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CHAPTER I THE FENCHURCH STREET MYSTERY
CHAPTER I THE FENCHURCH STREET MYSTERY
The man in the corner pushed aside his glass, and leant across the table. "Mysteries!" he commented. "There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation." Very much astonished Polly Burton looked over the top of her newspaper, and fixed a pair of very severe, coldly inquiring brown eyes upon him. She had disapproved of the man from the instant when he shuffled across the shop and sat down opposite to her, at the same
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CHAPTER II A MILLIONAIRE IN THE DOCK
CHAPTER II A MILLIONAIRE IN THE DOCK
The man in the corner had finished his glass of milk. His watery blue eyes looked across at Miss Polly Burton's eager little face, from which all traces of severity had now been chased away by an obvious and intense excitement. "It was only on the 31st," he resumed after a while, "that a body, decomposed past all recognition, was found by two lightermen in the bottom of a disused barge. She had been moored at one time at the foot of one of those dark flights of steps which lead down between tall
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HIS DEDUCTION
HIS DEDUCTION
The man in the corner cocked his funny thin head on one side and looked at Polly; then he took up his beloved bit of string and deliberately untied every knot he had made in it. When it was quite smooth he laid it out upon the table. "I will take you, if you like, point by point along the line of reasoning which I followed myself, and which will inevitably lead you, as it led me, to the only possible solution of the mystery. "First take this point," he said with nervous restlessness, once more t
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THE ROBBERY IN PHILLIMORE TERRACE
THE ROBBERY IN PHILLIMORE TERRACE
Whether Miss Polly Burton really did expect to see the man in the corner that Saturday afternoon, 'twere difficult to say; certain it is that when she found her way to the table close by the window and realized that he was not there, she felt conscious of an overwhelming sense of disappointment. And yet during the whole of the week she had, with more pride than wisdom, avoided this particular A.B.C. shop. "I thought you would not keep away very long," said a quiet voice close to her ear. She nea
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A NIGHT'S ADVENTURE
A NIGHT'S ADVENTURE
"Now I must tell you," continued the man in the corner, "that after I had read the account of the double robbery, which appeared in the early afternoon papers, I set to work and had a good think—yes!" he added with a smile, noting Polly's look at the bit of string, on which he was still at work, "yes! aided by this small adjunct to continued thought—I made notes as to how I should proceed to discover the clever thief, who had carried off a small fortune in a single night. Of course, my methods a
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ALL HE KNEW
ALL HE KNEW
"The tramp was missing," continued the man in the corner, "and Mr. Francis Howard tried to find the missing tramp. Going round to the front, and seeing the lights at No. 26 still in, he called upon Mr. Shipman. The jeweller had had a few friends to dinner, and was giving them whiskies-and-sodas before saying good night. The servants had just finished washing up, and were waiting to go to bed; neither they nor Mr. Shipman nor his guests had seen or heard anything of the suspicious individual. "Mr
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THE YORK MYSTERY
THE YORK MYSTERY
The man in the corner looked quite cheerful that morning; he had had two glasses of milk and had even gone to the extravagance of an extra cheese-cake. Polly knew that he was itching to talk police and murders, for he cast furtive glances at her from time to time, produced a bit of string, tied and untied it into scores of complicated knots, and finally, bringing out his pocket-book, he placed two or three photographs before her. "Do you know who that is?" he asked, pointing to one of these. The
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THE CAPITAL CHARGE
THE CAPITAL CHARGE
"The police, it appears, instinctively feeling that some mystery lurked round the death of the bookmaker and his supposed murderer's quiet protestations of innocence, had taken a very considerable amount of trouble in collecting all the evidence they could for the inquest which might throw some light upon Charles Lavender's life, previous to his tragic end. Thus it was that a very large array of witnesses was brought before the coroner, chief among whom was, of course, Lord Arthur Skelmerton. "T
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A BROKEN-HEARTED WOMAN
A BROKEN-HEARTED WOMAN
The man in the corner called for another glass of milk, and drank it down slowly before he resumed: "Now Lord Arthur lives mostly abroad," he said. "His poor, suffering wife died the day after he was liberated by the magistrate. She never recovered consciousness even sufficiently to hear the joyful news that the man she loved so well was innocent after all. "Mystery!" he added as if in answer to Polly's own thoughts. "The murder of that man was never a mystery to me. I cannot understand how the
