The Big Book of Rogues and Villains

by Otto Penzler

  “Eh? No, nor’s anybody else, curse it. Doubt if they ever will.”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about them, and I’ve got an idea.”

  “So?”

  “Yes. Came to me all of a sudden. Quarter of an hour ago. And I’d felt that we’d all been blind. It’s been staring us in the face.”

  The man turned again to look at him, and the look and the movement held suspicion of this man who seemed to know so much. “Oh? Has it? Well, if you’re so sure, why not give us the benefit of it?”

  “I’m going to.” They walked level, and were nearly at the end of the little street where it meets Deever Market, when the journalist turned casually to the man. He put a finger on his arm. “Yes, it seems to me quite simple now. But there’s still one point I don’t understand. One little thing I’d like to clear up. I mean the motive. Now, as man to man, tell me, Sergeant Ottermole, just why did you kill all those inoffensive people?”

  The sergeant stopped, and the journalist stopped. There was just enough light from the sky, which held the reflected light of the continent of London, to give him a sight of the sergeant’s face, and the sergeant’s face was turned to him with a wide smile of such urbanity and charm that the journalist’s eyes were frozen as they met it. The smile stayed for some seconds. Then said the sergeant: “Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Newspaper Man, I don’t know. I really don’t know. In fact, I’ve been worried about it myself. But I’ve got an idea—just like you. Everybody knows that we can’t control the workings of our minds. Don’t they? Ideas come into our minds without asking. But everybody’s supposed to be able to control his body. Why? Eh? We get our minds from lord-knows-where—from people who were dead hundreds of years before we were born. Mayn’t we get our bodies in the same way? Our faces—our legs—our heads—they aren’t completely ours. We don’t make ’em. They come to us. And couldn’t ideas come into our bodies like ideas come into our minds? Eh? Can’t ideas live in nerve and muscle as well as in brain? Couldn’t it be that parts of our bodies aren’t really us, and couldn’t ideas come into those parts all of a sudden, like ideas come into—into”—he shot his arms out, showing the great white-gloved hands and hairy wrists; shot them out so swiftly to the journalist’s throat that his eyes never saw them—“into my hands!”

  Rogue: Richard Verrell (Blackshirt)

  “His Lady” to the Rescue

  BRUCE GRAEME

  GRAHAM MONTAGUE JEFFRIES (1900–1982), pseudonym Bruce Graeme, was working as a young literary agent and submitted his own novel to a publisher. When it was rejected, he tried writing a short story, a ten-thousand-word Blackshirt adventure, which was immediately accepted by a magazine, with a commission to write seven more. The British publishing house T. Fisher Unwin used the eight Blackshirt stories to launch a series of cheap “novels” in 1925 and sold more than a million copies of Blackshirt over the next fifteen years. The sequel, The Return of Blackshirt (1927), sold just as well.

  Richard Verrell is known as Blackshirt because of the costume he affects when on a safecracking job, dressing entirely in black, including his mask. By day Verrell is a wealthy member of high society; at night he is an audacious burglar. A bestselling author, he continues his life of crime in the name of adventure.

  Secure in his anonymity, his tranquility is shattered when his identity is discovered by a beautiful young woman who anonymously calls him on the telephone. Threatening to expose him, she forces him to change from a mere thief to a kind of Robin Hood. He soon thinks of her as his “Lady on the Phone.” By the second volume in the series, they are married with a son, who has similar adventures.

  “ ‘His Lady’ to the Rescue” was originally published in New Magazine in 1925; it was first collected in Blackshirt (London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1925).

  “HIS LADY” TO THE RESCUE

  Bruce Graeme

  RICHARD VERRELL, the author, suddenly realised that although at least two hours had elapsed since he had lain his head upon the pillow, he had not yet fallen asleep. He referred to his watch, and found that his imaginary two hours was in reality only a matter of forty to forty-five minutes. Nevertheless, this was unusual, because as a general rule he automatically dropped asleep as soon as he switched off the light of his reading-lamp. Up to the present time the fact that he, a well-known novelist, was at the same time Blackshirt, now of a sudden as equally notorious, had given him no undue qualms of conscience; but tonight he felt strangely stirred, moved by some new emotion which he found impossible to define.

