[Transcriber’s Notes: The Adventures of Dora Bell, Detective was originally serialized in twelve parts in the South Wales Echo on Saturdays, beginning January 6th, 1894. It was reserialized several times over the next few years in the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia. Digitized scans of the original newspapers can be found free online at The National Library of Wales Newspapers. This eBook was transcribed from the original serialization in the South Wales Echo except for one sentence which was omitted in the original serialization but reproduced in multiple reserializations. It appears in the ninth story, Miss Rankin's Rival, and is recorded here for clarity: "I rather fancy that he is engaged to Miss Beatrice.">[

The Adventures of Dora Bell, Detective

by Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett, also known as Mrs. George Corbett

Table of Contents

I. SWE-E-EP

“I shall be ruined, if this misfortune becomes known! You must help me out of the difficulty without the affair coming into the papers.”

“We will do our best. But we cannot guarantee success; and I must say that it is an invaluable advantage to have the police on our side.”

“The police must know nothing about it. The business lies entirely between my clients and myself. I should lose all my customers at once if, through the slightest indiscretion, they were led to suspect their valuable property to have passed into other hands pro tem.”

“But suppose some of them wish to redeem the property upon which you have advanced them money?”

“They are not likely to do that at present. The season has been an exceptionally gay one, and a gay season is always an expensive one. Society dames will be glad to leave their plate and jewellery at ‘their bankers’ until their most pressing debts are settled. Meanwhile, I have sufficient confidence in your acumen to hope that you will speedily recover the missing goods.”

We could not help thinking that Mr Davison’s confidence in us was too overweening to be anything but embarrassing, even though our vanity was flattered by having the sole onus of responsibility for the recovery of stolen goods fixed upon us.

The facts are briefly as follows: –

Mr Davison drove a very peculiar trade. In society he figured as a man of culture, and of large independent means. He lived in one of the most costly of the many palatial flats in which opulent London loves to disport itself, and dispensed his hospitality on a very lavish and comprehensive scale. Assisted by his wife, a woman who was very beautiful, and as clever as himself, he gave receptions to which the titled and untitled flower of English aristocracy thought itself fortunate to be invited, and spent vast sums in apparently ostentatious extravagance.

But this extravagance was really the medium by which he found opportunities of gauging, and of trading upon, the social and financial position of his hosts of acquaintances, who never dreamed that the wherewithal of the splendid hospitality at which they wondered was derived from their own needs.

Mr Davison was really a money-lender on a huge scale, and had at least half-a-dozen flourishing West-End establishments. At one of them he traded, under a fictitious name, as a dealer in gold and silver plate, and at another, under another alias, he made costly jewellery his principal line. From still another establishment he drew plethoric profits by lending large sums of money on valuables, at another he advanced money on real estate at huge interest, and at one or two others he drove an equally lucrative trade on somewhat different lines.

But at none of his shops did he ever put in a personal appearance, though he was actually the guiding spirit of them all. He had one little room in his flat to which no one was ever allowed to penetrate except himself and his wife. Connecting this room with his various establishments was an elaborate system of telephoning, and from this so-called “study” he was able to direct the multifarious threads of his vast business.

Add to his acquisitive capacity the fact that he had the power of winning the confidence of others to an extraordinary degree, and it will be seen how much more easy it was for him to manage so complicated a business than for a man with less tact and polish, or for a man whose wife was inferior to Mrs Davison, who was her husband’s very double in cunning and suavity.

And then they both had such a clever way of advising their friends out of their difficulties, that success was a foregone conclusion with them.

“Do you know, Lady C.,” would be Mrs Davison’s advice to a bosom friend whose present condition was that of chronic impecuniosity, but whose future was assured wealth. “If I were you, I would do just what dear Gerald and I had to do a year or two ago, when we were at our wit’s end for money, owing to a temporary depreciation of land values. We knew that all would come right in time, and we bought a couple of thousand pounds’ worth of jewellery from Edison & Co. and a thousand pounds worth of gold and silver plate from Meeson’s.”

“But how could it help you to go several thousand pounds deeper into debt?”

“My dear Lady C., how unsophisticated you are! We pawned the things for a thousand pounds at Grinling’s. It’s a capital place for business of that sort. No questions asked, and no fear of things being lent on hire, as sometimes happens. You see, we got all that ready money without laying any out, and paid all up as soon as we were better off.”

The result of some such talk would be that Lady C. and her kindred spirits would do a rather tall business with Edison, Meeson, and Grinling, unconscious of the fact that all three were embodied in the persons of Davison and his charming, sympathetic wife.

Or the prospective heir to vast estates would forestall his inheritance by mortgaging his interest at Robson’s estate office at a ruinous percentage, being advised thereto by his friend Davison.

It was this complicated nature of his business which made Davison so nervous about employing the police. He didn’t mind trusting us. But he gave the force more credit for bungling, and preferred to lose the things, which, after all, were really his own, since they were not paid for, rather than risk exposure.

Grinling’s didn’t look at all like a pawnshop, and it was, oddly enough, only patronised by people who knew the Davisons or some of their friends. To all outward seeming, it was but a middle-class private dwelling, hardly likely to tempt a gang of burglars. Even the servants were supposed to be in profound ignorance of the nature of Mr Grinling’s business, or of the contents of a certain room on the third storey, into which they were never admitted.

“Do you think Mr Grinling requires a new set of blinds for his windows?” inquired Mr Bell. “If so, I will send a man to measure the windows, and to show you patterns.”

Mr Davison had employed Messrs Bell and White before, and understood my uncle’s drift at once.

“By all means,” he replied. “You will find him prepared to receive your messenger in an hour.”

Just an hour later Adam Henniker was interviewing Mr Grinling, who had already been advised of the intended visit. Could the two manservants have seen the systematic way in which the supposed blindmaker pried, peeped, and smelled in every corner, and over every inch of the room from which the theft had been made, they would have been greatly surprised. As it was they were a little astonished, for the man actually went into the back area, and measured the lower windows for outside sunblinds.

“My goodness, I wonder what’ll happen next!” said the housemaid. “The master must be thinking of getting married, and if he brings a missis here we shall have to mind our p’s and q’s. Last week the sweeps and a lot of new furniture, and this week new blinds! We’re comin’ out, ain’t we?”

“Looks like it. Me and my missis would like to come out, too,” said Adam Henniker. “But we can’t afford new furniture. The whitewashers and sweeps is enough for us. Do you have a decent sort of sweep round here?”

“Oh, yes, he did very well, and was particularly clean. I never knew a sweep take such pains over a job. He lives round the corner, in the back street.”

That same evening Adam Henniker imparted his discoveries to me, and invoked my aid in the matter. He had found certain marks on the window-sill, spout, and the flooring of the looted room which his magnifying glass and his sense of smell assured him were produced by soot, and as soot is generally associated with people whose garments are habitually covered with it he had no hesitation in deciding that the sweep must have become suspicious as to the contents of the closed chamber, and that he had made a very profitable nocturnal visit to it, aided by the spout, and by the implements of his real trade.

“I don’t know how the people failed to hear the noise that must have been made,” continued Adam, “for the man fell and hurt himself severely. I saw evidences of this in the area. There were some spots of blood on the ground, and there were marks on the wall. I should fancy that he must have tied the bag of jewellery on his back, and that he was coming down the spout again, when he slipped, and was supported by his trousers until they gave way, and left this piece of cloth hanging on a nail which projects from the wall. I went to the sweep’s house, ostensibly to order a chimney to be swept, but was told that the man had hurt himself at his trade, and was laid up with a broken leg. It is now your turn to take the matter up.”

I saw no difficulty in doing this, for my work seemed cut and dried. The next morning witnessed a metamorphosis in my appearance. I presented myself at the sweep’s house in the garb of a charity nurse, and said that I had heard there was a man lying ill there, and was willing to nurse him two or three hours a day. As it happened, the sweep’s wife was very glad of my services, for though the fellow’s leg was not broken, he had sustained so many injuries that I marvelled how he had managed to reach home with his booty.

