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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Krimi
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Dark Eyes of London," Edgar Wallace crafts a riveting tale that intertwines elements of suspense, mystery, and crime, reflecting the complexities of early 20th-century London. The novel is distinguished by Wallace's masterful use of atmospheric prose and intricate plotting, as it delves into themes of identity and morality. The narrative follows a series of enigmatic murders linked to a sinister figure known as the 'Dying Detective,' drawing readers into a maze of deception and intrigue that captures the pulsating energy of urban life during the interwar period. Edgar Wallace, a prolific writer and journalist, was deeply immersed in the world of crime fiction and journalism, which undoubtedly influenced the gripping content of this novel. His firsthand experiences with the British legal system and the dark underbelly of society provide a rich backdrop against which his characters navigate perilous situations. Wallace's ability to weave real-life elements into his fictional works reveals an author dedicated to exploring the human condition amid chaos and uncertainty. "The Dark Eyes of London" is a must-read for enthusiasts of classic crime fiction and suspense. Wallace's engaging narrative style and complex characters invite readers to unravel the layers of mystery alongside the protagonists, ensuring a captivating experience. This novel not only entertains but also offers a thought-provoking exploration of the darker facets of humanity, making it a timeless addition to the literary canon. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Dark Eyes of London
Table of Contents
Introduction
Behind London's polished facades, where commerce and civility exchange courteous smiles, Edgar Wallace charts how the relentless arithmetic of greed erodes conscience, distorts what people see and fail to see, and turns human lives into figures quietly adjusted in ledgers that are balanced, not in daylight, but in the obscurity where power prefers to work, a world in which appearances reassure the respectable while the city's shadows provide cover for those who profit from confusion, indifference, and fear, and in which the difference between witness and victim can be only a matter of who dares to look closely.
Edgar Wallace, a prolific British writer of the early twentieth century, built his reputation on swift, intricately plotted crime fiction, and The Dark Eyes of London stands among his urban thrillers. First published in the 1920s, the novel unfolds in interwar London, a city of teeming streets, dockside gloom, and professional offices where respectability and risk meet. It belongs to the nexus of detective story and thriller: a case-driven narrative propelled by gathering menace. Without relying on the locked-room puzzle, Wallace instead draws energy from the city's breadth and the pressure of time, situating readers inside an investigation that feels urgent and plausible.
In its opening movement, the book frames a string of suspicious deaths that at first seem unrelated, connected only by hints of financial pressure and the quiet disappearance of inconvenient people. The police open an inquiry, tracing the trail from shabby rooms to well-lit premises where business is conducted with impeccable manners. As patterns emerge, the narrative leads into a network that thrives on what others overlook. The experience for readers is that of a brisk pursuit: swift transitions, mounting stakes, and a persistent atmosphere of unease that promises danger without revealing its full design until the proper moment.
Wallace's voice here is economical and propulsive, favoring short, vivid scenes that end just as the tension tightens, a rhythm that keeps the plot in forward motion. He varies perspective to widen the field of vision, letting official inquiry, street knowledge, and private anxiety intersect. Dialogue is practical and pointed, steering attention to motive and method rather than ornament. Description anchors action in concrete spaces—offices, streets, stairwells—so that the reader's mental map sharpens as the case advances. The cumulative effect is procedural clarity infused with the frisson of the sensational, a combination that made Wallace a mainstay of popular crime fiction.
The title invites a meditation on sight: who watches, who is watched, and what remains invisible because it is hidden in plain view. Wallace dwells on the instability of appearances, especially where money, respectability, and public service intersect, suggesting how institutions can acquire a glow that discourages scrutiny. In this London, knowledge is power, and power chooses what may be known. The novel probes the cost of looking away, the ease with which desperation can be exploited, and the way fear narrows perspective. These concerns gather into a moral question: how to keep one's vision clear when incentives favor blindness.
