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 looked 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.”
The men’s eyes met.
“Is Claythorpe crooked?” asked Dawes bluntly, and the detective shrugged his shoulders.
“Heaven knows,” he said. “The only thing I am satisfied about is his association with Four Square Jane.”
Peter looked at him with a startled gaze.
“What on earth do you mean?” he asked.
“Well,” said the inspector, “don’t you see how all these crimes which are committed by Four Square Jane have as their object the impoverishment of Claythorpe?”
“I have formed my own theory on that,” said Peter slowly. “I thought Four Square Jane was a society crook doing a Claude Duval stunt, robbing the rich to keep the poor.”
The inspector smiled.
“You got that idea from the fact that she gives the proceeds of her jewel robberies to the hospitals. And why shouldn’t she? They’re difficult to dispose of, and as a rule they’re easily retrievable if old man Claythorpe will pay the price. But you never heard, when she took solid money, that that went to hospitals, did you?”
“There have been instances,” said Peter.
“When it wasn’t Claythorpe’s money,” said the other quickly. “When it was only the money belonging to some pal of Claythorpe’s as shady as himself. The impression I get of Four Square Jane is that she’s searching for something all the time. Maybe it’s money—at any rate, when she gets money she sticks to it; and maybe its something else.”
“What is your theory?” asked Dawes.
“My theory,” said the inspector slowly, “is that Four Square Jane and Claythorpe were working in a crooked game together, and that he double-crossed her and that she is getting her revenge.”
Lord Claythorpe had his office in the City, but most of his business was conducted in a much smaller office situated in St. James’s Street. The sole staff of this bureau was his confidential clerk, Donald Remington, a sour-faced man of fifty, reticent and taciturn, who knew a great deal more about his lordship’s business than possibly even Lord Claythorpe gave him credit for.
After his interview with the detective, Lord Claythorpe drove away from the city to the West End, and went up the one flight of stairs which led to the little suite—it was more like a flat than an office and occupied the first floor of a shop building, being approached by the side door—in an absent and abstracted frame of mind.
The silent Remington rose as his master entered, and Lord Claythorpe took the seat which his subordinate had occupied. For fully three minutes neither man spoke, and then Remington asked:
“What did the detective want your lordship for?”
“To ask about that infernal woman,” replied the other shortly.
“Four Square Jane, eh? But did he ask you anything else?” His tone was one of respectful familiarity, if the paradox may be allowed.
Claythorpe nodded.
“He wanted to know about Miss Wilberforce’s fortune,” he said.
Another silence, and then Remington asked:
“I suppose you’ll be glad when that wedding is through, now?”
There was a significant note in his voice, and Claythorpe looked up.
“Of course, I shall,” he said sharply. “By the way, have you made arrangements about——”
Remington nodded.
“Do you think you’re wise?” he asked. “The securities had better stay in the vaults at the bank don’t you think, especially in view of this girl’s activities?”
“Nothing of the sort,” replied Claythorpe violently. “Carry out my instructions, Remington, to the letter. What the devil do you mean by questioning any act of mine?”
Remington raised his eyebrows the fraction of an inch.
“Far be it from me to question your lordship’s actions; I am merely suggesting that——”
“Well, suggest nothing,” said Lord Claythorpe. “You have given notice to the bank that I intend putting the bonds in a place of security?”
“I have,” replied the other, “the manager has arranged for the box to be delivered here this afternoon. The assistant manager and the accountant are bringing it.”
“Good!” said Claythorpe. “Tomorrow I will take it down to my country place.”
Remington was silent.
“You don’t think it wise, eh?” The small eyes of Lord Claythorpe twinkled with malicious humour. “I see you’re scared of Four Square Jane, too.”
“Not I,” said Remington quickly. “When is this marriage to occur?”
“In a month,” said his lordship airily. “I suppose you’re thinking about your bonus.”
Remington licked his dry lips.
“I am thinking about the sum of four thousand pounds which your lordship owes me, and which I have been waiting for very patiently for the last two years,” he said. “I am tired of this kind of work, and I am anxious to have a little rest and recreation. I’m getting on in years, and it’s very nearly time I had a change.”
Lord Claythorpe was scribbling idly on his blotting-pad.
“How much do you think I will owe you, altogether, with the bonus I promised you for your assistance?”
“Nearer ten thousand pounds than four,” replied the man.
“Oh!” said his lordship carelessly. “That is a large sum, but you may depend upon receiving it the moment my boy is married. I have been spending a lot of money lately, Remington. It cost a lot to get back that pearl necklace.”
“You mean the Venetian Armlet?” said the other quickly. “I didn’t know that you had the pearl necklace back?”
“Anyway, I advertised for it,” said his lordship evasively.
“Fixing no definite reward,” said Remington, “and for a very good reason.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lord Claythorpe quickly.
“The pearls were faked,” said the calm Remington. “Your fifty thousand pound necklace was worth little more than fifty pounds!”
“Hush! for heavens’ sake,” said Claythorpe. “Don’t talk so loud.” He mopped his brow. “You seem to know a devil of a lot,” he said suspiciously. “In fact, there are moments, Remington, when I think you know a damn sight too much for my comfort.”
Remington smiled for the first time—a thin hard smile that gave his face a sinister appearance.
“All the more reason why your lordship should get rid of me as soon as possible,” he said. “I have no ambition except to own a little cottage in Cornwall, where I can fish, ride a horse, and idle away my time.”
His lordship rose hurriedly and took off his coat, preparatory to washing his hands in a small wash-place leading from the office.
“It’s getting late,” he said. “I had forgotten I have to lunch with somebody. Your ambition shall be gratified—be sure of that, Remington,” he said, passing into the smaller room.
“I hope so,” said Remington. His eyes were fixed on the floor. In throwing down his coat a letter had dropped from Claythorpe’s pocket, and Remington stooped to pick it up. He saw the postmark and the handwriting, and recognized it as that of Mrs. Wilberforce. He heard the splash of the water in the bowl and Lord Claythorpe’s voice humming a little tune. Without a moment’s hesitation he took it out and read it. The letter was short.
“My dear Lord Claythorpe,” it ran. “Joyce is adamant on the point of the marriage, and says she will not go through with it for another twelve months.”
He replaced the letter in the envelope, and put it back in the inside pocket of the coat.
Twelve months! Claythorpe had lied when he said a month, and was obviously lying with a purpose.
When his lordship emerged, wiping his hands on a towel, and still humming a little tune, Remington was gazing out of the window upon the chimney tops of Jermyn Street.
“I shall be back at half-past two,” said Lord Claythorpe, perfunctorily examining a small heap of letters which lay on his desk. “The bank people will be here by then?”
Remington nodded.
“I am worried about this transfer of Miss Joyce’s securities,” he said. “They are safe enough in the bank. I do not think they will be safe with you.”
“Rubbish,” said his lordship. “I think I know how to deal with Four Square Jane. And besides, I am going to ensure the safety of the securities. Four Square Jane isn’t the kind of person who would steal paper security. It wouldn’t be any good to her, anyway.”
“But suppose these documents disappear?” persisted Remington. “Though it might not assist Four Square Jane, it would considerably embarrass you and Miss Joyce. It would not be a gain, perhaps, to the burglar, but it would be a distinct loss to the young lady.”
“Don’t worry,” said Claythorpe, “neither Four Square Jane nor her confederate, Mr. Jamieson Steele——”
“Jamieson Steele?” repeated Remington. “What has he to do with it?”
Lord Claythorpe chuckled.
“It is my theory—and it is a theory, I think, which is also held by the police—that Jamieson Steele is the gentleman who assists Miss Four Square Jane in her robberies.”
“I’ll never believe it,” said Remington.
Lord Claythorpe had his hand on the door, preparatory to departing, and he turned at these words.
“Perhaps you do not believe that he forged my name to a cheque in this very office?” he said.
“I certainly do not believe that,” said Remington. “In fact I know that that story is a lie.”
Claythorpe’s face went red.
“That is an ugly word to use to me, Remington,” he said, “I think the sooner you go the better.”
“I quite agree with your lordship,” said Remington, and smiled as the door slammed behind his irate master.
When Claythorpe returned he was in a more amicable frame of mind, and greeted the two bank officials with geniality. On the big table was a black japanned box, heavily sealed. The business of transferring the sealed packages which constituted the contents of the box was not a long process. Lord Claythorpe checked them with a list he took from his case, and signed a receipt.
“I suppose your lordship would not like to break the seals of these envelopes?” said the assistant bank manager. “Of course, we are not responsible for their contents, but it would be more satisfactory to us, as I am sure it would be to your lordship, if you were able to verify the contents.”
“It is not necessary,” said Claythorpe, with a wave of his hand. “I’ll just reseal the box and put it in my safe.”
This he did in the presence of the manager, locking away the box in an old-fashioned steel safe—a proceeding which the bankers witnessed without enthusiasm.
“That doesn’t seem very secure,” said one, “I wish your lordship——”
“I wish you would mind your own business,” said Lord Claythorpe, and the bankers left, “blessing” the truculent man under their breath.
At six o’clock that afternoon Claythorpe finished the work on which he had been engaged, closed and locked his desk, tried the safe, and put on his hat. He glanced through the front window and saw that his car was waiting, and that it was pelting with rain.
“Which way are you going, Remington?” he asked. “I can give you a lift as far as Park Lane.”
“No, thank you, my lord,” said Remington, struggling into his mackintosh. “I am going by tube, and I have not far to walk.”
They went out of the office together, double-locking the stout door. Before leaving, Remington attached a burglar alarm which communicated with a large bell outside the building, and he repeated this process before the door was actually closed and double-locked.
“I want you to be here at nine o’clock tomorrow morning,” said Claythorpe to his subordinate. “Good-night.”
The inclemency of the weather increased as the evening advanced. A howling southwest gale swept over London, clearing the streets of idlers and limiting to some extent the activities of the police patrols. The police officer who was on duty within a few yards of the building, and who was relieved at eleven o’clock that night, stated that he saw or heard nothing of a suspicious character. In the course of his tour of duty, he tried the door which led to Lord Claythorpe’s office but found it fastened. His relief, a man named Tomms, made an examination of the door at a quarter past eleven—it was his business to examine every door in the street to see that they were securely fastened—and, in addition, acting upon instructions received from Scotland Yard, “pegged” the door. That is to say, he inserted two small wedges of the size of match sticks, one in each door-post, and tied a piece of black cotton from one to the other.
