Legendary Women Detectives Read online

  “Oh, that was easy enough,” said Loveday, as she stepped into the train; “a newspaper sent down to Mr. Craven by his wife, was folded so as to direct his attention to the shipping list. In it I saw that the Bonnie Dundee had sailed two days previously for Natal. Now it was only natural to connect Natal with Mrs. Craven, who had passed the greater part of her life there; and it was easy to understand her wish to get her scapegrace son among her early friends. The alias under which he sailed came readily enough to light. I found it scribbled all over one of Mr. Craven’s writing pads in his study; evidently it had been drummed into his ears by his wife as his son’s alias, and the old gentleman had taken this method of fixing it in his memory. We’ll hope that the young fellow, under his new name, will make a new reputation for himself – at any rate, he’ll have a better chance of doing so with the ocean between him and his evil companions. Now it’s good-bye, I think.”

  “No,” said Mr. Griffiths; “it’s au revoir, for you’ll have to come back again for the assizes, and give the evidence that will shut old Mr. Craven in an asylum for the rest of his life.”

  * * *

  THE MAN WHO SCARED THE BANK“

  VALENTINE

  (Sleuth: Daphne Wrayne)

  In the history of British male mystery fiction there are countless heroes of distinguished parentage and sporting nature, who put natural gifts to use detecting crime – Reggie Fortune and Peter Wimsey to name several. On the distaff side, there is Daphne Wrayne. The brainchild of the prolific and pseudonymous Valentine (Archibald Thomas Pechey), Daphne Wrayne is the youngest of all the female sleuths in this volume, whom the author describes in The Adjusters (1930), as “barely out of her teens.” But, she is no Nancy Drew – she is an adult detective and so are the cases that challenge her.

  The editor of the Daily Monitor rang his bell.

  “Send Mr. Mannering to me at once,” he said when the boy appeared.

  He sat drumming on the table with his fingers and frowning at the letter in his hand until a knock sounded on the door. Then:

  “Come in, Mannering. Read that letter–” thrusting it at him.

  The other took it, scanned it, whistled softly.

  “I know the Duchess, sir,” he said.

  “Exactly. That’s why I sent for you. Go up and see her at once. Find out all you can about this story. Maybe she’ll get you an interview with these Adjusters people. Hitherto no one’s been able to get one. Get hold of every bit of news you can lay your hands on… The moment we publish the fact that they’ve recovered her necklace the public will be on its toes to know who and what they are. It’s over three months since the necklace was stolen from Hardington House, and the police have owned themselves beat.”

  For four weeks the Adjusters had been intriguing public curiosity.

  Who and what they were no one seemed to know. Four times had a full-page advertisement appeared in the Daily Monitor:

  IF THE POLICE CANNOT HELP YOU

  THE

  ADJUSTERS

  CAN

  179, CONDUIT STREET, W.

  Just that and no more. Interviewers and reporters had called, but had come away empty-handed. All that they could say was that the Adjusters occupied the whole of the first floor at 179, Conduit Street, that a stalwart commissionaire – an ex-army man with a string of ribbons across his chest – replied to all callers that “Miss Wrayne could see no one except by appointment, and no pressmen in any circumstances whatever.”

  Now he gave the same reply when Mannering presented his card. But Mannering merely smiled and produced a letter.

  “Perhaps you will be good enough to give that to Miss Wrayne,” he said. “It’s from the Duchess of Hardington.”

  Five minutes later the commissionaire came back.

  “If you will come this way, sir, Miss Wrayne will see you,” he said.

  The next morning the Daily Monitor brought out flaming headlines announcing that the Duchess of Hardington’s world-famous pearl necklace had been recovered by “The Adjusters of 179, Conduit Street.” But it was what followed that made the public rub its eyes in astonishment.

  Armed with a letter of introduction from the Duchess of Hardington I succeeded in gaining an interview with Miss Daphne Wrayne, the secretary of the Adjusters. To comment on that interview is impossible. I can merely state what Miss Wrayne told me and leave the public to judge for themselves. Probably they will be as bewildered as I was – and still am.

