X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard

by Harry Stephen Keeler

  “Gad, Lu—you have had a stinking day! And you—but say—could you use a shilling—”

  “’Ave orf,” said Lu sternly. “I ’int tykin’ no money from starvin’ arthers. W’at’s infants to boot. Yer can slip me a p’und note if yer warnts to—out o’ that there 200-guinea cheque yer goin’ to win. If yer wins it—that is! And I can—but I got to be goin’—I see a bobby swingin’ down the walk. See yer again, ’Erb. Luck!”

  * * * *

  Four more weeks passed, swiftly enough for Lu Caslow whose time was spent from morning to night looking for prospects along the Chinese section of the Water Front, and dodging bobbies when, because of hunger due to meager pickings, she took a flier into the forbidden territory of the Front. But slowly enough, the passing of the weeks, for Herbert Maitland Warwick, who sat through the entire day in Calderstone Square.

  He had heard nothing, of course, from his manuscript. And he could not possibly know that, though the date tentatively set for determining the prize-winner lay but four days off, there were still many many stacks of unread stories lying on the desks of the engaged readers of Chesterton’s Magazine—there on Fleet Street, London, 160 miles to the southeast.

  * * * *

  And it happened that just five weeks and 2 days after her first conversation with Herbert Maitland Warwick, Lucille Caslow—the Lady known on the Water Front as Lu—again passed through Calderstone Square on her way to catch a whiff of real ozone off the grass, the furtive sight of a posy or two—and the glimpse of at least one baby cooing in its pram. And in the same manner as before she espied someone she knew, lolling back upon one of the benches. And since he was quite alone on the bench, and the bench, in turn, considerably separated from the other benches in the parklet, she made her way straight as an arrow to it, dropped down upon it, and opened a conversation.

  “Well, ’Erb, four—no, five—long weeks is garn, ’int they? Since I was over ’ere larst? And ’ow’s the ol’ writin’ gyme goin’? Are yer tykin’ in any coin?” She paused. She surveyed Mr. Herbert Maitland Warwick a little more closely. The professional wielder of the pen looked rather tired—worn, perhaps. Though he sat erect enough. But his eyes, too, appeared somewhat odd. Then Lu Caslow asked a further question. “An’ by the w’y, ’Erb, did yer ever ’ear anything about that there 200-guinea prize you were a-tellin’ me about when we was tarkin’ ’ere larst?”

  Herbert Maitland Warwick turned and gazed straight into the eyes of his interrogator.

  “Yes, Lu,” he said quietly, “I did! I won it, Lu! And I haven’t forgotten, either, that you were to get a pound out of it when it’s put through—but here—I’ll show you the cheque—for I haven’t cashed it yet.”

  His fingers explored the breast pocket of his coat for a few seconds and then emerged, holding forth proudly for Lu’s inspection a rectangle of blue paper, smooth and crisp.

  * * * *

  “A very deplorable case,” said Dr. Abbott of the Liverpool Royal Lunatic Asylum, to his assistant, who had just returned to work after being on Holiday. “You can see him sitting down there at the other end of the ward. Warwick’s his name. He was a writer. His fixed delusion consists of the belief that he won a 200-guinea prize for one of his short-stories. The usual case, of course, of the psychopathic individual with too much and too intensive thinking upon one subject. Harmless variety of paranoia his, of course, but like all our other paranoiacs here, hopeless on account of the secondary delusions which sooner or later set in. Barclay’s Bank on Canning Street turned him over after he tried to cash one of those American tobacco coupons that are given out in America by some chain of stores with every package of cigarettes, and—but there—look quick!—he’s showing it proudly to our new patient—that case of dementia praecox who was just brought in from Blackburn this morning!”

  * * * *

  “Odd thing, by Jove!” said the Managing Editor of Chesterton’s Magazine, to his assistant, as the letter addressed to H. M. Warwick, 17 Green Lane, Liverpool, returned to the office bearing three official postage notices stamped across it in red ink: “Not residing any longer at above address. Address unknown. Return to sender.”

