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- Herausgeber: Dean Street Press
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
"I cannot understand why Mr. Bechcombe apparently offered no resistance. His hand-bell, his speaking-tube, the telephone—all were close at hand. It looks as though he had recognized his assassin and had no fear of him." The corner house of Crow's Inn Square was the most dignified set of solicitors' chambers imaginable. But this monument to law and order nonetheless becomes the scene of murder - when the distinguished lawyer Mr. Bechcombe, despite giving strict instructions not to be disturbed, is strangled in his own office. Inspector Furnival of Scotland Yard has to wrestle with fiendish clues, unearth priceless gems and tangle with a dangerous gang before he can solve this case, his third and final golden age mystery. Originally published in 1927, this new edition is the first printed in over 80 years, and features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans. "What could be better to whet the appetite of the mystery-loving reader? A capital piece of work... exactly the sort of mystery story that everyone is asking for and will eagerly devour." Sketch
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
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ANNIE HAYNESThe Crow’s Inn Tragedy
“I cannot understand why Mr. Bechcombe apparently offered no resistance. His hand-bell, his speaking-tube, the telephone—all were close at hand. It looks as though he had recognized his assassin and had no fear of him.”
The corner house of Crow’s Inn Square was the most dignified set of solicitors’ chambers imaginable. But this monument to law and order nonetheless becomes the scene of murder – when the distinguished lawyer Mr. Bechcombe, despite giving strict instructions not to be disturbed, is strangled in his own office.
Inspector Furnival of Scotland Yard has to wrestle with fiendish clues, unearth priceless gems and tangle with a dangerous gang before he can solve this case, his third and final golden age mystery. Originally published in 1927, this new edition is the first printed in over 80 years, and features an introduction by crime fiction historian Curtis Evans.
“What could be better to whet the appetite of the mystery-loving reader? A capital piece of work... exactly the sort of mystery story that everyone is asking for and will eagerly devour.” Sketch
Contents
The Mystery of the Missing Author Annie Haynes and Her Golden Age Detective Fiction
The psychological enigma of Agatha Christie’s notorious 1926 vanishing has continued to intrigue Golden Age mystery fans to the present day. The Queen of Crime’s eleven-day disappearing act is nothing, however, compared to the decades-long disappearance, in terms of public awareness, of between-the-wars mystery writer Annie Haynes (1865-1929), author of a series of detective novels published between 1923 and 1930 by Agatha Christie’s original English publisher, The Bodley Head. Haynes’s books went out of print in the early Thirties, not long after her death in 1929, and her reputation among classic detective fiction readers, high in her lifetime, did not so much decline as dematerialize. When, in 2013, I first wrote a piece about Annie Haynes’ work, I knew of only two other living persons besides myself who had read any of her books. Happily, Dean Street Press once again has come to the rescue of classic mystery fans seeking genre gems from the Golden Age, and is republishing all Haynes’ mystery novels. Now that her crime fiction is coming back into print, the question naturally arises: Who Was Annie Haynes? Solving the mystery of this forgotten author’s lost life has taken leg work by literary sleuths on two continents (my thanks for their assistance to Carl Woodings and Peter Harris).
Until recent research uncovered new information about Annie Haynes, almost nothing about her was publicly known besides the fact of her authorship of twelve mysteries during the Golden Age of detective fiction. Now we know that she led an altogether intriguing life, too soon cut short by disability and death, which took her from the isolation of the rural English Midlands in the nineteenth century to the cultural high life of Edwardian London. Haynes was born in 1865 in the Leicestershire town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, the first child of ironmonger Edwin Haynes and Jane (Henderson) Haynes, daughter of Montgomery Henderson, longtime superintendent of the gardens at nearby Coleorton Hall, seat of the Beaumont baronets. After her father left his family, young Annie resided with her grandparents at the gardener’s cottage at Coleorton Hall, along with her mother and younger brother. Here Annie doubtlessly obtained an acquaintance with the ways of the country gentry that would serve her well in her career as a genre fiction writer.