Modern readers may find the novel's anxieties unexpectedly current. The story's preoccupation with financial instruments, bureaucratic procedures, and the promise of security speaks to ongoing debates about trust, accountability, and the ethics of care in complex systems. Its portrait of urban anonymity—crowds that conceal, paperwork that legitimizes, reputations that shield—echoes contemporary concerns about predatory schemes and institutional failures. Without preaching, the book asks what protections society owes to its most vulnerable members, and what complicity grows when efficiency outruns empathy. In that sense, its thrills carry an afterimage that lingers: a reminder to test the evidence of our own eyes.
Approached as a classic of British crime fiction, The Dark Eyes of London offers a compact, atmospheric journey through interwar London's moral twilight, delivered with the speed and control that characterized Wallace's craft. Readers can expect a clean through-line of investigation, decisive turns, and revelations paced to satisfy without undue elaboration. It stands at a crossroads between the Victorian sensation tale and the modern procedural, distilling each into a narrative built for momentum. For those new to Wallace, it is an accessible entry point; for seasoned fans, it is a reminder of how deftly he made menace feel close to home.
Synopsis
The novel opens in a fogbound London where the Thames gives up a troubling number of drowned bodies. Each death looks accidental, yet small anomalies persist, and a pattern begins to unsettle the authorities. A methodical Scotland Yard inspector takes charge, drawn by the regularity of the incidents and the discreet efficiency with which the victims vanish into the river. Reports from river police, coroners, and beat constables converge, suggesting more than chance at work. The city’s shadows, crowded with the dispossessed and the unseen, provide ample cover as the investigation starts to sift rumor from fact and coincidence from design.
Early inquiries into the dead men’s identities reveal that many carried insurance policies purchased recently and under circumstances that seem hurried or guided. The same office or intermediary appears in paperwork that should have been routine. The victims tend to be isolated, with few friends to notice their absence, and in several cases a tenuous link surfaces to establishments serving the blind. The phrase dark eyes acquires a double resonance, pointing both to literal sightlessness and to the obscurity cloaking the crimes. The inspector maps these threads and seeks testimony from clerks, lodgers, and dockside workers who sensed unease but stayed silent.
Attention narrows to a respected charitable home for the destitute blind, a place lauded in society columns for its benevolent mission. Its director moves easily among donors and officials, and a related insurance brokerage handles policies for clients who might be considered risky. The inspector pays a formal visit, encountering orderly corridors, careful records, and residents whose stories are rehearsed or timid. Among them looms a formidable figure, a blind man of great strength whose presence unsettles staff and visitors alike. Nothing overtly criminal is found, yet the juxtaposition of philanthropy and profit, and the proximity to the river, raise persistent doubts.
A living thread enters the case in the form of a young woman newly connected to a sizable insurance benefit. Her circumstances, poised between inheritance and vulnerability, echo details in prior deaths. Anonymous letters, misdirected calls, and a sudden change in her employment draw the investigator’s concern, and he assigns discreet protection. A streetwise constable provides watchful support, while a sympathetic friend offers shelter. Unfamiliar faces begin to shadow her movements, and an attempt at intimidation fails only because of timely intervention. By safeguarding her, the inspector gains leverage, treating her as both potential target and key to the scheme’s recruitment methods.
Forensic and financial strands tighten in tandem. A pathologist notes bruising consistent with restraint rather than accident, while waterlogged fibers and unusual knots suggest practiced technique. Ledger audits reveal policies altered shortly before the victims vanished, beneficiaries redirected, and premiums paid by third parties. A drowned clerk with access to client files surfaces as a possible intermediary. Warehouse inventories near the docks list items that could serve the killers’ purposes without arousing comment. Each discovery remains circumstantial, but together they form a lattice pointing back to the charity’s orbit, where compassion, commerce, and secrecy coexist with an efficiency that resists casual scrutiny.
To break the stalemate, the inspector undertakes covert measures. A reliable informant seeks lodging among those dependent on the charity, listening for whispers about a leader who commands fear in the dark. Night patrols track a hulking silhouette guiding strangers along perilous riverside paths. A potential witness disappears after expressing willingness to talk, and a forged message lures the protected woman into a quiet street before help arrives. Under pressure, an administrative assistant admits to irregular instructions received from above but refuses to name the source. The investigation now frames the conspiracy as organized, disciplined, and shielded by respectable public reputation.
