The Complete Four Just Men (102 page)

Leon shook his head.

‘Letheritt has been falling for years. He hasn’t reached his present state since Christmas; therefore he must have been as bad – or nearly as bad – nine months ago. I really have taken a violent dislike to him, and I must get those letters.’

Manfred looked at him thoughtfully.

‘They would hardly be at his bankers, because he wouldn’t have a banker; or at his lawyers, because I should imagine that he is the kind of person whose acquaintance with law begins and ends in the Criminal Courts. I think you are right, Leon; the papers are in his room.’

Leon lost no time. Early the next morning he was in Whitechurch Street, and watched the milkman ascend to the garret where Letheritt had his foul habitation. He waited till the milkman had come out and disappeared but, sharp as he was, he was hardly quick enough. By the time he had reached the top floor, the milk had been taken in, and the little phial of colourless fluid which might have acted as a preservative to the milk was unused.

The next morning he tried again, and again he failed.

On the fourth night, between the hours of one and two, he managed to gain an entry into the house, and crept noiselessly up the stairs. The door was locked from the inside, but he could reach the end of the key with a pair of narrow pliers he carried.

There was no sound from within, when he snapped back the lock and turned the handle softly. He had forgotten the bolts.

The next day he came again, and surveyed the house from the outside. It was possible to reach the window of the room, but he would need a very long ladder, and after a brief consultation with Manfred, he decided against the method.

Manfred made a suggestion.

‘Why not send him a wire, asking him to meet your Miss Brown at Liverpool Street Station? You know her Christian name?’

Leon sighed wearily.

‘I tried that on the second day, my dear chap, and had little Lew Leveson on hand to “whizz” him the moment he came into the street in case he was carrying the letters on him.’

‘By “whizz” you mean to pick his pocket? I can’t keep track of modern thief slang,’ said Manfred. ‘In the days when I was actively interested, we used to call it “dip”.’

‘You are out of date, George; “whizz” is the word. But of course the beggar didn’t come out. If he owed rent I could get the brokers put in; but he does not owe rent. He is breaking no laws, and is living a fairly blameless life – except, of course, one could catch him for being in possession of opium. But that wouldn’t be much use, because the police are rather chary of allowing us to work with them.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid I shall have to give Miss Brown a very bad report.’

It was not until a few days later that he actually wrote to the agreed address, having first discovered that it was, as he suspected, a small stationer’s shop where letters could be called for.

A week later Superintendent Meadows, who was friendly with the Three, came down to consult Manfred on a matter of a forged Spanish passport, and since Manfred was an authority on passport forgeries and had a fund of stories about Spanish criminals, it was long after midnight when the conference broke up.

Leon, who needed exercise, walked to Regent Street with Meadows, and the conversation turned to Mr John Letheritt.

‘Oh, yes, I know him well. I took him two years ago on a false pretence charge, and got him eighteen months at the London Assizes. A real bad egg, that fellow, and a bit of a squeaker, too. He’s the man who put away Joe Benthall, the cleverest cat burglar we’ve had for a generation. Joe got ten years, and I shouldn’t like to be this fellow when he comes out!’

Suddenly Leon asked a question about Letheritt’s imprisonment, and when the other had answered, his companion stood stock-still in the middle of the deserted Hanover Square and doubled up with silent laughter.

‘I don’t see the joke.’

‘But I do,’ chuckled Leon. ‘What a fool I’ve been! And I thought I understood the case!’

‘Do you want Letheritt for anything? I know where he lives,’ said Meadows.

Leon shook his head.

‘No, I don’t want him: but I should very much like to have ten minutes in his room!’

Meadows looked serious.

‘He’s blackmailing, eh? I wondered where he was getting his money from.’

But Leon did not enlighten him. He went back to Curzon Street and began searching certain works of reference, and followed this by an inspection of a large scale map of the Home Counties. He was the last to go to bed, and the first to waken, for he slept in the front of the house and heard the knocking at the door.

It was raining heavily as he pulled up the window and looked out; and in the dim light of dawn he thought he recognized Superintendent Meadows. A second later he was sure of his visitor’s identity.

‘Will you come down? I want to see you.’

Gonsalez slipped into his dressing-gown, ran downstairs and opened the door to the Superintendent.

‘You remember we were talking about Letheritt last night?’ said Meadows as Leon ushered him into the little waiting-room.

The superintendent’s voice was distinctly unfriendly, and he was eyeing Leon keenly.

‘Yes – I remember.’