I concluded that the wife was ignorant of the real cause of her husband’s accident, and of the robbery, or she would not have trusted me to sit at the now delirious man’s bedside, while she attended to her household duties in the room which served as a kitchen.

It did not take me long to discover that my patient kept a feverish hold upon a small key. This key fitted a box that stood at the foot of the bed, and a judiciously administered opiate enabled me to get it into my possession at a time when Mrs Sweep had gone upon a lengthy errand.

In five minutes my task was accomplished. I opened the box, withdrew a well-filled black leather bag, disposed of its contents in my multitudinous pockets, put the key back in the hand of the sleeping man, after locking the empty bag in the box again, and was ready to leave when the woman came back.

My readers will not be surprised to hear that I did not go back again. But, lest the thief should blame his wife for the loss of his booty, we caused a letter to be sent to him, in which we asserted that he had been tracked and followed to his home. “The property has been returned to Mr Grinling, the rightful owner,” concluded this letter, “and he has decided not to prosecute you, for your wife’s sake, so long as you keep clear of dishonest doings in the future.”

Mr Davison was very much astonished to recover his property so quickly, especially as we gave him no clue to the thief, or a hint of our modus operandi.

We only advised him to remove his pawnbroking business to safer premises.

It does not do for private detectives to let their clients know how simple their business can be on occasion.

II. Hoist on her Own Petard

We were morally certain that Madame Rose Gringoire was no other than the Fraulein Bertha Gerhardt, whom we had been patiently seeking for six months. But moral certainty is a long way removed from proof positive, and the client who was employing us was slow to believe that we had almost cornered our quarry.

You see, the circumstances were not merely peculiar. They were of desperate moment, and upon the circumvention of Bertha Gerhardt’s intrigues depended either the reputation or the fortune of a family which had, by virtue of its wealth and spotless lineage, made itself a power in its residential county. Sir Arthur and Lady Brackett were desperately anxious to recover some papers which the whilom governess had abstracted from a secret drawer in which they were believed to be in absolutely safe keeping.

Of the precise nature of these documents professional honour forbids me to speak. Equally momentous secrets are often confided to us, and the many cases of a delicate nature with which our firm are entrusted are the outcome of a steadily growing reputation for discretion and reliability. Were blackmailing our forte, we might wax rich on our knowledge of the strange events and conditions which harass the lives, and endanger the prosperity, of the apparently rich and happy.

To the latter class belonged Sir Arthur and Lady Brackett, and we were the more anxious to bring their case to a satisfactory issue because we knew that the somewhat disreputable family doings in which this trouble originated were condemned by them at the time, and were beyond their power to prevent.

How Bertha Gerhardt obtained her knowledge of the skeleton in their cupboard is still a mystery. But it is believed that Sir Arthur’s scapegrace brother, who hated his father’s heir with a hatred which could hardly be equalled by men of alien races, had made a confidant of her, and that she had sought the post of governess as a means of securing the incriminating documents.

“Have you a photograph of Fraulein Gerhardt?” inquired Mr Bell, before whom Sir Arthur had just laid his case.

“Yes, we have a small one, though the original does not know,” was the reply. “My wife is very fond of amateur photography, and has photographed nearly every nook and cranny of the house and estate. Miss Gerhardt is not handsome, and she always laughingly refused to have her plainness perpetuated on paper. One morning Lady Brackett had had her camera taken into the drawing-room and had embraced the governess within its scope ere that lady was aware of her intention. When she discovered she had been photographed she with difficulty kept back the signs of her anger, and it was rather odd that the negative of the little picture should have been found broken a day or two later. But, though Miss Gerhardt was not made aware of the fact, two or three prints had been taken before the negative was destroyed, and from one of these we have enlarged her photograph. Here is a copy. It is not very good, but will no doubt be useful.”

“Excellent, Sir Arthur! It is evidently a good likeness, and will suit us even better than one which has been toned down and touched up by a professional photographer for the sake of flattering a customer. It is quite apparent that this clever lady meant to take every precaution against being over-reached. She will be astonished when we run her to earth.”

“I hope you will manage that feat.”

“I do not think there is much doubt on the subject. It is simply a matter of time.”

“And meanwhile my fortune is being drained.”

“We will be as expeditious as possible. You say that Miss Gerhardt must not be arrested.”

“By no means! Everything depends upon strict secrecy. Were this not the case we would not have parted so readily with the money which has been demanded of us from time to time.”

“And you have no idea where this woman resides since she quitted Brackett Hall?”

“Not the slightest. We were surprised and mystified at her sudden departure, but did not suspect her of any covert act until she wrote to us. Her letter was an impudent avowal of her abstraction of the papers upon which our destiny hangs, and she demanded a large amount of money as the price of her silence. Since then we have had several letters from her, but both her letters and our remittances all pass through the hands of a shady solicitor, who lives in a short street off the Strand, and who will give us no clue to his client’s whereabouts.”

Mr White elicited several more particulars from the troubled baronet, and then set about performing the mission entrusted to him. The fact that Miss Gerhardt transacted all her business through a London agent made it seem probable that she herself resided in London, and for several weeks we kept a strict watch upon the lawyer’s premises, but without result.

The lady evidently knew better than to show herself in that quarter, and we might have failed to rescue our client from his insatiate blackmailer had not a very unforeseen occurrence taken place.

“When thieves fall out, honest men get their own,” and this was a case in point.

One hot July afternoon a lady came to our office to invoke our aid in bringing back to her an individual who had absconded with a large sum of money belonging to her. The gentleman she described and named was Hulbert Brackett, Sir Arthur Brackett’s ne’er-do-weel younger brother, and our would-be new client bore such a strong resemblance to the photograph of Bertha Gerhardt, that we believed this to be that lady herself.

But she gave the name of Madame Rose Gringoire, and professed to be a French widow, who had entrusted Mr Brackett with all her fortune to invest for her, and the onus of proof of her identity with the German schemer whom we were seeking rested with us. She certainly spoke and comported herself as Frenchified as if to the manner born, but we soon discovered that she understood German equally well.

Mr Henniker, got up in very Teutonic fashion called in to the office and bungled so much in his efforts to pass himself off as a needy German, who couldn’t speak English, that madame was highly amused, and I, who was an unsuspected witness of the scene, was an unsuspected witness of the scene, could see that she understood every word that was said.

This discovery helped to convince us that we were indeed on the right track, even if the sum of which this adventuress complained of having been robbed had not tallied exactly with the amount extorted from Sir Arthur only a week before her visit to us.

“I am afraid the thief has too great a start, but we will do all we can in the matter,” said Mr Bell. “I hope your entire resources are not exhausted?”

“By no means! I can always get more money where that came from. But I have no mind to be such a heavy loser, all the same.”

“Then you will pardon me, I hope, if I inquire whether you would care to have the matter made public, or not? Most of our clients prefer us to conduct all their affairs with the utmost secrecy.”

“And so do I. On no account must anyone else know of this business. If you can find Hulbert Brackett for me, I can soon bring him to terms again.”

The next day our firm received a note from Madame Gringoire, stating that she was too ill to keep an appointment she had made to call again at the office, and asking us to let her know at once if we heard anything about her absconding friend, who was, we afterwards discovered, actually married to her.

That note proved very useful to us, as we were anxious to call at her house, and the usually so ultra-cautious woman had given her present address upon it. She had been followed home the night before, and we knew her address already. But having received it from herself in the way of business simplified matters for us.

That afternoon, armed with an introduction from our firm, I called upon Madame Gringoire. I found her suffering from a bilious headache, and she was none too pleased to see me.

“How did you know where to find me?” she asked suspiciously.

“Why, Madame,” I exclaimed, in deprecative surprise; “you gave us your address in the note you sent this morning, and as we have already traced your fugitive from London to Liverpool, we thought it better to consult you at once about him, as we did not know what further course to take without definite instructions from you.”

In an instant madame was all eagerness and attention, and I was so well armed with details, thanks to Sir Arthur’s circumstantial explanations, that I succeeded in convincing her of the plausibility of my story.

Henceforth all was plain sailing.

The next Atlantic liner would leave Liverpool in two days. There was time for madame to overtake the fugitive, or rather, it suited us to persuade her that such was the case.