Publicly, the charity’s figureheads denounce the crimes and lament the unsafe city, sponsoring meetings that praise vigilance. Privately, the inspector’s interviews reveal evasions and inconsistencies in schedules, signatures, and deliveries to the riverside. A frightened resident, certain he will not be believed, describes a basement space where water and darkness meet. Coordinated searches recover weighted ropes, tarpaulins, and equipment whose lawful uses are unconvincing. The inspector reconstructs the process by which victims are selected, isolated, insured, and dispatched. An internal leak complicates the effort, briefly setting the police at cross purposes and reinforcing the conspirators’ confidence in their protective camouflage.
Events accelerate when the protected woman vanishes and a cryptic note points toward the river at an hour when the tides run hard. The inspector follows a trail through shuttered wharves and into a labyrinth beneath the charitable facade, where floods and machinery muffle cries. In the darkness, a powerful blind attendant becomes the visible instrument of menace, while the concealed director orchestrates movement with practiced calm. A struggle breaks lines of command, and a careless instruction exposes knowledge only the architect could possess. The confrontation ends with rapid intervention, sudden illumination, and the unmasking of the control at the center of the murderous enterprise.
In the aftermath, the ring is dismantled, victims are named, and official reports recommend stricter oversight of charitable institutions and insurance practices. The surviving witnesses receive protection, and the rescued beneficiary begins to reclaim ordinary life. The inspector notes how appearances facilitated concealment, and how loneliness made people vulnerable to exploitation. The narrative closes on a sober recognition that benevolence can be used as a screen, while also affirming that persistent, coordinated inquiry can pierce such disguises. The central message emphasizes vigilance, empathy for the isolated, and the importance of scrutinizing systems that operate unchallenged in the shadows of a great city.
Historical Context
Edgar Wallace situates The Dark Eyes of London in the metropolis of the early 1920s, a city still reeling from the First World War. London’s geography—respectable insurance houses in the City, the fog-laden Thames with its docks, and the impoverished East End—structures a plot that moves between finance, charity, and the underworld. New Scotland Yard on the Victoria Embankment symbolizes the modernization of policing, while telephones, motorcars, and electric lighting coexist with shadowed alleys and lodging houses. The social climate of inflation, the 1921 slump, and rising unemployment sharpen anxieties about respectability masking crime, a tension the novel exploits through white-collar villainy and clandestine violence.
The most immediate historical backdrop is the post-1914–1918 settlement for disabled veterans, especially the blind. Britain lost roughly 750,000 dead and saw more than 1.6 million wounded; among them, approximately 3,000–3,500 servicemen were blinded. The War Pensions Act 1915 established support, and St Dunstan’s (founded 1915 by Sir Arthur Pearson) pioneered rehabilitation and employment for blinded soldiers. The Blind Persons Act 1920 mandated local authority registers and enabled pensions from age fifty, folding blind welfare into public responsibility. Yet provision remained uneven, with charities—some reputable, some dubious—filling gaps. The 1921 Census recorded on the order of 50,000 blind people in England and Wales, a population disproportionately poor and at risk of institutionalization under residual Poor Law practices that persisted until the Local Government Act 1929 abolished Boards of Guardians. Oversight of philanthropic institutions was patchy; the Charity Commission existed, but investigative powers and routine inspection were limited, and newspaper exposés periodically revealed abuse or fundraising frauds. Industrial life insurers simultaneously expanded door-to-door sales among working-class and disabled households, offering small policies to cover funerals or lost earnings. This environment—of vulnerable people corralled into underfunded homes and of opaque financial instruments circulating through the poorest districts—forms the novel’s moral terrain. Wallace’s plot, centered on a “home for blind men” manipulated for lethal insurance schemes, mirrors contemporary fears that benevolent façades could conceal exploitation. The narrative’s use of blindness as a social marker resonates with public debates of 1919–1924 about whether the disabled should be treated as charitable objects or as citizens with enforceable rights. By setting murder-for-profit within a philanthropic setting, the book dramatizes the disjunction between public sympathy and private predation that defined Britain’s improvised postwar welfare.