  Followed then an account of a lavishly furnished suite of offices and a beautiful young girl who called herself the secretary, who declined to give the names of her associates, but who said that the Adjusters came into being for the “adjustment of the inequalities that at present exist between the criminal and the victim.” Asked to explain this a little more fully Miss Wrayne said that where the police were chiefly interested in the capture and punishment of the criminal, the Adjusters were solely concerned with the restoration to the victim of the money, or property, out of which he or she had been defrauded. She added, furthermore, that they had unlimited money behind them and charged no fees whatsoever! Then the Monitor man went on:

  But, frankly, to me Miss Daphne Wrayne is the most amazing part of this amazing firm. It is well-nigh impossible to believe that this singularly lovely girl, barely out of her teens, who looks as if she had just stepped out of a Bond Street modiste’s, is really in control of an enterprise of this kind. I say “in control” for even if she is not, she is, on her own statement, the only one whom the public will see, and behind the very up-to-date exterior, with its dainty Paris frock, silk stockings, etc., there is obviously a brain out of the ordinary.

  I was bewildered at the rapidity with which this pretty, laughing-eyed schoolgirl who smoked cigarettes and used slang, changed into an earnest young woman, with the criminal life of London at her slim fingers’ ends.

  I came away from Conduit Street trying to tell myself that it was foolish, impossible, ridiculous. And yet there is Miss Wrayne herself. I can still see those clear hazel eyes of hers, and hear her final words: “Is it so strange that some who have unlimited money and brains should want to help their less fortunate brethren?”

  One week later, when Sir John Colston – the interview had been arranged that morning by telephone – was ushered into Daphne’s private room, he was conscious of a slight sense of annoyance. To, discover that he, Sir John Colston, the head of one of the biggest banks in London, had to lay his difficulties at the slim feet of a lovely, hazel-eyed girl hardly out of her teens – a girl who coolly waved him to a chair as she lighted another cigarette – it was almost preposterous!

  “Well, Sir John, what can we do for you?”

  Just as if he were nobody and his affair a trivial matter!

  “I understand from the Duchess of–” he began stiffly, but Daphne Wrayne’s eyes narrowed a little as she cut in on him.

  “I know, and you’re surprised at finding me so young.” She leant forward suddenly in her chair. “Forgive me for saying so, but you’re a little behind the times. You are obviously in trouble or you wouldn’t be here. If you want my services they are at your disposal. But in that case it will be very much better, both for you and for me, if you will forget that I am a girl and not yet twenty-one. You will excuse my plain speaking, won’t you?”

  A little smile curved her lips, but her eyes were steady on his.

  “You’re not the first, you know, Sir John,” she went on. “It’s a bit of a handicap sometimes, being a girl!”

  His resentment vanished from that moment. Her ingenuousness disarmed him.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Wrayne,” he said. “I’m an old man – a bit old-fashioned, I’m afraid, too. You – this place–” he waved a hand “rather took me by surprise.”

  “Of course–” sweetly. “Now, let’s get to business. You, I take it, are the head of the Universal Banking Corporation of Lombard Street?”

  “I am. I have a client of the name of Richard Henry Gorleston.”<
br />
  “The bookmaker?”

  “I begin to see that what the Duchess told me about you was true,” he smiled. He was becoming more impressed now every minute.

  “I have a good memory for names,” she replied.

  “He has been a client of mine for nearly three years. His father, I may tell you, left him fifty thousand pounds. The son has banked with us ever since, and until this week has been a trusted client.

  “I must tell you,” he went on, “that ever since he opened an account with us it has been his habit to draw out large sums of money in notes and to replace them within a few days. He told me from the start that he lived by gambling.

  “On numerous occasions he has presented checks for five or ten thousand pounds, and drawn the money out in notes. Then a few days later he would come and pay it all back, perhaps a little more, perhaps a little less.

  “Ten days ago he called at the bank and came into my private room – nothing unusual in that, though. He often does. Now, the moment he came in I noticed that he was wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, a thing which he has never done before. I commented on it and he said that he’d had trouble with his eyes, and had been to an oculist.”

  “Mention his name?” casually.

  “He did. James Adwinter, of Queen Anne Street.”

  Daphne Wrayne made a note of it.

  “Please go on, Sir John.”

