The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  She flattened herself into a recess, and he passed her so closely that she could have touched him. She waited until he had disappeared, and then crossed to one of the doors and felt gingerly at the key-hole. The occupant had made the mistake of locking the door and taking out the key, and in a second she had inserted one of her own, and softly turning it, had tip-toed into the room.

  She stood listening; there was a steady breathing, and she made her way to the dressing-table, where her deft fingers began a rapid but silent search. Presently she found what she wanted, a smooth leather case, and shook it gently. She was not a minute in the room before she was out again, closing the door softly behind her.

  She had half-opened the next door before she saw that there was a light in the room and she stood motionless in the shadow of the doorway. On the far side of the bed the little table-lamp was still burning, and it would, she reflected, have helped her a great deal, if only she could have been sure that the person who was lying among the frilled pillows of the bed was really asleep. She waited rigid, and with all her senses alert for five minutes, till the sound of regular breathing from the bed reassured her. Then she slipped forward to the dressing-table. Here, her task was easy. No less than a dozen little velvet and leather cases lay strewn on the silk cover. She opened them noiselessly one by one, and put their glittering contents into her pocket, leaving the cases as they had been.

  As she was handling the last of the jewels a thought struck her, and she peered more closely at the sleeping figure. A thin pretty woman, it seemed in the half-light. So this was the businesslike Lady Ovingham. She left the room as noiselessly as she had entered it, and more quickly, and tried the next door in the passage.

  This one had not been locked.

  It was Mrs. Lewinstein’s own room, but she was not sleeping quietly. The door had been left open for her lord, who had made a promise to see his wife to make arrangements for the morrow. This promise he had quite forgotten in his perturbation. There was a little safe let into the wall, and the keys were hanging in the lock; for Mr. Lewinstein, who, being a prudent, careful man, was in the habit of depositing his diamond studs every night.

  The girl’s fingers went into the interior of the safe, and presently she found what she wanted. Mrs. Lewinstein stopped breathing heavily, grunted, and turned, and the girl stood stock-still. Presently the snoring recommenced, and she stole out into the corridor.

  As she closed each door she stopped only long enough to press a small label against the surface of the handle before she passed on to the next room.

  Downstairs in the library, Mr. Lewinstein heard the soft purr of a motor car, and rose with a sigh of relief. Only his butler had been let into the secret, and that sleepy retainer, who was dozing in one of the hall chairs, heard the sound with as great relief as his employer. He opened the big front door.

  Outside was a motor-ambulance from which two men had descended. They pulled out a stretcher and a bundle of blankets, and made their way into the hall.

  “I will show you the way,” said Mr. Lewinstein. “You will make as little noise as possible, please.”

  He led the procession up the carpeted stairs, and came at last to the girl’s room.

  “Oh, here you are,” said the doctor, yawning. “Set the stretcher by the side of the bed. You had better stand away some distance, Mr. Lewinstein,” he said, and that gentleman obeyed with alacrity.

  Presently the door opened and the stretcher came out, bearing the blanket-enveloped figure of the girl, her face just visible, and she favoured Mr. Lewinstein with a pathetic smile as she passed.

  The stairs were negotiated without any difficulty by the attendants, and carefully the stretcher was pushed into the interior of the ambulance.

  “That’s all right,” said the doctor; “if I were you I would have that bedroom locked up and fumigated tomorrow.”

  “I’m awfully obliged to you, doctor. If you will give me your address I would like to send you a cheque.”

  “Oh, rubbish,” said the other cheerfully, “I am only too happy to serve you. I will go into the village to pick up my car and get back to town myself.”

  “Where will you take this young woman?” asked Mr. Lewinstein.

  “To the County Fever Hospital,” replied the other carelessly. “That’s where you’re taking her, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir,” said one of the attendants.

  Mr. Lewinstein waited on the steps until the red lights of the car had disappeared, then stepped inside with the sense of having managed a very difficult situation rather well.

  “That will do for the night,” he said to the butler. “Thank you for waiting up.”

