The Crime Club

‘It beats me,’ he declared viciously. ‘It fairly beats me. Who else could have done it? Who else had a motive?’

Grant stole out of the room, and Silvervale rested his elbows on the table and his chin in his cupped hands, striving to recall some avenue of investigation that he might have overlooked.

Suddenly his face lightened and he jerked himself from his chair with a swift movement of his whole body. Ignoring the journalist, he rushed from the room. It was long before he returned. When he did he was accompanied by Grant.

‘Tell me’—he addressed Silvervale—‘did you ever see Crake?’

The other shook his head. ‘I was out of town when he was tried. It was after the case was over that I interviewed Madeline Fulford.’

Grant was frowning. ‘If I hadn’t seen the records, Forrester, I’d say you were mad. It’s the most unheard-of thing …’

‘We’ll see whether I’m mad or not,’ said the chief inspector grimly. He placed a photograph, the official side and full-face, before Silvervale. ‘Did you ever see that man before?’

‘No.’

‘Nor that?’ The second photograph was a studio portrait with the name of a Strand firm at the bottom. It awoke some vague reminiscence in Silvervale. He held it closer to the light.

‘Wait a minute.’ Grant placed a sheet of paper over the bottom of the face, hiding the moustache and chin. Recollection came to Silvervale in a flash. It was Norman, the man with the lustreless blue eyes who had commented on Madeline Fulford in the smoking-room of the Columbia.

He explained. ‘The hair’s done differently,’ he added, ‘but I can recognise the upper part of the face, though he’s older now than when this photograph was taken. Do you think he’s mixed up in this?’

‘Maybe,’ answered Forrester enigmatically. ‘I’ll have a man motor down to the prison now’—he was speaking to Grant—‘and we’ll go on to the Palatial. If I’m any judge he’ll still be there. His room was No. 472, almost opposite her suite. I had him questioned, of course, but I never dreamed—’

Silvervale lit a cigarette resignedly. ‘It’s all Greek to me,’ he complained. ‘Still, I have no right to ask questions.’

‘You’ll understand in an hour or two,’ said Forrester. ‘It would take too long to explain now. Come on and you’ll see what you’ll see.’

It was back to the Palatial Hotel that he took the journalist and a couple of subordinates. There he remained closeted with the manager for five minutes. He reappeared with that functionary, a master-key dangling on his finger.

‘Our bird’s at home,’ he said. ‘Gone to roost, probably.’

Nothing more was said till they reached the third floor. The manager led the way until they came opposite a door facing the suite which Mrs de Reszke had occupied. ‘This is No. 472,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Shall I knock?’

Forrester made a gesture of dissent and his hand fell coaxingly on the door. He made no sound as he pushed a key in the lock and turned it. With a sharp push the door flew open, and a quick, angry question was succeeded by confused sounds of a struggle. The next Silvervale saw was a pyjama-clad man being held on the bed with Forrester and a colleague at either wrist.

‘I don’t know who you are or the meaning of this outrage,’ he protested angrily. ‘Someone will have to pay for this.’

‘Hold on to his hand a minute, Roker,’ said Forrester, and one of the other detectives seized the wrist he had been grasping.

The chief inspector thrust his hand beneath the pillow and produced a small automatic pistol. ‘I just grabbed him in time,’ he said a little breathlessly.

‘I want to know—’ persisted the prisoner.

Forrester turned sternly upon him. ‘I am a police officer,’ he said. ‘I am arresting you as an escaped convict, one John Crake.’

Something approaching a gleam of interest shot into Crake’s lifeless eyes. ‘So that’s it, is it?’ he said quietly. ‘I wonder how you got on to it. According to official reckoning, John Crake has still got five years to serve.’

It was impossible to doubt that the man knew the real reason of his arrest, but his manner gave no hint of perturbation. He smiled sardonically as a shiver swept over his slight frame. ‘I suppose you aren’t going to take me to the police station in my sleeping-suit? Will these gentlemen allow me to dress?’

At an order from Forrester his clothes were searched and passed to him. He was adjusting his tie with a steady hand when he next shot out a question: ‘You have something else to say?’