The interwar insurance boom supplied both opportunity and anxiety. Industrial life offices such as the Prudential, Pearl, and Liverpool Victoria sold millions of penny-a-week policies, while Lloyd’s of London underwrote complex risks from its City market. Regulation tightened via the Assurance Companies Act 1909 and the Life Assurance Companies Act 1923, which sought clearer accounts and solvency standards after periodic scandals. Public fears of homicide for profit were stoked by notorious cases, notably George Joseph Smith’s “Brides in the Bath” murders (convicted 1915), which showcased forensic detection of staged accidents. The Dark Eyes of London channels these concerns through an antagonist who weaponizes insurance contracts, embodying distrust of respectable offices and actuarial opacity.
Modern policing and forensic science were undergoing consolidation. Scotland Yard’s Fingerprint Bureau, established in 1901, and the development of ballistics and toxicology under figures like Sir Bernard Spilsbury professionalized detection. The 1919 Police Act, following police strikes in 1918–1919, created the Police Federation and reasserted discipline, while the Flying Squad (1919) targeted mobile, organized crime. Under Commissioner Sir William Horwood (1920–1928), the Metropolitan Police emphasized methodical investigation and interdepartmental coordination. In Wallace’s novel, the Yard’s detectives embody this shift toward scientific, bureaucratic policing, marshaling fingerprints, files, and coordinated raids—techniques that promised rational order against conspiracies incubated in charity offices and riverside warrens.
The East End’s entrenched poverty and interwar unemployment framed crime and philanthropy alike. The 1921 slump drove joblessness above two million, and overcrowding remained severe in districts like Stepney and Poplar. The Poplar Rates Rebellion (1921), led by Mayor George Lansbury, dramatized inequities in local taxation and poor relief, while the 1926 General Strike exposed class conflict and fragile urban provisioning. Docklands casual labor, cheap lodging houses, and informal economies sustained both survival and exploitation. Wallace’s London—of grim hostels, warehouses, and charitable depots—draws directly on these realities. The novel’s predators use the very spaces built to manage destitution as cover, indicting an urban order where need and opportunity for abuse intersect.
Interwar Britain also registered acute anxieties about immigration and “alien” criminality. The Aliens Act 1905, the wartime Aliens Restriction Act 1914, and the Aliens Order 1919 tightened entry, residence, and reporting requirements, while press rhetoric imagined continental gangs infiltrating London. Displaced persons after 1918, and rumors of foreign conspirators, fed a politics of surveillance at ports and in dockside neighborhoods. The Dark Eyes of London trades cautiously on these tensions through its figure of the seemingly cosmopolitan professional whose foreign inflections and networks unsettle British respectability. The book mirrors the era’s suspicion that international mobility and expertise could cloak white-collar predation in a metropolis built on global flows.
Public health crises and mortality practices shaped attitudes to suspicious death. The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic killed roughly 228,000 people in the United Kingdom, increasing scrutiny of death certification, coroners’ inquests, and insurance payouts. London’s coal-smoke fogs, hazardous docks, and the Thames—long a site of drownings—complicated determinations of accident versus foul play. Industrial insurers monitored “moral hazard,” while coroners and forensic pathologists refined standards for detecting staged accidents or poisonings. Wallace’s narrative leverages this climate: plausibly accidental deaths, waterborne bodies, and the bureaucratic choreography of inquests become instruments in an insurance-murder apparatus, reflecting a public attuned to how statistics, certificates, and expert testimony could be manipulated.
As social and political critique, the book exposes the precariousness of Britain’s postwar settlement: underregulated charities housing the vulnerable, an insurance market profiting from fear, and a city whose class geography enables impunity behind respectable doors. It indicts paternalistic philanthropy that substitutes sentiment for enforceable safeguards, revealing how blind and disabled people could be commodified within legal gray zones despite the Blind Persons Act 1920. By staging white-collar crime against the poor and disabled, it condemns the asymmetry between polished professionals and those rendered voiceless. While affirming modern policing’s promise, the novel ultimately presses for oversight, transparency, and social responsibility in institutions that claimed to protect.