At one o’clock he tried the door again, and flashed his lamp upon the black thread, and found that it had been broken. This could only mean that someone had passed into the office between eleven and one. He summoned assistance, and roused the caretaker, who lived in adjoining premises, and together they went into the darkened building, and mounted the stairs.
Lord Claythorpe’s office door was apparently closed. It led, as the caretaker explained, directly into the main office. There was no sign of jemmy work, and the officers might have given up their investigations and found a simple explanation for the broken thread in the wildness of the night, when, flashing his lamp on the floor, one of the policemen saw a thin trickle of red coming from beneath. It was blood!
The police did not hesitate, but smashed open the door, and entered with some difficulty, for immediately behind the door was lying the body of a man. Tomms switched on the light and knelt down by the side of the body.
“He’s dead,” he said. “Do you know this man?”
“Yes, sir,” said the white-faced caretaker, “that’s Mr. Remington.”
The police made a perfunctory examination.
“You’d better get the divisional surgeon, Jim,” he said to his comrade. “But I’m afraid its no use. This poor fellow has been shot through the heart.”
He looked round the apartment. The safe door was wide open and empty.
Half-an-hour later Peter Dawes arrived on the scene of the murder and made a brief examination. He looked at the body.
“Was he like this?” he asked, “when you found him?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the officer.
“He has a knife in his hand.”
Peter bent down and looked at the thin-bladed weapon, tightly clenched in the dead man’s hand.
“What’s that, sir?” said Tomms, pointing to the other hand. “It looks like a paper there.”
The card in Remington’s half-clenched fist was loosely held, and the detective gently withdrew it. It was a visiting-card, and the name inscribed thereon was, “Mr. Jamieson Steele, Civil Engineer.” Peter Dawes whistled, and then walked across to the safe.
“That’s queer,” he said, and swung the door of the safe closed in the hope of finding something behind it.
He found something, but not what he had expected. In the centre of the green steel door was a small label. It was a label bearing the mark of Four Square Jane.
Four Square Jane had committed a murder! It was incredible. All Peter Dawes’s fine theories went by the board in that discovery. This was not the work of a society crook; it was not the work of a criminal philanthropist; there was evidence here of the most cold-blooded murder that it had been his business to investigate.
Summoned from his bed at three o’clock in the morning, Lord Claythorpe came to his office a greatly distressed man. He was shivering from sheer terror when he told the story of the securities which had been in the safe when he had left the office.
“And I was warned. I was warned!” he cried. “Poor Remington himself begged me not to do it. What a fool I am!”
“What was Remington doing here?” asked Peter.
The body of the murdered man had long since been removed to the mortuary, and only the dark stain on the floor spoke eloquently of tragedy.
“I haven’t any idea,” said his lordship. “I simply dare not let myself think. Poor fellow! It is a tragedy, an appalling tragedy!”
“I know all about that,” said Peter drily. “Murders usually are. But what was Remington doing in this office between eleven at night and one o’clock in the morning?”
Lord Claythorpe shook his head.
“I can only offer you my theory,” he said, “for what it is worth. Poor Remington was greatly worried about the securities being in this office at all, and he begged me to get a caretaker, a commissionaire or somebody, to sit in the office during the night. Very foolishly I rejected this excellent suggestion. I can only surmise that, worried by the knowledge that so many valuable securities were in this inadequate safe, Remington came in the middle of the night, intending to remain on guard himself.”
Peter nodded. It was a theory which had the appearance of being a feasible one.
“Then you think that he was surprised by the burglar?”
“Or burglars,” said Lord Claythorpe. “Yes, I do.”
Peter sat at his lordship’s desk, tapping at the blotting-pad with his fingers.
“There is a lot to support your theory,” he said. “From the appearance of the body and the weapon in his hand, it is a likely suggestion that he was defending himself. On the other hand, look at this.”
He took a crumpled envelope from his pocket and laid it on the table. It was stained with blood and the flap was heavily sealed.
“We found this under his body,” said the detective. “You will note that the envelope has been slit open by some sharp instrument—in fact, such an instrument as was found in Remington’s hand when the body was discovered.”
His lordship pondered this.
“Possibly he surprised them in the act of opening the envelope, and snatched it away,” he said, and again the detective nodded.
“I agree with you that that is also a plausible theory,” he said. “Had he a key of the safe?”
Lord Claythorpe hesitated.
“Not that I know,” he said. “Why, yes, of course, he had! I did not realize it. Yes, Remington had a key.”
“And is this the key?” Peter Dawes handed his lordship a long steel key which he had taken from his pocket, and Lord Claythorpe examined it intently.
“Yes,” he said, “that is undoubtedly one of the keys of the safe. Where did you find it?”
“Under the table,” said the detective.
“Are there any other clues?” asked his lordship after a pause, and this time Peter did not immediately answer.
“Yes, there is one,” he said. “We found in the dead man’s hand a small visiting-card.”
“What was the name?” asked the other quickly.
“The name was Mr. Jamieson Steele, who, I believe, was a former employee of yours.”
“Steele! By heaven! That fits in with what I have been saying all along!” cried Claythorpe. “So Steele was in it!”
“It doesn’t follow because this card was found in Remington’s hand that the card belonged to the burglar,” said Peter quietly. “It is not customary in criminal circles for murderers to leave their cards upon their victims, as I daresay your lordship knows.”
Claythorpe looked at him sharply.
“This does not seem to me to be a moment when you can exercise your sarcasm at my expense,” he growled. “I tell you Steele is a blackguard, and is the kind of man who would assist this notorious woman in her undertakings. Of course, if you’re going to shield him——”
“I shield nobody,” said Peter coldly. “I would not even shield your lordship if I had the slightest evidence against you. Of that you may be sure.”
Lord Claythorpe winced.
“This is a heavy loss for you,” said Peter, who was ignorant of the contents of the safe. Then, noticing the other’s silence, he asked quickly: “You will, of course, give me the fullest information as to what the safe contained. And you can’t do better than tell me now. Was it ready money?”
Lord Claythorpe shook his head.
“Nothing but securities,” he said, “and those not of a negotiable character.”
“Your securities?” asked Peter. “What was their value?”
“About a quarter of a million,” said his lordship, and Peter gasped.
“Your money?” he asked again.
“No,” hesitated Lord Claythorpe. “Not my money, but a trust fund——”
Peter sprang up from the table.
“You don’t mean to say that this was the fortune of Miss Joyce Wilberforce about which we were talking this morning?”
His lordship nodded.
“It is,” he said briefly. “It is a great tragedy, and I don’t know how I shall excuse myself to the poor girl.”
“You, of course, know what the securities were?” said Peter in a dry, matter-of-fact voice, as he sat down once more at the table.
In that moment he betrayed no more emotion than if he had been investigating the most commonplace of shop robberies.
“I have a list,” said Claythorpe, and for nearly an hour he was detailing particulars of the bonds which had been stolen.
Peter finished his inquiry at four in the morning, and went to his office to send out an all-Britain message.
It was not like Jane, this latest crime. It was certainly not like Jane or her assistant—if she had an assistant—to leave an incriminating visiting-card in poor Remington’s hand.
Peter Dawes was wise in the ways of criminals, both habitual and involuntary. He had seen a great deal of the grim side of his profession, and had made a careful study of anatomy, particularly in relation to murdered people. He was satisfied in his own mind that the card that was held in the lightly clenched fist of the dead man had been placed there after he had been shot.
He expressed himself frankly to his chief.
“The card is evidently a plant to lead us off the track; and if it was put there by Four Square Jane it was designed with the object of switching suspicion from her on to the unfortunate Steele.”
“Do you think you’ll catch Steele?” asked the chief.
Peter nodded.
“Yes, sir, I can catch him just when I want him, I think,” he said. “It was only because we didn’t want to take this man that we have let him go loose so long. He was a fool to run away, because the evidence against him was pretty paltry.”
Dawes had a large number of calls to make the following morning, and the first of these was on a firm of safemakers in Queen Victoria Avenue. He had the good fortune to find that the sales manager had been in control of the store for the past twenty years, and that he remembered distinctly selling the safe to Lord Claythorpe.
“That’s a relief,” smiled the detective. “I was afraid I should have to go all over London to find the seller. How many keys did you supply?”
“Two,” said the man. “One for his lordship, and one for Mr. Remington.”
“Was there any difference in the two keys?”
“None except the marking. Have you one of the keys here?”
The detective produced it from his pocket, but when the salesman put out his hand for it he shook his head, with a smile.
“No, I’ll keep it in my own hand, if you don’t mind. I have a special reason,” he said. “Perhaps you will describe the marking.”
“It’s inside the loop of the handle,” explained the salesman. “You will find a small number engraved there—No. 1 or No. 2. No. 1 was intended for his lordship, No. 2 for Mr. Remington. The numbers were put there at Lord Claythorpe’s suggestion in order to avoid confusion. It sometimes happens that both keys are in use together, and it is obviously desirable that they should not be mixed.”
Peter looked at the inside of the loop and saw the number, then placed the key in his pocket with a little smile.
“Thank you; I think you have told me all that I want to know,” he said. “You are sure that there are not three keys?”
“Perfectly certain,” said the man emphatically. “And what is more, it would have been impossible to have got these keys cut, except by our firm.”
Peter went back to Scotland Yard to find a telegram waiting for him. It was handed in at Falmouth by the chief of the local constabulary, and read:—
“Jamieson Steele is here. Shall I arrest? We have undoubted evidence that he spent last night in Falmouth with his wife.”
“His wife?” said the puzzled detective. “I didn’t know Steele was married. Well, that lets him out as far as the murder’s concerned. The question is shall we pinch him for the forgery?”
He consulted his friend the Inspector, and the advice he received with regard to the arrest on the lesser charge was emphatic.
“Leave him alone,” said the wise man. “It does us no good to arrest a man unless we are certain of conviction, and the only real offence that Jamieson Steele has committed was the fool offence of running away when he ought to have stood his ground. I interviewed the bank manager immediately after that crime, and the bank manager swore that the signature was not a forgery, but was Lord Claythorpe’s own; and with that evidence before the jury you’re not going to get a conviction, young fellow!”
Peter debated this point, and at last decided to wire to Steele asking him to come up and meet him.
The papers were filled with the stories of Four Square Jane’s latest exploit. This, indeed, was the culmination of a succession of sensational crimes. Her character, her eccentricities, the record of her several offences, appeared in every newspaper. There were witnesses who had seen a mysterious woman hurrying up St. James’s Street a quarter of an hour after the crime must have been committed; there were others who were certain they saw a veiled woman getting into a car at the bottom of St. James’s Street; in fact, the usual crop of rumours and evidence was forthcoming, none of which was of the slightest value to the police.
