I know you’ll understand. Now what can you tell me?”
“Very little, I’m afraid, Miss Wrayne,” with a shrug of his shoulders. “We found footprints, very big footprints, in the flower beds immediately below the duchess’s window, but there isn’t a pair of boots in the house that will fit ’em. We’ve interviewed all the servants and there isn’t one of them we can suspect.”
“What about the guests?”
He handed her a list.
“There they are.”
Daphne ran her eyes over the paper.
“I know every one of ’em,” she remarked laconically. Then: “The duchess tells me that some of the wires were cut?”
“Yes—evidently by a man who knew the wiring. That’s the only shadow of a clew we’ve got. The wires cut were the ones that affected only the duchess’s bedroom.”
WHAT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED
“Really? And her windows were open she tells me!”
“They were. But there’s not a trace of any sort on the window ledges. Yet she swears her door was locked so that entry could only have been made from the windows.”
Daphne shook her head.
“You mustn’t forget, inspector, that we don’t know that the safe was tampered with during the night. She locked up her jewels at twelve on Monday and never opened the safe till six thirty on Tuesday.”
“You mean it might have been done during Tuesday, Miss Wrayne?”
“Well, it’s possible, isn’t it?”
“The duchess swears the key of the safe was never out of her possession.”
“My sex swears a lot of things—and believe ’em, too. Find any marks round the safe lock?”
He leaned forward.
“Very tiny traces of wax, Miss Wrayne!” he a
nswered.
Daphne nodded.
“Then that tells us how it was done.”
“Yes, but not who did it,” ruefully.
She laughed.
“Well, just because two heads are always better than one, inspector, I’m going down there for a night or two. And if by any chance you’ve missed anything,” her brown eyes sparkling deliciously, “Heaven help you!”
She got up from her chair. Then suddenly stopped.
A MOTLEY GANG
“By the way, inspector, you don’t happen to know when those alarm wires were installed and why?”
“Yes. I’ve found that out,” he replied. “The professor had them fitted in six months ago. There was an attempted burglary and a successful one there just about a year ago.
“The first was while the professor was in residence himself, but he alarmed the burglars and they got away with nothing. The second was when Lady Castlebrough was in residence. The professor lets his house every summer for Ascot.”
“I know. The duchess told me. What went that time?”
“Some of the professor’s own silver—not of very great value, though.”
“Any points of similarity between that robbery and this one?” queried the girl carelessly.
“None, Miss Wrayne.”
“Right! Then I won’t bother you any further.”
* * *
—
Anyone who had been privileged to peep into a locked room in the Euston the following afternoon, a room whose door bore the commonplace name of James Martin, would have seen five people—four men and a girl—sitting round a fire talking in low tones.
Probably, unless he was an unusually observant person—which few are—he wouldn’t have lingered there. For the room was merely a meagerly furnished office such as you may see anywhere.
And the still life was represented by no more than half a dozen deal chairs, a writing table with a few papers and commercial books, and a small safe.
Neither was the animated life, to the casual observer, worthy of more than the merest glance. All the four men were shabbily dressed. One of them, a big bronzed giant of a man with rather nice eyes, wore a muffler round his neck and smoked a brier pipe.
The tall, thin, rather hawklike-looking man who sat next to him had his coat collar turned up and his hands thrust deep into his overcoat pockets as he lounged in his chair.
The elderly, white-haired man with the benevolent face had turned his chair round and was straddling it, his arms resting on the back. The clean-shaven, good-looking, rather boyish man in the shiny blue suit was smoking a cigarette.
THE SHABBY TYPIST
The girl, an amazingly pretty girl, too, was obviously in no better circumstances than those who sat facing her. A city typist perhaps on a few pounds a week judging from her clothes—though even the shabbiness of them couldn’t hide the slim beauty of her.
Had you told your casual observer that any one of these five could have written out a check for ten thousand pounds without, as the saying goes, feeling it, he would most probably have dropped down dead from sheer amazement.
Yet there were quite a number of people in Mayfair who would have been prepared to swear that if ever Daphne Wrayne of Conduit Street, Park Street, and Maidenhead had a twin sister, this girl must be she.
Half Debrett would have taken its oath without hesitation that the big bronzed giant was no other than Lord James Trevitter, the best known of all the sporting young English peers.
No less certain would they have been over the hawk-faced man. They would have known him at once as Sir Hugh Williamson, the great explorer.
The theatrical world would have identified the white-haired man in a second as Alan Sylvester, the popular actor manager. Bench and bar wouldn’t have hesitated even fractionally over the handsome, clean-shaven, cigarette-smoking man.
They would have been positive that it was Martin Everest, K. C., the biggest criminal barrister of modern times.
