The Big Book of Female Detectives

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

  “What arrangement can we make?” demanded Crewde. “You are on velvet. I’ve lent five thousand pounds on those pearls. You can get them from me for nothing by an order of the Court.”

  “Well, Mr. Crewde,” said Behrein indulgently, “I feel that men of our stamp must hang together when we’re up against this kind of thing. I have no desire to stand on my rights at your expense. I’ll be frank with you. I have a prospective purchaser for those pearls and time is of the utmost importance. If they are going to be held up three months as exhibits in a trial—to say nothing of a civil action between you and me, which I would profoundly regret—I shall lose my customer. I think—well, now, I won’t beat about the bush—I am content to carry the five thousand loss. If you like to hand those pearls to me, I’ll give you a proper receipt and five thousand pounds and take my risk of getting my money back.”

  Jabez Crewde could scarcely believe his ears.

  “Eh? What’s that? Haven’t quite got you,” he muttered, and Behrein repeated his offer.

  “Of course,” said Behrein laboriously, “you will lose your profit on the transaction—but you will have lost that in any case—together with your principal of five thousand pounds. As you admit, I can get the pearls returned to me by an order of the Court. I had hoped that you would accept my offer——”

  “I do accept it,” said Crewde in haste.

  Behrein took out his wallet.

  “One has to carry large sums about one in my trade,” he explained, and counted out five thousand pounds in notes.

  He added a formal receipt for the pearls and left the meanest man in Europe trembling with relief at being spared the loss of five thousand pounds and the necessity of appearing in Court.

  V

  It was nearly lunch-time when Detective-Inspector Rason arrived at Fidelity’s house in Bayswater. Fidelity, exquisite in grey taffetas, asked him to stay to lunch. Politely, he declined.

  “You constantly refuse my invitations, Mr. Rason,” she told him, her violet eyes clear and shining as a child’s. “And you cannot have come on duty this time.”

  Rason made a grimace.

  “I have come on a clear-cut case against you for jewel-robbery, Miss Dove,” he said. “But I’m old enough now not to attach too much importance to that fact.”

  Fidelity’s smile was seraphic.

  “All the same,” continued Rason, “I’m taking a pretty keen professional interest in this particular case. I’ve been trying to guess how you’re going to keep out of prison this time, and I’ll admit I’ve clean failed.”

  “There is an elusive suggestion of flattery in your words, Mr. Rason,” reproved Fidelity. “And flattery falls strangely on my ears. Let me confess I cannot in the least understand what you are saying.”

  “Yesterday morning,” said Rason, with a sigh, “you pledged with Mr. Jabez Crewde pearls which on Monday you are alleged to have stolen by means of substituting false ones from a Mr. Abraham Behrein. Mr. Behrein has photographs of the pearls and expert descriptions. They have been identified as the pearls you pledged with Mr. Crewde.”

  “Mr.—what is the name of the other gentleman—Berlein?”

  “Behrein,” said Rason. “Are you going to deny knowledge of him, Miss Dove?”

  “Yes,” said Fidelity. The word had all the sanctity of a vow.

  For a moment there was silence. A look almost of fear flashed into Rason’s eyes.

  “May I use your telephone?” he asked.

  Fidelity’s little bow gave consent. Rason fluttered the leaves of the telephone book, looked for Behrein, and could not find him. He rang up the Holborn police.

  He gave particulars of himself, and then:

  “Abraham Behrein,” he said, and gave the address in Hatton Garden. “Send a man at once to verify name and address. ’Phone me here.” There followed Fidelity’s number.

  In a quarter of an hour, in which Fidelity spoke gracefully and well of pearls as mentioned in the scriptures, there came the return message. Abraham Behrein was unknown in Hatton Garden.

  “And now, Mr. Rason,” asked Fidelity, “are you going to apologize for doubting my word?”

  “No,” said Rason. The emphasis of his refusal left Fidelity’s gravity undisturbed until he had left her drawing-room; but as he crossed the magnificent hall silvery laughter followed him and rang in his ears long after he had left the house.