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THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY
It was all very well for Mr. Richard Frobisher (of the London Mail ) to cut up rough about it. Polly did not altogether blame him. She liked him all the better for that frank outburst of manlike ill-temper which, after all said and done, was only a very flattering form of masculine jealousy. Moreover, Polly distinctly felt guilty about the whole thing. She had promised to meet Dickie—that is Mr. Richard Frobisher—at two o'clock sharp outside the Palace Theatre, because she wanted to go to a Maud
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MR. ERRINGTON
MR. ERRINGTON
"Did you ever see Mr. Errington, the gentleman so closely connected with the mysterious death on the Underground Railway?" asked the man in the corner as he placed one or two of his little snap-shot photos before Miss Polly Burton. "There he is, to the very life. Fairly good-looking, a pleasant face enough, but ordinary, absolutely ordinary. "It was this absence of any peculiarity which very nearly, but not quite, placed the halter round Mr. Errington's neck. "But I am going too fast, and you wi
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THE LIVERPOOL MYSTERY
THE LIVERPOOL MYSTERY
"A title—a foreign title, I mean—is always very useful for purposes of swindles and frauds," remarked the man in the corner to Polly one day. "The cleverest robberies of modern times were perpetrated lately in Vienna by a man who dubbed himself Lord Seymour; whilst over here the same class of thief calls himself Count Something ending in 'o,' or Prince the other, ending in 'off.'" "Fortunately for our hotel and lodging-house keepers over here," she replied, "they are beginning to be more alive t
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A CUNNING RASCAL
A CUNNING RASCAL
"Yes, left severely alone," continued the man in the corner with a sarcastic chuckle. "So severely alone, in fact, that one quarter of an hour after another passed by and still the magnificent police officer in the gorgeous uniform did not return. Then, when it was too late, Schwarz cursed himself once again for the double-dyed idiot that he was. He had been only too ready to believe that Prince Semionicz was a liar and a rogue, and under these unjust suspicions he had fallen an all too easy pre
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THE EDINBURGH MYSTERY
THE EDINBURGH MYSTERY
The man in the corner had not enjoyed his lunch. Miss Polly Burton could see that he had something on his mind, for, even before he began to talk that morning, he was fidgeting with his bit of string, and setting all her nerves on the jar. "Have you ever felt real sympathy with a criminal or a thief?" he asked her after a while. "Only once, I think," she replied, "and then I am not quite sure that the unfortunate woman who did enlist my sympathies was the criminal you make her out to be." "You m
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A TERRIBLE PLIGHT
A TERRIBLE PLIGHT
"Little more than a fortnight after that, Edith Crawford was duly committed to stand her trial before the High Court of Justiciary. She had pleaded 'Not Guilty' at the pleading diet, and her defence was entrusted to Sir James Fenwick, one of the most eminent advocates at the Criminal Bar. "Strange to say," continued the man in the corner after a while, "public opinion from the first went dead against the accused. The public is absolutely like a child, perfectly irresponsible and wholly illogical
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"NON PROVEN"
"NON PROVEN"
"There is no doubt," continued the man in the corner, "that what little sympathy the young girl's terrible position had aroused in the public mind had died out the moment that David Graham left the witness-box on the second day of the trial. Whether Edith Crawford was guilty of murder or not, the callous way in which she had accepted a deformed lover, and then thrown him over, had set every one's mind against her. "It was Mr. Graham himself who had been the first to put the Procurator Fiscal in
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UNDENIABLE FACTS
UNDENIABLE FACTS
There was a moment's silence, for Polly did not reply immediately, and he went on making impossible knots in his bit of string. Then she said quietly— "I think that I agree with those English people who say that an English jury would have condemned her.... I have no doubt that she was guilty. She may not have committed that awful deed herself. Some one in the Charlotte Square house may have been her accomplice and killed and robbed Lady Donaldson while Edith Crawford waited outside for the jewel
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THE THEFT AT THE ENGLISH PROVIDENT BANK
THE THEFT AT THE ENGLISH PROVIDENT BANK
"That question of motive is a very difficult and complicated one at times," said the man in the corner, leisurely pulling off a huge pair of flaming dog-skin gloves from his meagre fingers. "I have known experienced criminal investigators declare, as an infallible axiom, that to find the person interested in the committal of the crime is to find the criminal. "Well, that may be so in most cases, but my experience has proved to me that there is one factor in this world of ours which is the mainsp
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CONFLICTING EVIDENCE