‘That can wait,’ returned Forrester. ‘Remember that anything you say—’

‘I know,’ interrupted Crake; ‘you’re bound to give that warning. What’s the good of all this finesse, Mr—er—er—Forrester—thank you? I know you want me for murder, and if you want me to say anything you’d better listen now while I’m in the mood. First of all, though, how did you get on to me?’

‘There was a finger-print, and we had yours in the records taken when you were on trial for the other thing.’

‘Look here.’ Crake spoke as though he were merely an interested observer with no personal concern in the affair. ‘You’d better tell me the full story, and if there are any gaps I’ll fill them in for you. Is that a bargain?’

Forrester reflected a moment. ‘All right,’ he agreed, with a glance at Silvervale. ‘There can be no harm in that if you want to know. In the first place, when the woman was found it was easy to penetrate the idea of a clumsy attempt to simulate suicide. We had little to guide us beyond the fact that she was a Mrs de Reszke who had come over from the States in the Columbia. Then Mr Silvervale, here, turned up with the story of the bother on board, and some of our men picked up the same story from other passengers we traced out. Of course, with de Reszke missing, we went off full cry on a false trail. There were scores of circumstances that pointed against him, and but for the accident of the finger-print it might have looked very ugly.’

‘I don’t understand about that finger-print,’ remarked Crake.

‘It was left on the book the woman had been reading when you placed it on the table. Well, anyway, we got de Reszke, and when I found that his finger-print did not agree with that on the book, I was at a dead loss. Of course, I had had your record looked up when Mr Silvervale identified the dead woman as Madeline Fulford, and I found you were supposed to be still in prison. Naturally, we had not considered you after that. But when I found myself right up against it I took a forlorn chance and compared the prints from the book with those we had of yours. Then Mr Silvervale identified a portrait of you as that of a passenger named Norman who came over on the Columbia. I remembered that a Mr Norman had been questioned here by our people, and we came on. That’s all.’

Crake’s thin lips curved into a sneer. ‘It was just the off-chance of your comparing the prints that did it,’ he said.

Forrester made a disclaiming gesture. ‘The records would have been searched sooner or later in any event, and we’d have hit on you. It would have taken a day or two though, and you’d have got a start.’

‘And you don’t know how it is I’m still not in prison, and no one knows I’ve been at large for a year?’

‘No, not altogether,’ admitted the chief detective carelessly. ‘There’s been a change of identity and big bribery somewhere. That’s for the prison people to explain.’ He was careful not to ask any questions.

‘Well,’ said Crake slowly, ‘I can help you out on that. This is what happened: When that Jezebel there’—he jerked his thumb towards the door—‘sold me at the trial, I swore I’d get quits with her, if I swung for it.’ He spat out the words in an even voice that made them ten times more venomous. ‘Mark you, in the time that I knew her she had bled me for thousands. Then when the other man turned up, she had to get rid of me—and the Old Bailey was the method she chose. I don’t know if any of you gentlemen know what hate is—real, white-hot, flaming hatred that eats a man’s vitals out,’—he choked a little—‘but never mind that. My first idea was to work an escape, for I knew my sentence would not be a light one. I had plenty of money—never mind how I kept it out of other people’s clutches.

‘There was a man sentenced the same day as myself to two years. There was a certain similarity between us in height and build and physical characteristics—I don’t mean that we were in any way doubles, but it was enough to give me an idea when I learned that, after the rising of the Court, we were to be taken to a fresh prison. In the van I got my chance. I offered him a thousand a year to exchange sentences and identities with me—seven thousand pounds in all. He fell in with the idea, and when we descended in the prison yard he was John Crake and I—I was Isaac Wells. That was his name.

‘I had forgotten one thing. When my term—or rather Wells’s term—was drawing to a close, my finger-prints were to be taken as a matter of ordinary routine to be sent to Scotland Yard for comparison. That staggered me at first, but I was not done. My prison record had been good—and that and the fact that I was well-educated caused me now and again to be chosen for work in the office. I watched and waited, and pure accident helped me at last. I managed to lay my hands for a few seconds on the prints the day they were to be sent to London. And the prints that went up were those of the real Wells.