‘You didn’t by any chance go out again last night?’

‘No. Why?’

Again that look of suspicion.

‘Only Letheritt was murdered at half past one this morning, and his room ransacked.’

Leon stared at him.

‘Murdered? Have you got the murderer?’ he asked at last.

‘No, but we shall get him all right. He was seen coming down the rainpipe by a City policeman. Evidently he had got into Letheritt’s room through the window, and it was this discovery by the constable which led to a search of the house. The City Police had to break in the door, and they found Letheritt dead on the bed. He had evidently been hit on the head with a jemmy, and ordinarily that injury would not have killed him, according to the police doctor; but in his state of health it was quite enough to put him out. A policeman went round the house to intercept the burglar, but somehow he must have escaped into one of the little alleys that abound in this part of the city, and he was next seen by a constable in Fleet Street, driving a small car, the number-plate of which had been covered with mud.’

‘Was the man recognized?’

‘He hasn’t been – yet. What he did was to leave three fingerprints on the window, and as he was obviously an old hand at the game, that is as good as a direct identification. The City Detective Force called us in, but we haven’t been able to help them except to give them particulars of Letheritt’s past life. Incidentally, I supplied them with a copy of your fingerprints. I hope you don’t mind.’

Leon grinned.

‘Delighted!’ he said.

After the officer had left, Leon went upstairs to give the news to his two friends.

But the most startling intelligence was to come when they were sitting at breakfast. Meadows arrived. They saw his car draw up and Poiccart went out to open the door to him. He strode into the little room, his eyes bulging with excitement.

‘Here’s a mystery which even you fellows will never be able to solve,’ he said. ‘Do you know that this is a day of great tragedy for Scotland Yard and for the identification system? It means the destruction of a method that has been laboriously built up . . . ’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Manfred quickly.

‘The fingerprint system,’ said Meadows, and Poiccart, to whom the fingerprint method was something God-like, gaped at him. ‘We’ve found a duplicate,’ said Meadows. ‘The prints on the glass were undoubtedly the prints of Joe Benthall – and Joe Benthall is in Wilford County Gaol serving the first part of a ten years’ sentence!’

Something made Manfred turn his head toward his friend. Leon’s eyes were blazing, his thin face wreathed in one joyous smile.

‘The man who sang in church!’ he said softly. ‘This is the prettiest case that I have ever dealt with. Now sit down, my dear Meadows, and eat! No, no: sit down. I want to hear about Benthall – is it possible for me to see him?’

Meadows stared at him.

‘What use would that be? I tell you this is the biggest blow we’ve ever had. And what is more, when we showed the City policeman a photograph of Benthall, he recognized him as the man he had seen coming down the rainpipe! I thought Benthall had escaped, and phoned the prison. But he’s there all right.’

‘Can I see Benthall?’

Meadows hesitated.

‘Yes – I think it could be managed. The Home Office is rather friendly with you, isn’t it?’

Friendly enough, apparently. By noon, Leon Gonsalez was on his way to Wilford Prison and, to his satisfaction, he went alone.

Wilford Gaol is one of the smaller convict establishments, and was brought into use to house long-time convicts of good character who were acquainted with the bookbinding and printing trade. There are several ‘trade’ prisons in England – Maidstone is the ‘printing’ prison, Shepton Mallet the ‘dyeing’ prison – where prisoners may exercise their trades.

The chief warder, whom Leon interviewed, told him that Wilford was to be closed soon, and its inmates transferred to Maidstone. He spoke regretfully of this change.

‘We’ve got a good lot of men here – they give us no trouble, and they have an easy time. We’ve had no cases of indiscipline for years. We only have one officer on night-duty – that will give you an idea how quiet we are.’

‘Who was the officer last night?’ asked Leon, and the unexpectedness of the question took the chief warder by surprise.

‘Mr Bennett,’ he said, ‘he’s gone sick today by the way – a bilious attack. Curious thing you should ask the question: I’ve just been to see him. We had an inquiry about the man you’ve come to visit. Poor old Bennett is in bed with a terrible headache.’

‘Can I see the Governor?’ asked Leon.

The chief warder shook his head.

‘He’s gone to Dover with Miss Folian – his daughter. She’s gone off to the Continent.’

‘Miss Gwenda Folian?’ and when the chief warder nodded: ‘Is she the lady who was training to be a doctor?’

‘She is a doctor,’ said the other emphatically. ‘Why, when Benthall nearly died from a heart attack, she saved his life – he works in the Governor’s house, and I believe he’d cut off his right hand to serve the young lady. There’s a lot of good in some of these fellows!’