CONFLICTING EVIDENCE
"By the time the public had been able to think over James Fairbairn's evidence, a certain disquietude and unrest had begun to make itself felt both in the bank itself and among those of our detective force who had charge of the case. The newspapers spoke of the matter with very obvious caution, and warned all their readers to await the further development of this sad case. "While the manager of the English Provident Bank lay in such a precarious condition of health, it was impossible to arrive a
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CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XX
AN ALIBI "It was close on six weeks before the doctor at last allowed his patient to attend to the grave business which had prostrated him for so long. "In the meantime, among the many people who directly or indirectly were made to suffer in this mysterious affair, no one, I think, was more pitied, and more genuinely sympathised with, than Robert Ireland, the manager's eldest son. "You remember that he had been clerk in the bank? Well, naturally, the moment suspicion began to fasten on his fathe
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THE DUBLIN MYSTERY
THE DUBLIN MYSTERY
"I always thought that the history of that forged will was about as interesting as any I had read," said the man in the corner that day. He had been silent for some time, and was meditatively sorting and looking through a packet of small photographs in his pocket-book. Polly guessed that some of these would presently be placed before her for inspection—and she had not long to wait. "That is old Brooks," he said, pointing to one of the photographs, "Millionaire Brooks, as he was called, and these
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FORGERY
FORGERY
"The facts that transpired in connection with this extraordinary case were sufficiently mysterious to puzzle everybody. As I told you before, all Mr. Brooks' friends never quite grasped the idea that the old man should so completely have cut off his favourite son with the proverbial shilling. "You see, Percival had always been a thorn in the old man's flesh. Horse-racing, gambling, theatres, and music-halls were, in the old pork-butcher's eyes, so many deadly sins which his son committed every d
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A MEMORABLE DAY
A MEMORABLE DAY
"Two days later the police applied for a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Percival Brooks on a charge of forgery. "The Crown prosecuted, and Mr. Brooks had again the support of Mr. Oranmore, the eminent K.C. Perfectly calm, like a man conscious of his own innocence and unable to grasp the idea that justice does sometimes miscarry, Mr. Brooks, the son of the millionaire, himself still the possessor of a very large fortune under the former will, stood up in the dock on that memorable day in October,
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AN UNPARALLELED OUTRAGE
AN UNPARALLELED OUTRAGE
"Do you care for the seaside?" asked the man in the corner when he had finished his lunch. "I don't mean the seaside at Ostend or Trouville, but honest English seaside with nigger minstrels, three-shilling excursionists, and dirty, expensive furnished apartments, where they charge you a shilling for lighting the hall gas on Sundays and sixpence on other evenings. Do you care for that?" "I prefer the country." "Ah! perhaps it is preferable. Personally I only liked one of our English seaside resor
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THE PRISONER
THE PRISONER
"I really don't know," continued the man in the corner blandly, "what it was that interested me in the case from the very first. Certainly it had nothing very out of the way or mysterious about it, but I journeyed down to Brighton nevertheless, as I felt that something deeper and more subtle lay behind that extraordinary assault, following a robbery, no doubt. "I must tell you that the police had allowed it to be freely circulated abroad that they held a clue. It had been easy enough to ascertai
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A SENSATION
A SENSATION
"I can assure you that the situation was quite dramatic," continued the man in the corner, whilst his funny, claw-like hands took up a bit of string with renewed feverishness. "In answer to further questions from the magistrate, she declared that she had never seen the accused; he might have been the go-between, however, that she could not say. The letters she received were all typewritten, but signed 'Armand de la Tremouille,' and certainly the signature was identical with that on the letters s
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TWO BLACKGUARDS
TWO BLACKGUARDS
"Tell me what you think of it," said the man in the corner, seeing that Polly remained silent and puzzled. "Well," she replied dubiously, "I suppose that the so-called Armand de la Tremouille's story was true in substance. That he did not perish on the Argentina , but drifted home, and blackmailed his former wife." "Doesn't it strike you that there are at least two very strong points against that theory?" he asked, making two gigantic knots in his piece of string. "Two?" "Yes. In the first place
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THE REGENT'S PARK MURDER
THE REGENT'S PARK MURDER