It was arranged that on the following morning at nine o’clock, madame was to be at our office, ready to start at once with Mr Bell and myself to Liverpool. We were to be paid for our services out of the money recovered from the absconding accomplice.

The lady was all excitement, and rang the bell violently for her maid.

“Bring some tea upstairs,” she commanded, “and set about packing my things. I am going to Liverpool in the morning with this lady, and will be away a few days.”

“With that headache?”

“No, you stupid, not with that headache. I am going to leave the headache at home for you to take care of while I am away. Now, go on with your work.”

The next morning at a quarter past nine, while madame was in our office, I presented myself at her house in a great state of fluster. “Your mistress has forgotten some papers which she must have with her. She has other business to do, and has no time to come back for them. Here is a note from her. Be as quick as you can, please.

Such was the message to Sophie, and she never doubted my bona-fides, seeing that I was armed with a letter, apparently in her mistress’s handwriting, authorising me to hunt for a packet of papers of which the appearance was accurately described.

Sophie had seen her mistress looking at such a packet as was described, and at once took me to the bureau in which they were kept. Oddly enough, I had forgotten to bring the key with me, and there was no time to go back for it, so, rather to Sophie’s horror, I broke the drawer lock open. Then, having found the great prize I sought, I hurried to the street, jumped into the hansom waiting for me, and was soon in the presence of the lady whose schemes I had circumvented.

She was already impatient at the long delay, and started up in alarm when she saw me enter the office smiling triumphantly, and holding in my hands the papers upon which hung the destiny of the Bracketts. She sprang forward, and would have snatched them out of my hand. But I was too quick for her. I was also protected by my colleagues, and Sir Arthur, who had been telegraphed for, arrived at the same moment.

For awhile the baffled woman shrieked out rage and threats, and swore that all the world should know the disreputable secret connected with Sir Arthur’s parents.

But the latter had now the upper hand, and meant to keep it. Taking the packet from my hand, and opening it to see that all the papers were there, he promptly threw it into the empty fireplace, set a match to it, and watched it burn to the last atom.

“You have filched ten thousand pounds out of me because I dreaded to have my family name disgraced. You will get no more. Every proof of these past events is now destroyed, and any assertions you might make would not be believed. I saw the man who claims to be my brother last night. He tells me that he is married to you. You will find him in our village if you want him. But he understands as fully as you must do that any further injury he may attempt to do me will recoil on his own head.”

Mrs Hulbert Brackett seemed to comprehend the situation thoroughly. She left the office without another word, and we have never heard of her since.

III. One of Dora’s Failures

Is it usual to record one’s failures? I believe not. And yet many of them are perforce as interesting to the public as one’s most brilliant successes.

Here is a case in point.

A young lady, whom we will call Ada Calmour, had had the misfortune to displease her wealthy father to so great an extent that he vowed never to forgive her. Her crime was a common one. She loved a handsome young fellow who was impulsive, unlucky, poor, and a cousin to boot, and steadfastly declined to give him up when ordered to do so by her father, from whom, by-the-by, she inherited the self-will which roused his ire.

Just about this time Mr Calmour fell under the spell of a lady whom his daughter did not hesitate to dub an adventuress of the most pronounced type, and it became evident to his friends that he was sickening for matrimony.

The ordinary judge of humanity would have imagined that Mr Calmour’s own infatuation would have made him more tolerant of his daughter’s love affair. But, to the tell the truth, he was perversity personified, and as his appreciation of Miss Reede’s insidious advances increased, so did his depreciation of his nephew’s qualities progress in inverse ratio.

At last matters reached a crisis. The adventuress’s intrigues progressed successfully, and Miss Reede succeeded in transforming her impecunious self into the wife of a wealthy country magnate. She had evidently entered upon her new sphere of life with fixed ideas as to the fitness of things, for she had no sooner returned from her short honeymoon that she began to turn the house upside down, and coolly informed her step-daughter that she must vacate the bedroom she had always occupied, as it was to be transformed into a boudoir for the new mistress of the establishment. As there were at least two other rooms in the rambling old house that would have suited Mrs Calmour’s purpose equally well, Ada recognised in the new arrangement a deliberate intention to insult her, and suspected that the ulterior motive was to drive her from the house.

A girl of meek and yielding spirit would have submitted to the indignity without audible complaint. Miss Calmour was too high-spirited for that, and declined to yield her treasured privileges without a struggle. Her father had always petted and indulged her until these unfortunate love differences arose. He had, in her opinion, shown strong signs of mental aberration in marrying a woman of whose antecedents he knew nothing beyond the fact that she owed money in all directions before she secured him for her husband, and that her very close intimacy with a man whom she represented to be her guardian provoked invidious comments.

Ada was therefore not greatly surprised when her father declined to put a veto upon Mrs Calmour’s appropriation of her pet sanctum.

“I can’t see that there is anything worth making a fuss about,” he observed, carelessly. “If the room is wanted, you can easily find another that will be just as comfortable.”

In fact, he dismissed the matter as too trivial to worry about. The mischief lay deeper than he either knew or cared, and one encroachment followed another until the daughter of the house decided that her room was preferable to her company. The immediate result of this conviction was action on her part. She quitted the home she idolised, and it was surmised by her father and his wife that she had eloped with Pearce Churchill. Mrs Calmour did her best to encourage this supposition, and to fan the already unreasonable anger of the man whose money she coveted for herself.

Her schemes prospered to perfection. Mr Calmour swore never to look upon his daughter again, or to allow her to touch a farthing of his money.

“Her good-for-nothing husband may keep her,” he observed, callously. “She didn’t know when she was well off, and as she has chosen to make her own bed, she may lie upon it.”

But the poor girl had not married her cousin after all, although he was eager that she should become his wife, even though the fortune she once expected to inherit was probably alienated from her for ever. When Ada discovered that her lover’s income was totally inadequate for even one, she declined to add to his responsibilities, and went into the world to earn her own living.

“And you must not write to me for twelve months,” she said firmly but tearfully. “I love you dearly, Pearce; but you shall not sacrifice yourself to a penniless wife until time and absence have tested your affection. You need not fear for me. I shall get on well enough. And in twelve months I will write to you, and will gladly marry you if you still want me.”

All Pearce Churchill’s arguments in favour of an immediate marriage were in vain, and when Mr Calmour died quite suddenly, three months after his daughter’s disappearance, none knew where to find her. Probably the misguided man had been visited by compunctious qualms of conscience concerning his treatment of his own child, for his will, as read at the funeral, savoured of a half-hearted attempt to saddle Fate with the responsibility of deciding whether his wife or his daughter should inherit his wealth. Said will was fantastic to a ridiculous degree, and provoked the indignation of all the old friends of the family, who estimated Mrs Calmour at her true value, and set her down as the unscrupulous, scheming adventuress she really was.

Some even went so far as to hint that Mr Calmour, who was in the prime of life, and had always been a healthy man, would have been alive still, if he had been further removed from his wife’s influence. But hints and suspicions are more easily indulged in than open accusations, and many a tragedy remains unexposed because nobody likes to be the initiative accuser.

Thus, though many black glances were levelled at the newly made widow, she was allowed to pursue the even tenor of her way unmolested, in spite of the fact that her badly disguised rage at the gist of her husband’s will increased the distrust with which she was already regarded.

Mr Calmour had been enlightened as to the true state of affairs with regard to his daughter, at least as far as his nephew could enlighten him, and had become aware that she was struggling unaided to earn a livelihood which he could have given her without missing the money.

“I am very anxious about Ada,” Pearce had written. “I have written to the last address I had, and my letters have been returned, marked ‘Not known.’ I have now got a good appointment, and could I but find her Ada would marry me at once. She only refused me before because she was afraid of making me still poorer than I was. She is a noble girl, and has been shamefully treated. On your head be it, if she has come to grief in her fight with adversity. I wonder what my aunt, whom you used to pretend to love, would think if she could know that within two years of her death you have practically turned her only child into the streets, to make room for a professional adventuress, whom no one but you would have married?”