That afternoon the detective visited Lord Claythorpe. He found that gentleman in very close consultation with a grave Mr. Lewinstein. To the credit of that genial Hebrew financier it must be said that, however optimistic might be the prospectuses he framed from time to time, he was undoubtedly straight. And Mr. Lewinstein’s gravity of demeanour was due to a doubt which had arisen in his mind for the first time as to the trustworthy character of his lordly business associate. They greeted the detective—his lordship suspiciously and a little nervously, Lewinstein with evident relief.
“Well,” asked Claythorpe, “have you made any discovery?”
“Several,” said Peter. “We have been able to reconstruct the crime up to a point, and we have also proved that Mr. Steele was in Falmouth when the murder was committed.”
A little shade passed over the sallow face of Lord Claythorpe.
“How could you prove that when you don’t know where he is?” he asked.
“We found where he was, all right,” said Peter with satisfaction.
“And you have arrested him, of course?” demanded his lordship. “I mean for the forgery.”
The other smiled.
“Honestly, Lord Claythorpe, do you seriously wish us to arrest Jamieson Steele, in view of the overwhelming evidence in support of his contention that the cheque was given to him by you, and signed by you?”
“It’s a lie!” roared Lord Claythorpe, bringing his fist down on the table.
“It may be a lie,” said Peter Dawes quietly, “but it is a lie the jury will believe, and I can’t believe that the outcome of such a prosecution will be very profitable to your lordship.”
Claythorpe was silent. Presently he looked up and caught Lewinstein’s eye, and Lewinstein nodded.
“I quite agree,” said that gentleman seriously. “I never thought there was much of a case against young Steele. He was a good boy. Why he got rattled and ran away heaven only knows.”
Claythorpe changed the subject, which was wholly disagreeable to him.
“Have you found anything else?”
“Nothing except this,” said Peter, taking a key from his pocket and laying it on the table before Lord Claythorpe. “Will you be kind enough to show me your key?”
Claythorpe looked at the other for fully a minute.
“Certainly,” he said. He disappeared from the room and returned with a bunch of keys, on the end of which lay the facsimile of that which lay on the table.
Peter took the key and examined it. He looked at the inside of the loop, and as he did so an involuntary cry broke from Claythorpe’s lips.
“A jumping tooth,” he mumbled in apology. “Well, what have you found?”
“I’ve found that your keys have got slightly mixed,” said Peter. “You have Remington’s, and the key found in the office after the murder is yours!”
“Impossible!” said Lord Claythorpe.
“It is one of the impossible things that has happened,” said Peter.
“Well, there’s an explanation for that,” Claythorpe began, but Peter stopped him.
“Of course there is,” he said. “There are a hundred explanations, all of which are quite satisfactory. I suppose you had the keys out together on the table, and they got mixed at some time or other, and you did not notice. I’m not suggesting that you can’t explain. I merely point out this fact, which at present has no bearing, or very little, or any aspect of the case.”
Lewinstein and the detective went from the house together. His lordship, left alone, paced the study restlessly. Then he sat down at his desk and began to write. He produced two large canvas envelopes from the drawer of his desk, and into one of these he inserted a square certificate. He examined it casually before he put it into the cover. It was a debenture certificate issued by the North American Smelter Corporation for five hundred thousand dollars, and there was a particular reason why he should not have this valuable and important document in his house. He addressed the envelope containing the cover to himself in London. This he crossed with blue pencil, and from a drawer took out a small box containing a number of unused stamps. They were not British stamps, but Colonial, including Australian, African, Indian, and British Chinese. He fixed two Australian stamps, and placed the envelope within another, a little bigger. This he addressed to the manager of a Tasmanian bank, with whom he had done some business. To this gentleman he wrote a letter, saying that he expected to be in Australia by the time this letter reached its destination.
“But,” the letter went on, “if by any chance I am not able to get to Australia, and I do not call for this packet within a week after its arrival, or notify you by cable, asking you to keep it for me, will you please send it back to me by registered post.”
That was a job well done, he thought, as he sealed the envelope. This incriminating document would at any rate be out of the country for three months. Should he register it? He scratched his chin dubiously. Registration literally meant registration. If people inquired as to whether he had made any important transfer by mail, there would be no difficulty in discovering, not only the fact that he had posted such a letter, but the address to which it had been posted. No, on the whole he thought it would be better if he sent the letter by ordinary post. He put on his hat and coat, and took the letter himself to the nearest post office. On his return his butler announced a visitor.
“Miss Wilberforce!” said his lordship in surprise, “I thought she was in the country.”
“She arrived a few minutes after you left, m’lord.”
“Excellent!” said Claythorpe. It was the last person he had expected to see, and he fetched a sigh of relief. It might have been awkward if she had arrived earlier—at any rate, it was a remarkable coincidence that she had come at all that evening.
He found her standing by his table, and went towards her with outstretched hands.
“My dear Joyce,” he said, “whatever brings you here?”
“I had a telegram about the robbery,” she said; and then for the first time he realized that he had not troubled to notify the only person who was really affected by the burglary.
“Who wired you?”
“The police.”
Still he was puzzled.
“But you couldn’t have had the wire till eleven,” he said, “how on earth did you get here?”
She smiled rather quietly.
“I did rather an adventurous thing,” she replied. “There is an aeroplane service between Falmouth and London.”
He could only stare at her.
“That was very enterprising of you, Joyce.”
“Tell me,” she said, “did you also wire about this robbery?”
“I’ve been waiting till I got the fullest details before I notified you,” said Lord Claythorpe easily. “You see, my dear girl, I have no wish to worry or frighten you, and possibly there was some chance that this wretched woman would return the securities, or at any rate give me a chance of redeeming them.”
She nodded.
“I see,” she said. “Then I can do nothing?”
He shook his head.
“Absolutely nothing.”
She pursed her lips irresolutely.
“Can I write a letter?” she asked.
“Sit down, sit down, my dear child,” he fussed. “You’ll find paper and envelopes in this case.”
At eleven o’clock that night, South Western District Post Office No. 2 was a scene of animation. Postal vans, horse vans, and motors were pulled up level with the big platform which led from the sorting room, and a dozen porters were engaged in handling mail bags for various destinations. The vans conveying local London mails had been despatched to the various district offices, the last to leave being a small one-horse van carrying the foreign mails to the G.P.O. It was driven by a middle-aged attendant named Carter, and pulled out of the yard at a quarter to twelve.
The weather was a repetition of that which had been experienced on the previous night. The south-wester was still blowing, the rain was coming down in gusty squalls, and the driver, muffled up to the chin, whipped up his horse to face the blast. His way led through the most deserted part of London’s West End—more deserted than usual on this stormy night. One of the main streets through which he had to pass was “up,” being in the hands of the road repairers, and he turned into a side street to make a detour which would bring him clear of the obstruction. He observed, as he again turned his horse into the narrow thoroughfare running parallel with the main road, that the street lamps were extinguished, and put this down to the storm. He was in the blackest patch of the road, when a red lamp flashed right ahead of him, and he pulled his horse back on its haunches.
“What’s the trouble?” he said leaning down and addressing the figure that held the lamp.
For answer, a blinding ray of light, directed by a powerful pocket lamp, struck him full in the face, and before he realised what had happened, someone had leapt on to the wheel and was by his side, clutching at the rails on top of the van. Something cold and hard was pressed against his neck.
“Utter a sound and you’re a dead man,” said a man’s voice.
A quarter of an hour later, all that stood for authority in London was searching for a dark low motor car, and Peter Dawes, sitting on the edge of his bed in his pyjamas, was eagerly questioning one of his junior officers over the ’phone.
“Robbed the mail? Impossible! How did it happen? Were they arrested? I’ll be with you in ten minutes.”
He slipped into a suit, buttoned his mackintosh, and stepped out into the wild night. His flat was opposite a cab rank, and in less than ten minutes he was at Scotland Yard.
“…the man said the thing was over so quickly he hadn’t a chance of shouting, besides which, the fellow who stood by his side threatened to shoot him.”
“What have they taken?”
“Only one bag, so far as can be ascertained. They knew just what they were after, and when they had got it they disappeared. The constable at the other end of the street heard the man shout, and came running down just in time to see a motor car turn the corner.”
Later, Peter interviewed the driver, a badly scared man, in the stable-yard of the contractor who supplied the horses for the post office vans. The driver was a man who had been in the Government service for ten years, and had covered the route he was following that night—except that he had never previously taken the side street rendered necessary by the condition of the road—for the greater part of that time.
“Did you see anybody else except the man who sat by your side and threatened you?” asked Peter.
“Yes, sir,” replied the man. “I saw what I thought was a girl in a black oilskin; she passed round to the back of the van.”
“Where is the van? Is it here?” asked the detective, and they showed him a small, four-wheeled vehicle, covered in at the top and with two doors which were fastened behind by a steel bar and padlocked. The padlock had been wrenched open, and the doors now stood ajar.
“They had taken out the mail bags, sir, in order to sort them out to see what was gone.”
Peter flashed his lamp in the interior, examining the floor and sides carefully. There was no clue of any kind until he began his inspection of the inside of the doors, and there, on the very centre, was the familiar label.
“Four Square Jane, eh?” said Peter, and whistled.
“I deeply regret that I found it necessary to interfere with His Majesty’s mails. In a certain bag was a letter which was very compromising to me, and it was necessary that I should recover it. I beg to enclose the remainder of the letters which are, as you will see, intact and untampered with!”
This document, bearing the seal manual of Four Square Jane, was delivered to the Central Post Office accompanied by a large mail bag. The person who delivered it was a small boy of the District Messenger Service, who brought the package in a taxi-cab. He could give no information as to the person who had sent him except to say that it was a lady wearing a heavy veil, who had summoned him to a popular hotel and had met him in the vestibule. They had taken a cab together, and at the corner of Clarges Street the cab had pulled up on the instructions of the lady; a man had appeared bearing a bundle that he had put into a cab which then drove on. A little later the lady had stopped the cab, given the boy a pound note, and herself descended. The boy could only say that in his opinion she was young, and undoubtedly in mourning.
Here was new fuel to the flames of excitement which the murder of Remington had aroused. A murder one day, accompanied by a robbery which, if rumour had any foundation, involved nearly a quarter of a million pounds, and this tragedy followed on the next day by the robbery of the King’s mail; and all at the hands of a mysterious woman whose name was already a household word—these happenings apart from the earlier crimes were sufficient to furnish not only London but the whole of Britain with a subject for discussion.