  He slit open the end and tossed the envelope as well as a typewritten letter contained within it, into the waste-basket. Then he made room in one of the pigeonholes of his desk for a rectangular slip of smooth blue paper bearing the numeral “200.”

  DOCUMENT XXXIII

  Exact copy of a notation in red ink and in André Marceau’s handwriting, appearing upon the top of the first page of a short fiction manuscript, entitled “A Cheque for 200 Guineas,” typewritten by him on May 8, 1935.

  May 8, 1935.

  If ever I am found dead under mysterious circumstances, the name of my murderer will be found concealed within the 106th line of this script, excluding in the count the titular material.

  André Marceau.

  DOCUMENT XXVIV

  Handwritten note from John Gilrain, composing-room foreman in the Century Press, Typographers and Printers, Newark, New Jersey, to Arthur Haswell, President of the Century Press.

  Dear Mr. Haswell:

  Now that we’ve got the original Marceau manuscript set up for permanent record in the Marceau Case documents, I can say that its 106th typewritten line, reading “Blimey, ’Erb! Little?” Lu Caslow’s dreary eyes, as designated by him in his notation on the top, becomes the 160th line in the set-up copy. Am returning the original manuscript to your office so it can be locked in the safe against fire in the composing-room.

  Gilrain

  DOCUMENT XXXV

  Cablegram of date November 28, 1936, a.m., from Gus Erks, General Manager of the All-America News Service of New York City, to Harold DeLay, American artist residing at the Hyde Park Hotel, 66 Knightsbridge S.W., London, England.

  Please make us for our files pen-and-ink portrait along exact lines as pen portrait of X. Jones in current “Criminology Magazine” which appeared on U.S.A. newsstands today, but of Aleck Snide, American Criminological Investigator. You can contact Snide at Hotel Russell, London. Forward sketch at once with bill, and we will remit immediately.

  Gus Erks, General Manager All-America

  News Service, Empire State Building,

  New York City.

  DOCUMENT XXVIII

  Pen portrait of Aleck Snide, by Harold DeLay, mailed from London November 28, 1936, p.m. by Harold DeLay, to G. Erks, General Manager of the All-America News Service at New York City.

  DOCUMENT XXXVII

  Excerpt from registered letter, of date November 28, 1936, from Aleck Snide, Hotel Russell, Russell Square, London, England, to Gilbert Whittimore, Hotel Kincardine, Aberdeen, Scotland.

  “Anyway, the notation states, Whittimore, that the 106th line of the story proper contains the name of the gink who’s responsible for Marceau’s bump-off—in case the Frog ever catches the bump-off. Which line, typed off on a reporter’s machine in each A-A newspaper, and blown up by the engraver, and run across the bottom of each newspaper, would be a wow of a feature display on—well—let’s call it the Snide Solution story. Am I a newspaperman—or am I a dope? But most likely we’ll have to pipe down on the lead that really put us in the know—and play everything we get as having come from something else. We’ll see what we shall see when we see it. But anyway, the line in question is

  “Blimey, ’Erb! Little?” Lu Caslow’s dreary eyes

  And if you don’t catch, from that line, baby, the name

  LITTLE LU CAS or LITTLE LUCAS

  you need cheaters on your glims.

  “For I went over it frontwards and backwards, skip-stop and stop-skip, and a hundred other ways. And ‘Little Lucas’ is cert the name that’s coded into it. Moreover, baby, it’s 100 per cent confirmed by the fact that Marceau first started to write the gal’s name in as ‘Daisy’—then x’d it out immediately and changed it to ‘Lucille.’ Which shows that it had to be ‘Lucille’ to give him his ‘Lucas.’ And—wait! In the line in question he first
wrote the ‘Lu’ as ‘Lucille,’ then x’d off the ‘cille’ which would have made a wedge between the ‘Lu’ and the ‘Cas.’

  “All right!

  “Little Lucas!