‘I wanted to be free—partly for the sake of freedom, mainly to get even with Madeline Fulford. Prison had altered my appearance in some respects, and I did what I could myself. I won’t trouble you with my adventures in tracking her down. I found the man for whom I had been sacrificed had committed suicide in Paris, and from there I followed her all over the world, sometimes going on a blind, sometimes getting a hint here and there that satisfied me I should get her sooner or later. I heard at last that she had married de Reszke, and I reached New York a day before they sailed for England.

‘There was a vacant berth on the Columbia, and I took it. I kept out of her sight, but I watched for my chance like a cat. She never seemed to be alone, and it was not my purpose to take any risk of involving myself if it could be avoided. Then there was the row in the smoking-room. That frightened me for a while, but when I saw that Mr Silvervale did not recognise me, I did not mind.

‘I was in the next carriage to her in the boat-train from Southampton to London, and my taxi-cab was close behind hers when she arrived at the Palatial. I took this room on the same floor as her suite—and you know the rest.’

The scratching of a pencil as a detective who had followed Crake’s statement in shorthand put the finishing touches to his notes was the only sound for a few seconds after Crake had finished. The manager fished in his pocket and produced a letter which he handed to Forrester.

‘I forgot to give you this,’ he said. ‘It was left in the office early this morning. It is addressed to Mrs de Reszke.’

Forrester broke the seal and read the letter, silently at first and then aloud:

‘MADAM,—You have no moral claim upon me since your admission yesterday that you are the infamous woman formerly known as Madeline Fulford. I then told you as plainly as possible that you need look to me no longer for support. I have now, however, thought the question over, and will allow you three thousand dollars per annum, paid quarterly, on condition, first, that you assume some other name than mine; secondly, that you make no attempt in future to molest or communicate with me either in person or by letter.

‘I shall instruct my lawyer that the foregoing payment is to be made to you. I sail for New York in two days’ time.

‘R. DE RESZKE.’

IV

THE MAKER OF DIAMONDS

FLEETING twisted his watch-chain absently around his fingers till it cut the flesh.

‘They’re diamonds all right, all right,’ he said. ‘That’s the blazes of it.’

Heldway smiled genially at the jeweller. ‘Where do I come in then? I don’t see what you’ve to complain about. You admit, yourself, there’s a fortune in it.’

He spoke quietly, yet there was a subtle inflection of irony in his tone that caused the jeweller to scrutinise his face with suspicion. Somehow Heldway made him feel a fool, and Fleeting knew he was not a fool. He recognised himself—more, other men recognised him—as one of the keenest jewellers in Hatton Garden.

Being a jeweller, he was one of the least credulous of men. It spoke for itself that he had called in Heldway. There were those at Scotland Yard who held Heldway in high esteem.

‘There’s a screw loose somewhere,’ he protested, releasing his chain and pushing out a pair of delicate hands. ‘I feel it. The thing’s too good to be true. Why, if I hadn’t seen it myself, I’d have sworn those diamonds came from Kimberley.’

The detective-inspector shrugged his shoulders listlessly. ‘Ah, of course, an expert can always tell which mine a stone has come from.’

Fleeting seethed inwardly. He was in a burning excitement, and the placidity of the other annoyed him. He did not consider that while his own agitation was to be attributed to the possibility of making a fortune beyond his wildest dreams, or losing a sum that would long cripple him, the detective had nothing to gain or lose.

‘What do you make of it?’ Fleeting demanded bluntly.

Heldway slowly changed his position till his elbow rested on the mantelpiece. He seemed to be weighing the question. At last he spoke. ‘What it comes to is this: This man Vernet says he can make diamonds, and offers to sell a half-interest in his secret to you for a hundred thousand pounds. He gives a demonstration under the most stringent tests, and you fail to find out any fake. The diamonds are genuine. Now it seems to me one of two things—either Vernet can do what he says, or your precautions against trickery have not been effective.’

‘Hang it all!’ retorted Fleeting impatiently. ‘What more could I do? The room in which he works is here in my office. It was fitted up by firms whom I specified, according to his ideas, with a little charcoal furnace and certain chemical preparations. I did all the buying. Everything passed through my hands. It is impossible that he should have had any confederate among the workmen. When he has gone in to supervise the construction of the furnace, I have been with him, watching every movement. That he could have hid anything in the room is quite impossible.’

‘Have you seen him actually make these gems?’