We currently know nothing else of Annie Haynes’ life in Leicestershire, where she still resided (with her mother) in 1901, but by 1908, when Haynes was in her early forties, she was living in London with Ada Heather-Bigg (1855-1944) at the Heather-Bigg family home, located halfway between Paddington Station and Hyde Park at 14 Radnor Place, London. One of three daughters of Henry Heather-Bigg, a noted pioneer in the development of orthopedics and artificial limbs, Ada Heather-Bigg was a prominent Victorian and Edwardian era feminist and social reformer. In the 1911 British census entry for 14 Radnor Place, Heather-Bigg, a “philanthropist and journalist,” is listed as the head of the household and Annie Haynes, a “novelist,” as a “visitor,” but in fact Haynes would remain there with Ada Heather-Bigg until Haynes’ death in 1929.
Haynes’ relationship with Ada Heather-Bigg introduced the aspiring author to important social sets in England’s great metropolis. Though not a novelist herself, Heather-Bigg was an important figure in the city’s intellectual milieu, a well-connected feminist activist of great energy and passion who believed strongly in the idea of women attaining economic independence through remunerative employment. With Ada Heather-Bigg behind her, Annie Haynes’s writing career had powerful backing indeed. Although in the 1911 census Heather-Bigg listed Haynes’ occupation as “novelist,” it appears that Haynes did not publish any novels in book form prior to 1923, the year that saw the appearance of The Bungalow Mystery, which Haynes dedicated to Heather-Bigg. However, Haynes was a prolific producer of newspaper serial novels during the second decade of the twentieth century, penning such works as Lady Carew’s Secret, Footprints of Fate, A Pawn of Chance, The Manor Tragedy and many others.
Haynes’ twelve Golden Age mystery novels, which appeared in a tremendous burst of creative endeavor between 1923 and 1930, like the author’s serial novels retain, in stripped-down form, the emotionally heady air of the nineteenth-century triple-decker sensation novel, with genteel settings, shocking secrets, stormy passions and eternal love all at the fore, yet they also have the fleetness of Jazz Age detective fiction. Both in their social milieu and narrative pace Annie Haynes’ detective novels bear considerable resemblance to contemporary works by Agatha Christie; and it is interesting to note in this regard that Annie Haynes and Agatha Christie were the only female mystery writers published by The Bodley Head, one of the more notable English mystery imprints in the early Golden Age. “A very remarkable feature of recent detective fiction,” observed the Illustrated London News in 1923, “is the skill displayed by women in this branch of story-telling. Isabel Ostrander, Carolyn Wells, Annie Haynes and last, but very far from least, Agatha Christie, are contesting the laurels of Sherlock Holmes’ creator with a great spirit, ingenuity and success.” Since Ostrander and Wells were American authors, this left Annie Haynes, in the estimation of the Illustrated London News, as the main British female competitor to Agatha Christie. (Dorothy L. Sayers, who, like Haynes, published her debut mystery novel in 1923, goes unmentioned.) Similarly, in 1925 The Sketch wryly noted that “[t]ired men, trotting home at the end of an imperfect day, have been known to pop into the library and ask for an Annie Haynes. They have not made a mistake in the street number. It is not a cocktail they are asking for….”
Twenties critical opinion adjudged that Annie Haynes’ criminous concoctions held appeal not only for puzzle fiends impressed with the “considerable craftsmanship” of their plots (quoting from the Sunday Times review of The Bungalow Mystery), but also for more general readers attracted to their purely literary qualities. “Not only a crime story of merit, but also a novel which will interest readers to whom mystery for its own sake has little appeal,” avowed The Nation of Haynes’ The Secret of Greylands, while the New Statesman declared of The Witness on the Roof that “Miss Haynes has a sense of character; her people are vivid and not the usual puppets of detective fiction.” Similarly, the Bookman deemed the characters in Haynes’ The Abbey Court Murder “much truer to life than is the case in many sensational stories” and The Spectator concluded of The Crime at Tattenham Corner, “Excellent as a detective tale, the book also is a charming novel.”
