Four Square Jane Read online

  “Did you get the other?” said Peter.

  “There it is,” said the stout man, and pointed to a strip of cardboard bearing two black fingerprints.

  Peter compared the two impressions.

  “Well,” he said, “at any rate, one of the mysteries is cleared up. How did you get this?” he asked pointing to the strip of cardboard bearing the two prints.

  “I called on him, and shook hands with him,” said the stout man with a smile. “He was horribly surprised and offended that I should take such a liberty. Then I handed him the strip of card. It was a little while later, when he put his hand on the blotting pad, that he discovered that his palm and fingertips were black, and I think that

  he was the most astonished man I ever saw.”

  Peter smiled.

  “He didn’t guess that your hand would be carefully covered with lamp-black, I gather?”

  “Hardly,” said the fat man.

  Again Peter compared the two impressions.

  “There is no doubt at all about it,” he said.

  He looked at his watch. “Half-past twelve. Not a bad time, either. I’ll take Wilkins and Browne,” he said, “and get the thing over. It’s going to be a lot of trouble. Have you got the warrant?”

  The stout man opened the drawer of his desk and passed a sheet of paper across. Peter examined it.

  “Thank you,” he said simply.

  Lord Claythorpe was in his study taking a stiff whisky and soda when the detective was announced.

  “Well?” he said. “Have you found the person who stole the emerald necklace?”

  “No, my lord,” said Peter. “But I have found the man who shot Remington.”

  Lord Claythorpe’s face went ashen.

  “What do you mean?” he said hoarsely “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” said Peter, “that I am going to take you into custody on a charge of wilful murder, and I caution you that what you now say will be used in evidence against you.”

  9

  At three o’clock in the morning, Lord Claythorpe, an inmate of a cell at Cannon Row, sent for Peter Dawes. Peter was ushered into the

  cell, and found that Claythorpe had recovered from the crushed and hopeless man he had left: he was now calm and normal.

  “I want to see you, Dawes,” he said, “to clear up a few matters which are on my conscience.”

  “Of course, you know,” said Peter, “that any statement you make–”

  “I know, I know,” said the other impatiently. “But I have this to say.” He paced the short cell, his hands gripped behind him. Presently he sat down at Peter’s side. “In the first place,” he said, “let me tell you that I killed Donald Remington. There’s a long story leading up to that killing, but I swear I had no intention of hurting him.”

  Peter had taken a notebook from one pocket and a pencil from another, and was jotting down in his queer shorthand the story the other told. Usually such a proceeding had the effect of silencing the man whose words were being inscribed, but Claythorpe did not seem to notice.

  “When Joyce Wilberforce’s uncle left me executor of his estate, I had every intention of going straight,” he went on. “But I made bad losses in the Kaffir market, and gradually I began to nibble at her fortune. The securities, which were kept in sealed envelopes at the bank, were taken out one by one, and disposed of; blank sheets of paper were placed in the envelopes, which were resealed. And when the burglary occurred, there was only one hundred-thousand pound bond left. That bond you will find in a secret drawer of my desk. I think Remington, who was in my confidence except for this matter, suspected it all along. When I took the securities from the bank, it was with the intention of raiding my own office that night and leaving the sign of Four Square Jane to throw suspicion elsewhere. I came back to the office at eleven o’clock that night, but found Remington was before me. He had opened the safe with his key, and was satisfying

  his curiosity as to the contents of the envelopes. He threatened to expose me, for he had already discovered that the envelopes contained nothing of importance.

  “I was a desperate man. I had taken a revolver with me in case I was detected, intending to end my life then and there. Remington made certain demands on me, to which I refused to agree. He rose and walked to the door, telling me he intended to call the police; it was then that I shot him.”

  Peter Dawes looked up from his notes.

  “What about Steele’s card?” he said.

  Lord Claythorpe nodded.

  “I had taken that with me to throw suspicion upon Steele, because I believed, and still believe, that he is associated with Four Square Jane.”

