The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  The following morning I received a letter from Vandeleur. It was very short, and once more impressed on me the necessity of caution. He said that two eminent physicians had examined Silva, and the verdict was that he could not live a month. Until his death precautions must be strictly observed.

  The day was cloudless, and after breakfast I was just starting out for a stroll when the butler brought me a telegram. I tore it open; it was from Vandeleur:

  “Prohibit all food until I arrive. Am coming down,” were the words. I hurried into the study and gave it to Selby. He read it and looked up at me.

  “Find out the first train and go and meet him, old chap,” he said. “Let us hope that this means an end of the hideous affair.”

  I went into the hall and looked up the trains. The next arrived at Cronsmoor at 10:45. I then strolled round to the stables and ordered a carriage, after which I walked up and down on the drive. There was no doubt that something strange had happened. Vandeleur coming down so suddenly must mean a final clearing up of the mystery. I had just turned round at the lodge gates to wait for the carriage when the sound of wheels and of horses galloping struck on my ears. The gates were swung open, and Vandeleur in an open fly dashed through them. Before I could recover from my surprise he was out of the vehicle and at my side. He carried a small black bag in his hand.

  “I came down by special train,” he said, speaking quickly. “There is not a moment to lose. Come at once. Is Mrs. Selby all right?”

  “What do you mean?” I replied. “Of course she is. Do you suppose that she is in danger?”

  “Deadly,” was his answer. “Come.”

  We dashed up to the house together. Selby, who had heard our steps, came to meet us.

  “Mr. Vandeleur,” he cried. “What is it? How did you come?”

  “By special train, Mr. Selby. And I want to see your wife at once. It will be necessary to perform a very trifling operation.”

  “Operation!” he exclaimed. “Yes; at once.”

  We made our way through the hall and into the morning-room, where Mrs. Selby was busily engaged reading and answering letters. She started up when she saw Vandeleur and uttered an exclamation of surprise.

  “What has happened?” she asked. Vandeleur went up to her and took her hand.

  “Do not be alarmed,” he said, “for I have come to put all your fears to rest. Now, please, listen to me. When you visited Madame Sara with your sister, did you go for medical advice?”

  The colour rushed into her face.

  “One of my teeth ached,” she answered. “I went to her about that. She is, as I suppose you know, a most wonderful dentist. She examined the tooth, found that it required stopping, and got an assistant, a Brazilian, I think, to do it.”

  “And your tooth has been comfortable ever since?”

  “Yes, quite. She had one of Edith’s stopped at the same time.”

  “Will you kindly sit down and show me which was the tooth into which the stopping was put?”

  She did so.

  “This was the one,” she said, pointing with her finger to one in the lower jaw. “What do you mean? Is there anything wrong?”

  Vandeleur examined the tooth long and carefully. There was a sudden rapid movement of his hand, and a sharp cry from Mrs. Selby. With the deftness of long practice, and a powerful wrist, he had extracted the tooth with one wrench. The suddenness of the whole thing, startling as it was, was not so strange as his next movement.

  “Send Mrs. Selby’s maid to her,” he said, turning to her husband; “then come, both of you, into the next room.”

  The maid was summoned. Poor Mrs. Selby had sunk back in her chair, terrified and half fainting. A moment later Selby joined us in the dining-room.

  “That’s right,” said Vandeleur; “close the door, will you?”

  He opened his black bag and brought out several instruments. With one he removed the stopping from the tooth. It was quite soft and came away easily. Then from the bag he produced a small guinea-pig, which he requested me to hold. He pressed the sharp instrument into the tooth, and opening the mouth of the little animal placed the point on the tongue. The effect was instantaneous. The little head fell on to one of my hands—the guinea-pig was dead. Vandeleur was white as a sheet. He hurried up to Selby and wrung his hand.