They were standing in the main prison hall. Leon gazed along the grim vista of steel balconies and little doors.

‘This is where the night-warder sits, I suppose?’ he asked, as he laid his hand on the high desk near where they were standing: ‘and the door leads – ?’

‘To the Governor’s quarters.’

‘And Miss Gwenda often slips through there with a cup of coffee and a sandwich for the night man, I suppose?’ he added carelessly.

The chief warder was evasive.

‘It would be against regulations if she did,’ he said. ‘Now you want to see Benthall?’

Leon shook his head.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said quietly.

* * *

‘Where could a blackguard like Letheritt be singing in church on Christmas Day?’ asked Leon when he was giving the intimate history
of the case to his companions. ‘In only one place – a prison. Obviously
our Miss Brown was in that prison: the Governor and his family invariably attend church. Letheritt was “not staying” – it was the end of his sentence, and he had been sent to Wilford for discharge. Poor Meadows! With all his faith in fingerprints gone astray because a released convict was true to his word and went out to get the letters that I missed, whilst the doped Mr Bennett slept at his desk and Miss Gwenda Folian took his place!’

The Lady From Brazil

The journey had begun in a storm of rain and had continued in mist. There was a bumpiness over the land which was rather trying to airsick passengers. The pilot struck the Channel and dropped to less than two hundred feet.

Then came the steward with news that he bawled above the thunder of engines. ‘We’re landin’ at Lympne . . . thick fog in London . . . coaches will take you to London . . . ’

Manfred leaned forward to the lady who was sitting on the other side of the narrow gangway.

‘Fortunate for you,’ he said, tuning his voice so that it reached no other ear.

The Honourable Mrs Peversey raised her glasses and surveyed him cold-bloodedly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

They made a perfect landing soon after, and as Manfred descended the steps leading from the Paris plane he offered his hand to assist the charming lady to alight.

‘You were saying – ?’

The slim, pretty woman regarded him with cold and open-eyed insolence.

‘I was saying that it was rather fortunate for you that we landed here,’ said Manfred. ‘Your name is Kathleen Zieling, but you are known better as “Claro” May, and there are two detectives waiting for you in London to question you on the matter of a pearl necklace that was lost in London three months ago. I happen to understand French very well and I heard two gentlemen of the Sureté discussing your future just before we left Le Bourget.’

The stare was no longer insolent, but it was not concerned. Apparently her scrutiny of the man who offered such alarming information satisfied her in the matter of his sincerity.

‘Thank you,’ she said easily, ‘but I am not at all worried. Fenniker and Edmonds are the two men. I’ll wire them to meet me at my hôtel. You don’t look like a “bull” but I suppose you are?’

‘Not exactly,’ smiled Manfred.

She looked at him oddly. ‘You certainly look too honest for a copper. I’m OK, but thank you all the same.’

This was a dismissal, but Manfred stood his ground.

‘If you get into any kind of trouble I’d be glad if you’d call me up.’ He handed the woman a card, at which she did not even glance. ‘And if you wonder why I am interested, I only want to tell you that a year ago a very dear friend of mine would have been killed by the Fouret gang which caught him unprepared on Montmartre, only you very kindly helped him.’

Now, with a start of surprise, she read the card and, reading, changed colour. ‘Oh!’ she said awkwardly. ‘I didn’t know that you were one of that bunch – Four Just Men? You folks give me the creeps! Leon something – a dago name . . . ’

‘Gonsalez,’ suggested Manfred, and she nodded.

That’s right!’

She was looking at him now with a new interest.

‘Honest there’s no trouble coming about the pearls. And as to your friend, he saved me. He wouldn’t have got into the gang fight, only he came out of the cabaret to help me.’

‘Where are you staying in London?’

She told him her address, and at that moment came a Customs officer to break the conversation. Manfred did not see her again – she was not in the closed coach that carried him to London.

In truth he had no great wish to meet her again. Curiosity and a desire to assist one who had given great help to Leon Gonsalez – it was the occasion of Leon’s spectacular unravelling of the Lyons forgeries – were behind his action.

Manfred neither sympathized with nor detested criminals. He knew May to be an international swindler on the grand scale, and was fairly well satisfied that she would be well looked after by the English police.

It was on the journey to London that he regretted that he had not asked her for information about Garry, though in all probability they had never met.

George Manfred, by common understanding the leading spirit of the Four Just Men, had in the course of his life removed three-and-twenty social excrescences from all human activities.