Lord Claythorpe heard the news of the robbery with some uneasiness. Inquiries made at the local district office, however, relieved him of his anxiety. The mail bag which had been taken, he was informed, was part of the Indian mail. The Australian mail had been delivered at the General Post Office earlier in the evening by the service which left the district office at nine o’clock. It was as well for his peace of mind that he did not know how erroneous was the information he had been given. He had asked Joyce to breakfast with him, and had kept her waiting whilst he pursued these inquiries; for he had read of the robbery in bed, and had hurried round to the district office without delay.
“This is the most amazing exploit of all,” he said to the girl, as he handed her the paper. “Take this,” he said. “I have read it.”
“Poor Jane Briglow!”
“Why Jane Briglow?”
The girl smiled.
“Mother insists that it is she who has committed all these acts. As a matter of fact, I happen to know that Jane is in good service in the North of England.”
Claythorpe looked at her in surprise.
“Is that so?” he said incredulously. “Do you know, I’d begun to form a theory about that girl.”
“Well, don’t,” said Joyce, helping herself to jam.
“I wonder whether they’ll get the bag back,” speculated his lordship. “There’s nothing about it in the papers.”
“It is very unlikely, I should think,” said Joyce. She rolled up her table-napkin. “You wanted to see me about something this morning,” she said.
He nodded.
“Yes, Joyce,” he said. “I’ve been thinking matters over. I’m afraid I was rather prejudiced against young Steele.” The girl made no reply. “I’m not even certain that he was guilty of the offence with which I charged him,” Claythorpe went on. “You see, I was very worried at the time, and it is possible that I may have signed a cheque and overlooked the fact. You were very fond of Steele?”
She nodded.
“Well,” said Lord Claythorpe heartily, “I will no longer stand in your way.”
She looked at him steadily.
“You mean you will consent to my marriage?”
He nodded.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Why not, indeed?” she said, a little bitterly. “I understand that my fortune no longer depends upon whether I marry according to your wishes or not—since I have no fortune.”
“It is very deplorable,” said his lordship gravely. “Really, I feel morally responsible. It is a most stupendous tragedy, but I will do whatever I can to make it up to you, Joyce. I am not a rich man by any means, but I have decided, if you still feel you cannot marry my son, and would prefer to marry Mr. Steele, to give you a wedding gift of twenty thousand pounds.”
“That is very good of you,” said the girl politely, “but, of course, I cannot take your verbal permission. You will not mind putting that into writing?”
“With all the pleasure in life,” said Lord Claythorpe, getting up and walking to a writing-table, “really Joyce, you’re becoming quite shrewd in your old age,” he chuckled.
He drew a sheet of paper from a writing-case and poised a pen.
“What is the date?” he asked.
“It is the nineteenth,” said the girl. “But date it as from the first of the month.”
“Why?” he asked in surprise.
“Well, there are many reasons,” said the girl slowly. “I shouldn’t like people to think, for example, that your liking for Mr. Steele dated from the loss of my property.”
He looked at her sharply, but not a muscle of her face moved.
“That is very considerate of you,” he said with a shrug, “and it doesn’t really matter whether I make it the first or the twenty-first, does it?”
He wrote quickly, blotted the sheet, handed it to the girl, and she read it and folded the paper away in her handbag.
“Was that really the reason you asked me to date the permission back?” he asked curiously.
She shook her head.
“No,” she said coolly. “I was married to Jamieson last week.”
“Married!” he gasped. “Without my permission!”
“With your permission,” she said, tapping her little bag.
For a second he frowned, and then he burst into a roar of laughter.
“Well, well,” he said. “That’s rather rich. You’re a very naughty girl, Joyce. Does your mother know?”
“Mother knows nothing about it,” said the girl. “There is one more thing I want to speak to you about, Lord Claythorpe, and that is in connection with the robbery of the mail last night.”
It was at that moment that Peter Dawes was announced.
“It’s the detective,” said Lord Claythorpe with a little frown. “You don’t want to see him?”
“On the contrary, let him come in, because what I am going to say will interest him,” she said.
Claythorpe nodded to the butler, and a few seconds later Peter Dawes came into the room. He bowed to the girl and shook hands with Lord Claythorpe.
“This is my niece—well, not exactly my niece,” smiled Claythorpe, “but the niece of a very dear friend of mine, and, in fact, the lady who is the principal loser in that terrible tragedy of St. James’s Street.”
“Indeed?” said Peter with a smile. “I think I know the young lady by sight.”
“And she was going to make an interesting communication to me just as you came in,” said Claythorpe. “Perhaps, Joyce, dear, you will tell Mr. Dawes?”
“I was only going to say that this morning I received this.” She did not go to her bag, but produced a folded paper from the inside of her blouse. This she opened and spread on the table and Claythorpe’s face went white, for it was the five hundred thousand dollar bond which he had despatched the day before to Australia. “I seem to remember,” said the girl, “that this was part of my inheritance—you remember I was given a list of the securities you held for me?”
Lord Claythorpe licked his dry lips.
“Yes,” he said huskily. “That is part of your inheritance.”
“How did it come to you?” asked Peter Dawes.
“It was found in my letter-box this morning,” said the girl.
“Accompanied by a letter?”
“No, nothing,” said Joyce. “For some reason I connected it with the mail robbery, and thought that perhaps you had entrusted this certificate to the post—and that in your letter you mentioned the fact that it was mine.”
“That also is impossible,” said Peter Dawes quietly, “because, if your statement is correct, this document would have been amongst those which were stolen on the night that Remington was murdered. Isn’t that so, Lord Claythorpe?”
Claythorpe nodded.
“It is very providential for you, Joyce,” he said huskily. “I haven’t the slightest idea how it came to you. Probably the thief who murdered Remington knew it was yours and restored it.”
The girl nodded.
“The thief being Four Square Jane, eh?” said Peter Dawes, eyeing his lordship narrowly.
“Naturally, who else?” said Claythorpe, meeting the other’s eyes steadily. “It was undoubtedly her work, her label was on the inside of the safe.”
“That is true,” agreed Peter. “But there was one remarkable fact about that label which seems to have been overlooked.”
“What was that?”
“It had been used before,” said Peter slowly. “It was an old label which had previously been attached to something or somewhere, for the marks of the old adhesion were still on it when I took it off. In fact, there were only a few places where the gum on the label remained useful.”
Neither the eyes of the girl or Lord Claythorpe left the other’s face.
“That is curious,” said Lord Claythorpe slowly. “What do you deduce from that?”
Dawes shrugged.
“Nothing, except that it is possible someone is using Four Square Jane’s name in vain,” he said, “someone who was in a position to get one of the old labels she had used on her previous felonies. May I sit down?” he asked, for he had not been invited to take a seat.
Claythorpe nodded curtly, and Dawes pulled a chair from the table and seated himself.
“I have been reconstructing that crime,” he said, “and there are one or two things that puzzle me. In the first place, I am perfectly certain that no woman was in your office on the night the murder was committed.”
Lord Claythorpe raised his eyebrows.
“Indeed!” he said. “And yet the constable who was first in the room told me that he distinctly smelt a very powerful scent—the sort a woman would use. I also noticed it when I went into the room.”
“So did I,” said Peter, “and that quite decided me that Four Square Jane had nothing to do with the business. A cool, calculating woman like Four Square Jane is certain to be a lady of more than ordinary intelligence and regular habits. She is not the kind who would suddenly take up a powerful scent, because it is possible to trace a woman criminal by this means, and it is certain that in no other case which is associated with her name was there the slightest trace or hint of perfume. That makes me more certain that the crime was committed by a man and that he sprinkled the scent on the floor in order to leave the impression that Four Square Jane had been the operator.”
“What do you think happened?” asked Lord Claythorpe after a pause.
“I think that Remington went to the office with the intention of examining the contents of the safe,” said Peter deliberately. “I believe he had the whole of the envelopes on the table, and had opened several, when he was surprised by somebody who came into the office. There was an argument, in the course of which he was shot dead.”
“You suggest that the intruder was a burglar?” said Lord Claythorpe with a set face, but Peter shook his head.
“No,” he said. “This man admitted himself to the office by means of a key. The door was not forced, and there was no sign of a skeleton key having been used. Moreover, the newcomer must have been well acquainted with the office, because, after the murder was committed he switched out the light and pulled up the blinds which Remington had lowered, so that the light should not attract attention from the street. We know they were lowered, because the constable on beat duty on the other side of the street saw no sign of a light. The blinds were heavy and practically light-proof. Now, the man who committed the murder knew his way about the office well enough to turn out the light, move in the dark, and manipulate the three blinds which covered the windows. I’ve been experimenting with those blinds, and I’ve found that they’re fairly complicated in their mechanism.”
Again there was a pause.
“A very fantastic theory, if you will allow me to say so,” said Lord Claythorpe, “and not at all like the sensible, commonsense point of view that I should have expected from Scotland Yard.”
“That may be so,” said Peter quietly. “But we get romantic theories even at Scotland Yard.”
He looked down at the bond, still spread out on the table.
“I suppose your lordship will put this in the bank after your unhappy experience?” he said.
“Yes, yes,” said Lord Claythorpe briefly, and Peter turned to the girl.
“I congratulate you upon recovering a part of your property,” he said. “I understand this is held in trust for you until you’re married.”
Lord Claythorpe started violently.
“Until you’re married!” he said. “Why, why!” He caught the girl’s smiling eyes. “That means now, doesn’t it?” he said.
“Until your marriage is approved by me,” said Lord Claythorpe.
“I think it is approved by you,” said Joyce, and dived her hand into her bag.
“It will be delivered to you formally tomorrow,” said his lordship stiffly.
Peter Dawes and the girl went out of the house together and walked in silence a little way.
“I’d give a lot to know what you’re thinking,” said the girl.
“And I’d give a lot to know what you know,” smiled Peter, and at that cryptic exchange they parted.
That night Mr. Lewinstein was giving a big dinner party at the Ritz Carlton. Joyce had been invited months before, but had no thought of accepting the invitation until she returned to the hotel where she was staying.
A good-looking man rose as she entered the vestibule, and came towards her with a smile. He took her arm, and slowly they paced the long corridor leading to the elevator.
“So that’s Mr. Jamieson Steele, eh?” said Peter Dawes, who had followed her to the hotel, and he looked very thoughtfully in the direction the two had taken.