  He found himself walking, with a little smile on his lips, along the corridor to his own room.

  As he was passing his wife’s door he stumbled over something. Stooping, he picked up a case. There was an electric switch close by, and he flooded the corridor with light.

  “Jumping Moses!” he gasped, for the thing he held in his hand was his wife’s jewel case.

  He made a run for her door, and was just gripping the handle, when the label there caught his eye, and he stared in hopeless bewilderment at the sign of Four Square Jane.

  —

  An ambulance stopped at a cross-road, where a big car was waiting, and the patient, who had long since thrown off her blankets, came out. She pulled after her a heavy bag, which one of the two attendants lifted for her and placed in the car. The doctor was sitting at the wheel.

  “I was afraid I was going to keep you waiting,” he said. “I only just got here in time.”

  He turned to the attendant.

  “I shall see you tomorrow, Jack.”

  “Yes, doctor,” replied the other.

  He touched his hat to Four Square Jane, and walked back to the ambulance, waiting only to change the number plates before he drove away in the opposite direction to London.

  “Are you ready?” asked the doctor.

  “Quite ready,” said the girl, dropping in by his side. “You were late, Jim. I nearly pulled a real fit when I heard they’d sent for the local sawbones.”

  “You needn’t have worried,” said the man at the wheel, as he started the car forward. “I got a pal to wire calling him to London. Did you get the stuff?”

  “Yards of it,” said Four Square Jane laconically. “There will be some sad hearts in Lewinstein’s house tomorrow.”

  He smiled.

  “By the way,” she said, “that lady detective Ross sent, how far did she get?”

  “As far as the station,” said the doctor, “which reminds me that I forgot to let her out of the garage where I locked her.”

  “Let her stay,” said Four Square Jane. “I hate the idea of she-detectives, anyway—it’s so unwomanly.”

  Rogue: Edward Farthindale

  A Fortune in Tin

  EDGAR WALLACE

  THE ENORMOUS SUCCESS that Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875–1932) enjoyed in the 1920s and ’30s extended beyond the United Kingdom to the United States, but Elegant Edward (1928) was suffused with a kind of humor that evidently did not appeal to Americans, as the collection of short stories was never published on the other side of the Atlantic.

  Unlike most of the many criminal characters created by Wallace, Edward Farthindale, known to one and all as Elegant Edward, was not a brilliant mastermind who arrogantly laughed at the police who tried to capture him. He is described thus by the editor:

  He is a droll character. His crimes are not conceived in a spirit of overwhelming and deadly seriousness. There is a light touch in all his performances. Nor is his skill always of such a high order that he outwits the police. His encounters with them are almost in the nature of a friendly game in which the better man, whoever he may happen at the time to be, wins, with no lasting ill-feeling on the part of his opponent.

  As the most popular writer in the world in the 1920s and ’30s, Wallace earned a fortune—reportedly more than a quarter of a million do
llars a year during the last decade of his life, but his extravagant lifestyle left his estate deeply in debt when he died.

  “A Fortune in Tin” was originally published in Elegant Edward (London, Readers Library, 1928).

  A FORTUNE IN TIN

  Edgar Wallace

  ELEGANT EDWARD dealt in a stable line of goods, and, in the true sense of the word, he was no thief. He was admittedly a chiseller, a macer, a twister, and a get-a-bit. His stock-in-trade consisted either of shares in derelict companies purchased for a song, or options on remote properties, or genuine gold claims, indubitable mineral rights, and oil propositions. Because of his elegance and refinement, he was able to specialize in this high-class trade and make a living where another man would have starved.

  Mr. Farthindale had emerged from a welter of trouble with almost all the capital which had been his a week before. He had tracked down certain disloyal partners who had sold property of his, and had forced them to disgorge their ill-gotten gains, and from the fence who had illegally purchased his property, he had obtained the rest.

  The police were seeking a certain Scotty Ferguson, the partner in question, and because Edward had no desire to give evidence against his some-time confederate, he had changed his lodgings, and was considering the next move in his adventurous game.