  “Tell me one thing,” said Peter. “Do you know or suspect Four Square Jane?”

  Lord Claythorpe shook his head.

  “I’ve always suspected that she was Joyce Wilberforce herself,” he said, “but I’ve never been able to confirm that suspicion. In the old days, when the Wilberforces were living in Manchester Square, I used to see the girl, and suspected she was carrying notes to young Steele, who had a top-floor office at the corner of Cavendish Square.”

  “Where were you living at the time?” asked Peter quickly.

  “I had a flat in Grosvenor Square,” said Lord Claythorpe.

  Peter jumped up.

  “Was the girl’s uncle alive at this time?”

  Lord Claythorpe nodded.

  “He was still alive,” he said.

  “Where was he living?”

  “In Berkeley–”

  “I’ve got it!” said Peter excitedly. “This was when all the trouble was occurring, when you were planning to rob the girl, and using your influence against her. Don’t you see? ‘Four Square Jane.’ She has named the four squares where the four characters in your story lived.”

  Lord Claythorpe frowned.

  “That solution never occurred to me,” he said. He did not seem greatly interested in a matter which excited Peter Dawes to an unusual extent. He had little else to say, and when Peter Dawes left him, he lay wearily down on the plank bed.

  Peter was talking for some time with the inspector in charge of the station, when the gaoler called him.

  “I don’t know what was the matter with that prisoner, sir,” he said, “but, looking through the peephole about two minutes ago, I saw him pulling the buttons off his coat.”

  Peter frowned.

  “You’d better change that coat of his,” he said, “and place him under observation.”

  They all went back to the cell together. Lord Claythorpe was lying in the attitude in which Peter had left him, and they entered the cell together. Peter bent down and touched the face, then, with a cry, turned the figure over on its back.

  “He’s dead!” he cried.

  He looked at the coat. One of the buttons had been wrenched off. Then he bent down and smelt the dead man’s lips, and began a search of the floor. Presently he found what he was looking for – a section of a button. He picked it up, smelt it, and handed it to the inspector.

  “So that’s how he did it,” he said gravely. “Claythorpe was prepared for this.”

  “What is it?” asked the inspector.

  “The second button of his coat has evidently been made specially for him. It is a compressed tablet of cyanide of potassium, coloured to match the other buttons, and he had only to tear it off to end his life.”

  So passed Lord Claythorpe, a great scoundrel, leaving his title to a weakling of a son, and very few happy memories to that obscure and hysterical woman who bore his name. Peter’s work was done, save for the mystery of Four Square Jane, and even that mystery was exposed. The task he had set himself now was a difficult one, and one in which he had very little heart. He obtained a fresh set of warrants, and accompanied by a small army of detectives who watched every exit, made his call at the hotel at which Steele and his wife were staying.

  He went straight up to the room, and found Joyce and her husband at breakfast. They were both dressed; th
e fact that several trunks were packed suggested that they were contemplating an early move.

  Peter closed the door behind him and came slowly to the breakfast table, and the girl greeted him with a smile.

  “You’re just in time for breakfast,” she said. “Won’t you have some coffee?”

  Peter shook his head. Steele was eyeing him narrowly, and presently the young man laughed.

  “Joyce,” he said, “I do believe that friend Dawes has come to arrest us all.”

  “You might guess again, and guess wrong,” said Peter, sitting himself down and leaning one elbow on the table. “Mr Steele, the game is up. I want you!”

  “And me, too?” asked the girl, raising her eyebrows.

  She looked immensely pretty, he thought, and he had a sore heart for her.

  “Yes, you, too, Mrs Steele,” he said quietly.

  “What have I done?” she asked.

  “There are several things you’ve done, the latest being to embrace your husband in the vestibule of the hotel when we had arrested him for being in possession of an emerald necklace, and in your emotion relieving him of the incriminating evidence.”