He went from the hotel and called on Mr. Lewinstein by appointment, and that great financier welcomed him with a large cigar.
“I heard you were engaged upon the Four Square Jane case, Mr. Dawes,” he said, “and I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea if I invited you to dinner tonight.”
“Is this a professional or a friendly engagement?” smiled Peter.
“It’s both,” said Mr. Lewinstein frankly. “The fact is, Mr. Dawes, and I’m not going to make any bones about the truth, it is necessary in my business that I should keep in touch with the best people in London. From time to time I give a dinner-party, and I bring together all that is bright and beautiful and brainy. Usually these dinners are given in my own house, but I’ve had a rather painful experience,” he said grimly, and Peter, who knew the history of Four Square Jane’s robbery, nodded in sympathy.
“Now, I want to say a few words about Miss Four Square Jane,” said Lewinstein. “Do you mind seeing if the door is closed?”
Peter looked outside, and closed the door carefully.
“I’d hate what I’m saying to be repeated in certain quarters,” Lewinstein went on. “But in that robbery there were several remarkable coincidences. Do you know that Four Square Jane stole nothing, in most cases, except the presents that had been given by Claythorpe? Claythorpe is rather a gay old bird and has gone the pace. He has been spending money like water for years. Of course, he may have a big income, or he may not. I know just what he gets out of the City. On the night of the burglary at my house this girl went through every room and took articles which in many cases had been given to the various people by Claythorpe. For example, something he had presented to my wife disappeared; some shirt-studs, which he gave to me, were also gone. That’s rather funny, don’t you think?”
“It fits in with my theory,” said Peter nodding, “that Four Square Jane has only one enemy in the world, and that is Lord Claythorpe.”
“That’s my opinion, too,” said Lewinstein. “Now tonight I am giving a big dinner-party, as I told you, and there will be a lot of women there, and the women are scared of my parties since the last one. There will be jewels to burn, but what makes me specially nervous is that Claythorpe has insisted on Lola Lane being invited.”
“The dancer?” asked Peter in surprise, and the other nodded.
“She’s a great friend of Claythorpe’s—I suppose you know that? He put up the money for her last production, and, not to put too fine a point upon it, the old man is infatuated by the girl.”
Mr. Lewinstein sucked contemplatively at one of his large cigars.
“I am not a prude, you understand, Mr. Dawes,” he said, “and the way men amuse themselves does not concern me. Claythorpe is much too big a man for me to refuse any request he makes. In the present state of society, people like Lola are accepted, and it is not for me to reform the Smart Set. The only thing I’m scared about is that she will be covered from head to foot in jewels.”
He pulled again at his cigar, and looked at it before he went on:
“Which Lord Claythorpe has given her.”
“This is news to me,” said Peter.
“It would be news to a lot of people,” said Lewinstein, “for Claythorpe is supposed to be one of the big moral forces in the City.” He chuckled, as though at a good joke. “Now, there’s another point I want to make to you. This girl Lola has been telling her friends—at least, she told a friend of mine—that she was going to the Argentine to live in about six months’ time. My friend asked her if Lord Claythorpe agreed to that arrangement. You know, these theatrical people are very frank, and she said ‘Yes.’ He looked at the detective.
“Which means that Claythorpe is going, too,” said Peter, and Lewinstein nodded.
“That is also news,” said Peter Dawes. “Thank you, I will accept your invitation to dinner tonight.”
“Good!” said Lewinstein, brightening. “You don’t mind, but I may have to put you next to Lola.”
That evening when Peter strolled into the big reception hall which Mr. Lewinstein had engaged with his private dining-room, his eyes wandered in search of the lady. He knew her by sight—had seen her picture in the illustrated newspapers. He had no difficulty in distinguishing her rather bold features; and, even if he had not, he would have known, from the daring dress she wore, that this was the redoubtable lady whose name had been hinted in connection with one or two unpleasant scandals.
But chiefly his eyes were for the great collar of emeralds about her shapely throat. They were big green stones which scintillated in the shaded lights, and were by far the most remarkable jewels in the room. Evidently Lewinstein had explained to Lord Claythorpe the reason of the invitation, because his lordship received him quite graciously and made no demur at a common detective occupying the place by the side of the lady who had so completely enthralled him.
It was after the introduction that Peter had a surprise, for he saw Joyce Wilberforce.
“I didn’t expect to see you again today, Miss Wilberforce,” he said.
“I did not expect to come myself,” replied the girl, “but my husband—you knew I was married?”
Mr. Dawes nodded.
“That is one of the things I did know,” he laughed.
“My husband had an engagement, and he suggested that I should amuse myself by coming here. What do you think of the emeralds?” she asked mischievously. “I suppose you’re here to keep a friendly eye on them?”
Peter smiled.
“They are rather gorgeous, aren’t they? Though I cannot say I admire their wearer.”
Peter was discreetly silent. He took the dancer in to dinner, and found her a singularly dull person, except on the question of dress and the weakness of her sister artistes. The dinner was in full swing when Joyce Wilberforce, who was sitting almost opposite the detective, screamed and hunched herself up in the chair.
“Look, look!” she cried, pointing to the floor. “A rat!”
Peter, leaning over the table, saw a small brown shape run along the wainscot. The woman at his side shrieked and drew her feet up to the rail of her chair. This was the last thing he saw, for at that second all the lights in the room went out. He heard a scream from the dancer.
“My necklace, my necklace!”
There was a babble of voices, a discordant shouting of instructions and advice. Then Peter struck a match. The only thing he saw in the flickering light was the figure of Lola, with her hands clasped round her neck.
The collar of emeralds had disappeared!
It was five minutes before somebody fixed the fuse and brought the lights on again.
“Let nobody leave the room!” shouted Peter authoritatively. “Everybody here must be searched. And——”
Then his eyes fell upon a little card which had been placed on the table before him, and which had not been there when the lights went out. There was no need to turn it. He knew what to expect on the other side. The four squares and the little J looked up at him mockingly.
Peter Dawes, of Scotland Yard, had to do some mighty quick thinking and, by an effort of will, concentrate his mind upon all the events which had immediately preceded the robbery of the dancer’s necklace. First there was Joyce Wilberforce, who had undoubtedly seen a rat running along by the wainscot, and had drawn up her feet in a characteristically feminine fashion. Then he had seen the dancer draw up her feet, and put down her hands to pull her skirts tight—also a characteristically feminine action.
What else had he seen? He had seen a hand, the hand of a waiter, between himself and the woman on his left. He remembered now that there was something peculiar about that hand which had attracted his attention, and that he had been on the point of turning his head in order to see it better when Joyce’s scream had distracted his attention.
What was there about that hand? He concentrated all his mind upon this trivial matter, realising instinctively that behind that momentary omen was a possible solution of the mystery. He remembered that it was a well-manicured hand. That in itself was remarkable in a waiter. There had been no jewels or rings upon it, which was not remarkable. This he had observed idly. Then, in a flash, the detail which had interested him came back to his mind. The little finger was remarkably short. He puzzled his head to connect this malformation with something he had heard before. Leaving the room in the charge of the police who had been summoned, he took a taxi and drove straight to the hotel where Joyce Steele was staying with her husband.
“Mrs. Steele is out, but Mr. Steele has just come in,” said the hotel clerk. “Shall I send your name up?”
“It is unnecessary,” said the detective, showing his card. “I will go up to his room. What is the number?”
He was told, and a page piloted him to the door. Without troubling to knock, he turned the handle and walked in. Jamieson Steele was sitting before a little fire, smoking a cigarette, and looked up at the intruder.
“Hullo, Mr. Dawes,” he said calmly.
“You know me, eh?” said Peter. “May I have a few words with you?”
“You can have as many as you like,” said Steele. “Take a chair, won’t you? This is not a bad little sitting-room, but it is rather draughty. To what am I indebted for this visit? Is our wicked uncle pressing his charge of forgery?”
Peter Dawes smiled.
“I don’t think that is likely,” he said. “I have made a call upon you for the purpose of seeing your hands.”
“My hands?” said the other in a tone of surprise. “Are you going in for a manicure?”
“Hardly,” said Peter drily, as the other spread out his hands before him. “What is the matter with your little finger?” he asked, after a scrutiny.
Jamieson Steele examined the finger and laughed.
“He is not very big, is he?” he laughed. “Arrested development, I suppose. It is the one blemish on an otherwise perfect body.”
“Where have you been tonight?” asked Peter quietly.
“I have been to various places, including Scotland Yard” was the staggering reply.
“To Scotland Yard?” asked Peter incredulously, and Jamieson Steele nodded.
“The fact is, I wanted to see you about the curious charge which Lord Claythorpe brings forward from time to time; and also I felt that some explanation was due to you as you are in charge of a case which nearly affects my wife, as to the reason I did a bolt when Claythorpe brought this charge of forgery against me.”
“What time did you leave the Yard?”
“About half an hour ago,” said Steele.
Peter looked at him closely. He was wearing an ordinary lounge suit, and a soft shirt. The hand which had come upon the table had undoubtedly been encased in a stiff cuff and a black sleeve.
“Why, what is the matter?” asked Steele.
“There has been a robbery at the Ritz Carlton tonight,” Peter explained. “A man dressed as a waiter has stolen an emerald necklace.”
“And naturally you suspect me,” he said ironically. “Well, you’re at liberty to search this apartment.”
“May I see your dress clothes?” said Peter.
For answer, the other led him to his bedroom, and his dress suit was discovered at the bottom of a trunk, carefully folded and brushed.
“Now,” said Peter, “if you don’t mind, I’ll conduct the search you suggest. You understand that I have no authority to do so, and I can only make the search with your permission.”
“You have my permission,” said the other. “I realise that I am a suspected person, so go ahead, and don’t mind hurting my feelings.”
Peter’s search was thorough, but revealed nothing of importance.
“This is my wife’s room,” said Steele. “Perhaps you would like to search that?”
“I should,” said Peter Dawes, without hesitation, but again his investigations drew blank.
He opened all the windows of the room, feeling along the window-sills for a tape, cord or thread, from which an emerald necklace might be suspended. It was an old trick to fasten a stolen article to a black thread, and the black thread to some stout gummed paper fastened to the window-sill; but here again he discovered nothing.
“Now,” said the cheerful young man, “you had better search me.”
“I might as well do the job thoroughly,” agreed Peter, and ran his hands scientifically over the other’s body.