The Dark Eyes of London
CHAPTER ILARRY HOLT IN PARIS
LARRY HOLT sat before the Café de la Paix[1], watching the stream of life flow east and west along the Boulevard des Italiens. The breath of spring was in the air; the trees were bursting into buds of vivid green; the cloud-flecked skies were blue; and a flood of golden sunshine brought out the colours of the kiosks, and gave an artistic value even to the flaring advertisements. Crowded motor-buses rumbled by, little taxis dashed wildly in and out of the traffic, to the mortal peril of unsuspecting pedestrians.
A gendarme, with cloak over his shoulder, stood in a conventional attitude on the kerb, his hand behind him, staring at nothing, and along the sidewalk there were hurrying bareheaded girls, slow-moving old men, and marching poilus. Itinerant vendors of wares loafed past the tables of the café, dusky-faced Arabs with their carpets on their arms, seedy-looking men who hawked bundles of picture post cards and would produce, at the slightest encouragement, cards which were not for the public gaze. All these things and people were a delight to Larry Holt, who had just returned from Berlin after four years’ strenuous work in France and Germany, and felt in that holiday spirit to which even the mind of a detective will ascend.
The position occupied by Larry Holt was something of a mystery to the officials of Scotland Yard. His rank was Inspector, his work was the administrative work of a Commissioner; and it was generally understood that he was in the line for the first vacant assistant commissionership that came along. The question of his rank, of his prospects, did not trouble Larry at that particular moment. He sat there, absorbing the sweetness of spring with every breath he drew. His good-looking face was lit up with the sheer joy of living, and there was in his heart a relief, a sense of rest, which he had not experienced for many a long day.
He revealed himself a fairly tall man when he rose, after paying the waiter, and strolled round the corner to his hotel. It was a slow progress he made, his hands in his pockets, his soft felt hat at the back of his head, a half-smile on his parted lips as he gripped a long black cigarette holder between his white teeth.
He came into the busy vestibule of the hotel, the one spot in Paris where people hustle and rush, where bell-boys really run, and even the phlegmatic Briton seems in a frantic hurry, and he was walking towards the elevator, when, through the glass door leading to the palm court, he saw a man in an attitude of elegant repose, leaning back in a big chair and puffing at a cigar.
Larry grinned and hesitated. He knew this lean-faced man, so radiantly attired, his fingers and cravat flashing with diamonds, and in a spirit of mischief he passed through the swing doors and came up to the lounger.
“If it isn’t my dear old friend Fred!” he said softly.
Flash Fred, Continental crook and gambler, leapt to his feet with a look of alarm at the sight of this unexpected visitation.
“Hullo, Mr. Holt!” he stammered. “You’re the last person in the world I expected to see——”
“Or wanted to see,” said Larry, shaking his head reproachfully. “What prosperity! Why, Fred, you’re all dressed up like a Christmas tree.”
Flash Fred grinned uncomfortably, but made a brave show of indifference.
“I’m going straight now, Mr. Holt,” he said.
“Liar you are, and liar you will always be,” said Larry without heat.
“I swear to you on the Book——” began Fred vigorously.
“If,” said Larry without resentment, “you stood between your dead aunt and your failing uncle, and took an oath on Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, I wouldn’t believe you.”
He gazed admiringly at Fred’s many adornments, at the big pin in his tie, at the triple chain of gold across his neatly tailored waistcoat, at his white spats and patent shoes, and then brought his eyes back to the perfectly brushed hair.
“You look sweet,” he said. “What is the game? Not,” he added, “that I expect you to tell me, but it must be a pretty prosperous game, Fred.”
The man licked his dry lips.
“I’m in business,” he said.
“Whose business are you in now?” asked Larry, interested. “And how did you get in? With a jemmy or a stick of dynamite? That’s a new line for you, Fred. As a rule, you confine yourself strictly to picking crumbs of gold off the unwary youth of the land—and,” he added significantly, “in picking the pockets of the recently deceased.”
The man’s face went red.
“You don’t think I had anything to do with that murder in Montpellier?” he protested heatedly.
“I don’t think you shot the unfortunate young man,” admitted Larry, “but you were certainly seen bending over his body and searching his clothes.”
“For identification,” said Fred virtuously. “I wanted to find out who did it.”