  VI

  On the next day Mr. Jabez Crewde was severely startled at being told that Fidelity Dove was on the doorstep and wished to see him.

  “Show her in, and run for the police,” he whispered to the clerk.

  Fidelity came in, gracefully as ever. She inclined her head in the soupçon of a bow.

  “Oh, Mr. Crewde!” she said in clear tones. “I do not know how to thank you! The money that you lent me must veritably have been bewitched. The scheme was successful beyond my friend’s wildest dreams. So much money has been made that—is it the firm or his stockbroker?—has advanced on account of my profits all the money I borrowed from you, and I have come to repay you five thousand five hundred pounds.”

  “Let’s have a look at it,” said Crewde coarsely.

  “But of course I wish you not merely to look at it but to take it,”—and Fidelity laid the notes on the table.

  Mr. Crewde counted the notes.

  “You can leave those there,” he said, and glanced towards the door. Then, for safety, he picked them up and put them in his pocket. Fidelity looked offended.

  “Will you give me a receipt and return my pearls?” she asked.

  “We’ll see about that in a minute,” snapped Crewde.

  “Against my inclination, I am driven to believe that your manner is intentionally offensive,” said Fidelity. “I will wait no longer. The receipt is of no importance, for my bankers have the numbers of the notes. You will please return the pearls to my private address.”

  “Your private address! Yes, I know it—Aylesbury prison it’ll be in a week or two,” jeered Crewde. “As for the pearls, they are back with Mr. Abraham Behrein, whom you stole them from.”

  “Oh! How can you——” Fidelity produced a handkerchief.

  “Tell it all to the policeman,” invited Mr. Crewde as the clerk returned with a constable.

  “What’s all this?” asked the constable.

  “That’s the woman you want. Fidelity Dove, she calls herself,” shouted Crewde. “Scotland Yard knows all about her.”

  The policeman looked embarrassed.

  “Do you give the lady in charge, sir?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t give her in charge,” said Crewde. “I’m not going to be mixed up with it. It’s a matter for the Public Prosecutor. Scotland Yard!”

  “We’ve no orders to arrest anyone of that name as far as I know,” said the constable. “I can’t take the lady unless you charge her, sir.”

  “There is my card, constable,” said Fidelity. “My car is outside if you care to take the number.”

  In the car Fidelity drove home.

  As soon as she had left, Jabez Crewde telephoned to Scotland Yard. He was put through to Rason, who informed him that all efforts to trace Abraham Behrein had failed.

  “It was a hoax of some kind, I’m afraid,” said Rason. “But you’re all right, Mr. Crewde. You have the pearls, I take it? It was apparently a swindle that didn’t come off.”

  “But she’s paid me back the money I lent her, and wants the pearls back,” protested Crewde.

  “Well, I can’t advise you,” said Rason. “But I should have thought the best thing to do would be to give them to her.”

  “But I haven’t got them!” yelled Crewde. “I handed them to Behrein—they were his—and he gave me the five thousand I’d lent her.”

  “O-o-oh!�
� said Rason. It was a long-drawn sound that held a world of meaning.

  “What’s the good of saying ‘oh,’ ” raged Crewde. “You’re a pack of fools, that’s what you are,” he added, after he had replaced the receiver.

  On the next morning Jabez Crewde received a letter from Fidelity Dove’s solicitor, Sir Frank Wrawton, demanding the immediate return of the pearls or their value in cash, which had been estimated by competent and unassailable experts at fifty thousand pounds.

  By eleven o’clock Jabez Crewde had learned that Sir Frank Wrawton was empowered merely to give him a receipt for the pearls or the cash equivalent.

  By twelve o’clock he was at Fidelity’s house in Bayswater.

  He was received by Fidelity in the morning-room.