‘No,’ admitted Fleeting. ‘I can’t very well expect him to lay his hand down till I have paid cash. It’s too big a thing to take chances on. Mind you, Vernet’s perfectly reasonable. He invited me to take precautions against trickery, and I have. Each time he goes into the laboratory he changes every stitch of clothing for a suit I have provided. I have engaged an expert searcher, who used to be at the diamond fields, to examine his hair, his mouth, his ears, and so on. I have stood guard over the door while he’s been inside. And always he has come out with perhaps one, perhaps two, perhaps three, rough stones, well up to the average size and quality.’

Heldway had been softly whistling a bar of ragtime. He broke off to press home the logical fact. ‘Well, if they’re not already in the room, and he doesn’t take ’em in, he must manufacture them.’

‘I wish I could be sure,’ said Fleeting. ‘It seems all right, and yet—one does not like to sink a hatful of money … I want to be dead sure. That’s why I’d like you to look into the business.’

The detective-inspector settled himself in a chair. ‘The long and short of it is, that you’re in for a gamble and want to be sure you’ll win before you risk your money. I guess you know if I take it up, and it is a swindle, you’ll have to take it into court. Let’s be clear about that.’

The jeweller reddened. ‘Look here, Mr Heldway, I don’t mind so much myself; but there’s another thing—my daughter—’

‘Oh, there’s a lady in the case?’ The corners of Heldway’s eyes wrinkled. ‘Suppose you tell me all you know about Vernet.’

‘We ran across him while we were in Chamonix last summer,’ replied Fleeting. ‘You know how one falls into these holiday acquaintanceships. Don’t run away with the idea that I’ve got any fixed suspicions of him, Mr Heldway. I believe in him—but I want to be sure. He’s certainly a gentleman, and he was in touch with some very nice people. He made himself agreeable to Elsie—that’s my daughter—and he and I fell rather together. I’m not impressionable, but I must say I like him. Apart from the money, I should be sorry if there were any fake in this. I should put him about thirty. His mother was English and his father French. He’s got a little estate in France, but for these last ten years has been knocking about the world. He speaks English as well as you or I …

‘Of course my business leaked out. I’m a pretty well-known man. I don’t remember precisely how the matter arose, but one day Vernet asked me for a private interview. I thought he wished to see me about something else—’

‘Miss Fleeting?’ interjected Heldway.

‘Yes …’ Fleeting hesitated. ‘I didn’t intend to tell you this, Mr Heldway, but you may as well know it. It makes the situation rather more delicate. He did see me about Elsie, but he introduced the other affair, and that matter remains in abeyance for the time being. He told me he had stumbled on the discovery while making certain chemical experiments, and offered to submit to any test I might propose short of showing me the actual process. I, of course, accepted, and invited him over to my little country-place till inquiries were completed.’

The detective’s whistling stopped. ‘Made any inquiries about the chap?’ he demanded.

‘Naturally. His estate is near Danville in the Department of Eure. I pleaded business in London, and put a couple of days in there myself as a tourist. I corroborated all that he told me about his affairs. His income, translated into English, would be about seven hundred a year. Nothing tremendous, but quite enough.’

A superficial insight might hold that a lifetime of detective work would make a man a cynic. Heldway had his share of cynicism, but, like all successful men of his profession, he had sympathy. He could appreciate something of the diverse feelings by which the jeweller was torn—his care for his daughter, his pocket, his vanity. He rose and dropped his hand lightly on the other’s shoulder.

‘When does the next demonstration take place?’

‘On Monday.’

‘Good. Now, can you invite me down to your place for the weekend as a friend? I’d like to see Vernet. Meanwhile, if you’ve got a photograph of him, any writing, any scrap of material concerning him, you let me have it. And by the way, I’d like a description of Vernet—hair, eyes, height, and so on. Good-bye for the present. I’ll be down some time Saturday afternoon.’

Ten minutes later Heldway sauntered out of the office, whistling softly. He did not wonder that Fleeting, canny man, felt uneasy. The making of diamonds—profitably—was a big thing, and a man who could prove his good faith would easily obtain more than one hundred thousand pounds for a half-share. True, there was Elsie Fleeting—but, not having seen her, Heldway did not know exactly how far she might weigh in the transaction.