  “Thank heaven!” he said, “I’ve been in time, but only just. Your wife is safe. This stopping would hardly have held another hour. I have been thinking all night over the mystery of your sister-in-law’s death, and over every minute detail of evidence as to how the poison could have been administered. Suddenly the coincidence of both sisters having had their teeth stopped struck me as remarkable. Like a flash the solution came to me. The more I considered it the more I felt that I was right; but by what fiendish cunning such a scheme could have been conceived and executed is still beyond my power to explain. The poison is very like hyoscine, one of the worst toxic-alkaloids known, so violent in its deadly proportions that the amount that would go into a tooth would cause almost instant death. It has been kept in by a gutta-percha stopping, certain to come out within a month, probably earlier, and most probably during mastication of food. The person would die either immediately or after a very few minutes, and no one would connect a visit to the dentist with a death a month afterwards.”

  What followed can be told in a very few words. Madame Sara was arrested on suspicion. She appeared before the magistrate, looking innocent and beautiful, and managed during her evidence completely to baffle that acute individual. She denied nothing, but declared that the poison must have been put into the tooth by one of the two Brazilians whom she had lately engaged to help her with her dentistry. She had her suspicions with regard to these men soon afterwards, and had dismissed them. She believed that they were in the pay of José Aranjo, but she could not tell anything for certain. Thus Madame escaped conviction. I was certain that she was guilty, but there was not a shadow of real proof. A month later Silva died, and Selby is now a double millionaire.

  Rogue: Hamilton Cleek

  The Affair of the Man Who Called Himself Hamilton Cleek

  THOMAS W. HANSHEW

  SUPERHEROES APPEAR TO BE LITERARY or comic book figures of recent vintage, but many criminals who appeared a century ago also had amazing abilities and powers. Hamilton Cleek, the creation of Thomas W. Hanshew (1857–1914), had the extraordinary ability to contort his face almost instantly, creating a dozen different visages in as many seconds, setting a living mask over his features without the aid of makeup.

  He was variously known as “the Man of the Forty Faces” and as “the Vanishing Cracksman,” a sobriquet he disliked, telling newspapers that describing him as merely a cracksman was akin to calling Paganini a fiddler. He insisted that he be referred to as “the Man Who Calls Himself Hamilton Cleek,” promising journalists that for the courtesy he would henceforth provide them with the time and place of his next robbery. Furthermore, he informed Scotland Yard that he would send it a small portion of his haul on the following morning—as a souvenir.

  Although he has several aliases, Cleek is actually Prince of Mauravania, a throne he abandons to marry Ailsa, the woman who is his partner in crime until she eventually convinces him to repent, after which he becomes a detective.

  There are thirteen books featuring Hamilton Cleek, mostly published after Hanshew’s death. The latter volumes were written by his wife, Mary E. Hanshew, at first produced from her husband’s notes and ideas, then continued on her own. Most books were jointly bylined as by Thomas W. Hanshew and Mary E. Hanshew.

  “The Affair of the Man Who Called Himself Hamilton Cleek,” the first story in the series, was originally published in The Man of the Forty Faces (London, Cassell, 1910; the first American edition was titled, peculiarly, as the character worked only as a criminal, Cleek, the Master Detective; New York, Doubleday, 1918).

  THE AFFAIR OF THE MAN WHO CALLED HIMSELF HAMILTON CLEEK

  Thomas W. Hanshew

  I
/>   THE THING WOULDN’T have happened if any other constable than Collins had been put on point duty at Blackfriars Bridge that morning. For Collins was young, good-looking, and—knew it. Nature had gifted him with a susceptible heart and a fond eye for the beauties of femininity. So when he looked round and saw the woman threading her way through the maze of vehicles at “Dead Man’s Corner,” with her skirt held up just enough to show two twinkling little feet in French shoes, and over them a graceful, willowy figure, and over that an enchanting, if rather too highly tinted face, with almond eyes and a fluff of shining hair under the screen of a big Parisian hat—that did for him on the spot.

  He saw at a glance that she was French—exceedingly French—and he preferred English beauty, as a rule. But, French or English, beauty is beauty, and here undeniably was a perfect type, so he unhesitatingly sprang to her assistance and piloted her safely to the kerb, revelling in her voluble thanks, and tingling as she clung timidly but rather firmly to him.