Pearce Churchill knew that his letter would enrage his uncle. But he also hoped that it might have a salutary effect. The will which he heard read convinced him that his hope had not been quite in vain.

Mr Calmour left all his property, subject to an annuity of one hundred per annum for his wife, to his nephew Pearce Churchill, on condition that he was married to Ada within three months of the testator’s death. Should this marriage not take place within the stipulated period, Ada and Pearce were to have one hundred per annum each, and everything else was to go to his wife absolutely, no less than five thousand a year being involved altogether.

The stake was so big, and it seemed so monstrous that this hated interloper should succeed to the estates that had been in the Calmour family over three hundred years, that every effort was made to baffle her.

We were speedily commissioned to discover Ada Calmour and put forth all our energies to the task. Indeed, we had been offered such a large sum in the event of success, that we engaged a colleague for me, in the person of a woman of thirty or thereabouts, who came to us with very good credentials. One of these we verified. The other reference had just started on a Continental tour when Mr White wrote to him, and was uncomeatable. But Mrs Deane was engaged, and proved herself so exceedingly smart that our firm soon congratulated itself on having secured her services.

Just at this time the Calmour case was engrossing the greater part of my attention. We had advertised very freely, but our advertisements met with no response, and as one week after another passed, and all our plans for discovering Miss Calmour failed, we grew very anxious about the matter.

The case was so exasperatingly disappointing, too. Several times we believed ourselves to be on the eve of discovery, and each time our expected triumph turned out to be a will-o’-the-wisp. Twice I journeyed to a distant town, feeling confident of meeting Miss Calmour. Each time she had disappeared and left no trace behind her, or at least so little that it was difficult to work upon. Three times Mrs Deane set off on a similar errand, and three times she returned with failure written on her face.

At last the fateful day of limitation came and went. Wherever she might be now, Ada’s inheritance was lost to her, and the adventuress was triumphant possessor of the coveted acres and personalty.

At the end of twelve months’ probation she had given herself, Miss Calmour returned, and then we managed to understand the cause of our failure. She had been engaged as travelling companion by some people who turned out to have been in the pay of Mrs Calmour, and who, oddly enough, were the people who had been given as reference by Mrs Deane. All newspapers were tabooed by Miss Calmour’s employers, a Mr and Mrs Carlile, and she neither knew of her father’s death or of our advertisements. The Carliles were very erratic travellers, and it subsequently transpired that their hurried departures had been co-incidental with the futile journeys of myself or my lady colleague.

They had, in fact, been warned of our intended arrival, and had always managed to carry their unsuspecting companion away in time to avoid discovery.

Miss Calmour bitterly regretted having insisted upon twelve months’ probation, for although she was soon very happily married to her cousin, and although his earnings and their joint little incomes brought in a total of six hundred a year, this was very far short of what would have been theirs had they inherited under Mr Calmour’s stupid and eccentric will.

They did not doubt that Mrs Calmour learnt somehow that we were employed to trace the heiress, and had counter-schemed to prevent the discovery we were so anxious to make.

A few months after this painful failure of ours, I was in the neighbourhood of Calmour Grange, and saw the lady of the house driven past me in great style. I was naturally curious as to her personality, and am not sure that I was quite as surprised as I might have been at the discovery I made.

I knew now that success would have been will nigh impossible for me.

Mrs Calmour was no other than Mrs Deane, the clever lady detective who stayed in our employment three months, and to whom we confided all the details about the great will case.

I have another story to relate about her.

IV. Dora Turns the Tables

“There will soon be very little of my uncle Calmour’s property left, if this woman is allowed to pursue her present reckless course of extravagance,” observed Mr Churchill, discontentedly, about two years after the incidents narrated in the last story.

He had come to consult me as to the possibility of still outwitting Mrs Calmour, and of regaining possession of the family acres. He had but the haziest idea as to the plan most likely to realise his wishes, and admitted that the widow’s position seemed unassailable from an ordinary point of view; yet, in spite of our previous failure, he was imbued with such an extravagant belief in the abnormal ability of Messrs Bell and White that he had taken it into his head to see if we could not unseat the adventuress, even now.

“According to the law of England,” I observed to Mr Churchill, “Mrs Calmour is perfectly entitled to squander the property. The will has been duly proved, and unless we could show that this clever schemer’s title is base there is little chance of ousting her.”

“What are the pleas upon which we could upset her right to possession?”

“Probably a clever lawyer, if you could find such an individual, might suggest several. At present I can only think of two.”

“And they are?”

“The illegality of Mr Calmour’s marriage and the existence of a will posterior to the one that has been proved.”

“Miss Bell! You give me new hope! There may really be another will in existence, or rather, there may have been. When I come to think of it, it is not likely that such a will would have been kept so long, even if it had ever been penned. To suppress a will is a serious thing, and culprits do not, I should imagine, carefully preserve the evidence of their own guilt.”

“There you are quite wrong. There are innumerable instances on record of people who have been punished for grave crimes that would never have been brought home to them but for their own incredible carelessness. A letter, an article of wearing apparel, a trivial trinket – these have often been the principal factors in elucidating criminal puzzles.”

“Then you really think Mrs Calmour has kept the real will back?”

“My dear sir! I never said any such thing. I only supposed it possible that, to secure the property, Mrs Calmour had suppressed her husband’s final testament, in which case it might safely be concluded that it would have been entirely in your or your wife’s favour, since the will that was eventually proved required a lot of very clever scheming on the successful legatee’s part.”

“Just so, and I mean to act on the supposition that you have made a correct guess at the true state of affairs. The idea that the marriage was not legal cannot be entertained for a moment. There are too many proofs to the contrary, worse luck.”

“So you think. But we are accustomed to look at a case from every point of view. An exhaustive analysis of Mrs Calmour’s past might disclose the existence of a prior right on the part of some accommodating individual, who is content to remain in the background for the sake of a liberal share of the plunder.”

But this view of the case, excited my impulsive client so much that I with difficulty restrained his prematurely triumphant exultation, and when he left our office he seemed to be firmly convinced that his wife would still become possessor of what was left of her father’s estate. As she was an only child, it had always been natural to suppose herself the heiress, and as at first one beloved piece of land and then another was sold by the present possessor she found it very hard to hear of such wanton waste of fine property. Probably she would share her husband’s newly-awakened hopes and enthusiasm when he told her of his interview with me.

And were these hopes quite as unfounded as they appear at the first blush?

Probably not.

I had been so much chagrined at the manner in which I had been outwitted by Mrs Calmour, that I had resolved to ferret well into her past life, and rake thence such items of interest as would help to turn the tables on her, and return to Mrs Churchill the property which I deemed morally hers.

I had already made good progress in my researches before I was consulted again by my client. But it would not have been wise, from a professional point of view, to betray the full extent of my knowledge at once. Clients have sometimes a rather a nasty knack of imagining that the remuneration due to a private detective is commensurate with the amount of research required after a case has been actually taken in hand on their behalf. They forget that all the knowledge and experience which is anterior to their application for their assistance has been the result of determined labour and forethought, without which no detective could hope to succeed, and which deserve ultimate interest equally with the client’s own provision for the future, whether it be in the shape of invested funds or acquired mental knowledge.

Of course, a great proportion of our clients are of a more reasonable nature. But the exceptions have taught us caution, and we rarely fall into a confidential mood until we are quite sure that our professional prestige will not suffer by doing so.

Thus it happened that I forebore to tell Mr Churchill how hopeful I really considered his wife’s cause to be. But I knew enough already to have made Mrs Calmour quake in her shoes, could she have guessed that I was on her trail. For instance, I knew that a certain Mr Selby formerly posed as the guardian of the lady, who, by-the-by, was at least thirty-six years of age, though she only owned to being twenty-seven. On making certain inquiries, I learned something else about Mr Selby, and came to the conclusion that his doings were quite as shady as those of his “ward.”