  It came as a result of a chance meeting with an itinerant vendor of novelties, who stood on the kerb of a London street selling 100,000 mark notes for twopence. Insensibly Edward’s mind went to the business he understood best. In the city of London was a snide bucket-shop keeper with whom he was acquainted. This gentleman operated from a very small office in a very large building. A picture of the building was on his note-paper, and country clients were under the impression that the Anglo-Imperial Stock Trust occupied every floor and overflowed to the roof. To him, Edward repaired, and found him playing patience, for business was bad.

  “How do, Mr. Farthindale. Come in and sit down.”

  “How’s it going?” asked Edward conventionally.

  The Anglo-Imperial Stock Trust made a painful face.

  “Rotten,” he said. “I sent out three thousand circulars last week, offering the finest oil ground in Texas at a hundred pounds an acre. I got one reply—from an old lady who wanted to know if I’d met her son who lives in Texas City. The suckers are dying, Mr. Farthindale.”

  Edward scratched his chin.

  “Oil’s no good to me,” he said. “I’ve worked oil in Scotland. What about mines?”

  “Gold or silver?” asked the Anglo-Imperial, rising with alacrity. “I’ve got a peach of a silver mine——”

  “I’ve worked silver mines,” said the patient Edward, “in Wales. Silver never goes as well as gold.”

  “What about tin?” asked The Trust anxiously. “The Trevenay Tin Mine Corporation? The mine’s been working since the days of the Pernicions, or Phinocians…prehistoric dagoes…you know?”

  Elegant Edward had a dim idea that the Phœnicians were pretty old, and was mildly impressed.

  “I’ve got a hundred and twenty thousand shares out of a hundred and fifty thousand. It’s a real mine, too—about forty years ago a thousand people used to work on it!” The Trust continued. “The other thirty thousand are owned by an old Scotsman—a professor or something—and he won’t part. I offered him twenty pounds for ’em, too. Not that they’re worth it, or rather at the time they weren’t,” added The Trust hastily, realizing that Edward stood in the light of a possible purchaser.

  “But the land and machinery are worth money?” suggested Edward.

  The Trust shook his head.

  “The company only holds mining rights, and the royalty owner has got first claim on the buildings—such as they are. But the company looks good, and the new share certificates I had printed look better. You couldn’t have a finer proposition, Mr. Farthindale.”

  There were hagglings and bargainings, scornful refusings and sardonic comments generally before Elegant Edward was able to take the trail again, the owner of a hundred and twenty thousand shares in a tin company, which was genuine in all respects, except that it contained no tin.

  “If you’re going to Scotland, see that professor,” said The Trust at parting. “You ought to get the rest of the stock for a tenner.”

  It was to Scotland, as a needle to a magnet, that Elegant Edward was attracted. A desire to get “his own back,” to recoup himself for his losses, in fact to “show ’em” brought him to a country he loathed.

  He had come to sell to the simple people of Scotia, at ten shillings per share, stock which he had bought at a little less than a farthing. And, since cupidity and stupidity run side by side in the mental equipment of humanity, he succeeded.

  It was in the quietude of an Edinburgh lodging that Edward ran to earth Professor Folloman.

  The professor was usually very drunk and invariably very learned—a wisp of a man, with long, dirty-white hair and an expression of woe. Five minutes after the two boarders met in the dismal lodging-house “drawing-room,” the professor, a man without reticence, was retailing his troubles.

  “The world,” said Professor Folloman, “neglects its geniuses. It allows men of my talent to starve, whilst it gives fortunes to the charlatan, the faker, and the crook. O mores, o tempores!”

  “Oui, oui,” said Elegant Edward misguidedly.

  The professor came naturally to his favourite subject, which was the hollowness and chicanery of patent medicines. It was his illusion that his life had been ruined, his career annihilated, and the future darkened by the popularity of certain patent drugs which are household words to the average Briton. That his misfortune might be traced to an early-acquired habit of making his breakfast on neat whisky—a practice which on one occasion had almost a tragical result—never occurred to him.