  “Sair, I have to give you much gratitude,” she said in a pretty, wistful sort of way, as they stepped on to the pavement. Then she dropped her hand from his sleeve, looked up at him, and shyly drooped her head, as if overcome with confusion and surprise at the youth and good looks of him. “Ah, it is nowhere in the world but Londres one finds these delicate attentions, these splendid sergeants de ville,” she added, with a sort of sigh. “You are wonnerful—you are mos’ wonnerful, you Anglais poliss. Sair, I am a stranger; I know not ze ways of this city of amazement, and if monsieur would so kindly direct me where to find the Abbey of the Ves’minster—”

  Before P.C. Collins could tell her that if that were her destination, she was a good deal out of her latitude; indeed, even before she concluded what she was saying, over the rumble of the traffic there rose a thin, shrill piping sound, which to ears trained to the call of it possessed a startling significance.

  It was the shrilling of a police whistle, far off down the Embankment.

  “Hullo! That’s a call to the man on point!” exclaimed Collins, all alert at once. “Excuse me, mum. See you presently. Something’s up. One of my mates is a-signalling me.”

  “Mates, monsieur? Mates? Signalling? I shall not understand the vords. But yes, vat shall that mean—eh?”

  “Good Lord, don’t bother me now! I—I mean, wait a bit. That’s the call to ‘head off’ someone, and—By George! There he is now, coming head on, the hound, and running like the wind!”

  For of a sudden, through a break in the traffic, a scudding figure had sprung into sight—the figure of a man in a grey frock-coat and a shining “topper,” a well-groomed, well-set-up man, with a small, turned-up moustache and hair of that peculiar purplish-red one sees only on the shell of a roasted chestnut. As he swung into sight, the distant whistle shrilled again; far off in the distance voices sent up cries of “Head him off!” “Stop that man!” et cetera; then those on the pavement near to the fugitive took up the cry, joined in pursuit, and in a twinkling, what with cabmen, tram-men, draymen, and pedestrians shouting, there was hubbub enough for Hades.

  “A swell pickpocket, I’ll lay my life,” commented Collins, as he squared himself for an encounter and made ready to leap on the man when he came within gripping distance. “Here! get out of the way, madmazelly. Business before pleasure. And, besides, you’re like to get bowled over in the rush. Here, chauffeur!”—this to the driver of a big, black motor-car which swept round the angle of the bridge at that moment, and made as though to scud down the Embankment into the thick of the chase—“pull that thing up sharp! Stop where you are! Dead still. At once, at once, do you hear? We don’t want you getting in the way. Now, then”—nodding his head in the direction of the running man—“come on, you bounder; I’m ready for you!”

  And, as if he really heard that invitation, and really was eager to accept it, the red-headed man did “come on” with a vengeance. And all the time, “madmazelly,” unheeding Collins’s advice, stood calmly and silently waiting.

  Onward came the runner, with the whole roaring pack in his wake, dodging in and out among the vehicles, “flooring” people who got in his way, scudding, dodging, leaping, like a fox hard pressed by the hounds—until, all of a moment he spied a break in the traffic, leapt through it, and—then there was mischief. For Collins sprang at him like a cat, gripped two big, strong-as-iron hands on his shoulders, and had him tight and fast.

  “Got you, you ass!” snapped he, with a short, crisp, self-satisfied laugh. “None of your blessed squirming now. Keep still. You’ll get out of your coffin, you bounder, as soon as out of my grip. Got you—got you! Do you understand?”

  The response to this fairly took the wind out of him.

  “Of course I do,” said the captive, gaily; “it’s part of the programme that you should get me. Only, for Heaven’s sake, don’t spoil the film by remaining inactive, you goat! Struggle with me—handle me roughly—throw me about. Make it look real; make it look as though I actually did get away from you, not as though you let me. You chaps behind there, don’t get in the way of the camera—it’s in one of those cabs. Now, then, Bobby, don’t be wooden! Struggle—struggle, you goat, and save the film!”

  “Save the what?” gasped Collins. “Here! Good Lord! Do you mean to say—?”