He made it a practice to hunt up charming country cottages or handsomely furnished suites of rooms and to offer such liberal terms for them as tempted their owners to take a lodger in for once, in order to earn an extra honest penny. Then Mr Selby, who had sung the praises of his accomplice sky-high, would superintend the installation of that individual with much empressement. The lady, whom he always represented as rich, and whom he endowed with fictitious relationship to people of note, who would have repudiated all connection with her, would bring her maid and her bosom female crony, a certain Miss Losteel, and they and the reputed guardian would eat and drink the poor hosts into ruination.

This would last until the latter began to look askance at the idea of always receiving excuses instead of money, and then the gang would suddenly seek fresh victims. Oddly enough, the victimised hosts generally found that some of their treasured knick-knacks always disappeared at the same time as their swindling lady lodger, who, while the spell of her fascination lasted, borrowed money for stamps, stationery, railway fares, and any other thing for which money is absolutely needed.

The woman was short, squat, dark, and of curious, square set features. While under the aegis of the charm which she could use at will, people found all sorts of excuses for her constant lapses into vulgarity, and smiled at the egregious vanity she displayed. Once fully alive to the unscrupulous creature’s real nature, they wondered how such an ugly incarnation of selfishness could ever have fascinated them, and were inclined to attribute her power to sorcery, or hypnotism, or to anything but the deep-laid plots of mere cunning.

After Miss Reede’s marriage to Mr Calmour, the whilom guardian (he posed as “uncle” at Dieppe) lived in bachelor chambers in London in great style, and did not even trouble to go to the office in which he had formerly done occasional business of a shady sort. He had money enough to live upon, and I had no difficulty in surmising whence it came.

Soon after Mrs Calmour succeeded to the estates Mr Selby developed into a property buyer. He figured at several of the purchases of land sold by the widow. As the latter showed no signs of being better off for all the cash she got, I inferred that it found its way back into Mr Selby’s possession, and that the latest scheme was intended to divert the ownership of the property to the nominal purchaser, instead of the widow.

I argued that there must be a reason for this, and the painstaking researches I made resulted in the astounding discovery that the couple were really man and wife. They had found it pay better to profess a different relationship. The marriage with Mr Calmour was, therefore, null and void. But I was not quite sure that this fact would suffice to restore her fortune to Mrs Churchill.

Prolonged observation convinced me that the utmost harmony existed between the two conspirators.

I felt sure that fear of discovery was prompting the transfer of the property, and argued that as friendly relations existed between the two principals, there must be a third party of whose revelations they were afraid.

It did not require much ingenuity to supply the missing link in the chain of evidence I was weaving round the lady who had outwitted me so cleverly when posing as my colleague. Suppose I turned my attention to the Mr and Mrs Carlile, whose active co-operation ensured the success of the widow’s schemes?

I thought the plan a very good one, and followed it up with such success that I learnt enough of the past life of the Carliles to have sent them both to penal servitude.

My colleagues had given me their active co-operation, and when I had arrived at a quite triumphant point of my personal investigations, I knew exactly where to put my hands on the people I wanted. But I did not care to present myself unsupported in the lion’s den, so was accompanied both by my uncle and by Mr Henniker when I paid the unsuspecting swindlers a visit.

Within half an hour we convinced them that we had them in our power, and that the only way to escape imprisonment themselves was to confess everything they knew relating to Mr Calmour’s inheritrix and her accomplice. And a pretty confession it was too!

It seems that the misguided squire had made two wills, both in legal form, and both drafted without the assistance of a lawyer. Of the one the reader has heard particulars, and though it did not carry out Mrs Calmour’s own views, she preferred to risk her chances on it rather than on the one made by the legatee in the heat of passion, a few hours before he died.

This last will left everything to Ada Calmour, absolutely and unconditionally, and was the outcome of Mr Calmour’s discovery that he had been duped and fooled. He was altogether so excited at this revelation that he was visited by a stroke, and died without being able to impart his knowledge to anyone who would have helped to see justice done to his daughter.

Mrs Carlile was a visitor in the house at the time. She obtained possession of Mr Calmour’s last will, and declined to give it up when asked to do so by the supposed widow, as she was quite aware of the power its possession gave her. The Carliles had lived quite luxuriously at Mrs Calmour’s expense, but had found it necessary to threaten exposure lately, as they had become suspicious of her intention to realise all she could, and levant with her lawful husband.

The reader can guess the rest. Mr and Mrs Churchill are installed in their own again. Even the land nominally sold to the man calling himself Selby is restored to them, as the transfer was a palpably fraudulent transaction between him and his wife, who had no legal power to sell.

The Carliles have deemed it wise to emigrate. I wish I could add that the Selbys had been duly punished for their misdeeds. But Mrs Churchill did not care to expose her poor father’s weakness too widely, and has let them go scot free.

For anything I know to the contrary, they have reverted to their former farcical pretence of being a guardian of his rich genius of a ward. Certain it is, that wherever they are, they are swindling somebody, and I would earnestly warn my readers against trusting the unsupported testimony of a plausible, gentlemanly fellow who wants to engage costly board and lodgings for his lady friend, whom he endows with the additional recommendation of being about to outstrip her pretended talented relations in the race for fame.

V. Acquaintance Dodge

Yes, it was undoubtedly the same woman. I had seen her before, and knew her to be of very equivocal character. Nay, I will go a step further, and assure my readers that she was a person of very disreputable antecedents, and had recently served a term of imprisonment in consequence of certain disclosures for which our firm was responsible.

Her penchant for frequent changes of names made it difficult to follow her career. But the last name under which I had known her was Angelina Dyer, and as Angelina Dyer she was convicted of assisting at the operations of a gang of burglars, of whom I have an exciting story to tell some day.

Knowing the true character of this woman, therefore, it caused me no small surprise to see her talking to Mr Lanimore, one of our city aldermen, whom I would have deemed one of the last individuals in the world to have dealings with Angelina Dyer.

My curiosity was aroused. I determined to see the farce to the end, and for the present relinquished my intention of taking a hansom to Liverpool-street Station, whither I was bent on a mission that could easily wait for another opportunity.

Angelina was naturally rather handsome, and on the present occasion was dressed with such remarkably good taste that the casual onlooker might easily mistake her for the lady she was evidently pretending to be.

Her face wore an expression of pleased surprise, and she held out her hand with a warmth of welcome which there was no resisting. There was a handshake, very cordial on the one side, somewhat hesitating on the other, and then I knew what was going on just as well as if I had been within earshot.

Alderman Lanimore was finding it difficult to recognise his impulsive interlocutor, and Angelina was expressing her delight at meeting such an old friend. And in London, too, of all places in the world!

There was a few moments’ smiling repudiation of bygone acquaintanceship on one side, and an apparently regretful realisation of the truth on the other, and then the little comedy ended, the lady bowing ceremoniously, and the gentleman raising his hat politely.

A second later Angelina had vanished in the never-ending crowd which makes the neighbourhood of the Mansion House one of the typical sights of London. Mrs Dyer’s abrupt departure did not trouble me. I knew where to find her if I wanted her again. And I also knew that there would be a further development of this seemingly trivial adventure, for that the lady with the angelic name had had an ulterior motive in accosting the alderman I was certain.

Nor was my conviction long in being verified. Mr Lanimore, followed by myself, walked along Cheapside, with a good-natured smile on his face, until he reached Sir William Bennet’s famous horological establishment. Then it struck him that he had better compare his timepiece with the big clock over the shop, and he mechanically put his hand to his fob to withdraw his costly gold repeater.

It was gone!

I could almost have laughed, aloud at this development of my little comedy, for though I had not been quite sure what form Angelina’s cunning would take, and although in spite of my keen watch I had not seen her take anything, I had no doubt that pocket-picking was the lady’s real game.

Nor did the alderman’s next act surprise me. He hailed an empty passing hansom and almost shouted to the driver, “Bell and White, Holborn, and drive like wildfire.”

That he would invoke our aid had also been one of my foregone conclusions, for we had already transacted business for him in connection with the large firm of which he was the senior partner.

Feeling glad that Mr Lanimore had not seen me, I waited until another hansom had appeared, and then gave the driver a somewhat similar order to the one given by the alderman a few moments before.

