“He was going to hide in there — until the raid was over. In — with the dead man. He was so small he could do it all right. He was going to get out as soon as you’d gone — but his arm — it must have bled — Champ must have passed out and now they... Oh, don’t stand there — help me get him out. A crowbar, a chisel — anything—”
A distorted mask of gray-faced terror that bore a remote resemblance to the widely publicized features of gunman Champ Lane, gazed up into their faces a few minutes later with mute, dog-like gratitude. His sworn enemies, at that moment, must have seemed like angels to him. Angels with handcuffs.
He handed them the gun that he had emptied, in his mad terror, when he came alive and found himself lying, weak and dazed from loss of blood, in the coffin with the dead man’s cold body. The way he gave up the gun was almost like a gesture of devotion.
“They didn’t hear my first shot — or maybe they thought it was the hearse backfiring.” He shivered. A hoarse rattle shook in his throat as he looked down at the disarranged corpse. “I was — under that — for hours — all night...”
As they held him upright between them and as one of them reached out a hand with the open jaws of the manacles reaching for his wrists, the small, tough man who had been the terror of forty-eight states suddenly dropped to his knees. The detective jerked the handcuffs back before Champ Lane could press his mouth against them.
“Bring on Atlanta, Leavenworth — even Alcatraz,” he whimpered. “Lead me to ’em. They’re all right with me!”
The headline in the papers that evening was, in a way, Champ line’s epitaph.
The black stone of Dr. Dee
by Lillian de la Torre
(as narrated by James Boswell, March 1771)
In September 1947 D. Appleton-Century published villainy detected, a simply gorgeous anthology of real-life crimes of a certain period in English history, edited by our foremost authority on 18th century crime-and-detection, Lillian de la Torre. Miss de la Torre, you will remember, had her first fiction published by EQMM — the brilliant series of historical detective stories later issued in book form as DR. SAM: JOHNSON, DETECTOR. To give you just a hint of the flavor, atmosphere, and pungency of Miss de la Torre’s anthology, let us quote the title and subtitle in fulclass="underline" villainy detected: Being a Collection of the most sensational True Crimes and the most notorious Real Criminals that blotted the name of Britain in the Years 1660 to 1800: By Various Hands: The Whole collected together and embellished with Observations historical, moral, and critical.
This festival of crime celebrates the Extraordinary and Daring Exploits of such picturesque scoundrels as Jack Sheppard, whom no jail could hold; Swift Nicks of the famous ride to York; James Maclaine, the sentimental Gentleman Highwayman; Lieutenant Richardson, the amorous pirate; thief-takers and thief-makers; horse-stealers, poachers, smugglers, house-breakers, foot-pads — rogues and renegades all, bloody malefactors, their villainy display’d, unmask’d, and detect’d by such illustrious oldstyle chroniclers of crime as Daniel DeFoe, Jonathan Swift, and Sir Walter Scott, and such equally renowned modem reporters of crime as Edmund Pearson, William Roughead, and Raymond Postgate. And as an extra dividend of sheer detectival delight Miss de la Torre includes in this rich and raffish tapestry of a book an original short story of her own, “The Disappearing Servant Wench,” in which her real-life detector, Dr. Sam: Johnson, grapples with the Elizabeth Canning mystery, “turning upon it the full beam of his penetrating intellect.”
If you are a collector or connoisseur of crime, Lillian de la Torre’s anthology is a “must” volume for your shelves; if you are a plain fan or fancy aficionado of crime, villainy detected is equally a “must” on your reading list; if you care not a hoot for crime, fictional or real, and have not the remotest notion as to the difference between cly-fakers and Abram coves, beak: runners and hornies, wipe prigging and lully prigging — why, in that case, simply read the book for its scholarship, authenticity, humor, and superb entertainment.
One picture is worth a thousand words: one sample is worth a thousand recommendations. If you are not familiar with the quality of Miss de la Torre’s workmanship, read her newest story about Dr. Sam: Johnson — “The Black Stone of Dr. Dee.”
Author’s note: It was Horace Walpole himself who posed this problem, in the letter with which the story opens. I give it as it came from the famous letter-writer’s quill pen in the spring of 1771, with only a word or two interpolated by my typewriter.
Mr. Walpole s castle, his book, his unbalanced nephew, his Thespian ten ant, and his ducal neighbours, are all drawn from the life; except that the real Duke of Argyle was staunchly loyal to the Hanoverian King, and his brother to him.
The Black Stone of Dr. Dee now reposes in the British Museum. If it should be subjected to those experiments in natural philosophy practised upon it by Dr. Sam: Johnson, I cannot guarantee what might be discovered.
“ ’Tis a strange kind of thief, my dear George,” wrote Horace Walpole, on a day in March, 1771, “that goes to the devil’s own trouble to break and enter, and then goes away with nothing for his trouble, not even a golden guinea out of a drawer full of them. But stay, you shall have the tale from the beginning.
“ ’Twas Monday I had a courier from cousin Conway to tell me that my house in Arlington Street had been broken open in the night, and all my cabinets and trunks forced and plundered.
“I was a good quarter of an hour before I recollected that it was very becoming to have philosophy enough not to care about what one does care for, if you don’t care there’s no philosophy in bearing it. I despatched my upper servant, breakfasted, fed the bantams as usual, and made no more hurry to town than Cincinnatus would if he had lost a basket of turnips. I left in my drawers 270 I. of bank bills and three hundred guineas, not to mention all my gold and silver coins, some inestimable miniatures, a little plate, and a good deal of furniture, under no guard but that of two maidens.
“When I arrived, I found in three different chambers three cabinets, a large chest, and a glass case of china wide open, the locks not picked, but forced, and the doors of them broken to pieces. The miracle was, that I did not find the least thing missing!
“In the cabinet of modern medals, there were, and so there are still, a series of English coins, with downright John Trot guineas, half-guineas, shillings, sixpences, and every kind of current money. Not a single piece was removed. Just so in the Greek and Roman cabinet; though in the latter were some drawers of papers, which they had tumbled and scattered about the floor. A great exchequer chest, that belonged to my father, the Prime Minister, was in the same room. Not being able to force the lock, the philosophers (for thieves that steal nothing deserve the title much more than Cincinnatus or I) had wrenched a great flapper of brass with such violence as to break it into seven pieces. The trunk contained a new set of chairs of French tapestry, two screens, rolls of prints, and a suit of silver stuff that I had made for the King’s wedding. All was turned topsy-turvy, and nothing stolen.
“In short, they had broken out a panel in the door of the area, and unbarred and unbolted it, and gone out at the street-door, which they left wide open at five o’clock in the morning. A passenger had found it so, and alarmed the maids, one of whom ran naked into the street, and by her cries waked my Lord Romney, who lives opposite.