  Restless, sleepless, he lit a cigarette and gave his chaotic thoughts full play; analysed his individuality, dissected his personality. In this turmoil there comes to him flashes of his boyhood, memories of dismal surroundings, of cruel and hated foster-parents. He lives again the night when he became lost in a maze of streets, parted from parents of whom now he had no memory. He dares not ask the people who pass, who, to his terrified imagination, assume the stature of giants, whilst he runs helter-skelter from the one man who would have been his salvation—the man in blue, the policeman at the corner. This man to the childish imagination, instilled into it by a stupid seventeen-year-old nursemaid, is an ogre from whom all good boys who say their prayers properly every night should shrink, for is he not the punisher of sins?

  He glimpses himself shrinking into the shadows, sick with fear; a hairy hand gripping his shoulder till he shrieks with pain, and a beery voice mumbling incoherently; then a whirlwind of motion, clattering horses, jostling people, yells and shouts, and countless ogres, from whom, too, the man of the hairy hand also shrinks.

  Next, a broken-down hovel, a slatternly woman, high words, and, if he could have only understood it then, a dawning look of comprehension and admiration on the woman’s face as she whispers: “You aren’t ’alf a slick ’un, Alf, after all.”

  Then a pseudo word of comfort to the trembling boy.

  Follows then a faint, misty remembrance of brutal blows, of lessons in the art of picking pockets. With frequent practice his arms become quick and his fingers nimble. A turned back, a hasty dig from his tormentor, and the next moment an apple, a cake, a cheap piece of jewellery—anything upon which he can lay his hands—is transferred into his small pocket.

  Through a hazy recollection of lessons and more lessons, of scaling walls, of slipping window-catches, he pictures himself growing taller and stronger. He remembers the pride with which he discovered one day that his head was actually level with the mantelpiece.

  Then follows the period when his soul awakens from the emancipation of a shivering, nervous boy to a youth with a growing intuition of virile manliness, conscious also that his recent hatred of his unlawful escapades has turned to a joyful eagerness to embark more and more upon these nocturnal adventures, which inclination becomes emphasised as he grows older.

  Even then, however, it was not for what he secured that he carried on, but for the thrill, the excitement, the risk in the obtaining thereof. Then the day that he is free of his tyrants, no more to witness with disgust the drunken orgies, to listen to their fights, their vile language. His finer feelings are urging him to escape his environment, to leave behind the sordid slums. He does so, and his finely keyed intelligence becomes aware that he is ignorant, uneducated, and uncouth.

  Then years of study, with interludes of more thrills and more excitements, for which his soul craves, during which he becomes possessed of the wherewithal to live and carry on.

  So the years pass until the transition is complete, and the slum-bred grub emerges into the polished, educated gentleman of the West End, perhaps, for all he knew, the ultimate position to which he had been predestined by virtue of his birth.

  —

  He stirred uneasily in his bed. Had he, however, achieved that ultimate end? Was he the man his birth demanded? As Richard Verrell, well-known author, decidedly yes; but as Blackshirt—Blackshirt, the mysterious man upon whom the detectives of Scotland Yard had long wished to lay hands; the man who robbed how,
when, and where he could, matching his perfect solo-play against the team-work of the myrmidons of the law, and winning by the superiority of his wits, his subtlety, and his counter-play—Verrell shook his head. If he had been the natural-born son of the man and woman who were so long his foster-parents, and who were not even married, then, indeed, even as Blackshirt he had raised himself in life; for, though a criminal, he was at least better than the drunken, cringing sycophants that were his foster-parents.

  He smiled sarcastically, and wondered why these twinges of conscience were suddenly inflicting themselves upon him, but his smile softened as he remembered a telephone conversation of a night or two before.