Arrived at our office, I found that the impatient victim of the “auld acquaintance” dodge had been waiting a few minutes for an audience with one of the principals. Mr Jones conducted a branch business now, and was seldom at the London office. Mr White had sold out and retired, and my uncle only just entered the office as I did.

“Leave this case to me,” I whispered, “I know all about it.”

With a smile and a nod of comprehension, Mr Bell betook himself to his own private sanctum, while I removed my outdoor wraps and proceeded to interview the alderman.

“Good morning, Mr Lanimore! What can we do for you this time?”

“Oh, such a fool as I have been, Miss Bell! Actually let a strange woman stop me in the street and talk to me! Pretended to know me, and I never suspected the hussy’s intentions.”

“And the result?”

“My beautiful gold repeater, given to me by our employees when I was elected sheriff, has disappeared.”

“That is very serious.”

“Serious! good heavens! It’s as much as my happiness and reputation are worth to lose that watch! I must have it back, and the affair must not get into the newspapers.”

“I suppose not. Publicity is not always desirable.”

“In this case it would be ruination. The circumstances are so exasperating. My partners are inclined to twit me about what they call my ‘starched morality!’ My rivals in the Council Chamber are on the lookout for a chance of picking a hole in my character. My wife is desperately and absurdly jealous. They would one and all refuse to believe that I did not know to whom I was speaking, and I should be branded as a hypocrite who practised social vices under the cloak of pretended morality.”

“What was the woman like?”

“Tall, of fine figure, and ladylike appearance, with bright complexion, and a quantity of bright golden hair. She also wore a pair of gold rimmed eyeglasses.”

“H’m! not much to go by. There are so many stylish-looking woman with yellow hair and bright complexions nowadays. A little ready money and a determination to be in the fashion can work wonders. Did you observe any other peculiarity about the pick-pocket?”

“No, nothing. You see, I had not time to notice much, for the interview was short and I was quite unsuspicious.”

“Well, there is very little to act upon. Still, I daresay you will find our firm of more use than the police would have been.”

“I am quite sure of it. Those other cases you undertook for me were nothing short of miraculous, and I have the utmost faith in your powers.”

“Thank you. I believe I may almost promise that you shall have your watch back within a week. Meanwhile, say nothing about the affair to anyone else. You can be supposed to have taken your repeater to be regulated.”

When Mr Lanimore left our office he was much more at ease about his property than when he came in, and I was pretty confident about my ability to fulfil my apparently rash promise.

I had taken shorthand notes of all the details Mr Lanimore was able to give me. Not that I needed them. But it looks well to be as business-like as possible.

A few minutes later I was explaining the whole affair to my uncle, and we soon had our plans for future action completed. We generally keep an eye, through our subordinates, on such likely people for business as Angelina Dyer, and knew that she was lodging in a street off Commercial-road at this moment.

We also felt sure that for this day, at least, she would suspend further active operations in the city. At present she would be displaying her prizes to the admiring gaze of her associates. Pawnshops are a worked-out field for our regular watch-lifters. They have a safer means of disposing their gains. Not far from Houndsditch there lives a man under whose clever manipulative fingers stolen watches and jewellery lose their identity. If ordinary “faking” won’t work the oracle, then the melting-pot is resorted to.

In all probability Alderman Lanimore’s repeater would be in the hands of the watch-faker within twenty-four hours. We must, therefore, secure it to-night – if not by strategy, then by force.

Four subordinates were instantly instructed to keep a careful watch upon Angelina Dyer’s abode, and to set about the business without delay. Half-an-hour later I started on the track, accompanied by Adam Henniker. We had both undergone a considerable transformation, and would not have been recognised by our best friends. We looked like very well-to-do country simpletons who had never been in London before, and who were agog with amazement at all we saw. We noticed many a smile of covert meaning on the faces of passers-by, whose knowledge of the neighbourhood we were in made them question the wisdom of our gorgeously liberal display of jewellery.

But we did not anticipate trouble, as our colleagues were mostly near enough to assist us at a moment’s notice, although until they received that notice, we were as utter strangers to each other in our occasional encounters.

I had had no time to snatch a meal before setting out to watch for Angelina again, and was feeling very hungry, but dared not relax my attention. I knew, however, that people of the class we had chosen to represent saw no breach of manners in eating in the street, and we decided that our assumption of the roles of country Johnnies would look much more natural if we comported ourselves with true country unconsciousness.

When, therefore, Angelina realised our expectations by emerging from her habitation, and walking towards Aldgate, Adam was cutting a big sandwich with a huge clasp-knife, and I was making futile efforts to dispose of a cake that had proved much less tempting than when it was displayed in the vendor’s window.

In an instant Angelina spotted prey, and Adam, with his mouth half-full of sandwich, contrived to give her an excuse for speaking to us, if she had needed one, remarking loudly, “Aw doant care, Jane, aw’m not gooin’ whoam withawt seein’ th’ place wheer th’ Whitechapel murders were done. Aw say, missis, con yo tell us which is th’ street as th’ fust murder were done in?”

“Why, yes,” was the smiling reply. “It’s just over here. I’m going that way, and I’ll show you the street.”

Five minutes later the business was accomplished. We had caught the pickpocket in flagrante delicto, and one of our men had come up in time to help us to ease her of the watch and chain she had just stolen from Adam. We gave her the alternative of going to prison for both thefts she had committed that day, or of purchasing present immunity by delivering the alderman’s gold repeater to us.

“Well, if ever I let a set of lags take me in again like that!” she remarked, in great disgust. “Here, take the blooming ticker, and thank your stars that none of my pals are about.”

When Alderman Lanimore received his property back safe and sound the next morning, he could not restrain his admiration of our astuteness, which had of course suppressed disenchanting explanations.

“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “I never heard tell of anything like it. Your deductions and methods of reasoning must be more than human. Wonderful!”

VI. A Broken Trust

“I am sure, Miss Bell, that there is much more in this than meets the eye. Mrs Wemysson’s conduct is so altogether unexpected and inexplicable that it can only be accounted for on the hypothesis of some peculiar development of events of which her daughter and myself are supremely ignorant.”

“Will you kindly recapitulate all the circumstances of the case to me, Mr Wigan?”

“Certainly. You see, Miss Alice Wemysson and I have known each other since we were children, and I can hardly remember the time when I did not dream of love in a cottage with Alice. Yes, it was really to be love in a cottage at first, for a more ambitious prospect did not disclose itself to us until lately. My father has too many claims upon his purse to be able to give his sons more towards a start in life than a good education. And, until he died, no one dreamed that Mr Wemysson possessed more than a modest competence.

“The attachment between Alice and myself was so patent to all our friends that our names have been coupled together for years. But no formal engagement existed between us, and though Mr Wemysson seemed to be rather fond of me than otherwise, he always insisted that his daughter was too young to know what was best for her, and that there was still plenty of time to decide her future.

“Things were in this position when Mr Wemysson died, and then it transpired that he was a comparatively rich man, having left ten thousand pounds to his wife, and ten thousand pounds to her in trust for Alice Wemysson, who was the daughter of the testator’s first wife. The young lady was then eighteen, and she was to be under the absolute guardianship of her stepmother until she was twenty-one. If she married contrary to the wishes of her guardian, she was to forfeit her inheritance.

“The last stipulation afforded nobody any uneasiness, for everyone knew Mrs Wemysson to be well disposed towards me, and could hardly understand why such a condition should have been made. As a matter of fact, Mrs Wemysson gave her cordial consent to the engagement soon after her husband’s death, but stipulated for the postponement of the marriage until the bride was of age.

“The first summer after this unfortunate event passed tranquilly enough. As winter approached my mother-in-law-elect developed a restless disposition, which culminated in a determination to travel and see the world.

“‘My means have always been too cramped to permit me to enjoy life properly,’ she remarked. ‘There is no reason, however, why I should make myself miserable now, and I mean to get all the pleasure I can this winter. Alice shall do the Continent with me; it will do her good to see something worth seeing, before she settled down to a humdrum married life.’

“To tell the truth, both Alice and I were rather shocked at this speech. It seemed to us to cast a reflection on the good man whom we had both loved and implied a certain feeling of elation at being relieved of the duties and ties of matrimony, which ill-befitted a woman who had always been treated with affection by her husband.