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” he shouted at Fidelity, “and I can see what’s happened. That Behrein, as he calls himself, is a confederate of yours. You two are in it together. I’ll show you the whole bag o’ tricks. You bought those pearls—they were genuine. Then you borrowed five thousand from me, and paid back five thousand five hundred. You dropped that five hundred. Then your confederate dropped another five thousand in getting the pearls from me. That’s five thousand five hundred you’ve dropped—and for that outlay you’ve landed me with a liability for fifty thousand pounds. Why, you probably had those pearls hidden away an hour after Behrein left me, and you’ll sell them again quietly later on——”

  “Have you also been thinking, Mr. Crewde, how you are going to establish this terribly slanderous theory in a court of law?” asked Fidelity, nun-like and serene.

  “Bah! The lawyers are robbers, like the police——”

  “And the hospitals?” asked Fidelity.

  Crewde looked very nearly startled.

  “They call you the meanest man in Europe, Mr. Crewde,” said Fidelity. “I alone have maintained that that is a slander. I want you to prove my words. You owe me fifty thousand pounds. To dispute my claim would merely mean the loss of another thousand pounds or so in lawyers’ expenses. It is a pleasure to wring money from a mean man, but it is no pleasure if the man be not mean. The Grey Friars Hospital requires twenty thousand pounds, I understand.”

  “Eh?” grunted Crewde. “I don’t get you. D’you want me to give them twenty thousand? What if I do?”

  “If you will write a cheque for twenty thousand pounds to the Grey Friars Hospital,” said Fidelity, “I will withdraw one-fifth of my claim against you. Twenty thousand to the Grey Friars Hospital, twenty thousand to myself—and I will give you a receipt for fifty thousand pounds.”

  “That’s close on fifteen thousand pounds clear profit to yourself,” said Crewde, a ghastly pallor spreading over his face.

  “You may phrase it so,” said Fidelity. “Or you may say that I am offering you ten thousand pounds to remove from London the reproach of harbouring the meanest man in Europe….Ah, I see you have no fountain-pen. I beg you to use mine.”

  BAD GIRL: FOUR SQUARE JANE

  FOUR SQUARE JANE UNMASKED

  Edgar Wallace

  RICHARD HORATIO EDGAR WALLACE (1875–1932) created any number of series characters, the longest-running being Commissioner Sanders, representative of the Foreign Office of Great Britain, whose job was to keep the king’s peace in Africa’s River territories; he appeared in about a dozen books, beginning with Sanders of the River (1911). Wallace’s most popular series featured the coterie who first appeared in The Four Just Men (1905); there were actually three, as one died before the story begins. They were wealthy dilettantes who set out to administer justice when the law is unable or unwilling to do the job; there were five sequels. Most of his other series characters appeared in short stories published in various newspapers and magazines and then were collected in book form.

  One of these was the titular figure in Four Square Jane (1929), the only book devoted to the young rogue’s exploits. In the editor’s note in the book edition, the “heroine” is described as an “extremely ladylike crook, an uncannily clever criminal who exercises all her female cunning on her nefarious work” and “makes the mere male detectives and policemen who endeavor to be on her tracks look foolish.”

  Jane is pretty, young, slim, and chaste, and she leaves her calling card at the scene of her robberies: a printed label with four squares and the letter “J” in the middle. She makes sure to do this so that none of the servants will be accused of the theft. She has a troupe of loyal associates on whom she calls as they are needed.

  “Four Square Jane Unmasked” is a made-up title; none of the stories in the book publication has a title. It was originally serialized in The Weekly News from January 10 to February 7, 1920; it was first collected in Four Square Jane (London, Readers Library, 1929).

  Four Square Jane Unmasked

  EDGAR WALLACE

  PETER DAWES, of Scotland Yard, and a very gloomy Lord Claythorpe sat in conference in the latter gentleman’s City office. For Lord Claythorpe was a director of many companies and had interests of a wide and varied character.

  The detective sat at a table, with a little block of paper before him, jotting down notes from time to time, and there was a frown upon his face which suggested that his investigations were not going exactly as he could have wished them.