The spade work of detection is a laborious business, but very necessary to every detective outside the story-books. Juries do not convict on theories, however brilliant and plausible. They want facts—facts that can be sworn to. And so far Heldway had no facts—only a statement by Fleeting.

For half an hour or more Heldway laboured diligently. The Criminal Record Office put him in possession of facts relating to every one of the adventurers of this type known to be in England. Big Grant, the head of the department, who knew the science and practice of identification backwards, assisted in a close comparison of the portraits available with the amateur photograph of Vernet in the midst of a group which Fleeting had supplied. But they drew blank.

The finger-prints of Vernet might have simplified the search to a matter of minutes. As they were not available, the Record Office staff was set to work to trace through the old system of indexes, a tedious, lengthy job, by the light of the description Vernet had offered. They looked not under the letter ‘V’, but in that section of the records devoted to men of five feet nine in height with brown hair and hazel eyes.

This phase of the search Heldway left to the department, though at times he brought in a colleague to examine the photograph on the chance that Vernet might be recognised. At intervals he despatched cryptic cables to Paris and New York. Possibly Roger Vernet would have been flattered had he known how many people were being stirred to an interest in his career.

A neat little motor-car was waiting for Heldway at Haslemere station, and a run of a couple of miles brought him to a pine-shaded villa in which Fleeting had his country retreat. The detective nodded approval at the trim gables, the rose-bordered lawn, and the well-rolled gravel paths.

Fleeting, a little nervous and ill at ease, welcomed him with effusion, and with a wave of his hand introduced the couple who were standing in the shade of the veranda.

‘Mr Heldway—my daughter. Vernet, a friend of mine—Mr Heldway.’

The detective found himself gripping a slender, almost effeminate hand, and Vernet’s eyes did not drop under his scrutiny. Indeed, they were scrutinising him with a languorous ease that was almost insolent. The maker of diamonds had no appearance of the scientific student. He had been dressed by an artist in tailoring. His boots, his meticulously creased trousers, the sloping waist of his jacket, were all beyond criticism. He had a little toothbrush moustache, which he stroked from time to time with a delicate forefinger. His handkerchief was tinged with scent. Heldway, who was not self-conscious, felt uncouth in his presence.

‘Delighted to know you,’ said the young man, but his face had the abstract look of one wrestling with an abstruse mental problem. Heldway wondered if he had any suspicion of his identity. He murmured some commonplace, and his gaze wandered momentarily to the girl—a picture in grey and white. Erect and slender, with sparkling blue eyes and cheeks tanned to a wholesome clearness by fresh air and exercise, she did not conform at all to his mental impression of her. This was not the sort of woman to become infatuated with an adventurer. And yet—

They went in to lunch. Heldway was a good talker when he was in the vein, and conversation moved swiftly. He set himself to draw Vernet out, and the other was nothing loath. He had apparently been everywhere and seen everything.

‘If this man’s playing with a cold deck, he’s got a nerve,’ meditated the detective.

Once, during a lull in the conversation, he again surprised the bland hazel eyes surveying him with abstract calculation. Vernet pulled himself together.

‘Come, Mr Heldway, a man of your profession is always running against experiences. I appeal to Miss Fleeting. Here’s a real live detective, and he hasn’t told us one of his adventures.’

The shot was sudden, and for the moment Heldway was thrown off his balance. A flicker of astonishment passed across his features. Then he smiled. Vernet was evidently determined to drag him boldly into the open.

‘Are you a detective?’ inquired the girl. ‘How exciting! Dad only told us you were a friend of his.’

Heldway went imperturbably on with his sweet. ‘Yes, I am a detective, Miss Fleeting. I’m afraid it is not so exciting as the novelists would have you believe. How did you know?’ He addressed Vernet.

The other shrugged his shoulders. ‘I didn’t recall your face till this moment,’ he answered indifferently. ‘I saw you give evidence at the Old Bailey in a murder case last year. Are you down here on business?’

It was difficult for Heldway to repress a laugh. Whether Vernet was a rogue or not, he was not so simple as not to put a construction on the circumstances. ‘An official of police is always more or less on business,’ he parried. ‘But I’m here, through Mr Fleeting’s kindness, only for fresh air.’