The war brought him and his companions a pardon for offences known and offences suspected. But in return the pardoning authorities had exacted from him a promise that he should keep the law in letter and in spirit, and this he had made, not only on his own behalf but on behalf of his companions. Only once did he express regret for having made this covenant, and that was when Garry Lexfield came under his observation.

Garry lived on the outer edge of the law. He was a man of thirty, tall, frank of face, rather good-looking. Women found him fascinating, to their cost, for he was of the ruthless kind; quite nice people invited him to their homes – he even reached the board of a well-known West End Company.

Manfred’s first encounter with Garry was over a stupidly insignificant matter. Mr Lexfield was engaged in an argument at the corner of Curzon Street, where he had his flat. Manfred, returning late, saw a man and a woman talking, the man violently, the woman a little timidly. He passed them, thinking that it was one of those quarrels in which wise men are not interested, and then he heard the sound of a blow and a faint scream. He turned to see the woman crouching by the area railings of the house. Quickly he came back.

‘Did you hit that woman?’ he asked.

‘It’s none of your dam’ business – ’

Manfred swung him from his feet and dropped him over the area railings. When he looked round the woman had vanished.

‘I might have killed him,’ said Manfred penitently, and the spectacle of a penitent Manfred was too much for Leon Gonsalez.

‘But you didn’t – what happened?’

‘When I saw him get up on his feet and knew nothing was broken I bolted,’ confessed Manfred. ‘I really must guard against these impulses. It must be my advancing years that has spoilt my judgment.’

If Poiccart had a very complete knowledge of the sordid underworld, Manfred was a living encyclopaedia on the swell mob; but for some reason Mr Lexfield was outside his knowledge. Leon made investigations and reported.

‘He has been thrown out of India and Australia. He is only “wanted” in New Zealand if he attempts to go back there. His speciality is bigamous marriages into families which are too important to risk a scandal. The swell mob in London only know of him by hearsay. He has a real wife who has followed him to London and was probably the lady who was responsible for his visit to the area.’

Mr Garry Lexfield had ‘touched’ royally, and luck had been with him, since, unostentatiously and in an assumed name, he had stepped on to the Monrovia at Sydney. He had the charm and the attraction which are three-quarters of the good thie
f
’s assets. Certainly he
charmed the greater part of three thousand pounds out of the
pockets of two wealthy Australian land-owners, and attracted to himself the daughter of one who at any rate had the appearance of being another.

When he landed he was an engaged man: happily and mercifully, his bride-to-be was taken ill on the day of her arrival with a prosaic attack of appendicitis. Before she had left her nursing home, he learned that that bluff squatter, her father, so far from being a millionaire, was in very considerable financial difficulties.

But the luck held: a visit to Monte Carlo produced yet another small fortune – which was not gained at the public tables. Here he met and wooed Elsa Monarty, convent-trained and easily fascinated. A sister, her one relative, had sent her to San Remo – oddly enough, she also was convalescing from an illness – and, straying across the frontier, she met the handsome Mr Lexfield – which was not his name – in the big vestibule of the rooms. She wanted a ticket of admission – the gallant Garry was most obliging. She told him about her sister, who was the manager and part owner of a big dress-making establishment in the Rue de la Paix. Giving confidence for confidence, Garry told her of his rich and titled parents, and described a life which was equally mythical.

He came back to London alone and found himself most inconveniently dogged by the one woman in the world who was entitled to bear his name, which was Jackson – a pertinacious if handsome woman who had no particular affection for him, but was anxious to recover for the benefit of his two neglected children a little of the fortune he had dissipated.

And most pertinacious at a moment when, but for his inherent meanness, he would have gladly paid good money to be rid of her.

It was a week after he had had the shocking experience of finding himself hurled across fairly high railings into a providentially shallow area, and he was still inclined to limp, when Leon Gonsalez, who was investigating his case, came with the full story of the man’s misdeeds.

‘I would have dropped him a little more heavily if I had known,’ said Manfred regretfully. ‘The strange thing is that the moment I lifted him – it’s a trick you have never quite succeeded in acquiring, Leon – I knew he was something pestilential. We shall have to keep an unfriendly eye on Mr Garry Lexfield. Where does he stay?’

‘He has a sumptuous flat in Jermyn Street,’ said Leon. ‘Before you tell me that there are no sumptuous flats in Jermyn Street, I would like to say that it has the appearance of sumptuousness. I was so interested in this gentleman that I went round to the Yard and had a chat with Meadows. Meadows knows all about him, but he has no evidence to convict. The man’s got plenty of money – has an account at the London and Southern, and bought a car this afternoon.’