  “Why do you do it?” had asked his Lady of the ’Phone.

  He had thought and turned the matter over in his mind, but in the end he shrugged his shoulders, to confess weakly that he knew not why, which had been no more than the truth.

  Why was he what he was? How was it that he lived a double life—on the one hand a gentleman, a respected member of society; and on the other an outlaw, a thief of the night?

  He did not attempt to mince his language. He could not, for, whatever his faults, his sins of commission and omission, he abhorred hypocrisy—he that lived a life of hypocrisy, his one life a living lie to the other. He himself knew not why, why he was this, a man of dual personality; but one who could have known him well would have instantly laid his finger on the root of the trouble. His hidden life was nothing more or less than his excessive craving for excitement, an outlet of his dynamic forces, an opportunity to play a living game of chess. As a thief he was superb; as a detective he would have been prominent; but Fate had cast him on the wrong side of the law, and if any one person other than himself was to be blamed for his misdeeds, it was the seventeen-year-old nursemaid who had one day neglected her charge for the more amusing, if less onerous, distraction of a passing Grenadier Guardsman.

  The throbbing boom of an adjacent church clock echoed twice through the quiet, still air, and still Verrell had not yet succeeded in sleeping; in fact, he was more wide awake than ever.

  He switched on the reading-lamp, lit another cigarette, and picked up the book which he had been reading earlier in the evening; but, after having read two or three pages, and discovering that he had not consciously assimilated a single word, he threw the book away from him in disgust.

  His nerves were tingling with a throbbing sensation, which he was too well aware was usually a prelude to one of his night excursions. The pounding of his heart seemed almost to call continually to him: “Come, come, come!”

  Resolutely he attempted to ignore the call, and picked up an evening paper which lay folded and so far unread on the table next his bed. He opened it out, and as he did so his gaze was arrested by startling headlines, in which stood out one word—“Blackshirt.”

  With a feeling of amusement, not unmixed with a tinge of anxiety, for the first time he commenced to read about himself in print; that is to say, his secret self:

  “BLACKSHIRT”

  “Mysterious Master Criminal at Large”

  “Scotland Yard Admits Failure”

  “Through sources which it can command, and which have been the means more than once in the past of the Evening Star achieving some of the world’s greatest newspaper scoops, we have recently learned that there is at large, and has been for many years, a mysterious criminal, known to members of the C.I. Department at Scotland Yard as ‘Blackshirt,’ a sobriquet well chosen by reason of the fact that this criminal invariably wears a black shirt when engaged on his nefarious enterprises.

  “Blackshirt has been engaged on a series of remarkable crimes, all of which have so far been of a burglarious nature, and, notwithstanding the vigilance of the Metropolitan Police, and the recognised efficiency of our detective force, has so far successfully evaded all attempts at his capture. It speaks well of our police force that up to the present moment no whisper of this fact has been allowed to reach the general public, who are prone, in their anxiety, to be of assistance to the police, to be the means of blocking their very worthy efforts, and thus helping the criminal to escape his well-earned deserts.

  “On the first rumours of Blackshirt reaching the sensitive pulses of the Evening Star office our crime expert immediately got into touch with officials at Scotland Yard, who can, however, add little information to that contained above.

  “Amongst the recent robberies of which no trace has been found of the perpetrator, and which are assumed to be the work of Blackshirt, are the theft of Lady Carrington’s diamond pendant, Mrs. Sylvester-ffoulkes’s ‘Study of the Infant Christ,’ by Michael Angelo, Sir George Hayes’s valuable stamp collection, and Lord Walker’s famous statue of Apollo, in malachite. It will be seen, therefore, that Blackshirt is extremely versatile in his choice of booty, but he is even more so in his method of attack. In one instance he was successful in his coup by impersonating a policeman, whilst in another case he made his appearance disguised as a Frenchman.”