Sadly, Haynes’ triumph as a detective novelist proved short lived. Around 1914, about the time of the outbreak of the Great War, Haynes had been stricken with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis that left her in constant pain and hastened her death from heart failure in 1929, when she was only 63. Haynes wrote several of her detective novels on fine days in Kensington Gardens, where she was wheeled from 14 Radnor Place in a bath chair, but in her last years she was able only to travel from her bedroom to her study. All of this was an especially hard blow for a woman who had once been intensely energetic and quite physically active.
In a foreword to The Crystal Beads Murder, the second of Haynes’ two posthumously published mysteries, Ada Heather-Bigg noted that Haynes’ difficult daily physical struggle “was materially lightened by the warmth of friendships” with other authors and by the “sympathetic and friendly relations between her and her publishers.” In this latter instance Haynes’ experience rather differed from that of her sister Bodleian, Agatha Christie, who left The Bodley Head on account of what she deemed an iniquitous contract that took unjust advantage of a naive young author. Christie moved, along with her landmark detective novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1926), to Collins and never looked back, enjoying ever greater success with the passing years.
At the time Christie crossed over to Collins, Annie Haynes had only a few years of life left. After she died at 14 Radnor Place on 30 March 1929, it was reported in the press that “many people well-known in the literary world” attended the author’s funeral at St. Michaels and All Angels Church, Paddington, where her sermon was delivered by the eloquent vicar, Paul Nichols, brother of the writer Beverley Nichols and dedicatee of Haynes’ mystery novel The Master of the Priory; yet by the time of her companion Ada Heather-Bigg’s death in 1944, Haynes and her once highly-praised mysteries were forgotten. (Contrastingly, Ada Heather-Bigg’s name survives today in the University College of London’s Ada Heather-Bigg Prize in Economics.) Only three of Haynes’ novels were ever published in the United States, and she passed away less than a year before the formation of the Detection Club, missing any chance of being invited to join this august body of distinguished British detective novelists. Fortunately, we have today entered, when it comes to classic mystery, a period of rediscovery and revival, giving a reading audience a chance once again, after over eighty years, to savor the detective fiction fare of Annie Haynes. Bon appétit!
Curtis Evans
CHAPTER I
The offices of Messrs. Bechcombe and Turner took up the whole of the first floor of the corner house of Crow’s Inn Square. Bechcombe and Turner was one of the oldest legal firms in London. Their offices were dingy, not to say grimy-looking. The doors and windows had evidently not had a coat of paint for years. There were no lifts in Crow’s Inn. Any such modern innovation would have been out of place in the tall, narrow-casemented houses that stood square round the grass—grass which was bound and crossed by stone flagged walks. The front door of the corner house stood open; the tessellated floor of the hall was dulled by the passing of numberless footsteps. The narrow, uncarpeted stairs went up just opposite the door.
A tall, grey-haired clergyman, who was carefully scrutinizing the almost illegible doorplate, glanced round in some distaste as he went up the worn stairs. At the top he was faced by a door with the legend “Inquiries” written large upon it. After a moment’s hesitation he knocked loudly. Instantly a panel in the middle of the door shot aside and a small, curiously wrinkled face looked out inquisitively.
“Mr. Bechcombe?” the caller said inquiringly. “Please tell him that Mr. Collyer has called, but that he will wait.”
The message was repeated by a boyish voice, the panel was pushed into its place again, a door by the side opened and Mr. Collyer was beckoned in. He found himself in a small ante-room; a door before him stood open and he could see into an office containing a row of desks on each side and several clerks apparently writing busily away. Nearer to him was another open door evidently leading into a waiting-room, furnished with a round centre-table and heavy leather chairs—all with the same indescribable air of gloom that seemed to pervade Messrs. Bechcombe and Turner’s establishment.
The boy who had admitted Mr. Collyer now stood aside for him to pass in, and then departed, vouchsafing the information that Mr. Bechcombe would be at leisure in a few minutes.
With a sigh of relief the clergyman let himself down into one of the capacious arm-chairs, moving stiffly like a man afflicted with chronic rheumatism. Then he laid his head against the back of it as if thoroughly tired out. Seen thus in repose, the deep lines graven on his clean-shaven face were very noticeable, his mouth had a weary droop, and his kind, grey eyes with the tiny network of wrinkles round them were sad and worried.