“You were also seen talking to the man who did it,” said Larry remorsefully. “An old lady, a Madame Prideaux, looking out of her bedroom window, saw you holding him and then saw you let him go. I presume he ‘dropped.’ ”
Fred said nothing at first. He hated a pretended gentleman who descended to the vulgarity of employing the word “drop” for “bribe.”
“That’s two years ago, Mr. Holt,” he said. “I don’t see why you should rake that thing up against me. The examining magistrate gave me a clean bill.”
Larry laughed and dropped his hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Anyway, I’m off duty now, Fred. I’m going away to enjoy myself.”
“You ain’t coming to London, I suppose?” asked the man, looking at him quickly.
“No,” said Larry, and thought he saw signs of relief.
“I’m going over to-day,” said Fred, in a conversational tone. “I was hoping we’d be fellow-passengers.”
“I’m grieved to shatter your hopes,” said Larry, “but I’m going in the other direction. So long.”
“Good luck!” said Fred, and looked after him with a face which did not indicate any desire for Larry Holt’s fortune.
Larry went up to his room and found his man brushing his clothes and laying them out on his bed. Patrick Sunny, the valet he had endured for two years, was a serious young man with staring eyes and a round face, and he grew suddenly energetic on Larry’s appearance. He brushed and he hissed, for he had been in a cavalry regiment.
Larry strolled to the window and looked down on the Place de l’Opéra at the busy scene.
“Sunny,” he said, “you needn’t brush those dress things of mine. Pack ’em.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sunny.
“I’m going to Monte Carlo by the night train.”
“Indeed, sir?” said Sunny, who would have said exactly the same if Larry had expressed his intention of going to the Sahara or the North Pole.
“To Monte Carlo, Sunny!” chortled Larry. “For six bright, happy, expensive weeks—start packing at once.”
He picked up the telephone from the writing-table and called the Travel Bureau.
“I want a sleeper and a first-class reservation for Monte Carlo by to-night’s train,” he said. “Monte Carlo,” he repeated louder. “No, not Calais. I have not the slightest intention of going to Calais—thanks.” He hung up the receiver and stood looking at his servitor. “I hate talking to you, Sunny,” he said, “but I must talk to somebody, and I hate your name. Who gave you that horrible name?”
“My forefathers,” said Sunny primly, continuing his brushing without looking up.
“They rather missed the ’bus, didn’t they?” asked Larry. “For if there is anything less like a bright spring day than you, I should like to avoid it. But we’re southward bound, Sunny, to this Côte d’Azur, to the land of flowers and folly, to the orange-groves—do you like oranges, Sunny?”
“I prefer walnuts, sir,” said Sunny, “but fruit of any kind means nothing to me.”
Larry chuckled and sat on the edge of the bed.
“We’re going to be criminals and take people’s money from them,” he said, “instead of nosing about the criminal practices of others. No more robberies, defalcations, forgeries and murders, Sunny. Six weeks of dolce far niente.”
“I don’t play that game myself, sir,” said Sunny. “I prefer cribbage.”
Larry picked up the afternoon paper and had turned its columns. There were quite a few items of news to remind him of his profession and its calls. There was a big bank robbery at Lyons, a mail coach had been held up in Belgium by armed robbers; and then he came to a paragraph.
“The body of a man picked up on the steps leading down from the Thames Embankment has been identified as Mr. Gordon Stuart, a rich Canadian. It is believed to be a case of suicide. Mr. Stuart had been spending the evening with some friends at the theatre, and disappeared between the acts, and was not seen again until his body was discovered. A coroner’s inquest will be held in due course.”
He read the paragraph twice, and frowned.
“A man doesn’t usually go out between the acts of a play and commit suicide—unless the play is very bad,” he said, and the obedient Sunny said, “No, sir.”
He threw the newspaper down.
“Sunny, I’m getting into bad habits. I’m taking an interest in lunacy, and for that same reason I notice that you’ve folded my trousers so that the crease comes down the side. Unfold ’em, you lazy devil!”