  “Now Little This—and Little That, Whittimore, is a stage name used by midgets the world over. And if that ain’t the gravy in this midget murder, Whittimore, I hope the husband of the next dame I get mixed up with shoots me clear through the pants. Little Teddie—Little Tommie—Little Felix—Christ, Whittimore, I’ve seen scores of ’em in my day—in all parts of the world. But there was nothing of record here at London, in one of the biggest and oldest theatrical (including vaudeville) booking agencies—about any ‘Little Lucas.’

  “And that’s what I’ve been having Rommick and Custin here check back on, over 10 years. Ten years, that is, for a starter! On the ‘vaudey’ ads and theatrical reviews. In all English-speaking newspapers and vaudeville and theatrical journals. They’re hard at work—have three or four gals on the job—and with gas-masks on too, I understand, because of all the filed stacks having to come out of the dusty storerooms. And though I haven’t caught a mention of Little Lucas yet, I’m absolutely cert I will—even if it’s only a billing for a few weeks—somewhere—at some time.”

  DOCUMENT XXXVIII

  Letter, of date November 29, 1936, from X. Jones, 136 Grey’s Inn Road, London, England, to Gerald Wilkins, 3 Westgate Terrace, off Redcliffe Square, London, England.

  My Dear Gerald:

  Please forgive my several days’ delay in replying to your most interesting letter. If you have, since writing it and receiving no answer, inquired here personally for me, or at the Yard, you undoubtedly learned that I was in the north of England—with Sepoona—on a quite routine investigation of a quite prosaic criminal matter lying in the line of my regular work at the Yard.

  And so—referring to what you tell me in that letter—that was what Jane was concealing—all the time?

  And she’s passed it all over to this chap Snide?

  I must say that you have cleared up something that has bewildered me greatly. The girl’s covert attitude in my presence, I mean. And I think I can clear up something that seems to have you puzzled: namely, how this chap Snide got wind of “Dora Riverton” being Jane Trotter—and whether it is the All-America News Service that he is working with.

  For a small incident which occurred on Grey’s Inn Road, on the evening of November 4th, illuminates both points. On that evening, I gave Gilbert Whittimore, the London representative of the service, the long interview which later became incorporated in that huge story which, over here at least, was published in toto in the American Traveller’s Gazette. And though I urged him, when we were on the wire together earlier in the day, to select such a time as he could meet my valuable assistant, and include him also in the write-up, he oddly enough selected the definite time when Sepoona could not possibly be here. And I attributed such selection, at the time, I’ll concede, to the known tendency of the Americans to deprecate the status of all persons possessing colored skin.

  But, while Whittimore was here, I received a telephone call which necessitated my stepping over to Kings Cross. A presumed crime tipster, claiming to have been double-crossed; and claiming also to be leaving London in a few minutes, made overtures to me, on the wire, to the effect that if I would see him immediately outside the tube station there, he would give me certain inside information concerning a certain jewelry store robbery on Edgeway Road which robbery I knew to have actually taken place.

  I did not see how I could put Whittimore out, since our interview was not yet concluded, and especially in view of the fact that he’d told me he had ordered a certain trans-Atlantic telephone call he expected, swung to my wire. And so I just left him in my flat. With the Evening Times, and my tobacco jar!

  I walked up to Kings Cross, saw this fellow, who tossed about a few unimportant facts such as any newspaper office might pick up, tried to bone me unsuccessfully for 2 guineas for them, and back I went to Grey’s Inn Road. Believing, I sheepishly do admit, that I had just been contacted by a “hophead,” trying to get the wherewithal for a pipe down in Limehouse. Now, of course, I see that it was all a beautifully staged affair—and that the fellow had belladonna in his eyes to enlarge the pupils.

  And now that I was back, Whittimore and I finished the interview, and he went.

  But, a few days later, getting out from my safe a special report that I am drawing up about the Marceau Case—a report, by the way, for your uncle’s eyes alone, since it touches upon aspects of which the Yard ought to have a record, but which do not involve the Marceau Case itself, such as, for instance, Jane’s working on Redcliffe Square today under that pseudonym etc., etc.—well, I discovered that a certain notation, written upon a scrap of manilla paper, and originally pinned to the rough draught of this report, was missing. Upon questioning Sepoona, he told me that he had found it, the pin still in it from where it had torn loose from my report, and, in fact, dug it out from under the hollow end of an empty Indian vase which stands on my writing desk. And there is no doubt whatsoever that Whittimore unearthed this scrap—and that it was the notation on it which sent his man Snide straight to Jane.