Manfred nodded thoughtfully.

‘A pretty bad man,’ he said. ‘Is there any chance of finding his wife? I suppose the unfortunate lady who was with him – ’

‘She lives in Little Titchfield Street – calls herself Mrs Jackson, which is probably our friend’s name. Meadows is certain that it is.’

Mr Garry Lexfield was too wise a man not to be aware of the fact that he was under observation; but his was the type of crime which almost defies detection. His pleasant manner and his car, plus a well-organized accident to his punt on one of the upper reaches of the Thames, secured him introductions and honorary membership of a very exclusive river club; and from there was but a step to homes which ordinarily would have been barred to him.

He spent a profitable month initiating two wealthy stockbrokers into the mysteries of bushman poker, at which he was consistently unlucky for five successive nights, losing some £600 to his apologetic hosts. There was no necessity for their apologies as it turned out: on the sixth and seventh days, incredible as it may seem, he cleared the greater part of £5,000 and left his hosts with the impression of his regret that he had been the medium of their loss.

‘Very interesting,’ said Manfred when this was reported to him.

Then, one night when he was dining at the Ritz-Carlton with a young man to whom he had gained one of his quick introductions, he saw his supreme fortune.

‘Do you know her?’ he asked in an undertone of his companion.

‘That lady? Oh, Lord, yes! I’ve known her for years. She used to stay with my people in Somerset – Madame Velasquez. She’s the widow of a terribly rich chap, a Brazilian.’

Mr Lexfield looked again at the dark, beautiful woman at the next table. She was perhaps a little over-jewelled to please the fastidious. Swathes of diamond bracelets encircled her arm from the wrist up; an immense emerald glittered in a diamond setting on her breast. She was exquisitely dressed and her poise was regal.

‘She’s terribly rich,’ prattled on his informant. ‘My colonel, who knows her much better than I, told me her husband had left her six million pounds – it’s wicked that people should have so much money.’

It was wicked, thought Garry Lexfield, that anybody should have so much money if he could not ‘cut’ his share.

‘I’d like to meet her,’ he said, and a minute later the introduction was made and Garry forgot his arrangement to trim the young guardsman that night in the thrill of confronting a bigger quarry.

He found her a remarkably attractive woman. Her English, though slightly broken, was good. She was obviously pleased to meet him. He danced with her a dozen times and asked to be allowed to call in the morning. But she was leaving for her country place in Seaton Deverel.

‘That’s rather strange,’ he said, with his most dazzling smile. ‘I’m driving through Seaton Deverel next Saturday.’

To his joy she bit the bait. At noon on the Saturday his car shot up the long drive to Hanford House.

A week later came Leon with startling news.

‘This fellow’s got himself engaged to a rich South American widow, George. We can’t allow that to go any further. Let us have an orgy of lawlessness – kidnap the brigand and put him on a cattle boat. There’s a man in the East India Dock Road who would do it for fifty pounds.’

Manfred shook his head.

‘I’ll see Meadows,’ he said. ‘I have an idea that we may catch this fellow.’

Mr Garry Lexfield was not in that seventh heaven of delight to which accepted lovers are supposed to ascend; but he was eminently satisfied with himself as he watched the final touches being made to the dinner table in his flat.

Madame Velasquez had taken a great deal of persuading, had shown an extraordinary suspicion, and asked him to introduce her to those parents of his who were at the moment conveniently attending to their large estates in Canada.

‘It is a very serious step I take, Garry dear,’ she said, shaking her pretty head dubiously. ‘I love you very dearly, of course, but I am so fearful of men who desire only money and not love.’

‘Darling, I don’t want money,’ he said vehemently. ‘I have shown you my passbook: I have nine thousand pounds in the bank, apart from my estates.’

She shrugged this off. Madame was a lady of peculiar temperament, never in the same mood for longer than an hour.

She came to dinner and, to his annoyance, brought a chaperon – a girl who spoke no word of English. Mr Lexfield was a very patient man and concealed his anger.

She brought news that made him forget the inconvenience of a chaperon. It was while they were sipping coffee in his over-decorated little drawing-room that she told him:

‘Such a nice man I meet today. He came to my house in the country.’

‘He was not only nice, but lucky,’ smiled Garry, who was really not feeling terribly happy.

‘And he spoke about you,’ she smiled.