The minutes were very few indeed before a bell rang close at hand, a door sprang open as if by magic and the same boy beckoned him into a farther room.
Luke Bechcombe was standing on the hearthrug with his back to the open fireplace. The head, and in fact the sole representative, of the firm of Bechcombe and Turner, since Turner had retired to a villa at Streatham, Luke Bechcombe was a small, spare man with grey hair already growing very thin near the temples and on the crown, and a small, neatly trimmed, grey beard. His keen, pale eyes were hidden from sight by a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. His general appearance was remarkably spick and span.
He came forward with outstretched hand as the clergyman entered somewhat hesitatingly.
“Why, Jim, this is an unexpected pleasure! What has brought you up to town?”
The clergyman looked at him doubtfully as their hands met.
“The usual thing—worry! I came up to consult you, to ask if you could help me.”
The solicitor glanced at him keenly, then he turned to the revolving chair before his desk and motioned his visitor to the one opposite.
“Tony again?” he questioned, as his visitor seated himself.
The clergyman waited a minute, twirling his soft hat about in his hands as he held it between his knees.
“Tony again!” he assented at last. “It isn’t the lad’s fault, Luke, I truly believe. He can’t get a job that suits him. Those two years at the War played ruination with the young men just beginning life. Tony would make a good soldier. But he doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere else.”
“Then why doesn’t he enlist?” Luke Bechcombe snapped out.
“His mother,” Mr. Collyer said quietly. “She would never have a moment’s peace.”
Luke Bechcombe pushed back his glasses and stared at his brother-in-law for a moment. Then he nodded his head slowly. The Rev. James Collyer’s statement was true enough he knew—none better. Mrs. Collyer was his sister; the terrible anxiety of those last dreadful days of the Great War, when her only son had been reported wounded and missing for months, had played havoc with her heart. Tony Collyer had had a hot time of it in one of the prisoners’ camps in Germany; he had been gassed as well as badly wounded, and he had come back a shadow of his old self. His mother had nursed him back to health and sanity, but the price had been the invalid couch that had stood ever since in the Rectory morning-room. No. Tony Collyer could never enlist in his mother’s lifetime. The same applied to emigration. Tony must get a job at home, and England, the home of heroes, had no use for her heroes now. There had been times when Tony envied those comrades of his whose graves lay in Flanders’ soil.
They, at any rate, had not lived to know that they were little better than nuisances in the land for which they had fought and died. He had had several jobs, but in every one of them he had been a square peg in a round hole. They had all been clerkships of one kind or another and Tony had hated them all. Nevertheless he had conscientiously done his best for some time. Latterly, however, Tony had taken to slacking. He had met with some of his old companions of the Great War and had spent more money than he could afford. Three times already his father had paid his debts, taxing his resources to the utmost to do so. Each time Tony had promised reformation and amendment, but each time the result had been the same. Small wonder that the rector’s hair was rapidly whitening, that every day seemed to make new lines on his fresh-coloured, pleasant face.
His brother-in-law glanced at him sympathetically now.
“What is Tony doing just at present?”
“Nothing, most of the time,” his father said bitterly. “But I hear this morning that he has been offered a post as bear-leader to the younger brother of a friend of his. I gather the lad is a trifle defective.”
“Must be, I should think. His friends too, I imagine,” Luke Bechcombe barked gruffly.
The implication was unmistakable. The rector sighed uneasily.
“I have faith, you know, Luke, that the boy will come right in the end. He is the child of many prayers.”
“Umph!” Mr. Bechcombe sat drumming his fingers on the writing-pad before him. “Why don’t you let him pay his debts out of his salary?”
The clergyman stirred uneasily.
“He couldn’t. And there are things that must be met at once—debts of honour, he calls them. But that is enough, Luke. I mean to give the boy a clean start this time, and I think he will go straight. He has an inducement now that he has never had before.”
“Good heavens! Not a girl?” Luke Bechcombe ejaculated.
Mr. Collyer bent his head.
“Yes, I hope so. A very charming girl too, I believe.”
“Who is she?”