“Not guilty, eh?” said Steele, when he had finished. “Now perhaps you’ll sit down, and I’ll tell you something about Lord Claythorpe that will interest you. You know, of course, that Claythorpe has been living on the verge of bankruptcy. Won’t you sit down?” he said again, and Peter obeyed. “Here is a cigar which will steady your nerves.”
“I can’t stay very long,” said Peter, “but I should like your end of the serial very much indeed.”
He took the proffered cigar, and bit off the end.
“As I was saying,” Steele went on, “Claythorpe has been living for years on the verge of bankruptcy. He is a man who, from his youth up, has been dependent on his wits. His early life was passed in what the good books called dissolute living. I believe there was a time when he was so broke he slept on the Embankment.”
Peter nodded. He also had heard something to this effect.
“This, of course, was before he came into the title. He is a clever and unscrupulous man with a good address. And knowing that he was up against it, he set himself to gain powerful friends. One of these friends was my wife’s uncle—a good-natured innocent kind of man, who had amassed a considerable fortune in South Africa. I believe Claythorpe bled him pretty considerably, and might have bled him to death, only the old fellow died naturally, leaving a handsome legacy to his friends and the residue of his property to my wife. Claythorpe was made the executor, and given pretty wide powers. Amongst the property which my wife inherited—or rather, would inherit on her wedding day, was a small coal-mine in the North of England, which at the time of the old man’s death was being managed by a very brilliant young engineer, whose name modesty alone prevents my revealing.”
“Go on,” said Peter, with a smile.
“Claythorpe, finding himself in control of such unlimited wealth, set himself out to improve the property. And the first thing he did was to project the flotation of my coal mine—I call it mine, and I always regarded it as such in a spiritual sense—for about six times its value.”
Peter nodded.
“In order to bring in the public, it was necessary that a statement should be made with regard to the quantity of coal in the mine, the extent of the seams, etc., and it was my duty to prepare a most glowing statement, which would loosen the purse-strings of the investing public. Claythorpe put the scheme up to me, and I said, ‘No.’ I also told him,” the young man went on, choosing his words carefully, “that, if he floated this company, I should have something to say in the columns of the financial Press. So the thing was dropped, but Claythorpe never forgave me. There was a certain work which I had done for him outside my ordinary duties and, summoning me to his St. James’s Street office, he gave me a cheque. I noticed at the time that the cheque was for a much larger amount than I had expected, and thought his lordship was trying to get into my good books. I also noticed that the amount inscribed on the cheque had the appearance of being altered, and that even his lordship’s signature looked rather unusual. I took the cheque and presented it to my bank a few days later, and was summoned to the office, where I was denounced as a forger,” said the young man, puffing a ring of smoke into the air reflectively, “but it gives you a very funny feeling in the pit of the stomach. The heroic and proper and sensible thing to do was to stand on my ground, go up to the Old Bailey, make a great speech which would call forth the applause and approbation of judge and jury, and stalk out of the court in triumph. Under these circumstances, however, one seldom does the proper thing. Remington it was—the man who is now dead—who suggested that I should bolt; and, like a fool, I bolted. The only person who knew where I was was Joyce. I won’t tell you anything about my wife, because you probably know everything that is worth knowing. I’ll only say that I’ve loved her for years, and that my affection has been returned. It was she who urged me to come back to London and stand my trial, but I put this down to her child-like innocence—a man is always inclined to think that he’s the cleverer of the two when he’s exchanging advice with women. That’s the whole of the story.”
Peter waited.
“Now, Mr. Steele,” he said, “perhaps you will explain why you were at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel tonight disguised as a waiter.”
Steele looked at him with a quizzical smile.
“I think I could explain it if I’d been there,” he said. “Do you want me to invent an explanation as well as to invent my presence?”
“I am as confident that you were there,” said Peter, “as I am that you are sitting here. I am also certain that it will be next to impossible to prove that you were in the room.” He rose from his seat. “I am going back to the hotel,” he said, “though I do not expect that any of our bloodhounds have discovered the necklace.”
“Have another cigar,” said Steele, offering the open box.
Peter shook his head.
“No thank you,” he said.
“They won’t hurt you, take a handful.”
Peter laughingly refused.
“I think I am nearly through with this Four Square Jane business,” he said, “and I am pretty certain that it is not going to bring kudos or promotion to me.”
“I have a feeling that it will not, either,” said Steele. “It’s a rum case.”
Peter shook his head.
“Rum, because I’ve solved the mystery of Four Square Jane. I know who she is, and why she has robbed Claythorpe and his friends.”
“You know her, do you?” said Steele thoughtfully, and the other nodded.
Jamieson Steele waited till the door closed upon the detective, and then waited another five minutes before he rose and shot the bolt. He then locked the two doors leading from the sitting-room, took up the box of cigars and placed it on the table. He dipped into the box, and pulled out handful after handful of cigars, and then he took out something which glittered and scintillated in the light—a great collar of big emeralds—and laid it on the table. He looked at it thoughtfully, then wrapped it in a silk handkerchief and thrust it into his pocket, replacing the cigars in the box. He passed into his bedroom, and came out wearing a soft felt hat, and a long dark-blue trench coat.
He hesitated before he unbolted the door, unbottoned the coat, and took out the handkerchief containing the emerald collar, and put it into his overcoat pocket. If he had turned his head at that moment, and looked at the half-opened door of his bedroom, he might have caught a glimpse of a figure that was watching his every movement. Peter Dawes had not come alone, and there were three entrances to the private suite which Mr. and Mrs. Steele occupied.
Then Jamieson Steele stepped out so quickly that by the time the watcher was in the corridor, he had disappeared down the lift, which happened to be going down at that moment. The man raced down the stairs three at a time. The last landing was a broad marble balcony which overlooked the hall, and, glancing down, he saw Peter waiting. He waved his hand significantly, and at that moment the elevator reached the ground floor, and Jamieson Steele stepped out of it.
He was half way across the vestibule when Peter confronted him.
“Wait a moment, Mr. Steele. I want you,” said Peter.
It was at that second that the swing doors turned and Joyce Steele came in.
“Want me?” said Steele. “Why?”
“I am going to take you into custody on the charge of being concerned in the robbery tonight,” said the detective.
“You’re mad,” said Steele, with an immovable face.
“Arrest him? Oh no, no!” It was the gasping voice of the girl. In a second she had flung herself upon the man, her two arms about him. “It isn’t true, it isn’t true!” she sobbed.
Very gently Steele pushed her back.
“Go away, my dear. This is no place for you,” he said. “Mr. Dawes has made a great mistake, as he will discover.”
The watcher had joined the group now.
“He’s got the goods, sir,” he said triumphantly. “I watched him. The necklace was in a cigar box. He has got it in his pocket.”
“Hold out your hands,” said Peter, and in a second Jamieson Steele was handcuffed.
“May I come?” said the girl.
“It is better you did not,” said Peter. “Perhaps your husband will be able to prove his innocence. Anyway, you can do nothing.”
They left her, a disconsolate figure, standing in the hall, and carried their prisoner to Cannon Row.
“Now we’ll search you, if you don’t mind?” asked Peter.
“Not at all,” said the other coolly.
“Where did you say he put it?”
“In his pocket, sir,” said the spy.
Peter searched the overcoat pockets.
“There’s nothing here,” he said.
“Nothing there?” gasped the man in astonishment. “But I saw him put it there. He took it out of his hip pocket and——”
“Well, let’s try his hip pocket. Take off your coat, Steele.”
The young man obeyed, and again Peter’s deft fingers went over him, but with no better result. The two detectives looked at one another in consternation.
“A slight mistake on your part, my friend,” said Peter, “I’m sorry we’ve given you all this trouble.”
“Look in the bottom of the cab,” the second detective pleaded, and Peter laughed.
“I don’t see what he could do. He had the bracelets on his hands, and I never took my eyes off them once. You can search the cab if you like—it’s waiting at the door.”
But the search of the cab produced no better result.
And then an inspiration dawned upon Peter, and he laughed, softly and long.
“I’m going to give up this business,” he said. “I really am, Steele. I’m too childishly trustful.”
Their eyes met, and both eyes were creased with laughter.
“All right,” said Peter. “Let him go.”
“Let him go?” said the other detective in dismay.
“Yes. We’ve no evidence against this gentleman, and we’re very unlikely to secure it.”
For in that short space of time, Peter had realized exactly the kind he was up against; saw as clearly as daylight what had happened to the emeralds, and knew that any attempt to find them now would merely lead to another disappointment.
“If you don’t mind, Steele, I think I’ll go back with you to your hotel. I hope you’re not bearing malice.”
“Not at all,” replied Steele. “It’s your job to catch me, and my job to——” he paused.
“Yes?” said Peter curiously.
“My job to get caught, obviously,” said Steele with a laugh.
They did not speak again until they were in the cab on the way back to the hotel.
“I’m afraid my poor wife is very much upset.”
“I’m not worrying about that,” said Peter drily. “Steele, I think you are a wise man; and, being wise, you will not be averse to receiving advice from one who knows this game from A to Z.”
Steele did not reply.
“My advice to you is, get out of the country just as soon as you can, and take your wife with you,” said Peter. “There is an old adage that the pitcher goes often to the well—I need not remind you of that.”
“Suppose I tell you I do not understand you,” said Steele.
“You will do nothing so banal,” replied Peter. “I tell you I know your game, and the thing that is going to stand against you is the robbery of the mail. That is your only bad offence in my eyes, and it is the one for which I would work night and day to bring you to justice.”
Again a silence.
“Nothing was stolen from the mail, that I know,” said Peter. “It was all returned. Your principal offence is that you scared a respectable servant of his Majesty into fits. Anyway, it is a felony of a most serious kind, and would get you twenty years if we could secure evidence against you. You held up his Majesty’s mail with a loaded revolver——”
“Even that you couldn’t prove,” laughed Steele. “It might not have been any more than a piece of gaspipe. After all, a hardened criminal, such as you believe I am, possessed of a brain which you must know by this time I have, would have sufficient knowledge of the law to prevent his carrying lethal weapons.”
“We are talking here without witnesses,” said Peter.
“I’m not so sure,” said Steele quickly. “I thought I was talking to you in my little sitting-room without witnesses.”
“Anyway, you can be sure there are no witnesses here,” smiled Peter, as the cab turned into the street where the hotel was situated. “And I am asking you confidentially, and man to man, if you can give me any information at all regarding the murder in St. James’s Street.”
Steele thought awhile.