  “Here am I, sir, one of the best physicians of the city of Edinburgh, a man holding degrees which I can only describe as unique, and moreover, the possessor of shares in one of the richest tin mines in Cornwall, obliged to borrow the price of a drink from a comparative stranger.”

  Elegant Edward, recognizing this description of himself, made an heroic attempt to nail down the conversation to the question of tin mines, but the professor was a skilful man.

  “What has ruined me?” he demanded, fixing his bright eyes on Edward with a hypnotic glare. “I’ll tell you, my man! Biggins’ Pills have ruined me, and Walkers’ Wee Wafers and Lambo’s Lightning Lung-tonic! Because of this pernicious invasion of the healing realm, I, John Walker Folloman, am compelled to live on the charity of relations—let us have a drink.”

  Such a direct invitation, Elegant Edward could not refuse. They adjourned to a near-by bar, and here the professor took up the threads of the conversation.

  “You, like myself, are a gentleman. The moment I saw you, my man, I said: ‘Here is a professional.’ None but a professional would have his trousers creased, and wear a tail-coat. None but a professional would pay the scrupulous attention to his attire and the glossiness of his hat—don’t drown it, my lass! whisky deserves a better fate—you’re a doctor, sir?”

  Edward coughed. He had never before been mistaken for a doctor. It was not an unpleasing experience.

  “Not exactly,” he said.

  “Ah! A lawyer!”

  “I’ve had a lot to do with the law,” said Elegant Edward truthfully, “but I’m not exactly a lawyer.”

  “Something that makes money, I have no doubt,” said the old man gloomily. “I could have been a millionaire, had I descended to the manufacture of noxious quack medicines instead of following my profession. I should have been a millionaire had somebody with my unique knowledge of metallurgy been in control of the Trevenay Mines——”

  “Tin mines?” asked Elegant Edward. “There’s no money in tin. I always tell my friends—I’m in the stock-broking business—‘If you’ve got tin shares, sell ’em.’ ”

  “I’ll no’ sell mine,” said the old man grimly. “No, sir! I’ll hold my
shares. A dear friend of mine, Professor Macginnis, is in Cornwall and has promised to give me a report—Macginnis is the greatest authority on tin in this world, Sir. I have his letter,” he fumbled in his pocket unsuccessfully, “no, I have left it in my other jacket. But it doesn’t matter. He is taking a holiday in the south, and has promised to thoroughly examine the ground.”

  “His—his report won’t be published in the papers, will it?” asked Edward anxiously.

  “It will not,” said the professor, and pushed his glass across the counter. “Repeat the potion, Maggie, and let your hand be as generous as your heart, my lass!”

  A few days later, and on a raw December morning, with leaden clouds overhead and the air thick with driving sleet, Elegant Edward came out of the station and gazed disconsolately upon so much of the town as was visible through the veil of the blizzard.

  “So this is Dundee!” said Elegant Edward, unconsciously paraphrasing a better-known slogan. He had chosen Dundee for the scene of his operations, mainly because it was not Glasgow. Gathering up his rug and his bag, he beckoned the one cab in sight and gave his instructions.

  At the little hotel where he was set down, he found a letter awaiting him. It was addressed to Angus Mackenzie (he had signed the register in that name) and its contents were satisfactory. The small furnished office which he had engaged by letter was waiting his pleasure, the key was enclosed, together with a receipt for the rent he had paid in advance.

  To trace the progress of Mr. Farthindale through the months that followed his arrival on the Tay would be more or less profitless; to tell the story of his limited advertising campaign, his clever circularization and the pleasing volume of business which came his way, and divers other incidentals, would be to elongate the narrative to unpardonable length.

  Margaret Elton came to him on the third day after his arrival. She was tall, good-looking and, moreover, she believed in miracles. But although she was, by the admission of one who loved her best, masterful, she could not master the cruel fate which had hitherto denied her sufficient money to support an ailing mother without having recourse to the limited income of a young man who found every day a new reason for marrying at once.