“I do not suppose I shall be betraying confidence if I tell you,” the clergyman debated. “You will have to know soon, I expect. Her name is Cecily Hoyle.”
“Good heavens!” The lawyer sat back and stared at him. “Do you mean my secretary?”
“Your secretary,” Mr. Collyer acquiesced. “She is a nice girl, isn’t she, Luke?”
“Niceness doesn’t matter in a secretary, the solicitor said gruffly. “She types and takes shorthand notes very satisfactorily. As for looks she is nothing particular. Madeline took care of that—always does! In fact she engaged her for me. Still, she is a taking little thing. How the deuce did Tony get hold of her?”
The clergyman shook his head.
“I don’t know. He only spoke of her the other day. But it will be good for the lad, Luke. I believe it is the genuine thing.”
“Genuine thing! Good for the lad!” Luke Bechcombe repeated scornfully. “Tony can’t keep himself. How is he going to keep my secretary?”
“Tony can work if he likes,” his father maintained stoutly. “And if he has some one to work for I think he will.”
“Girl won’t take him. She has too much sense,” growled the solicitor.
“Oh, I think she has given Tony some reason to hope.”
“She is as big a fool as he is then,” Mr. Bechcombe said with asperity. “But Tony isn’t the only one of the family on matrimony bent. What do you think of Aubrey Todmarsh?”
“Aubrey Todmarsh!” repeated the rector of Wexbridge in amazed accents. “I should have thought matrimony would have been the last thing to enter his head. His whole life seems to be bound up in that community of his.”
“Not so bound up but that he still has a very good eye to the main chance,” retorted Luke Bechcombe. “He is not thinking of a penniless secretary! He’s after money, is Mr. Aubrey. What do you think of Mrs. Phillimore?”
“Mrs. Phillimore! The rich American widow! She must be much too old for him.”
“Old enough to be his mother, I dare say. She is pretty well made up, though, and that doesn’t matter to Aubrey as long as she has got the money. She has been financing these wildcat schemes of his lately. But I suppose he thinks the whole would suit him better than part.”
“But are they really engaged?”
“Oh, nothing quite so definite yet. But I am expecting the announcement every day. Hello!”—as an intermittent clicking made itself heard—“there’s your future daughter-in-law at work. That’s the typewriter.”
Mr. Collyer started.
“You don’t mean that she has been able to hear what we have been saying?”
Mr. Bechcombe laughed.
“Hardly! That would be delightful in a solicitor’s office. She sits in that little room at the side, but there is no communicating door and of course she can’t hear what goes on here. The door is in the top passage, past my private entrance. I didn’t expect to hear her machine, but there is something particularly penetrating about a typewriter. However, it is really very faint and I have got quite used to it. Would you like to see her?”
The clergyman looked undecided for a moment; then he shook his head.
“No, I shouldn’t care to do anything that might look like spying. Time enough for me to see her when there is anything decided.”
“Please yourself!” Luke Bechcombe said gruffly. “Anyway if I had to choose between Tony and Aubrey Todmarsh I should take Tony.”
“I wouldn’t,” Tony’s father said. “The lad is a good lad when he is away from these friends of his. But he is weak—terribly weak. Now Aubrey Todmarsh—though I haven’t always approved of him—is doing wonderful work in that East End settlement of his. He is marvellously successful in dealing with a class of men that we clergy are seldom able to reach.”
“Umph! Well, he is always out for money for something,” said the solicitor. “He invades this office sometimes almost demanding subscriptions. Will he expect his wife to go and live down at his Community house, I wonder? However, I believe the settlement is an attraction to some silly women, and to my mind he will want all the attraction he can get. I can’t stand Aubrey myself. I have no use for conscientious objectors—never had!”
“There I am with you,” assented the clergyman. “But I think Aubrey is hardly to be judged by ordinary standards. He is a visionary, an enthusiast. Of course I hold him to have been mistaken about the War, but honestly mistaken. With his dreams of reforming mankind I can understand—”
Mr. Bechcombe snorted.
“Can you? I can’t! I am jolly glad your Tony didn’t dream such dreams. Two conscientious objectors in the family would have been too much for me. I never could stand old Todmarsh. Aubrey is the very spit of him, as we used to say in Leicestershire.”
