The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales

by Charles Dickens

  Half an hour later there came to him a constable from Scotland Yard to tell him of Stephanie’s disappearance and the conjectures that were rife on the matter, and he then, not unnaturally, read Loveday’s telegram by the light of this information, and concluded that the clue in her hands related to the discovery of Stephanie’s whereabouts as well as to that of her guilt.

  A telegram received a little later on, however, was to turn this theory upside down. It was, like the former one, worded in the enigmatic language current in the Lynch Court establishment, but as it was a lengthier and more intricate message, it sent Mr. Dyer at once to his cipher book.

  “Wonderful! She has cut them all out this time!” was Mr. Dyer’s exclamation as he read and interpreted the final word.

  In another ten minutes he had given over his office to the charge of his head clerk for the day, and was rattling along the streets in a hansom in the direction of Bishopsgate Station.

  There he was lucky enough to catch a train just starting for Wreford.

  “The event of the day,” he muttered, as he settled himself comfortably in a corner seat, “will be the return journey when she tells me, bit by bit, how she has worked it all out.”

  It was not until close upon three o’clock in the afternoon that he arrived at the old-fashioned market town of Wreford. It chanced to be cattle-market day, and the station was crowded with drovers and farmers. Outside the station Loveday was waiting for him, as she had told him in her telegram that she would, in a four-wheeler.

  “It’s all right,” she said to him as he got in; “he can’t get away, even if he had an idea that we were after him. Two of the local police are waiting outside the house door with a warrant for his arrest, signed by a magistrate. I did not, however, see why the Lynch Court office should not have the credit of the thing, and so telegraphed to you to conduct the arrest.”

  They drove through the High Street to the outskirts of the town, where the shops became intermixed with private houses let out in offices. The cab pulled up outside one of these, and two policemen in plain clothes came forward, and touched their hats to Mr. Dyer.

  “He’s in there now, sir, doing his office work,” said one of the men pointing to a door, just within the entrance, on which was printed in black letters, “The United Kingdom Cab-drivers’ Beneficent Association.”

  “I hear however, that this is the last time he will be found there, as a week ago he gave notice to leave.”

  As the man finished speaking, a man, evidently of the cab-driving fraternity, came up the steps. He stared curiously at the little group just within the entrance, and then chinking his money in his hand, passed on to the office as if to pay his subscription.

  “Will you be good enough to tell Mr. Emmett in there,” said Mr. Dyer, addressing the man, “that a gentleman outside wishes to speak with him.”

  The man nodded and passed into the office. As the door opened, it disclosed to view an old gentleman seated at a desk apparently writing receipts for money. A little in his rear at his right hand, sat a young and decidedly good-looking man, at a table on which were placed various little piles of silver and pence. The get-up of this young man was gentleman-like, and his manner was affable and pleasant as he responded, with a nod and a smile, to the cab-driver’s message.

  “I sha’n’t be a minute,” he said to his colleague at the other desk, as he rose and crossed the room towards the door.

  But once outside that door it was closed firmly behind him, and he found himself in the centre of three stalwart individuals, one of whom informed him that he held in his hand a warrant for the arrest of Harry Emmett on the charge of complicity in the Craigen Court robbery, and that he had “better come along quietly, for resistance would be useless.”

  Emmett seemed convinced of the latter fact. He grew deadly white for a moment, then recovered himself.

  “Will someone have the kindness to fetch my hat and coat,” he said in a lofty manner. “I don’t see why I should be made to catch my death of cold because some other people have seen fit to make asses of themselves.”

  His hat and coat were fetched, and he was handed into the cab between the two officials.

  “Let me give you a word of warning, young man,” said Mr. Dyer, closing the cab door and looking in for a moment through the window at Emmett. “I don’t suppose it’s a punishable offence to leave a black bag on an old maid’s doorstep, but let me tell you, if it had not been for that black bag you might have got clean off with your spoil.”

