In a quarter of an hour, in which Fidelity spoke gracefully and well of pearls as mentioned in the scriptures, there came the return message. Abraham Behrein was unknown in Hatton Garden.
“And now, Mr. Rason,” asked Fidelity, “are you going to apologize for doubting my word?”
“No,” said Rason. The emphasis of his refusal left Fidelity’s gravity undisturbed until he had left her drawing-room; but as he crossed the magnificent hall silvery laughter followed him and rang in his ears long after he had left the house.
On the next day Mr. Jabez Crewde was severely startled at being told that Fidelity Dove was on the doorstep and wished to see him.
“Show her in, and run for the police,” he whispered to the clerk.
Fidelity came in, gracefully as ever. She inclined her head in the soupçon of a bow.
“Oh, Mr. Crewde!” she said in clear tones. “I do not know how to thank you! The money that you lent me must veritably have been bewitched. The scheme was successful beyond my friend’s wildest dreams. So much money has been made that — is it the firm or his stockbroker? — has advanced on account of my profits all the money I borrowed from you, and I have come to repay you five thousand five hundred pounds.”
“Let’s have a look at it,” said Crewde coarsely.
“But of course I wish you not merely to look at it but to take it,” — and Fidelity laid the notes on the table.
Mr. Crewde counted the notes.
“You can leave those there,” he said, and glanced towards the door. Then, for safety, he picked them up and put them in his pocket. Fidelity looked offended.
“Will you give me a receipt and return my pearls?” she asked.
“We’ll see about that in a minute,” snapped Crewde.
“Against my inclination, I am driven to believe that your manner is intentionally offensive,” said Fidelity. “I will wait no longer. The receipt is of no importance, for my bankers have the numbers of the notes. You will please return the pearls to my private address.”
“Your private address! Yes, I know it — Aylesbury prison it’ll be in a week or two,” jeered Crewde. “As for the pearls, they are back with Mr. Abraham Behrein, whom you stole them from.”
“Oh! How can you—” Fidelity produced a handkerchief.
“Tell it all to the policeman,” invited Mr. Crewde as the clerk returned with a constable.
“What’s all this?” asked the constable.
“That’s the woman you want. Fidelity Dove, she calls herself,” shouted Crewde. “Scotland Yard knows all about her.”
The policeman looked embarrassed.
“Do you give the lady in charge, sir?” he asked.
“No, I don’t give her in charge,” said Crewde. “I’m not going to be mixed up with it. It’s a matter for the Public Prosecutor. Scotland Yard!”
“We’ve no orders to arrest anyone of that name as far as I know,” said the constable. “I can’t take the lady unless you charge her, sir.”
“There is my card, constable,” said Fidelity. “My car is outside if you care to take the number.”
In the car Fidelity drove home.
As soon as she had left, Jabez Crewde telephoned to Scotland Yard. He was put through to Rason, who informed him that all efforts to trace Abraham Behrein had failed.
“It was hoax of some kind, I’m afraid,” said Rason. “But you’re all right, Mr. Crewde. You have the pearls, I take it? It was apparently a swindle that didn’t come off.”
“But she’s paid me back the money I lent her, and wants the pearls back,” protested Crewde.
“Well, I can’t advise you,” said Rason. “But I should have thought the best thing to do would be to give them to her.”
“But I haven’t got them!” yelled Crewde. “I handed them to Behrein — they were his — and he gave me the five thousand I’d lent her.”
“O-o-oh!” said Rason. It was a long-drawn sound that held a world of meaning.
“What’s the good of saying ‘oh,’ ” raged Crewde. “You’re a pack of fools, that’s what you are,” he added, after he had replaced the receiver.
On the next morning Jabez Crewde received a letter from Fidelity Dove’s solicitor, Sir Frank Wrawton, demanding the immediate return of the pearls or their value in cash, which had been estimated by competent and unassailable experts at fifty thousand pounds.
By eleven o’clock Jabez Crewde had learned that Sir Frank Wrawton was empowered merely to give him a receipt for pearls or the cash equivalent.
By twelve o’clock he was at Fidelity’s house in Bayswater.
He was received by Fidelity in the morning-room.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” he shouted at Fidelity, “and I can see what’s happened. That Behrein, as he calls himself, is a confederate of yours. You two are in it together. I’ll show you the whole bag o’ tricks. You bought those pearls — they were genuine. Then you borrowed five thousand from me, and paid back five thousand five hundred. You dropped that five hundred. Then your confederate dropped another five thousand in getting the pearls from me. That’s five thousand five hundred you’ve dropped — and for that outlay you’ve landed me with a liability for fifty thousand pounds. Why, you probably had those pearls hidden away an hour after Behrein left me, and you’ll sell them again quietly later on—”
“Have you also been thinking, Mr. Crewde, how you are going to establish this terribly slanderous theory in a court of law?” asked Fidelity, nun-like and serene.
“Bah! The lawyers are robbers, like the police—”
“And the hospitals?” asked Fidelity.
Crewde looked very nearly startled.
“They call you the meanest man in Europe, Mr. Crewde,” said Fidelity. “I alone have maintained that that is a slander. I want you to prove my words. You owe me fifty thousand pounds. To dispute my claim would merely mean the loss of another thousand pounds or so in lawyers’ expenses. It is a pleasure to wring money from a mean man, but it is no pleasure if the man be not mean. The Grey Friars Hospital requires twenty thousand pounds, I understand.”
“Eh?” grunted Crewde. “I don’t get you. D’you want me to give them twenty thousand? What if I do?”
“If you will write a check for twenty thousand pounds to the Grey Friars Hospital,” said Fidelity, “I will withdraw one-fifth of my claim against you. Twenty thousand to the Grey Friars Hospital, twenty thousand to myself — and I will give you a receipt for fifty thousand pounds.”
“That’s close on fifteen thousand pounds clear profit to yourself,” said Crewde, a ghastly pallor spreading over his face.
“You may phrase it so,” said Fidelity. “Or you may say that I am offering you ten thousand pounds to remove from London the reproach of harbouring the meanest man in Europe... Ah, I see you have no fountain-pen. I beg you to use mine.”
P. Moran, Deductor
by Percival Wilde
P. Moran, correspondence-school sleuth, 1944 model, is another old friend. His first appearance in our September 1943 issue met with instant and unanimous approval. Even before you asked us to, we had already persuaded Percival Wilde to have Pete cut another caper and apply his marvelous deductive talents to the defeat of crime.
P. Moran is indeed a rare bird — the comic sleuth. Only a small coterie of these droll detectives, these farcical ferrets, these humorous Holmeses, these burlesque bloodhounds, these ludicrous Lecoqs — only a handful have laughed their way into our plethoric literature of crime. Until Mr. Wilde created P. Moran for EQMM, the best of them included Ellis Parker Butler’s Philo Gubb, Sir Basil Thomson’s Mr. Pepper, and W. A. Darlington’s Mr. Gronk. Now — well, our vote goes to “gorjous” Pete, who, in the great tradition, plays a criminous fiddle when the occasion demands.