“Oh, I don’t see any resemblance between Aubrey and his father,” the rector dissented. “Old Aubrey Todmarsh was a thoroughly self-indulgent man. I don’t believe he ever gave a thought to anyone else in the world. Now Aubrey with his visions and his dreams—”
“Which he does his best to get other people to pay for,” the solicitor interposed. “No use. You won’t get me to enthuse over Aubrey, James. I remember him too well as a boy—a selfish, self-seeking little beast.”
“Yes, I was not fond of him as a child. But I believe it to be a case of genuine conversion. He spends himself and his little patrimony for others. Next week he goes to Geneva, he tells me, to attend a sitting of the League of Nations, to explain the workings of—”
“Damn the League of Nations!” uttered the solicitor, banging his fist upon his writing-pad with an energy that rattled his inkstand. “I beg your pardon, James. Not but what it went out of fashion to apologize to parsons for swearing in the War. Most of them do it themselves nowadays—eh, what?” with a chuckle at his own wit that threatened to choke him.
The rector did not smile.
“I look upon the League of Nations as our great hope for the future.”
“Do you? I don’t,” contradicted his brother-in-law flatly. “I look to a largely augmented Air Force with plenty of practice in bomb-throwing as my hope for the future. It will be worth fifty of that rotten League of Nations. Aubrey Todmarsh addressing the League of Nations! It makes me sick. I suppose they will knight him next. No, no more of that, please, James. When I think of the League of Nations I get excited and that is bad for my heart. But now to business. You say you want money for Tony—how do you propose to get it? I should say you have exhausted all ways of doing it by now.”
“How about a further mortgage on my little farm at Halvers?”
The solicitor shook his head.
“No use thinking of it. Farm is mortgaged up to the hilt already—rather past it, in fact.”
“And I can’t raise any more on my life insurance.” Mr. Collyer sighed. “Well, it must be—there is nothing else—the emerald cross.”
“Oh, but that would be a thousand pities—an heirloom with a history such as that. Oh, you can’t part with it.”
“What else am I to do?” questioned the clergyman. “You said yourself that I had exhausted all my resources. No. I had practically made up my mind to it when I came here. I had just a forlorn hope that you might be able to suggest something else, though as a matter of fact I want your assistance still. I am deplorably ignorant on such matters. How does one set about selling jewellery? Can you tell me a good place to go to?”
“Um!” The solicitor pursed up his lips. “If you have really made up your mind, how would you like to put the matter in my hands? First, of course, I must have the emeralds valued—then I can see what offers we get, and you can decide which, if any, you care to accept. Not but what I think you are quite wrong, mind you!”
“I shall be enormously obliged to you,” the clergyman said haltingly. “But do you know anything of selling jewellery yourself, Luke?”
Mr. Bechcombe smiled. “A man in my position and profession has to know a bit of everything. As a matter of fact I have a job of this kind on hand just now, and I might work the two together. I will do my best if you like to entrust me with the emeralds.”
The clergyman rose.
“You are very good, Luke. All my life long you have been the one to help me out of any difficulty. Here are the emeralds,” fumbling in his breast pocket. “I brought them with me in case of any emergency such as this that has arisen.”
“You surely don’t mean that you have put them in your pocket?” exclaimed the solicitor.
Mr. Collyer looked surprised.
“They are quite safe. See, I button my coat when I am outside. No one could possibly take them from me.”
Mr. Bechcombe coughed.
“Oh, James, nothing will ever alter you! Don’t you know that there have been as many jewels stolen in the past year in London as in twenty years previously? People say there is a regular gang at work—they call it the Yellow Gang, and the head of it goes by the name of the Yellow Dog. If it had been known you were carrying the emeralds in that careless fashion they would never have got here. However, all’s well that ends well. You had better leave them in my safe.”
The rector brought an ancient leather case out of his pocket.
Mr. Bechcombe held his hand out for the case.
“Here it is.”