  Emmett, the irrepressible, had his answer ready. He lifted his hat ironically to Mr. Dyer; “You might have put it more neatly, guv’nor,” he said; “if I had been in your place I would have said: ‘Young man, you are being justly punished for your misdeeds; you have been taking off your fellow-creatures all your life long, and now they are taking off you.’”

  Mr. Dyer’s duty that day did not end with the depositing of Harry Emmett in the local jail. The search through Emmett’s lodgings and effects had to be made, and at this he was naturally present. About a third of the lost jewellery was found there, and from this it was consequently concluded that his accomplices in the crime had considered that he had borne a third of the risk and of the danger of it.

  Letters and various memoranda discovered in the rooms, eventually led to the detection of those accomplices, and although Lady Cathrow was doomed to lose the greater part of her valuable property, she had ultimately the satisfaction of knowing that each one of the thieves received a sentence proportionate to his crime.

  It was not until close upon midnight that Mr. Dyer found himself seated in the train, facing Miss Brooke, and had leisure to ask for the links in the chain of reasoning that had led her in so remarkable a manner to connect the finding of a black bag, with insignificant contents, with an extensive robbery of valuable jewellery.

  Loveday explained the whole thing, easily, naturally, step by step in her usual methodical manner.

  “I read,” she said, “as I dare say a great many other people did, the account of the two things in the same newspaper, on the same day, and I detected, as I dare say a great many other people did not, a sense of fun in the principal actor in each incident. I notice while all people are agreed as to the variety of motives that instigate crime, very few allow sufficient margin for variety of character in the criminal. We are apt to imagine that he stalks about the world with a bundle of deadly motives under his arm, and cannot picture him at his work with a twinkle in his eye and a keen sense of fun, such as honest folk have sometimes when at work at their calling.”

  Here Mr. Dyer gave a little grunt; it might have been either of assent or dissent.

  Loveday went on:

  “Of course, the ludicrousness of the diction of the letter found in the bag would be apparent to the most casual reader; to me the high falutin sentences sounded in addition strangely familiar; I had heard or read them somewhere I felt sure, although where I could not at first remember. They rang in my ears, and it was not altogether out of idle curiosity that I went to Scotland Yard to see the bag and its contents, and to copy, with a slip of tracing paper, a line or two of the letter. When I found that the handwriting of this letter was not identical with that of the translations found in the bag, I was confirmed in my impression that the owner of the bag was not the writer of the letter; that possibly the bag and its contents had been appropriated from some railway station for some distinct purpose; and, that purpose accomplished, the appropriator no longer wished to be burthened with it, and disposed of it in the readiest fashion that suggested itself. The letter, it seemed to me, had been begun with the intention of throwing the police off the scent, but the irrepressible spirit of fun that had induced the writer to deposit his clerical adjuncts upon an old maid’s doorstep had proved too strong for him here, and had carried him away, and the letter that was intended to be pathetic ended in being comic.”

  “Very ingenious, so far,” murmured Mr. Dyer: “I’ve no doubt when the contents of the
bag are widely made known through advertisements a claimant will come forward, and your theory be found correct.”

  “When I returned from Scotland Yard,” Loveday continued, “I found your note, asking me to go round and see you respecting the big jewel robbery. Before I did so I thought it best to read once more the newspaper account of the case, so that I might be well up in its details. When I came to the words that the thief had written across the door of the safe, ‘To be Let, Unfurnished,’ they at once connected themselves in my mind with the ‘dying kiss to my Marchioness Mother,’ and the solemn warning against the race-course and the book-maker, of the black-bag letter-writer. Then, all in a flash, the whole thing became clear to me. Some two or three years back my professional duties necessitated my frequent attendance at certain low class penny-readings, given in the South London slums. At these penny-readings young shop-assistants, and others of their class, glad of an opportunity for exhibiting their accomplishments, declaim with great vigour; and, as a rule, select pieces which their very mixed audience might be supposed to appreciate. During my attendance at these meetings, it seemed to me that one book of selected readings was a great favourite among the reciters, and I took the trouble to buy it. Here it is.”