  “There is the case,” said Lord Claythorpe. “The whole thing was a malicious act on the part of this wretched woman, directed against me, my son, and my niece.”

  “Is Miss Joyce Wilberforce your niece?” asked the detective, and Lord Claythorpe hesitated.

  “Well, she is not my niece,” he said at last. “Rather she was the niece of one of my dearest friends. He was an immensely wealthy man, and when he died he left the bulk of his property to his niece.”

  The detective nodded.

  “Where does your interest come in, Lord Claythorpe?” he asked.

  “I am her legal guardian,” said his lordship, “although of course, she has a mother. That is to say, I am the trustee and sole executor of her estate, and there were one or two provisions especially made by my dear friend which gave me authority usually denied to trustees——”

  “Such as the right of choosing her husband,” said the detective quietly, and it was Lord Claythorpe’s turn to frown.

  “So you know something about this, do you?” he asked. “Yes, I have that right. It so happened that I chose my own son Francis as the best man for that position, and the lady was quite agreeable.”

  “Indeed!” said the polite Peter. He consulted his notes. “As far as I understand, this mysterious person, whom Mrs. Wilberforce believes to be a discharged employee named Jane Briglow, after making several raids upon your property, reached the culmination of her audacity by robbing your son of his wedding-ring and then burgling the house of the parson who was to marry them and stealing the license, which had been granted by the Bishop of London.”

  “That’s it exactly,” said Lord Claythorpe.

  “And what of the wedding?” asked Peter. “There will be no difficulty of getting another license.”

  Lord Claythorpe sniffed.

  “The only difficulty is,” he said, “that the young lady is naturally prostrated by the humiliation which this villainous woman has thrust upon her. She was in such a state of collapse the following morning that her mother was compelled to take her—or rather, to send her—to a friend in the country. The wedding is postponed for, let us say, a month.”

  “One other question,” asked the detective. “You say you suspect, in addition to Jane Briglow, a young man named Jamieson Steele, who was in a way engaged to Miss Joyce Wilberforce?”

  “A fugitive from justice,” said his lordship emphatically. “And why you police fellows cannot catch him is beyond my understanding. The man forged my name——”

  “I know all about that,” said the detective. “I had the records of the case looke
d out, and the particulars of the case were ’phoned to me here whilst you had gone upstairs to collect data concerning the previous robbery. As a matter of fact, although he is, as you may say, a fugitive from justice, having very foolishly run away, there is no evidence which would secure a conviction before a judge and jury. I suppose your lordship knows that?”

  His lordship did not know that, and he expressed his annoyance in the usual manner—which was to abuse the police.

  Peter Dawes went back to Scotland Yard, and consulted the officer who had been in charge of the forgery case.

  “No, sir,” said that individual, “we have not a picture of Mr. Steele. But he was a quiet enough young fellow—a civil engineer, so far as my memory serves me, in the employment of one of Lord Claythorpe’s companies.”

  Peter Dawson looked at the other thoughtfully. His informant was Chief Inspector Passmore, who was a living encyclopædia, not only upon the aristocratic underworld, but upon crooks who moved in the odour of respectability.

  “Inspector,” said Peter, “what position does Lord Claythorpe occupy in the world of the idle rich?”

  The inspector stroked his stubbly chin.

  “He is neither idle nor rich,” he said. “Claythorpe is, in point of fact, a comparatively poor man, most of whose income is derived from directors’ fees. He has been a heavy gambler in the past, and only as recently as the last oil slump he lost a goodish bit of money.”

  “Married?” asked Peter, and the other nodded.

  “To a perfectly colourless woman whom nobody seems to have met, though I believe she is seen out at some of the parties Lewinstein gives,” he said.

  “Do you know anything about the fortune of Miss Joyce Wilberforce?”

  “Two hundred and fifty thousand pounds,” said the other promptly. “Held absolutely by his lordship as sole trustee. The girl’s uncle thought an awful lot of him, and my own opinion is that, in entrusting the girl’s fortune to Claythorpe, he was a trifle mad.”