“But no serious objections to the proposed trip could be offered, and the day came when I bade farewell to my dear girl, never dreaming that aught could now intervene between us and our future happiness, or that the cloud which was to overshadow our destinies was already rising.

“I received my letters regularly. Alice was delighted with all she saw, and gave me wonderful descriptions of the places she and her mother visited. For many weeks all seemed to be going gaily with the travellers. Then a change came over the spirit of Alice’s letters. They were less spontaneously confidential, and a vague sense of impending trouble seemed to pervade them. But I could get no satisfaction until the travellers returned. It was in vain that I questioned. My questions were always parried evasively, and I am not at all sure that I was surprised when my darling broke down at sight of me, and welcomed me with tears instead of smiles.

“I had been waiting a long time at the station for them, my impatience leading me there a good while before the train was due. I was able to render Mrs Wemysson some little services, but could not help seeing that my attentions were unwelcome, and when I saw how harassed and ill Alice looked, I was filled with a vague foreboding of mischief to come.

“Nor was my foreboding unfounded. During the course of that same evening Mrs Wemysson informed me that I must consider my engagement with her daughter at an end, as she had other views for her.

“‘In fact,’ she said, ‘Alice is going to marry Mr Jackson, a gentleman whom we met abroad.’ Probably my anger got the better of my good manners, for I flatly contradicted the widow at this point. I pointed out that Mr Wemysson had always liked me; that she herself had consented to our engagement, and that I knew Alice to be true as steel from top to toe.

“‘Nevertheless, she will not marry you,’ I was coolly informed. ‘She knows that her father wished her to obey my judgment in the matter, and she is too good a daughter to act counter to his wishes. Besides, if she were to marry you, after I have forbidden her to do so, she would forfeit her fortune, and it is poor love that would reduce its object to poverty.’

“Now Alice certainly loved her father very much. But she is not exactly a girl to sacrifice herself without knowing the reason why. Her character is by no means as superficial and yielding as Mrs Wemysson imagines, and she vows that if she may not marry me, she will marry nobody, least of all this Mr Jackson, who is elderly, thin, bald, waspish-looking, and of altogether forbidding exterior. His face is also so indicative of craft one instinctively distrusts him.

“Now, as I have said before, Mrs Wemysson must have some powerful motive for wishing to substitute Mr Jackson for myself as her daughter’s husband, and I want you to unravel the mystery for me.”

I had listened to Mr Wigan’s story with some interest, and now proceeded to cross-question him.

“Who, or what, is this Mr Jackson?” I asked.

“He is a solicitor, with an office near Lincoln’s Inn Fields.”

“How long has Mrs Wemysson known him?”

“I should say that on and off she has known him ten years. He was the late Mr Wemysson’s solicitor, but was never on visiting terms with the family until recently.”

“Where did he meet the Wemysson’s lately?”

“At Monte Carlo. I believe the widow was alarmingly fond of the gaming tables there, and Alice suspects that she lost a lot of money.”

“Is Mr Jackson rich?”

“On the contrary, he barely subsists on a very poor business.”

“Then what was he doing at Monte Carlo?”

“He had to go over there on business for another client – to watch a scapegrace young spendthrift, I believe. While there he recognised Mrs Wemysson, and speedily became quite familiar. The widow at first professed to dislike him very much, but apparently got over her dislike, and entered no protest when he proclaimed himself madly in love with her ward.”

“Can you give me any clue to this man’s influence over the widow, Mr Wigan?”

“Not the slightest. I only know that the influence was very evident, and that although Mrs Wemysson’s temper became very trying towards Alice, she submitted very quietly to a somewhat impertinent reproof from Mr Jackson.”

“Concerning what did he reprove her?”

“He told her that she had lost quite enough at the tables, and that she had better not gamble any more.”

“What banker do the Wemysson’s patronise?”

“The National and Provincial Bank.”

“Thank you. I believe that is all I wish to ask you at present, Mr Wigan. I will look into the case, and let you know the results as soon as possible.”

When my client departed he did not look very hopeful of the results of my investigations, and although my plans were already laid, I was not at all sanguine as to their success.

But of two fundamental facts I felt certain. Mrs Wemysson had committed some indiscretion, in which the welfare of her step-daughter was involved. And Mr Jackson was not only cognisant of that indiscretion, but was determined to make capital out of it.

Now, whatever the indiscretion was, it had evidently had its origin at Monte Carlo. It was probably connected with Mrs Wemysson’s rashness at the gaming tables. But at this point the puzzle became more tangled. Even if she had been losing money heavily, this would not make marriage into her family desirable for an impoverished fortune-hunter, for that Mr Jackson had actually fallen in love with Alice Wemysson was, I concluded, hardly a likely supposition to entertain. I preferred to look upon his motives as entirely mercenary.

Suppose Miss Wemysson proved to be a greater matrimonial prize than she knew herself to be? This would explain the solicitor’s conduct in forcing his attentions upon an unwilling girl. But it made the widow’s behaviour all the more inexplicable.

With a view of satisfying myself as to Miss Wemysson’s financial position, I communicated with one of the employees of the bank in which her father had invested his money, and desired him to let me know how much of this money had been withdrawn. We make a point of having friends in all sorts of unlikely places, and their co-operation often simplifies our work wonderfully. In this case the information I got startled me considerably.

Of the twenty thousand pounds left by Mr Wemysson, there was barely five thousand left! Mrs Wemysson must have been completely carried away by the gambling demon, to risk her daughter’s little fortune as well as her own. Mr Jackson evidently knew of her breach of trust and was trading upon it. Now where did his profit come in?

I determined to know.

A few days later, having watched him leave his office, I interviewed the poor underpaid soul who served him as clerk. At first I could get little information from him. But, prompted by the promise of another situation, he showed me what a scoundrel his employer really was.

Mr Jackson knew that Mrs Wemysson had gambled her daughter’s money, and threatened to expose and ruin her if she did not insist upon Alice marrying him. He forebore to tell her that Mr Wemysson’s brother, of whom they had not heard for years, had died and left his niece a fortune of fifty thousand pounds. He, as the family solicitor, knew all about it, but was keeping the information back until he had secured the heiress for his wife.

My course was now plain. I paid a visit to Mrs Wemysson and proved to her that I knew more about her own and her daughter’s affairs than she did. She was very humble and repentant. She was also grateful when I undertook to smooth over the ruffled feelings of the injured lovers.

The latter are now happily married, and have sealed their forgiveness by augmenting Mrs Wemysson’s fortune to its original amount. They have, however, taken the precaution to place only the interest at her disposal. Every Christmas brings me some wonderful presents from Mr and Mrs Wigan, who will have it that I saved them from lifelong misery by exposing Mr Jackson’s schemes ere it was too late.

Mr Jackson himself has by this time discovered that shady ways don’t pay. He has been struck off the rolls, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields knows him no more.

VII. Madame Duchesne’s Garden Party

“It cost more than two hundred pounds, Miss Bell. But that is not the worst of the matter. My aunt stipulated that I should always wear it as a perpetual reminder of her past kindness and her future good intentions, and if she misses it I shall lose favour with her altogether. To lose Miss Mainwaring’s favour means to lose the splendid fortune which is hers to bequeath, so you see how very serious the matter is for me. It is, indeed, little short of life and death, for poverty would kill me now. For God’s sake do your best for me.”

“But surely, if Miss Mainwaring knows that you could not possibly have foreseen your loss, she will not be unjust enough to disinherit you?”

“Indeed she will. She believes me to be vacillating and unreliable, because I broke off an engagement with a rich man to whom I had but given a reluctant acceptance, and united myself to the man of my choice. My husband was poor and therefore beyond the pale of forgiveness, and my own pardon is only based on the most unswerving obedience to all my aunt’s injunctions. The pendant came from India, and the stones in it are said to possess occult power – I wish they had the power to come back to their rightful owner.”