  Here Loveday took from her cloak-pocket “The Reciter’s Treasury,” and handed it to her companion.

  “Now,” she said, “if you will run your eye down the index column you will find the titles of those pieces to which I wish to draw your attention. The first is ‘The Suicide’s Farewell;’ the second, ‘The Noble Convict;’ the third, ‘To be Let, Unfurnished.’”

  “By Jove! so it is!” ejaculated Mr. Dyer.

  “In the first of these pieces, ‘The Suicide’s Farewell,’ occur the expressions with which the black-bag letter begins—‘The fatal day has arrived,’ etc., the warnings against gambling, and the allusions to the ‘poor lifeless body.’ In the second, ‘The Noble Convict,’ occur the allusions to the aristocratic relations and the dying kiss to the marchioness mother. The third piece, ‘To be Let, Unfurnished,’ is a foolish little poem enough, although I dare say it has often raised a laugh in a not too-discriminating audience. It tells how a bachelor, calling at a house to enquire after rooms to be let unfurnished, falls in love with the daughter of the house, and offers her his heart, which, he says, is to be let unfurnished. She declines his offer, and retorts that she thinks his head must be to let unfurnished, too. With these three pieces before me, it was not difficult to see a thread of connection between the writer of the black-bag letter and the thief who wrote across the empty safe at Craigen Court. Following this thread, I unearthed the story of Harry Emmett—footman, reciter, general lover and scamp. Subsequently I compared the writing on my tracing paper with that on the safe-door, and, allowing for the difference between a bit of chalk and a steel nib, came to the conclusion that there could be but little doubt but what both were written by the same hand. Before that, however, I had obtained another, and what I consider the most important, link in my chain of evidence—how Emmett brought his clerical dress into use.”

  “Ah, how did you find out that now?” asked Mr. Dyer, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.

  “In the course of conversation with Mrs. Williams, whom I found to be a most communicative person, I elicited the names of the guests who had sat down to dinner on Christmas Eve. They were all people of undoubted respectability in the neighbourhood. Just before dinner was announced, she said, a young clergyman had presented himself at the front door, asking to speak with the Rector of the parish. The Rector, it seems, always dines at Craigen Court on Christmas Eve. The young clergyman’s story was that he had been told by a certain clergyman, whose name he mentioned, that a curate was wanted in the parish, and he had traveled down from London to offer his services. He had been, he said, to the Rectory and had been told by the servants where the Rector was dining, and fearing to lose his chance of the curacy, had followed him to the Court. Now the Rector had been wanting a curate and had filled the vacancy only the previous week; he was a little inclined to be irate at this interruption to the evening’s festivities, and told the young man that he didn’t want a curate. When, however, he saw how disappointed the poor young fellow looked—I believe he shed a tear or two—his heart softened; he told him to sit down and rest in the hall before he attempted the walk back to the station, and said he would ask Sir George to send him out a glass of wine. the young man sat down in a chair immediately outside the room by which the thieves entered. Now I need not tell you who that young man was, nor suggest to your mind, I am sure, the idea that while the servant went to fetch him his wine, or, indeed, so soon as he saw the coast clear, he slipped into that little room and pulled back the catch of the window that admitted his confederates, who, no doubt, at that very moment were in hiding in the grounds. The housekeeper did not know whether this meek young curate had a black bag with him. Personally I have no doubt of the fact, nor that it contained the cap, cuffs, collar, and outer garments of Harry Emmett, which were most likely redonned before he returned to his lodgings at Wreford, where I should say he repacked the bag with its clerical contents, and wrote his serio-comic letter. This bag, I suppose, he must have deposited in the very early morning, before anyone was stirring, on the door-step of the house in the Easterbrook Road.”