  “I asked him if he was drawing out any money and he said he was – would I tell him what his balance was. I sent out and found it was about thirty thousand pounds. In front of me he took his check-book and wrote a check for twenty-five thousand pounds. I sent for one of my cashiers and we paid it over to him in thousand pound notes. Now comes the amazing part of the story. Two days ago he came into the bank and presented a check for fifteen thousand pounds. The cashier told him he hadn’t got it, and reminded him of the twenty-five-thousand-pound one. He indignantly denied it – said he’d been out of town for nearly a fortnight, and he could prove it. Declared that some one must have impersonated him. This morning we received a letter from his solicitors threatening us with an action.”

  “But the signature, Sir John? If it was Richard Henry Gorleston’s usual signature with no irregularity–”

  “That’s the trouble, Miss Wrayne. This–” handing her a check “–is his usual signature. This–” handing her another–“is the disputed check.”

  Daphne Wrayne’s eyebrows went up as she scanned it.

  “How did you come to pass this check without comment?” she queried. “The difference is not very great, I admit, but still–”

  “Miss Wrayne, I put it to you! You have an old client whom you know well. He comes in, sits down and talks to you, writes out a check. You send for your cashier who knows him equally well. You’ve seen him write the check. You’re satisfied. You cash it without question.”

  “Oh, I know. But will the law exonerate you?”

  “I’m afraid it won’t,” a little ruefully.

  “Tell me, Sir John–” after a slight pause “–had you any shadow of doubt when this man presented that twenty-five-thousand-pound check but that he was Richard Gorleston?”

  “Not the faintest, Miss Wrayne.”

  “When he came in two days ago was he wearing spectacles?”

  “He wasn’t. He said he’d never worn them in his life, and never heard of Adwinter.”

  “What was his manner like?”

  “Oh, he was naturally very upset, but he quite appreciated our position, though he said, of course, that we should have noticed the difference in the signature. He went on to say that he’d known for some time that he had a ”double,“ but he’d never been able to run him to earth.”

  The girl wrinkled her forehead thoughtfully.

  “He told you he’d been out of London all the time. Did he say where?”

  “Yes. He gave me his address. ”The Golden Crown, Portworth, Tavistock“ – trout fishing. Incidentally I have verified this by one of our local branches. He was there the whole time.”

  “Well, Sir John, in about a week’s time I’ll report to you. In the meanwhile say nothing to anybody.”

  “What am I to tell my solicitors to do?” a little perplexedly.

  She laughed merrily.

  “Oh, come, Sir John, you don’t want to throw in your hand yet! Instruct ”em to say that you repudiate all liability. After all, if you have to climb down – still, let’s hope you won’t!“

  In a comfortably furnished room in the Inner Temple four men sat round a table talking. Just an ordinary room, but certainly no ordinary men, these four. Actually, you could have found them all in Who’s Who.

  The big, tanned, curly-haired, merry-eyed giant, who sat next to the empty chair at the head of the table, was none other than James Ffolliott Plantagenet Trevitter, only son of the Earl of Winstanworth – Eton and Oxford, with half a page of athletic records added. Next to him, lounging a little in his chair, thin, lean, bronzed, almost bored-looking, with his gold-rimmed monocle, sat Sir Hugh Williamson, most intrepid of explorers. Opposite to him, elderly, grey-haired, almost benevolent-looking, Allan Sylvester, the best-loved actor-manager in England. And lastly, leaning forward talking, a smile on his clean-cut handsome face, Martin Everest, K. C., the greatest criminal barrister in England.

  And these were the four Adjusters…

  The clock on the mantelpiece chimed out the hour, and as it did so the door opened and the four men rose to their feet, as Daphne Wrayne stood in the doorway.

  “Well, Peter Pan!” exclaimed Sylvester.

  “Well, you dear Knights!”

  Very lovely she looked as she came forward, and her eyes were for all of them. But it was Lord Trevitter who, as if by tacit understanding, helped her off with her cloak and put her into her chair. Very naturally, yet quite openly too, she slipped her hand into his and let it stay there. But the other three only smiled indulgently though their smiles spoke volumes. You felt, somehow, that they had known her from childhood – looked on her now almost as a beloved child. That even if she had singled out Trevitter – as indeed she had – she loved none of them less dearly for that.