  For, as I have implied, the notation on it very much concerned Jane. Since it was made after I had located her, and talked with her. It contained, in fact, two memos—covering two different inserts that should logically go into this special report, and where they should go. One of the memos was about “the stolen autogiro’s whereabouts having been confidentially revealed to me by Dora R.” And the other was about how Jane Trotter, with her name changed to “Dora R” was working for “Mrs. Stuyves-C on Redcliffe Square.”

  Unfortunately, the stolen autogiro did not at all refer to the stolen Lymewich autogiro which hovered above the Marceau lawn twice on the night of May 10, 1935! It referred to a certain solid gold and jewel-studded miniature autogiro, worth about 40 guineas—a paperweight!—a memento of some sales work done in the aeronautical field—which—well, since you are not actually in love with Jane nor going to marry her, I’ll be quite open with you—which was the cause of Jane’s losing that berth she held prior to going with Marceau. The case where she “took the rap,” as the American gangsters are said to say, for her employer’s son, and got discharged without references.

  And it is thus that this Snide, armed with all this more or less cryptic “information” by Whittimore who of course, right now, is covering that long-drawn-out Captain Huntley trunk murder trial up in Aberdeen, went straight to Jane. And having to explain away this autogiro business entirely to him, she was completely in his power after that—had to give him whatever else she was concealing on the Marceau Case in order to prove that she didn’t have more than he thought she had! Doubtlessly, too, his assurance that he wanted only to work the case out for the newspapers—and did not represent the British law—went a long way toward getting her to make a clean breast of things.

  Well—this all clarifies the situation a bit—as to who is working against whom—and all that, don’t you know!

  But now about yourself. You ask me what you should do. With respect to Jane. In your correspondence with her. And when she returns from Switzerland.

  I suggest, lad, that you do not press the girl any further for possibly yet concealed facts. I have been sorely troubled of late about all this getting engaged, and this diamond ring business—and I very, very much fear that what we are doing is decidedly not ethical. Indeed, I don’t know how we are going to wangle our way out of this decently. What do you think, old chap?

  And about this story manuscript, in which Marceau names his murderer, suppose we let Snide, now that he’s succeeded in getting hold of it, work on it. And work hard! It contains, I take it, a good many lines—four hundred or so!—and assuming that Jane has told you the 100 per cent complete truth—and it surely seems as though she must have—and that Marceau did not state which line contained the coded information—then Snide will have not only, by
intuition or whatnot, to find the line—but will also have to work out the manner in which the information is coded into it!

  For, after all, my boy, I probably have a few points in this case designed to bring me eventually in under the finish tape, which Snide does not have! Or what do you think?

  Let us just say, then, that in this particular affair U.S.A. and Britain are now neck to neck!

  Now if Jane cares to turn over to you temporarily that other story after it gets back to her from Australia, it would be of interest to me, naturally, if I could run over it in the interim while you hold it. But I don’t know that I would, if I were you, insist too strongly on seeing this script—for, after all, this girl is shrewd if uneducated, and she may become unexpectedly suspicious. In which case you will never learn another thing—if perchance she knows some further thing. If this manuscript, after it comes back to her from Australia, by some mischance also reaches Snide—well, it contains, you tell me, only the manner and mode of Marceau’s death. And since Snide and I both already know all about that, the manuscript becomes, I take it, of little practical importance to either of us. Unless, that is—unless—well, forgive me for thinking on paper! On second thought, you might, if you wish, insinuate in your letter to Jane a cautious plea to be allowed to see the cryptic concoction.

  In closing, let me say that I am glad to hear that you have found that position with the Adranis Art Galleries in Pall Mall East—and that it is the very position for which you have so long been wanting, anyway, to come to London. It has troubled me so much, don’t you know, your putting in all this time and trouble without proper recompense.