He spent the afternoon making preparations for his journey, and at half-past six, with his trunks in the hands of the porters and Sunny carrying his overcoat, he was settling his bill at the cashier’s desk, had folded up the receipt and was putting it in his pocket when a bell-boy came to him.
“Monsieur Holt?” he asked.
“That’s my name,” said Larry, and looked suspiciously at the thing in the boy’s hand. “A telegram?” he said. “I don’t want to see it.”
Nevertheless, he took it in his hand and opened the blue paper with a disapproving grimace and read:
“Very urgent, on special police service. Clear the line. Larry Holt, Grand Hotel, Paris.
“Very worried about Stuart drowning stop case presents unusual features stop would be personally grateful if you would come over at once and conduct investigation.”
It was signed by the Chief Commissioner, who was not only his superior but his personal friend, and Larry put the telegram in his pocket with a groan.
“What time do we arrive in Monte Carlo, sir?” asked Sunny when he joined him.
“About this day twelvemonth,” said Larry.
“Indeed, sir?” said Sunny, politely interested. “It must be a very long way.”
CHAPTER IISIR JOHN HASON
FLASH FRED, whose other name was Grogan, had a genuine grievance; for, after he had been solemnly assured by a reputable officer of the law that he intended going to Monte Carlo, he had found him on the Paris boat train, and though he carefully avoided him he knew that Larry was well aware that they were fellow-passengers.
At Victoria Fred made a rapid exit from the station, not being perfectly satisfied in his mind that Larry’s business in London was altogether unconnected with Fred’s own activities. Larry saw the disappearing back of the crook, and smiled for the first time since he had left Paris.
“Take my things to the flat,” he said to Sunny. “I’m going to Scotland Yard[2]. I may be home to-night, I may not be home until to-morrow night.”
“Shall I put out your dress things?” said Sunny. All that concerned him was the gentlemanly appearance of his employer. To Sunny the day was divided into three parts—tweed, broadcloth and pyjamas.
“No—yes—anything you like,” said his master.
“Yes, sir,” responded the obliging Sunny.
Larry drove straight to the Yard, and had some difficulty in making an entry, because he was unknown to the local officials; but presently he was ushered into the big room where Sir John Hason rose from his desk and came across to meet him with outstretched hand.
“My dear Larry,” he said, “it is awfully good of you to forgo your holiday. You are a brick! Of course I knew you would come, and I’ve given you room forty-seven and the smartest secretary I have seen in Scotland Yard for many a day.”
They were old friends and old school-mates, John Hason and Larry Holt, and between the two men there was an affection and a confidence which is rarely found between men in the same profession.
“I don’t know forty-seven,” said Larry, taking off his overcoat with a smile, “but I’ll be happy to know the smartest secretary in Scotland Yard. What’s his name?”
“It isn’t a he, it’s a she,” smiled Hason. “Miss Diana Ward, who’s been with me for about six months and is really the smartest and most reliable girl I’ve ever had working with me.”
“Oh, a female secretary!” said Larry gloomily, then brightened. “What you say goes, John; and even this paragon of virtue doesn’t worry me. I suppose she’s got a voice like a file and chews gum?”
“She is rather unprepossessing, but looks aren’t everything,” said Sir John dryly. “Now sit down, old man; I want to talk to you. It is about this Stuart case,” he began, offering his cigarette box to the other. “We only discovered yesterday that Stuart was a very rich man. He has been living in this country for nine months at a boarding-house in Nottingham Place, Marylebone. He was a mysterious individual, who went nowhere, had very few friends, and was extraordinarily reticent. It was known, of course, that he had money, and his bankers in London, who revealed his identity when they discovered he was dead, were in his secret; that is to say, his secret so far as his identity is concerned.”
“When you say he went nowhere, what do you mean? Did he stay in the boarding-house all the time?”
“I’m coming to that,” said Sir John. “He did go somewhere, but why, nobody knows. Every afternoon it was his practice to take a motor drive, and invariably he went to the same place—to a little village in Kent, about twenty-five miles out. He left the motor-car at one end of the village, walked through the place, and was gone for a couple of hours. We have made inquiries and we have discovered this, that he spent quite a lot of time in the church, an old Saxon edifice the foundations of which were laid a thousand years ago. Regularly as the clock he’d return after two hours’ absence, get into the car, which was hired, and be driven back to Nottingham Place.”