“So this is the Collyer cross! I haven’t seen it for years.” He was opening the case as he spoke. Inside the cross lay on its satin bed, gleaming with baleful, green fire. As Mr. Bechcombe looked at it his expression changed. “Where have you kept the cross, James?”
The rector blinked.
“In the secret drawer in my writing-table. Why do you ask?”
Mr. Bechcombe groaned.
“A secret drawer that is no secret at all, since all the household, not to say the parish, knows it. As for why I asked, I know enough about precious stones to see”—he raised the cross and peered at it in a ray of sunlight that slanted in through the dust-dimmed window—“to fear that these so-called emeralds are only paste.”
“What!” The rector stared at him. “The Collyer emeralds—paste! Why, they have been admired by experts!”
“No. Not the Collyer emeralds,” Mr. Bechcombe contradicted. “The Collyer emeralds were magnificent gems. This worthless paste has been substituted.”
“Impossible! Who would do such a thing?” Mr. Collyer asked.
“Ah! That,” said Luke Bechcombe grimly, “we have got to find out.”
CHAPTER II
The settlement of the Confraternity of St. Philip was situated in one of the most unsavoury districts in South London. It faced the river, but between it and the water lay a dreary waste of debatable land, strewn with the wreckage and rubbish thrown out by the small boat-building firms that existed on either side.
Originally the Settlement had been two or three tenement houses that had remained as a relic of the days when some better class folk had lived there to be near the river, then one of London’s great highways. At the back the Settlement had annexed a big barnlike building formerly used as a storehouse. It made a capital room for the meetings that Aubrey Todmarsh and his assistants were continually organizing. In the matter of cleanliness, even externally, the Settlement set an example to the neighbourhood. No dingy paint or glass there. The windows literally shone, the front was washed over as soon as there was the faintest suspicion of grime by some of Todmarsh’s numerous protégés. The door plate, inscribed “South London Settlement of the Confraternity of St. Philip,” was as bright as polish and willing hands could make it.
The Rev. James Collyer looked at it approvingly as he stood on the doorstep.
“Just the sort of work I should have loved when I was young,” he soliloquized as he rang the door bell.
It was answered at once by a man who wore the dark blue serge short coat and plus fours with blue bone buttons, which was the uniform of the Confraternity. In addition he had on the white overall which was de rigueur for those members of the Community who did the housework. This was generally understood to be undertaken by all the members in turn.
But Mr. Collyer did not feel much impressed with this particular member. He was a rather short man with coal-black hair contrasting oddly with his unhealthily white face, deep-set dark eyes that seemed to look away from the rector and yet to give him a quick, furtive glance every now and then from beneath his lowered lids. He was clean-shaven, showing an abnormally large chin, and he had a curious habit of opening and shutting his mouth silently in fish-like fashion.
“Mr. Todmarsh?” the rector inquired.
The man held the door wider open and stood aside. Interpreting this as an invitation to enter, Mr. Collyer walked in. The man closed the door and with a silent gesture invited the clergyman to follow him.
The Community House of St. Philip was just as conspicuously clean inside as out. Mr. Collyer had time to note that the stone floor of the hall had just been cleaned, that the scanty furniture, consisting of a big oak chest under the window and a couple of Windsor chairs at the ends, was as clean as furniture polish and elbow-grease could make them. His guide opened a door at the side and motioned him in.
A man who was writing at the long centre table got up quickly to meet him and came forward with outstretched hands.
“My dear uncle, this is a pleasure!”
“One to which I have long been looking forward,” Mr. Collyer responded warmly. “My dear Aubrey, the reports I have heard of the Settlement have been in no way exaggerated. And so far as I can see this is an ideal Community house.”
Todmarsh held his uncle’s hand for a minute in his firm clasp, looking the elder man squarely in the eyes the while.
“There is nothing ideal about us, Uncle James. We are just a handful of very ordinary men, all trying to make our own bit of the world brighter and happier. It sounds very simple, but it isn’t always easy to do things. Sometimes life is nothing but disappointments. But I know you realize just how it feels when one spends everything in striving to cleanse one’s own bit of this great Augean mass that is called London—and fails.”