The speaker heaved a sigh of desperation as she spoke, and I glanced at her with considerable interest. She was tall, pale, dark-eyed, and handsome, but her appearance bore certain signs of that vacillation and carelessness of which her aunt accredited her with the possession.

The circumstances surrounding the loss of which she complained were peculiar. She had been spending the evening at the house of the German Ambassador, and was returning home in Miss Mainwaring’s carriage, when she became aware of the fact that she had lost the jewelled pendant which her aunt had given her as a token of reconciliation when she returned to her after being suddenly widowed.

A frantic search of the carriage bore no results, and Mrs Bevan hastily told the coachman to return to the embassy. But she prudently refrained from confiding the particulars of her loss to him, for she was not quite without hope that it might be remedied. Madame von Auerbach was, however, able to give her no comfort, for she had herself suffered in like manner with her guest.

She had lost a valuable diamond-studded watch, and when the most careful search failed to discover it, the conclusion arrived at was that some thief must have been present at the reception. It was an unpleasant conclusion to arrive at. But it was the only natural one. For the Ambassador’s wife had not left her guests, or gone beyond the reception rooms, from the time she entered them, wearing the watch, to the moment when, the last visitors having just gone, she thought of looking at her watch, and found that it had disappeared.

Mrs Bevan’s return a few moments later with the news that her pendant had disappeared, confirmed the supposition that some professional thief must have been at work, and the police were at once communicated with. They were also strictly enjoined to keep the matter a profound secret, for various reasons.

But Mrs Bevan was too anxious to rely entirely upon the exertions of the regular force, hence her application to our firm and her urgent entreaty that I would act with the utmost despatch.

Soon after my client’s departure I sought an interview with Madame von Auerbach, but could glean very little useful information. The invitations had been sent out with great care, but their exclusiveness was negatived by the fact that they were all sent to So-and-so and friend. The position of those invited by name had been considered sufficient guarantee of the perfect suitability of the friends whom they might select to accompany them to the embassy, and at least a score of people had been present of whom the hostess barely heard even their names.

Of course, no one could treat any single one of these individuals as suspects without some definite suspicion to work upon, and unfortunately for our prospects of success, there was not the slightest ground for suspecting anyone in particular.

I was about to quit Madame von Auerbach’s house when a servant entered with a card upon a waiter, and upon hearing that the name inscribed thereon was that of one of the guests of the previous evening, I hastily decided to stay a little longer, and requested Madame von Auerbach to keep my vocation a secret from her visitor.

The next minute a most bewitching little woman was ushered into the room.

“Oh, my dear madame!” she exclaimed, with a charming foreign accent. “Such an unfortunate thing! I lost my beautiful diamond clasp last night. Have your servants seen anything of it?”

Madame von Auerbach turned pale, and I looked with augmented interest at the harbinger of this new development of the previous evening’s mystery. The depredations had evidently been on a large scale, and the depredators had shown remarkably good taste in the choice of their spoil. The latest victim was a French lady named Madame Duchesne, and she waxed eloquent in lamentations over her loss when it was shown to her how little hope there was of recovering her diamond clasp.

“And do you know, I feel so terribly upset,” was her pathetic protest, “that I would give anything not to have had to go on with my own garden party to-morrow. And I don’t like to say it, but it is a fact that I may also have included the thief in my invitation, and it would be awful if more things were to be stolen. Whatever shall I do?”

As no practical advice seemed to be forthcoming, Madame Duchesne studied for a moment, and then announced her intention of employing a detective.

“Not a real, horrid policeman,” she averred, “but one of those extraordinary individuals who seem able to look through and through you, and who can find anything out. Private detectives, I think they call them.”

Madame von Auerbach looked up eagerly, but I gave her a warning glance which caused her to postpone the revelation of my identity which she had felt prompted to make.

“Do you know any of these people?” was the Frenchwoman’s appeal to me. “Can you help me to the address of one?”

“There are several firms of private detectives in London, if we are to judge from their advertisements,” I answered. “I have heard of Messrs Bell and White, of Holborn, spoken of as fairly good, but, of course, there are plenty of others equally good, or probably better.”

“Bell and White, Holborn. Yes, I will try them. Thank you so much for helping me. May I ask if you live in London?”

Seizing my cue, Madame von Auerbach promptly came to my assistance.

“I am very angry with Miss Gresham,” she averred. “Since she resigned her post as governess to the Duke of Solothurn’s children, she has hardly deigned to take any notice of the numerous friends she made in Germany. But I mean to make her stay a few days with me, now that she has come to see me.”

“Then you must bring her with you to my garden party,” said Madame Duchesne, and the invitation so cleverly angled for was accepted with a faint pretence of hesitation at the idea of inflicting myself upon the hospitality of a total stranger.

After Madame Duchesne’s departure I congratulated Madame von Auerbach very warmly upon her tact and presence of mind, and arranged to visit the garden party as her friend the next day.

In due course the interesting function was in full swing, and the fascinating hostess had quite a crowd of guests to look after. My “guarantor” had left me, at my own request, to my own devices. I wanted to look about me, and to note all that was going on, without being too much in evidence myself.

Presently Madame Duchesne approached me with a very mysterious air, and introduced a very handsome man to my notice. “Don’t be shocked,” she whispered, “But this is the private detective, Mr Bell. I communicated with him at once after leaving Madame von Auerbach’s yesterday, and he is here to watch that no pickpocket secures booty here. Isn’t it too dreadful to have to take such precautions? I will never give another party in London!”

I responded to this confidential communication with due sympathy, and gravely acknowledged the attention my new companion bestowed upon me for a few moments. And I had need of my gravity and presence of mind. For the man introduced to me was not my uncle, the detective. I knew that our firm had not been applied to by Madame Duchesne, in spite of her assertion to the contrary, and as this was certainly no one who had ever been in our office, I knew that certain suspicions that I had formed yesterday were likely to be verified. Since this stranger was certainly no detective, I concluded that he was merely posing as one for the sake of diverting suspicion from the offenders whom I was anxious to run to earth. The assumption that he was the associate and helpmate of the thieves was also a very natural one, although a glance at the lovely hostess and her dainty surroundings almost seemed to belie such a supposition.

But I knew that I was on the right track, and within the hour my vigilance was rewarded. The sham detective, whose pretended avocation had been disclosed to none but Madame von Auerbach and myself, sauntered from group to group, as if intent upon scrutinising their actions. His real object was to attach their jewellery, and I had the satisfaction of seeing him possess himself of a costly watch which Lady A. was wearing in somewhat careless fashion. Instant denunciation was not my intention. I mean to probe the matter to the root, and followed “Mr Bell’s” movements with apparent nonchalance. Presently he culled a couple of beautiful standard roses, and handed them to Madame Duchesne with a graceful compliment.

The thing was beautifully done, and none but a person keenly on guard would have noticed that the watch changed hands with the roses. This little comedy over, Madame sauntered towards the house, and, five minutes later, I came upon her, quite by accident, of course, just as she was relocking a dainty cabinet from which she had taken a fresh bottle of perfume, in the use of which she was very lavish.

There were two or three other people in Madame’s charming boudoir, among them being Madame von Auerbach, by whose side I seated myself with an air of sudden weakness. She was really startled by the development of events, but she had been previously cautioned, and played her part very well indeed, when I exclaimed that I felt dreadfully ill.

“What shall I do?” she cried. “I hope it is not one of your old attacks.”

“Yes, it is,” I whispered faintly. “Do send for my uncle. He is the only one who can help me.”

I was promptly placed on the couch, and dosed with all sorts of amateur remedies, pending the arrival of my uncle, who had been sent for in hot haste, and who, “entre nous,” was waiting with a police officer in private clothes for the expected urgent summons. No sooner did they appear than my indisposition vanished, and I astonished the bystanders by springing vigorously to my feet.

“Arrest Madame Duchesne,” I cried, “and her accomplice.” Pointing to the latter, I continued, “That man has stolen Lady A.’s watch, and it is locked in that cabinet.”

What a scene of confusion there was immediately! Not only Lady A., but several other people discovered that they had been robbed, and the cabinet was found to contain a great quantity of stolen valuables, among them being Mrs Bevan’s much-prized pendant.