  There was much more to this effect, and by the time he had finished reading he was shaking in silent merriment. The Evening Star was the yellowest of the yellow journals, and the writer had not hesitated to draw upon his imagination.

  For instance, it was the first time that Blackshirt became aware he had ever impersonated a policeman, though it was the truth that he had once taken the part of a foreigner—an Italian.

  He flung the paper away in disgust. The Yellow Press could always be depended upon to make out the worst of a man and ignore the best.

  An insidious, insistent voice was calling, and with a gesture of impotence he flung the bedclothes from him. He knew it was useless to struggle further.

  A few minutes later Richard Verrell disappeared, and in his place stood Blackshirt. Outwardly he was dressed as a man about town, with the regulation silk hat, dress overcoat, and scarf, but this last-named article did more than keep his collar clean, for it hid his black shirt underneath, just as his shirt covered a broad elastic belt containing a complete outfit for opening any kind of door, window, or safe.

  The next question which he had to consider was where to go, and as he stood hesitatingly at the window of his apartment the church clock struck the half-hour.

  He grinned suddenly. He was still boyish enough to appreciate a joke, and he determined that he would walk aimlessly about until his wrist-watch showed three o’clock. Whichever house he should be nearest at that time he would enter. He was about to leave when he caught sight of the crumpled newspaper. Once again he smiled. He would tear out the columns about Blackshirt and leave it in place of whatever goods he should purloin, as a mute and poignant reminder that Blackshirt was still at large.

  —

  A clock near by struck the hour of three, and Blackshirt halted. He had wandered aimlessly up this road and down the next, caring not whether he went north, south, east, or west.

  Relegating the fact that when three o’clock struck he had other work to do to the background, he had spent a happy half-hour in dreaming of his Lady of the ’Phone.

  To him she was just a voice which was beginning to mean all the world to him; even now he hung upon every word she spoke, memorising every syllable, every intonation of the sweet music of her conversation.

  For a full half-hour he had dreamed dreams in which appeared but two people, himself and his Lady of the Voice, as he imagined her to be—an unknown, mystical figure.

  As the last stroke of the clock echoed away in the distance his dreams were banished, and he became once more his alert self, keen in his work, happy in its dangers.

  He found himself in a short road, evidently an avenue, judging by the fact that plane trees lined it. There were but few houses, each one detached, standing in its own grounds. Obviously a rich neighbourhood.

  Blackshirt chuckled to himself. He would have more pleasure in helping himself to a rich man’s goods.

  He gave a quick, searching glance up and down the road, and noted with satisfaction that
there was not a soul to be seen. With a quick athletic spring he vaulted the low brick wall, and emerged into the shadows of the other side.

  He covered his face with a black silk mask, and encased his hands in a pair of black silk gloves, thus making himself more invisible than ever, so that he appeared merely a black blur which crept noiselessly across the small lawn.

  At the edge of the lawn he paused a moment, memorising the geography of the front of the house, and then proceeded to the back, where he hoped he would be more secluded and less likely to be seen.

  In this he was not disappointed, for the back of the house was hidden from the adjacent households by a ring of trees.

  He noted several points of similarity between the back and the front of the house, and concluded from this that the lower rooms stretched the whole length of the house; one, which he surmised to be a reception-room, opened out on to a small balcony through long, handsome French windows.

  He judged the balcony to be undoubtedly his best means of entry into the house, and before another twenty seconds had elapsed he was standing in front of one of the windows.

  There was a slight click as the latch was forced back by an instrument which he pulled from his elastic waist-belt, but he was disappointed, for the window did not give way immediately. It was evident that it was bolted as well as latched.

  Another tool came into play, and presently the windows opened noiselessly inwards, and the black shadow that was Blackshirt entered and closed them behind him.

  For a time he stood there, his ears alert for the slightest sound, but the house seemed absolutely silent.

  Next a tiny pin-prick of light from his pocket-torch travelled round the room, moving on from one object to another.