  “Struggle—struggle—struggle!” cut in the man impatiently. “Can’t you grasp the situation? It’s a put-up thing: the taking of a kinematograph film—a living picture—for the Alhambra tonight! Heavens above, Marguerite, didn’t you tell him?”

  “Non, non! There was not ze time. You come so quick, I could not. And he—ah, le bon Dieu!—he gif me no chance. Officair, I beg, I entreat of you, make it real! Struggle, fight, keep on ze constant move. Zere!”—something tinkled on the pavement with the unmistakable sound of gold—“zere, monsieur, zere is the half-sovereign to pay you for ze trouble, only, for ze lot of goodness, do not pick it up while the instrument—ze camera—he is going. It is ze kinematograph, and you would spoil everything!”

  The chop-fallen cry that Collins gave was lost in a roar of laughter from the pursuing crowd.

  “Struggle—struggle! Don’t you hear, you idiot?” broke in the red-headed man irritably. “You are being devilishly well paid for it, so for goodness’s sake make it look real. That’s it! Bully boy! Now, once more to the right, then loosen your grip so that I can push you away and make a feint of punching you off. All ready there, Marguerite? Keep a clear space about her, gentlemen. Ready with the motor, chauffeur? All right. Now, then, Bobby, fall back, and mind your eye when I hit out, old chap. One, two, three—here goes!”

  With that he pushed the chop-fallen Collins from him, made a feint of punching his head as he reeled back, then sprang toward the spot where the Frenchwoman stood, and gave a finish to the adventure that was highly dramatic and decidedly theatrical. For “mademoiselle,” seeing him approach her, struck a pose, threw out her arms, gathered him into them—to the exceeding enjoyment of the laughing throng—then both looked back and behaved as people do on the stage when “pursued,” gesticulated extravagantly, and, rushing to the waiting motor, jumped into it.

  “Many thanks, Bobby; many thanks, everybody!” sang out the red-headed man. “Let her go, chauffeur. The camera men will pick us up again at Whitehall, in a few minutes’ time.”

  “Right you are, sir,” responded the chauffeur gaily. Then “toot-toot” went the motor-horn as the gentleman in grey closed the door upon himself and his companion, and the vehicle, darting forward, sped down the Embankment in the exact direction whence the man himself had originally come, and, passing directly through that belated portion of the hurrying crowd to whom the end of the adventure was not yet known, flew on and—vanished.

  And Collins, stooping to pick up the half-sovereign that had been thrown him, felt that after all it was a poor price to receive for all the jeers and gibes of the assembled onlookers.

  “Smart capture, Bobby, wasn’t it?” sang out a deriding voice that set the crowd jee
ring anew. “You’ll git promoted, you will! See it in all the evenin’ papers—oh, yus! ’Orrible hand-to-hand struggle with a desperado. Brave constable has ’arf a quid’s worth out of an infuriated ruffin!’ My hat! won’t your missis be proud when you take her to see that bloomin’ film?”

  “Move on, now, move on!” said Collins, recovering his dignity, and asserting it with a vim. “Look here, cabby, I don’t take it kind of you to laugh like that; they had you just as bad as they had me. Blow that Frenchy! She might have tipped me off before I made such an ass of myself. I don’t say that I’d have done it so natural if I had known, but—Hullo! What’s that? Blowed if it ain’t that blessed whistle again, and another crowd a-pelting this way; and—no!—yes, by Jupiter!—a couple of Scotland Yard chaps with ’em. My hat! what do you suppose that means?”

  He knew in the next moment. Panting and puffing, a crowd at their heels, and people from all sides stringing out from the pavement and trooping after them, the two “plain-clothes” men came racing through the grinning gathering and bore down on P.C. Collins.

  “Hullo, Smathers, you in this, too?” began he, his feelings softened by the knowledge that other arms of the law would figure on that film with him at the Alhambra tonight. “Now, what are you after, you goat? That French lady, or the red-headed party in the grey suit?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I am. You heard me signal you to head him off, didn’t you?” replied Smathers, looking round and growing suddenly excited when he realized that Collins was empty-handed, and that the red-headed man was not there. “Heavens! you never let him get away, did you? You grabbed him, didn’t you—eh?”