“What was the name of the village?”
“Beverley Manor,” said the Chief Commissioner. “Well, to resume. On Wednesday night, departing from his usual practice, he accepted the invitation of a Dr. Stephen Judd to go to the first night of a new show at the Macready Theatre. Dr. Stephen Judd is the managing director of the Greenwich Insurance Company, a small affair and quite a family concern, but having a pretty good name in the City. Mr. Judd is a genial person who dabbles in art and has a very beautiful house at Chelsea. Judd had a box for the first night of the show—which is a perfectly rotten one, judging by the newspaper notices—Box A. Stuart came, and, according to Judd, was very restless. In the interval between the second and third acts he slipped out of the theatre, unobserved, and did not come back, and was not seen again until we found his body on the Thames Embankment.”
“What sort of a night was it?” asked Larry.
“Bright in the early part, but rather misty and inclined to be foggy later,” said Sir John. “In fact, the constable who was patrolling that particular beat where the body was found reported that it was very thick between half-past three and half-past four.”
Larry nodded. “Is there any possibility of his having mistaken his way in the fog and fallen into the water?” he asked.
“None whatever,” replied Sir John emphatically. “Between the hour he disappeared and half-past two in the morning the Embankment was entirely clear of fog, and he was not seen. It was a very bright night until that hour.”
“And here is another curious circumstance,” the Commissioner went on. “When he was discovered, he was lying on the steps with his legs in the water, his body being clear—and,” he added slowly, “the tide was still rising.”
Larry looked at him in astonishment.
“Do you mean to say that he hadn’t been deposited there by the falling tide?” he asked incredulously. “How could he be there, with his legs in the water, when the tide was low, as it must have been, when he came upon the steps?”
“That is my contention,” nodded Sir John. “Unless he was drowned immediately he left the theatre when the tide was high and was falling, it seems almost impossible that he could have been left on the steps at daybreak, when the tide was rising.”
Larry rubbed his chin.
“That’s queer,” he said. “There’s no doubt about his being drowned?”
“None whatever,” replied the Commissioner, and pulled open a drawer, lifting out a little tray on which were a number of articles. “These were the only things found in his pockets,” he said. “A watch and chain, a cigar-case, and this roll of brown paper.”
Larry took up the latter object. It was about an inch in length, and was still sodden with water.
“There is no writing on it,” said Sir John. “I opened it when it first came in, but thought it better to roll it back and leave it as it was for another inspection when it dried.”
Larry was looking at the watch, which was an ordinary gold half-hunter.
“Nothing there,” he said, snapping back the case, “except that it stopped at twenty past twelve—presumably the hour of his death.”
Sir John nodded.
“The chain is gold and platinum,” mused Larry, “and at the end is a—what?”
There was a little cylinder of gold about an inch and a half long.
“A gold pencil fitted in here,” said Larry. “Have they found the pencil?”
Sir John shook his head.
“No, that is all we discovered. Apparently Stuart was not in the habit of wearing rings. I’ll have these sent to your office. Now will you take on the case?”
“But what is the case?” asked Larry slowly. “Do you suspect foul play?”
The Commissioner was silent.
“I do and I don’t,” he said. “I merely say that here are the elements of a terrible crime. But for the fact that he has been found on the steps with the tide still rising, and it was obviously low when he died, I should have thought it was an ordinary case of drowning, and I should not have opposed a verdict of accidental death if the jury reached that conclusion.”
Larry looked at the watch again.
“It’s strange,” he said, speaking half to himself, and then: “I’ll take these things into my room, if I may.”
“I expected you would want them,” said the Commissioner. “Now will you see the body?”
Larry hesitated.
“I’ll see Doctor Judd first,” he said. “Can you give me his address?”
Sir John looked up at the clock over his mantelpiece.
“He will be at his office. He’s one of those indefatigable persons who work late. Number 17 Bloomsbury Pavement; you can’t miss the building.”
Larry gathered up the tray and moved to the door.
“Now for the unattractive secretary,” he said, and Sir John smiled.