His voice dropped as he spoke, and the bright look of enthusiasm faded from his face, leaving it prematurely old and tired. For it was above all things his enthusiasm, a sort of exalted look as of one who dreamed dreams and saw visions not vouchsafed to ordinary men, that made Aubrey Todmarsh’s face attractive. Momentarily stripped of its bright expression it was merely a thin rather overjowled face, with deep-set, dark eyes, noticeably low forehead, and thick dark hair brushed sleekly backwards, hair that was worn rather longer than most men’s.
The clergyman looked at him pityingly.
“Oh, my dear Aubrey, this is only nerves, a very natural depression. We parsons know it only too well. It is especially liable to recur when we are beginning work. Later one learns that all one can do is to sow in faith, and then be content to wait the issue in patience, leaving everything to Him whose gracious powers can alone give the increase.” Todmarsh did not speak for a moment, then he drew a long breath and, laying his hand on the rector’s shoulder, looked at him with the bright smile with which his friends were familiar.
“You always give me comfort, Uncle James. Somehow you always know just what to say to heal when one has been stricken sorely. That idea of sowing and waiting—somehow one gets hold of that.”
“It isn’t original, dear Aubrey,” his uncle said modestly. “But for all Christian work I have found it most helpful. But you, my dear Aubrey, the founder of this—er—splendid effort—might rather have cause for—er—spiritual exaltation than depression.”
“There is cause enough for depression sometimes, I assure you,” Aubrey returned gloomily. “Much of our work is done among the discharged prisoners, you know, Uncle James. Different members of our Community look after those bound over under the First Offenders’ Act, and those undergoing terms of imprisonment. With those who have had longer sentences and the habitual offenders I try to deal as much as possible myself with the valuable help of my second-in-command.”
“I know. I have heard how you attend at police courts and meet the prisoners when they come out. I can hardly imagine a more saintly work or one more certain to carry with it a blessing.”
“It doesn’t seem to,” Todmarsh said, his face clouding over again. “There is this man, Michael Farmore, the case I was speaking of. He was convicted of burglary and served his five years. We got hold of him when he came out and brought him here. In time he became one of our most trusted members. If ever there was a case of genuine conversion I believed his to be one. Yet—”
“Yes?” Mr. Collyer prompted as he paused.
“Yet last night he was arrested attempting to break into General Craven’s house in Mortimer Square.”
Todmarsh blew his nose vigorously. His voice was distinctly shaky as he broke off. His uncle glanced at him sympathetically.
“You must not take it too much to heart, my dear Aubrey. Think of your many successes, and even in this case that seems so terrible I feel sure that your labour has not really been wasted. You have cast your bread upon the waters, and you will assuredly find it again. You are fighting against the forces of the arch-enemy, remember.”
“We are fighting against a gang of criminals,” Aubrey said shortly. “We hear of them every now and then in our work. The Yellow Gang they call them in the underworld—they form regular organizations of their own, working on a system, and appear to carry out the orders of one man. Sometimes I think he is the arch-fiend himself, for it seems impossible to circumvent him.”
“But who is he?” the rector inquired innocently.
Aubrey Todmarsh permitted himself a slight smile.
“If we knew that, my dear uncle, it wouldn’t be long before this wave of crime that is sweeping over the Metropolis was checked. But I have heard that even the rank and file of his own followers do not know who he is, though he is spoken of sometimes as the Yellow Dog. Anyway, he has a genius for organization. But now we must think of something more cheerful, Uncle James. I want you to see our refectory and the recreation rooms, and our little rooms, cells, kitchens. Through here”—throwing open a glass door—“we go to our playground as you see.”
Mr. Collyer peered forth. In front of him was a wide, open space, partly grass, partly concrete. On the grass a game of cricket was proceeding, the players being youths apparently all under twenty. On the concrete older men were having a game at racquets. All round the open space at the foot of the high wall that surrounded the Community grounds there ran a flower border, just now gay with crocuses and great clumps of arabis—white and purple and gold. The walls themselves were covered with creepers that later on would blossom into sweetness. Here and there men were at work. It was a pleasant and a peaceful scene and the Rev. James Collyer’s eyes rested on it approvingly.