  She laughed, throwing back her head.

  “It was prettily done, don’t you think?” she asked.

  “Very prettily,” said Peter.

  “Have you any other charge?”

  “None, except that you are Four Square Jane,” said Peter Dawes.

  “So you’ve found that out, too, have you?” asked the girl. She raised her cup to her lips without a tremor, and her eyes were dancing with mischief.

  Peter Dawes felt that had this woman been engaged on a criminal character instead of devoting her life to relieving the man who had robbed her of his easy gains, she would have lived in history as the greatest of all those perverted creatures who set the law at defiance. Steele took a cigarette from his pocket, and offered his case to the detective.

  “As you say, the jig is up,” said he, “and since we desire most earnestly that there should be no unpleasant scene, and this is a more comfortable place to make a confession than a cold, cold prison cell, I will tell you that the whole scheme of Four Square Jane was mine.”

  “That’s not true,” said the girl quietly. “You mustn’t take either the responsibility or the credit, dear.”

  Steele laughed as he held a light to the detective’s cigarette.

  “Anyway, I planned some of our cleverest exploits,” he said, and she nodded.

  “As you rightly say, Dawes, my wife is Four Square Jane. Perhaps you would like to know why she took that name?”

  “I know – or, rather, I guess,” said Peter. “It has to do with four squares in London.”

  Steele looked surprised.

  “You’re cleverer than I thought,” he said “But that is the truth. Joyce and I had been engaged in robbing Claythorpe for a number of years. When we got some actual, good money from him, we held tight to it. Jewels we used either to send in to the hospitals–”

  “That I know, too,” said Peter, and suddenly flung away his cigarette. He looked at the two suspiciously, but neither pair of eyes fell. “Now then,” said Peter thickly. “Come along. I’ve waited too long.”

  He rose to his feet and staggered, then took a halting step across the room to reach the door, but Steele was behind him, and had pinioned him before he went two paces. Peter Dawes felt curiously weak and helpless. Moreover, he could not raise his voice very much above a whisper.

  “That – cigarette – was – drugged,” he said drowsily.

  “Quite right,” said Steele. “It was one of my Never Fails.”

  Peter’s head dropped on his breast, and Steele lowered him to the ground.

  The girl looked down pityingly.

  “I’m awfully sorry we had to do this, dear,” he said.

  “It won’t harm him,” said Steele cheerfully. “I think we had better keep some of our sorrow for ourselves, because this hotel is certain to be surrounded. The big danger is that he’s got one of his gentleman friends in the corridor outside.”

  He opened the door quietly and looked out. The corridor was empty. He beckoned the girl.

  “Bring only the jewel-case,” he said. “I have the money and the necklace in my pocket.”

  After closing and locking the door behind them, they passed down the corridor, not in the direction of the lift or the stairs, but towards a smaller pair of stairs, which was used as an emergency exit, in case of fire. They did not attempt to descend, but went up three flights, till they emerged on a flat roof, which commanded an excellent view of the West End of London.

  Steele led the way. He had evidently reconnoitred the way, and did not once hesitate. The low roof ended abruptly in a wall onto which he climbed, assisting the girl after him. They had to cross a little neck of sloping ledge, before they came to a much more difficult foothold, a slate roof, protected only by a low parapet. They stepped gingerly along this, until they came to a skylight, which Steele lifted.

  “Down you go,” he said, and helped the girl to drop into the room below them.

  He waited only long enough to secure the skylight, and then he followed the girl through the unfurnished room into which they had dropped, on to a landing.

  In the meantime, Peter’s assistant had grown nervous, and had come up to the room, and knocked. Getting no answer, he had broken in the door, to find his chief lying still conscious but helpless where he had been left. The rough-and-ready method of resuscitation to which the detective resorted, shook the drugged man from his sleep, and a doctor, hastily summoned, brought him back to normality.

  He was still shaky, however, when he recounted the happenings.