By this time Miss Polly Burton had become quite accustomed to her extraordinary vis-á-vis in the corner. He was always there, when she arrived, in the selfsame corner, dressed in one of his remarkable check tweed suits; he seldom said good morning, and invariably when she appeared he began to fidget with increased nervousness, with some tattered and knotty piece of string. "Were you ever interested in the Regent's Park murder?" he asked her one day. Polly replied that she had forgotten most of t
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THE MOTIVE
THE MOTIVE
"Now at first sight the murder in the Regent's Park appeared both to police and public as one of those silly, clumsy crimes, obviously the work of a novice, and absolutely purposeless, seeing that it could but inevitably lead its perpetrators, without any difficulty, to the gallows. "You see, a motive had been established. 'Seek him whom the crime benefits,' say our French confrères . But there was something more than that. "Constable James Funnell, on his beat, turned from Portland Place into P
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FRIENDS
FRIENDS
"Yes," interrupted Polly eagerly, since, for once, her acumen had been at least as sharp as his, "but suspicion of that horrible crime only shifted its taint from one friend to another, and, of course, I know—" "But that's just it," he quietly interrupted, "you don't know—Mr. Walter Hatherell, of course, you mean. So did every one else at once. The friend, weak and willing, committing a crime on behalf of his cowardly, yet more assertive friend who had tempted him to evil. It was a good theory;
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THE DE GENNEVILLE PEERAGE
THE DE GENNEVILLE PEERAGE
The man in the corner rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and looked out upon the busy street below. "I suppose," he said, "there is some truth in the saying that Providence watches over bankrupts, kittens, and lawyers." "I didn't know there was such a saying," replied Polly, with guarded dignity. "Isn't there? Perhaps I am misquoting; anyway, there should be. Kittens, it seems, live and thrive through social and domestic upheavals which would annihilate a self-supporting tom-cat, and to-day I read in
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A HIGH-BRED GENTLEMAN
A HIGH-BRED GENTLEMAN
"The central figure in the coroner's court that day was undoubtedly the Earl of Brockelsby in deep black, which contrasted strongly with his florid complexion and fair hair. Sir Marmaduke Ingersoll, his solicitor, was with him, and he had already performed the painful duty of identifying the deceased as his brother. This had been an exceedingly painful duty owing to the terribly mutilated state of the body and face; but the clothes and various trinkets he wore, including a signet ring, had fortu
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THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
THE LIVING AND THE DEAD
The man in the corner blinked across at Polly with his funny mild blue eyes. "No wonder you are puzzled," he continued, "so was everybody in the court that day, every one save myself. I alone could see in my mind's eye that gruesome murder such as it had been committed, with all its details, and, above all, its motive, and such as you will see it presently, when I place it all clearly before you. "But before you see daylight in this strange case, I must plunge you into further darkness, in the s
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THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN PERCY STREET
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN PERCY STREET
Miss Polly Burton had had many an argument with Mr. Richard Frobisher about that old man in the corner, who seemed far more interesting and deucedly more mysterious than any of the crimes over which he philosophised. Dick thought, moreover, that Miss Polly spent more of her leisure time now in that A.B.C. shop than she had done in his own company before, and told her so, with that delightful air of sheepish sulkiness which the male creature invariably wears when he feels jealous and won't admit
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SUICIDE OR MURDER?
SUICIDE OR MURDER?
"At first there was only talk of a terrible accident, the result of some inexplicable carelessness which perhaps the evidence at the inquest would help to elucidate. "Medical assistance came too late; the unfortunate woman was indeed dead, frozen to death, inside her own room. Further examination showed that she had received a severe blow at the back of the head, which must have stunned her and caused her to fall, helpless, beside the open window. Temperature at five degrees below zero had done
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THE END
THE END
He had paused, absorbed in meditation. The young girl also was silent. Some memory too vague as yet to take a definite form was persistently haunting her—one thought was hammering away in her brain, and playing havoc with her nerves. That thought was the inexplicable feeling within her that there was something in connection with that hideous crime which she ought to recollect, something which—if she could only remember what it was—would give her the clue to the tragic mystery, and for once ensur
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