DOING THE IMPOSSIBLE
Yet there was scarcely a man in England who wouldn’t have given half of all he possessed to know what was only known to these five people. And that was that these men were the Adjusters!
“Jimmy” Trevitter was the first to speak, as he puffed at his brier pipe.
“Let’s have it, darling,” he began, for he and Daphne Wrayne had been engaged for months past, though no one but those in that room knew of it. “What is it today—blackmail, burglary, arson, or forgery?”
“The Duchess of Arlington’s jewels,” answered the girl as she drew off her shabby gloves and disclosed daintily manicured hands, strangely at variance with them. “She came to see me this morning.”
Martin Everest frowned.
“So the police are at a dead end, Daph?”
“Absolutely—worse luck.”
“Like that?”
“Sure,” admitted the girl with a little sigh. “I saw Montarthur this morning and told him the duchess had been to me. He was very charming, but I fancy he thought the same as I think—that we’ve got our work cut out.
“That’s the worst of acquiring a reputation like ours. We’re expected to do the impossible—”
“We advertised it, my dear, at the start,” suggested Williamson with a smile.
“I know, confound it,” answered the girl with a little laugh. “And now it’s coming home. If only people would come to us at once instead of—here’s the case, over ten days old and the duchess expects us to solve it! If she wasn’t such a dear old thing I’d have told her to go to Hades.”
She opened a packet of cigarettes, took one out, lit it.
“Still we’ve got to go for it, I suppose. I said I would. I’m off to Ascot tonight. And now I’ll tell you all I’ve got from Montarthur and perhaps you can give me a few suggestions.”
It was interesting to watch the four men as she talked, interesting to see how they hung on her words. They were all serious now and you could see in a moment that each one of them realized the quick, alert little brain that lay behind that thoughtful, beautiful young face of the girl who spoke so eagerly to them.
“Incidentally I went in to see Lady Castlebrough this morning,” she said, as she came to the end of her story. “I thought it might be as well.”
A GOOD DETECTIVE
“Learn anything fresh there?” queried Trevitter.
“I learned something,” answered the girl slowly, “though whether it’s of any value or not I really don’t know.
“You see, the Castlebrough jewels are nearly as valuable as the Arlington jewels, and they’re both pretty famous. Is it pure coincidence that the house is let in two consecutive years to two people with wonderful jewels?”
“Are you suspecting the professor, Daph?” asked Everest in the pause that followed.
“A good detective puts nobody outside the pale of suspicion at the start, Martin,” retorted the girl. “Who knows anything of the professor?”
“I do,” said Williamson. “A little, clean-shaven, fussy, didactic sort of a chap. Marvelous mathematical brain and a bit of an expert on criminology. You’ll see him at most of the big trials at the Central Criminal Court.”
“Quite right. I’ve seen him,” asserted Everest, “though I don’t know him to speak to.”
“I attend most of ’em myself,” smiled the girl, “but I’d hate to have a black mark against me in consequence.”
“What’s your idea, Daph?” queried Trevitter.
AN INSIDE JOB
“Oh, I haven’t got one, Jim. I’m just searching for any suspicious circumstance that will give me a line. And the professor only becomes suspicious because he did exactly the same to Lady Castlebrough as he did to the duchess. He showed both of them over the house, showed both of them the safe, and apparently dila
ted to both of them on its invulnerability!
“Now the duchess locks up her jewels in the safe and they’re stolen. But Lady Castlebrough doesn’t. She confided to me that she never believes in safes. Says that a burglar always goes for them, first thing.
“In each case there’s an attempted burglary the moment after these two people arrive. In the first case some silver of no value is stolen. In the second we find footprints and the jewels gone from the safe. But I’m wondering whether in the first case the safe and the jewels weren’t the real objective?
“Frankly, from what Montarthur tells me, I’m inclined to look on those footprints as a purposeful blind. He’s prepared to stake his reputation on the fact that the room was never entered by the window. In which case it was entered by the door.
“And we can assume that it was the work of some one who knew the distribution of the household. Otherwise why did he cut the wires outside the duchess’s bedroom?”
“Excellent bit of reasoning, my dear,” smiled Everest, “but where are your facts to fit it?”
“Of course, that’s the trouble,” admitted the girl. “I haven’t got any. All the same, Martin, we can at least follow our usual methods.”
“You mean your unusual methods, my dear,” with a chuckle.
“All right. Have it your way,” laughing. “But you know as well as I do that because I’m a girl and a young one at that, I help to balance you men.”
“That,” said Williamson thoughtfully, “is the greatest asset we’ve got. An impulsive young woman whose extensive legal training can’t entirely stop her from remembering that after all she’s a woman and therefore must at times follow intuition blindly, lest she be untrue to her sex.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 31