“I can’t,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I was in Falmouth at the time, as you know. Obviously, it was not the work of the lady who calls herself Four Square Jane, because my impression of that charming creature is that she would be scared to death at the sight of a revolver. The card which was found in the dead man’s hand——”
“How did you know that?” asked Peter quickly.
“These things get about,” replied the other unabashed. “Has it occurred to you that it was a moist night, that the murderer may have been hot, and that on the card may be his fingerprints?”
“That did occur to me,” said Peter. “In fact, it was the first thing I thought about. And, if it is any interest to you, I will tell you that there was a finger print upon that card, which I have been trying for the past few days to——” He stopped. “Here we are at your hotel,” he said. “There’s a good detective lost in you, Steele.”
“Not lost, but gone before,” said the other flippantly. “Good-night. You won’t come up and have a cigar?”
“No thanks,” said a grim Peter.
He went back to Scotland Yard. It was curious, amazingly curious, that Steele should have mentioned the card that night. It was not into an empty office that he went, despite the lateness of the hour. There was an important police conference, and all the heads of departments were crowded into the room, the air of which was blue with tobacco smoke. A stout, genial man nodded to Peter as he came in.
“We’ve had a devil of a job getting it, Peter, but we’ve succeeded.”
Before him was a small visiting-card, bearing the name of Jamieson Steele. In the very centre was a violet finger print. The finger print had not been visible to the naked eye until it had been treated with chemicals, and its present appearance was the result of the patient work of three of Scotland Yard’s greatest scientists.
“Did you get the other?” said Peter.
“There it is,” said the stout man, and pointed to a strip of cardboard bearing two black finger prints.
Peter compared the two impressions.
“Well,” he said, “at any rate, one of the mysteries is cleared up. How did you get this?” he asked pointing to the strip of cardboard bearing the two prints.
“I called on him, and shook hands with him,” said the stout man with a smile. “He was horribly surprised and offended that I should take such a liberty. Then I handed him the strip of card. It was a little while later, when he put his hand on the blotting pad, that he discovered that his palm and finger-tips were black, and I think that he was the most astonished man I ever saw.”
Peter smiled.
“He didn’t guess that your hand would be carefully covered with lamp-black, I gather?”
“Hardly,” said the fat man.
Again Peter compared the two impressions.
“There is no doubt at all about it,” he said. He looked at his watch. “Half-past twelve. Not a bad time, either. I’ll take Wilkins and Browne,” he said, “and get the thing over. It’s going to be a lot of trouble. Have you got the warrant?”
The stout man opened the drawer of his desk and passed a sheet of paper across. Peter examined it.
“Thank you,” he said simply.
Lord Claythorpe was in his study taking a stiff whisky and soda when the detective was announced.
“Well?” he said. “Have you found the person who stole the emerald necklace?”
“No, my lord,” said Peter. “But I have found the man who shot Remington.”
Lord Claythorpe’s face went ashen.
“What do you mean?” he said hoarsely. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Peter, “that I am going to take you into custody on a charge of wilful murder, and I caution you that what you now say will be used in evidence against you.”
At three o’clock in the morning, Lord Claythorpe, an inmate of a cell at Cannon Row, sent for Peter Dawes. Peter was ushered into the cell, and found that Claythorpe had recovered from the crushed and hopeless man he had left: he was now calm and normal.
“I want to see you, Dawes,” he said, “to clear up a few matters which are on my conscience.”
“Of course, you know,” said Peter, “that any statement you make——”
“I know, I know,” said the other impatiently. “But I have this to say.” He paced the short cell, his hands gripped behind him. Presently he sat down at Peter’s side. “In the first place,” he said, “let me tell you that I killed Donald Remington. There’s a long story leading up to that killing, but I swear I had no intention of hurting him.”
Peter had taken a notebook from one pocket and a pencil from another, and was jotting down in his queer shorthand the story the other told. Usually such a proceeding had the effect of silencing the man whose words were being inscribed, but Claythorpe did not seem to notice.
“When Joyce Wilberforce’s uncle left me executor of his estate, I had every intention of going straight,” he went on. “But I made bad losses in the Kaffir market, and gradually I began to nibble at her fortune. The securities, which were kept in sealed envelopes at the bank, were taken out one by one, and disposed of; blank sheets of paper were placed in the envelopes, which were resealed. And when the burglary occurred, there was only one hundred-thousand-pound bond left. That bond you will find in a secret drawer of my desk. I think Remington, who was in my confidence except for this matter, suspected it all along. When I took the securities from the bank, it was with the intention of raiding my own office that night and leaving the sign of Four Square Jane to throw suspicion elsewhere. I came back to the office at eleven o’clock that night, but found Remington was before me. He had opened the safe with his key, and was satisfying his curiosity as to the contents of the envelopes. He threatened to expose me, for he had already discovered that the envelopes contained nothing of importance.
“I was a desperate man. I had taken a revolver with me in case I was detected, intending to end my life then and there. Remington made certain demands on me, to which I refused to agree. He rose and walked to the door, telling me he intended to call the police; it was then that I shot him.”
Peter Dawes looked up from his notes.
“What about Steele’s card?” he said.
Lord Claythorpe nodded.
“I had taken that with me to throw suspicion upon Steele, because I believed, and still believe, that he is associated with Four Square Jane.”
“Tell me one thing,” said Peter. “Do you know or suspect Four Square Jane?”
Lord Claythorpe shook his head.
“I’ve always suspected that she was Joyce Wilberforce herself,” he said, “but I’ve never been able to confirm that suspicion. In the old days, when the Wilberforces were living in Manchester Square, I used to see the girl, and suspected she was carrying notes to young Steele, who had a top-floor office at the corner of Cavendish Square.”
“Where were you living at the time?” asked Peter quickly.
“I had a flat in Grosvenor Square,” said Lord Claythorpe.
Peter jumped up.
“Was the girl’s uncle alive at this time?”
Lord Claythorpe nodded.
“He was still alive,” he said.
“Where was he living?”
“In Berkeley——”
“I’ve got it!” said Peter excitedly. “This was when all the trouble was occurring, when you were planning to rob the girl, and using your influence against her. Don’t you see? ‘Four Square Jane.’ She has named the four squares where the four characters in your story lived.”
Lord Claythorpe frowned.
“That solution never occurred to me,” he said.
He did not seem greatly interested in a matter which excited Peter Dawes to an unusual extent. He had little else to say, and when Peter Dawes left him, he lay wearily down on the plank bed.
Peter was talking for some time with the inspector in charge of the station, when the gaoler called him.
“I don’t know what was the matter with that prisoner, sir,” he said, “but, looking through the peephole about two minutes ago, I saw him pulling the buttons off his coat.”
Peter frowned.
“You’d better change that coat of his,” he said, “and place him under observation.”
They all went back to the cell together. Lord Claythorpe was lying in the attitude in which Peter had left him, and they entered the cell together. Peter bent down and touched the face, then, with a cry, turned the figure over on its back.
“He’s dead!” he cried.
He looked at the coat. One of the buttons had been wrenched off. Then he bent down and smelt the dead man’s lips, and began a search of the floor. Presently he found what he was looking for—a section of a button. He picked it up, smelt it, and handed it to the inspector.
“So that’s how he did it,” he said gravely. “Claythorpe was prepared for this.”
“What is it?” asked the inspector.
“The second button of his coat has evidently been made specially for him. It is a compressed tablet of cyanide of potassium, coloured to match the other buttons, and he had only to tear it off to end his life.”
So passed Lord Claythorpe, a great scoundrel, leaving his title to a weakling of a son, and very few happy memories to that obscure and hysterical woman who bore his name. Peter’s work was done, save for the mystery of Four Square Jane, and even that mystery was exposed. The task he had set himself now was a difficult one, and one in which he had very little heart. He obtained a fresh set of warrants, and accompanied by a small army of detectives who watched every exit, made his call at the hotel at which Steele and his wife were staying.
He went straight up to the room, and found Joyce and her husband at breakfast. They were both dressed; the fact that several trunks were packed suggested that they were contemplating an early move.
Peter closed the door behind him and came slowly to the breakfast table, and the girl greeted him with a smile.
“You’re just in time for breakfast,” she said. “Won’t you have some coffee?”
Peter shook his head. Steele was eyeing him narrowly, and presently the young man laughed.
“Joyce,” he said, “I do believe that friend Dawes has come to arrest us all.”
“You might guess again, and guess wrong,” said Peter, sitting himself down and leaning one elbow on the table. “Mr. Steele, the game is up. I want you!”
“And me, too?” asked the girl, raising her eyebrows.
She looked immensely pretty, he thought, and he had a sore heart for her.
“Yes, you, too, Mrs. Steele,” he said quietly.
“What have I done?” she asked.
“There are several things you’ve done, the latest being to embrace your husband in the vestibule of the hotel when we had arrested him for being in possession of an emerald necklace, and in your emotion relieving him of the incriminating evidence.”
She laughed, throwing back her head.
“It was prettily done, don’t you think?” she asked.
“Very prettily,” said Peter.
“Have you any other charge?”
“None, except that you are Four Square Jane,” said Peter Dawes.
“So you’ve found that out, too, have you?” asked the girl. She raised her cup to her lips without a tremor, and her eyes were dancing with mischief.
Peter Dawes felt that had this woman been engaged on a criminal character instead of devoting her life to relieving the man who had robbed her of his easy gains, she would have lived in history as the greatest of all those perverted creatures who set the law at defiance.
Steele took a cigarette from his pocket, and offered his case to the detective.
“As you say, the jig is up,” said he, “and since we desire most earnestly that there should be no unpleasant scene, and this is a more comfortable place to make a confession than a cold, cold prison cell, I will tell you that the whole scheme of Four Square Jane was mine.”
“That’s not true,” said the girl quietly. “You mustn’t take either the responsibility or the credit, dear.”
Steele laughed as he held a light to the detective’s cigarette.
“Anyway, I planned some of our cleverest exploits,” he said, and she nodded.
“As you rightly say, Dawes, my wife is Four Square Jane. Perhaps you would like to know why she took that name?”
“I know—or, rather, I guess,” said Peter. “It has to do with four squares in London.”
Steele looked surprised.
“You’re cleverer than I thought,” he said. “But that is the truth. Joyce and I had been engaged in robbing Claythorpe for a number of years. When we got some actual, good money from him, we held tight to it. Jewels we used either to send in to the hospitals——”
“That I know, too,” said Peter, and suddenly flung away his cigarette. He looked at the two suspiciously, but neither pair of eyes fell. “Now then,” said Peter thickly. “Come along. I’ve waited too long.”