  “They haven’t passed out of the hotel, that I’ll swear,” said the detective. “We’re watching every entrance, including the staff entrance. How did it occur?”

  Peter shook his head.

  “I went like a lamb to the slaughter,” he said, smiling grimly. “It was the promise of a confession, and my infernal curiosity which made me stay – to smoke a doped cigarette, too!” He thought a moment. “I don’t suppose they depended entirely on the cigarette, though,” he said. “And maybe it would have been a little more unpleasant for me, if I hadn’t smoked.”

  An hour after he was well enough to conduct personally a search of the hotel premises. From cellar to roof he went, followed by two assistants, and it was not until he was actually on the roof that he discovered any clue. It was a small piece of beadwork against the wall which the girl had climbed, and which had been torn off in her exertions. They passed along the neck, and along the sloping roof till they came to the skylight, and this Peter forced.

  He found, upon descending, that he was in the premises of Messrs. Backham and Boyd, ladies’ outfitters. The floor below was a large sewing-room, filled with girls who were working at their machines, until the unexpected apparition of a pale and grimy man brought an end to their labours. Neither the foreman nor the forewoman had seen anybody come in, and as it was necessary to pass through the room to reach a floor lower down, this seemed to prove conclusively to Dawes that the fugitives had not made use of this method to escape.

  “The only people who have been in the upstairs room,” exclaimed the foreman, “are two of the warehousemen, who went up about two minutes ago, to bring down some bales.”

  “Two men?” said Peter quickly. “Who were they?”

  But, though he pushed his inquiries to the lower and more influential regions of the shop, he could not discover the two porters. A lot of new men had been recently engaged, said the manager, and it was impossible to say who had been upstairs and who had not.

  The door porter at the wholesale entrance, however, had seen the two porters come out, carrying their somewhat awkwardly shaped bundles on their shoulders.

  “Were they heavy?” asked Peter.

  “Very,” said the doorkeeper. “They put them on a cart, and didn’t come back.”

  Now if there was one thin
g more certain than another in Peter’s mind, it was that Four Square Jane did not depend entirely upon the assistance she received from her husband. Peter recalled the fact that there had once been two spurious detectives who had called on Lord Claythorpe having the girl in custody. They were probably two old hands at the criminal game, enlisted by the ingenious Mr Steele. This proved to be the case, as Peter was to find later. And either Four Square Jane or he might have planted these two men in an adjoining warehouse with the object of rendering just that kind of assistance, which, in fact, they did render.

  Peter reached the streets again, baffled and angry. Then he remembered that in Lord Claythorpe’s desk was a certain bond to bearer for five hundred thousand dollars. Four Square Jane would not leave England until she had secured this; and, as the thought occurred to him, he hailed a taxi, and drove at top speed to the dead man’s house.

  Already the news of the tragedy which had overcome the Claythorpes’ household had reached the domestics; and the gloomy butler who admitted him greeted him with a scowl as though he were responsible for the death of his master.

  “You can’t go into the study, sir,” he said, with a certain satisfaction, “it has been locked and sealed.”

  “By whom?” asked Peter.

  “By an official of the Court, sir,” said the man.

  Peter went to the study door, and examined the two big red seals.

  There is something about the seal of the Royal Courts of

  Justice which impresses even an experienced officer of the law. To break that seal without authority involves the most uncomfortable consequences, and Peter hesitated.

  “Has anybody else been here?” he asked.

  “Only Miss Wilberforce, sir,” said the man.

  “Miss Wilberforce?” almost yelled Peter. “When did she come?”

  “About the same time as the officer who sealed the door,” said the butler. “In fact, she was in the study when he arrived. He ordered her out pretty roughly, too, sir,” said the butler with relish, as though finding in Miss Wilberforce’s discomfiture some compensation for the tragedy which had overtaken his employer. “She sent me upstairs to get an umbrella she had left when she was here last, and when I came down she was gone. The officer grumbled something terribly.”