  Mr. Dyer drew a long breath. In his heart was unmitigated admiration for his colleague’s skill, which seemed to him to fall little short of inspiration. By-and-by, no doubt, he would sing her praises to the first person who came along with a hearty good will; he had not, however, the slightest intention of so singing them in her own ears—excessive praise was apt to have a bad effect on the rising practitioner.

  So he contented himself with saying:

  “Yes, very satisfactory. Now tell me how you hunted the fellow down to his diggings?”

  “Oh, that was mere ABC work,” answered Loveday. “Mrs. Williams told me he had left his place at Colonel James’s about six months previously, and had told her he was going to look after his dear old grandmother, who kept a sweet stuff-shop; but where she could not remember. Having heard that Emmett’s father was a cab-driver, my thoughts at once flew to the cabman’s vernacular—you know something of it, no doubt—in which their provident association is designated by the phase, ‘the dear old grandmother,’ and the office where they make and receive their payments is styled ‘the sweet stuff-shop.’”

  “Ha, ha, ha! And good Mrs. Williams took it all literally, no doubt?”

  “She did; and thought what a dear, kind-hearted fellow the young man was. Naturally I supposed there would be a branch of the association in the nearest market town, and a local trades’ directory confirmed my supposition that there was one at Wreford. Bearing in mind where the black bag was found, it was not difficult to believe that young Emmett, possibly through his father’s influence and his own prepossessing manners and appearance, had attained to some position of trust in the Wreford branch. I must confess I scarcely expected to find him as I did, on reaching the place, installed as receiver of the weekly moneys. Of course, I immediately put myself in communication with the police there, and the rest I think you know.”

  Mr. Dyer’s enthusiasm refused to be longer restrained.

  “It’s capital, from first to last,” he cried; “you’ve surpassed yourself this time!”

  “The only thing that saddens me,” said Loveday, “is the thought of the possible fate of that poor little Stephanie.”

  Loveday’s anxieties on Stephanie’s behalf were, however, to be put to flight before another twenty-four hours had passed. The first post on the following morning brought a letter from Mrs. Williams telling how the girl had been found before the night was over, half dead with cold and fright, on the verge of the stream running through Craigen Wood—“found too”—wrote the housekeeper, “by the very person who ought to have found her, young Holt, who was, and is so desperately in love with her. Thank goodness! at the last moment her courage failed her,
and instead of throwing herself into the stream, she sank down, half-fainting, beside it. Holt took her straight home to his mother, and there, at the farm, she is now, being taken care of and petted generally by everyone.”

  THE MYSTERY OF THE FIVE HUNDRED DIAMONDS, by Robert Barr

  When I say I am called Valmont, the name will convey no impression to the reader, one way or another. My occupation is that of private detective in London, but if you ask any policeman in Paris who Valmont was he will likely be able to tell you, unless he is a recent recruit. If you ask him where Valmont is now, he may not know, yet I have a good deal to do with the Parisian police.

  For a period of seven years I was chief detective to the Government of France, and if I am unable to prove myself a great crime hunter, it is because the record of my career is in the secret archives of Paris.

  I may admit at the outset that I have no grievances to air. The French Government considered itself justified in dismissing me, and it did so. In this action it was quite within its right, and I should be the last to dispute that right; but, on the other hand, I consider myself justified in publishing the following account of what actually occurred, especially as so many false rumours have been put abroad concerning the case. However, as I said at the beginning, I hold no grievance, because my worldly affairs are now much more prosperous than they were in Paris, my intimate knowledge of that city and the country of which it is the capital bringing to me many cases with which I have dealt more or less successfully since I established myself in London.

  Without further preliminary I shall at once plunge into an account of the case which riveted the attention of the whole world a little more than a decade ago.

  The year 1893 was a prosperous twelve months for France. The weather was good, the harvest excellent, and the wine of that vintage is celebrated to this day. Everyone was well off and reasonably happy, a marked contrast to the state of things a few years later, when dissension over the Dreyfus case rent the country in twain.