He rose to his feet and staggered, then took a halting step across the room to reach the door, but Steele was behind him, and had pinioned him before he went two paces. Peter Dawes felt curiously weak and helpless. Moreover, he could not raise his voice very much above a whisper.
“That—cigarette—was—drugged,” he said drowsily.
“Quite right,” said Steele. “It was one of my Never Fails.”
Peter’s head dropped on his breast, and Steele lowered him to the ground.
The girl looked down pityingly.
“I’m awfully sorry we had to do this, dear,” she said.
“It won’t harm him,” said Steele cheerfully. “I think we had better keep some of our sorrow for ourselves, because this hotel is certain to be surrounded. The big danger is that he’s got one of his gentleman friends in the corridor outside.”
He opened the door quietly and looked out. The corridor was empty. He beckoned the girl.
“Bring only the jewel-case,” he said. “I have the money and the necklace in my pocket.”
After closing and locking the door behind them, they passed down the corridor, not in the direction of the lift or the stairs, but towards a smaller pair of stairs, which was used as an emergency exit, in case of fire. They did not attempt to descend, but went up three flights, till they emerged on a flat roof, which commanded an excellent view of the West End of London.
Steele led the way. He had evidently reconnoitred the way, and did not once hesitate. The low roof ended abruptly in a wall on to which he climbed, assisting the girl after him. They had to cross a little neck of sloping ledge, before they came to a much more difficult foothold, a slate roof, protected only by a low parapet. They stepped gingerly along this, until they came to a skylight, which Steele lifted.
“Down you go,” he said, and helped the girl to drop into the room below them.
He waited only long enough to secure the skylight, and then he followed the girl through the unfurnished room into which they had dropped, on to a landing.
In the meantime, Peter’s assistant had grown nervous, and had come up to the room, and knocked. Getting no answer, he had broken in the door, to find his chief lying still conscious but helpless where he had been left. The rough-and-ready method of resuscitation to which the detective resorted, shook the drugged man from his sleep, and a doctor, hastily summoned, brought him back to normality.
He was still shaky, however, when he recounted the happenings.
“They haven’t passed out of the hotel, that I’ll swear,” said the detective. “We’re watching every entrance, including the staff entrance. How did it occur?”
Peter shook his head.
“I went like a lamb to the slaughter,” he said, smiling grimly. “It was the promise of a confession, and my infernal curiosity which made me stay—to smoke a doped cigarette, too!” He thought a moment. “I don’t suppose they depended entirely on the cigarette, though,” he said. “And maybe it would have been a little more unpleasant for me, if I hadn’t smoked.”
An hour after he was well enough to conduct personally a search of the hotel premises. From cellar to roof he went, followed by two assistants, and it was not until he was actually on the roof that he discovered any clue. It was a small piece of beadwork against the wall which the girl had climbed, and which had been torn off in her exertions. They passed along the neck, and along the sloping roof till they came to the skylight, and this Peter forced.
He found, upon descending, that he was in the premises of Messrs. Backham and Boyd, ladies’ outfitters. The floor below was a large sewing-room, filled with girls who were working at their machines, until the unexpected apparition of a pale and grimy man brought an end to their labours. Neither the foreman nor the forewoman had seen anybody come in, and as it was necessary to pass through the room to reach a floor lower down, this seemed to prove conclusively to Dawes that the fugitives had not made use of this method to escape.
“The only people who have been in the upstairs room,” exclaimed the foreman, “are two of the warehousemen, who went up about two minutes ago, to bring down some bales.”
“Two men?” said Peter quickly. “Who were they?”
But, though he pushed his inquiries to the lower and more influential regions of the shop, he could not discover the two porters. A lot of new men had been recently engaged, said the manager, and it was impossible to say who had been upstairs and who had not.
The door porter at the wholesale entrance, however, had seen the two porters come out, carrying their somewhat awkwardly-shaped bundles on their shoulders.
“Were they heavy?” asked Peter.
“Very,” said the door-keeper. “They put them on a cart, and didn’t come back.”
Now if there was one thing more certain than another in Peter’s mind, it was that Four Square Jane did not depend entirely upon the assistance she received from her husband. Peter recalled the fact that there had once been two spurious detectives who had called on Lord Claythorpe having the girl in custody. They were probably two old hands at the criminal game, enlisted by the ingenious Mr. Steele. This proved to be the case, as Peter was to find later. And either Four Square Jane or he might have planted these two men in an adjoining warehouse with the object of rendering just that kind of assistance, which, in fact, they did render.
Peter reached the streets again, baffled and angry. Then he remembered that in Lord Claythorpe’s desk was a certain bond to bearer for five hundred thousand dollars. Four Square Jane would not leave England until she had secured this; and, as the thought occurred to him, he hailed a taxi, and drove at top speed to the dead man’s house.
Already the news of the tragedy which had overcome the Claythorpe’s household had reached the domestics: and the gloomy butler who admitted him greeted him with a scowl as though he were responsible for the death of his master.
“You can’t go into the study, sir,” he said, with a certain satisfaction, “it has been locked and sealed.”
“By whom?” asked Peter.
“By an official of the Court, sir,” said the man.
Peter went to the study door, and examined the two big red seals.
There is something about the seal of the Royal Courts of Justice which impresses even an experienced officer of the law. To break that seal without authority involves the most uncomfortable consequences, and Peter hesitated.
“Has anybody else been here?” he asked.
“Only Miss Wilberforce, sir,” said the man.
“Miss Wilberforce?” almost yelled Peter. “When did she come?”
“About the same time as the officer who sealed the door,” said the butler. “In fact, she was in the study when he arrived. He ordered her out pretty roughly, too, sir,” said the butler with relish, as though finding in Miss Wilberforce’s discomfiture some compensation for the tragedy which had overtaken his employer. “She sent me upstairs to get an umbrella she had left when she was here last, and when I came down she was gone. The officer grumbled something terribly.”
Peter went to the telephone and rang up Scotland Yard, but they had heard nothing of the sealing of the house and suggested that he should seek out the Chancery officials to discover who had made the order and under what circumstances. Only those who have attempted to disturb the routine of the Court of Chancery will appreciate the unhappy hours which Peter spent that day, wandering from master to master, in a vain attempt to secure news or information.
He went back to the house at half-past four that evening, determined to brave whatever terror the Court of Chancery might impose, and again he was met by the butler on the doorstep, but this time a butler bursting with news.
“I’m very glad you’ve come, sir. I’ve got such a lot to tell you. About half-an-hour after you’d gone, sir, I heard a ripping and tearing in the study, and I went to the door and listened. I couldn’t understand what was going on, so I shouted out: ‘Who’s there?’ And who do you think replied?”
Peter’s heart had sunk at the butler’s words.
“I know,” he said. “It was Four Square—it was Miss Joyce Wilberforce.”
“So it was, sir,” said the butler in surprise. “How did you know?”
“I guessed,” said Peter shortly.
“It appeared she’d been locked in quite by accident by the officer of the Court,” the butler went on, “and she was having a look through his lordship’s desk to find some letters she’d left behind.”
“Of course, sir, everybody knows that Lord Claythorpe’s desk is one of the most wonderful in the world. It’s full of secret drawers, and I remember Miss Joyce saying once that if his lordship wanted to hide anything it would take a month to find it.”
Peter groaned.
“They wanted time—of course, they wanted time!”
What a fool he had been all through! There was no need for the butler to tell him the rest of the story, because he guessed it. But the man went on.
“After a bit,” he said, “I heard the key turn in the lock, and out came Miss Joyce, looking as pleased as Punch. But you should have seen the state of that desk!”
“So she broke the seals, did she?” said Peter, with gentle irony.
“Oh, yes, she broke the seals, and she broke the desk, too,” said the butler impressively. “And when she came out, she was carrying a big square sheet of paper in her hand—a printed-on paper, like a bank note, sir.”
“I know,” said Peter. “It was a bond.”
“Ah. I think it might have been,” said the butler hazily. “At any rate, that’s what she had. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘it took a lot of finding.’ ‘Miss,’ said I, ‘you oughtn’t to take anything from his lordship’s study until the law——’ ‘Blow the law,’ said she. Them was her very words—blow the law, sir.”
“She’s blown it, all right,” said Peter, and left the house. His last hope was to block all the ports, and in this way prevent their leaving the country. However, he had no great hopes of succeeding in his attempts to hold the volatile lady whose escapades had given him so many sleepless nights.
Two months later, Peter Dawes received a letter bearing a South American postmark. It was from Joyce Steele.
“You don’t know how sorry I am that we had to give you so much trouble,” it ran; “and really, the whole thing was ridiculous, because all the time I was breaking the law to secure that which was my own. It is true that I am Four Square Jane. It is equally true that I am Four Square Jane no longer, and that henceforth my life will be blameless! And really, dear Mr. Dawes, you did much better than any of the other detectives who were put on my track. I am here with my husband, and the two friends who very kindly assisted us with our many exploits are also in South America, but at a long distance from us. They are very nice people, but I am afraid they have criminal minds, and nothing appals me more than the criminal mind. No doubt there is much that has happened that has puzzled you, and made you wonder why this, or that, or the other happened. Why, for example, did I consent to go to church with that impossible person, Francis Claythorpe? Partly, dear friend, because I was already married, and it did not worry me a bit to add bigamy to my other crimes. And partly because I made ample preparations for such a contingency, and knew that marriage was impossible. I had hoped, too, that Lord Claythorpe would give me a wedding present of some value, which hope was doomed to disappointment. But I did get a lot of quite valuable presents from his many friends, and these both Jamieson and I most deeply appreciate. Jamieson was the doctor who saw me at Lewinstein’s by the way. He has been my right-hand man, and my dearest confederate. Perhaps, Mr. Dawes, you will meet us again in London, when we are tired of South America. And perhaps when you meet us you will not arrest us, because you will have taken a more charitable view of our behaviour, and perhaps you will have induced those in authority to share your view. I am tremendously happy—would you be kind enough to tell my mother that? I do not think it will cheer her up, because she is not that kind.
“I first got my idea of playing Four Square Jane from hearing a servant we once employed—a Jane Briglow—discussing the heroic adventures of some fictional personage in whom she was interested. But it was a mistake to call me ‘Jane.’ The ‘J’ stands for Joyce. When you have time for a holiday, won’t you come over and see us? We should love to entertain you.”
There was a P.S. to the letter which brought a wry smile to the detective’s face.
“P.S. Perhaps you had better bring your own cigarettes.”