  “Oh, it’s great to be here!” she exclaimed with shining eyes. “I can still hardly believe it’s true.”

  “It’s a wonderful stunt,” murmured Everest thoughtfully.

  “We’ve been lucky, Martin,” answered the girl. “If it hadn’t been for the Duchess’s pearls–”

  “And then you giving an interview to the Monitor,” chimed in Lord Trevitter. “That was the master stroke, Daph.”

  “Well, it was just the right moment, Jim. Having had a big success it seemed to me to be the very wisest thing to do.”

  “By Jove, it was, my dear,” chuckled Sylvester. “It couldn’t have come at a better time. If you’d given it before, the public would only have scoffed. But as we had recovered that necklace they couldn’t afford to scoff.”

  “Incidentally,” remarked the girl, “the Duchess sent us a check for five hundred pounds.”

  “Good for her,” said Lord Trevitter. “I suppose you’ve – oh, of course, Jim! Anonymously, needless to say.”

  “Quite right,” murmured Everest. “Well, what’s the big idea this evening?”

  “How do you know I’ve got one?”

  “Listen to her!” exclaimed Williamson. “Breaking off a dance at twelve o’clock and keeping us out of our beds–

  “But it’s rather a puzzling one, Hugh–” interrupting him. “We shall want all our ingenuity to get home this time.”

  “Splendid! Let’s have it, my dear.”

  Leaning forward in her chair, slim hands clasped, Daphne Wrayne outlined the story to them. Then, as she came to the end:

  “But I can add a good deal to this. It seemed obvious to me from the start that there was no double at all – it was just a ruse, carefully planned.”

  “Particularly why, Daph?” queried Lord Trevitter.

  “The signature, Jim, alo
ne. In a forgery of this size your forger never makes a mistake with the signature. It’s miles too risky. Besides, assuming that it was Gorleston himself, look at all there is to support the idea. If they detect the flaw in the signature they can’t collar him – it’s merely a slip. But if it gets by, what happens then? Why the bank’s in the cart and they’re liable for carelessness.”

  “You’re a true woman, my dear,” smiled Everest. “Jump to a conclusion first and fit your facts to it afterwards.”

  Daphne pouted adorably.

  “I hate you, Martin,” she said. “Still, I was right.”

  “You’re sure?” demanded Williamson.

  “Absolutely. All the same, as my legal friend here will tell you – laying her hand on Everest’s arm with a smile – ”it’s going to be very difficult to prove. However, let me first give you all the facts I have.“

  She paused for a moment to light a cigarette, and they all waited eagerly.

  “I sent Rayte up to interview Adwinter,” she went on, “and established pretty satisfactorily that a man wearing glasses and answering in all other descriptions to Gorleston called there recently in the name of John Elwes, of 124, Unwin Street, Bloomsbury. He wanted new glasses and got them. So to Unwin Street, where apparently John Elwes has had a bedroom and sitting-room for over a year. Now, according to his landlady he is a man of no occupation who used to come once or twice a week and stay the night there. He turned up there, on the day the forgery was committed, at two-fifteen in the afternoon – note the time – stayed a few minutes, during which he told his landlady he was going to the bank, got into his taxi saying he’d look in in a few days’ time. He has never been near there since.”

  She paused a moment to relight her cigarette which had gone out. Then she went on.

  “Now as regards Gorleston. Gorleston’s been stopping, as he declared, at the Golden Crown, Portworth, two miles out of Tavistock. Every morning he’s breakfasted at eight and gone out, with his lunch, till ten o’clock at night. Now on the day that this forgery is supposed to have been committed, Gorleston swears he was fishing all day. But the curious fact turns up that a ticket collector at Tavistock – who is a fisherman himself, and who had apparently seen Gorleston fishing there that week – swears that he saw him on that particular day going up to London on the nine-eleven. The booking clerk can’t help us, but it’s funny that there was only one return ticket to London issued that day. Funnier still that the return half should have been given up that evening, and funniest of all that Gorleston should have come in on that night – the only one – to say that he had had a blank day.”