CLOWNS AND CRIMINALS - Complete Series (Thriller Classics). E. Phillips Oppenheim

in her room. What she heard proved, at least, her lover’s infidelity. She stood there at her door, waiting. When Austen Abbott comes out, she shoots, throws the revolver at him, closes her door, and goes off into a faint. Perhaps she hears footsteps—a key in the door. At any rate, Captain Sotherst arrives a few minutes later. He finds, half in the hall, half on the threshold of the sitting room, Austen Abbott dead, and Miss Shaw’s revolver by the side of him. If he had been a wise young man, he would have aroused the household. Why he did not do so, we can perhaps guess. He put two and two together a little too quickly. It is certain that he believed that the dead man had been shot by his fiancee. His first thought was to get rid of the revolver. At any rate, he walked down to the street with it in his hand, and was promptly arrested by the policeman who had heard the shot. Naturally he refused to plead, because he believed that Miss Shaw had killed the man, probably in self-defence. She, at first, believed her lover guilty, and when afterwards Fluffy Dean confessed, she, with feminine lack of common sense, was trying to get the girl out of the country before telling the truth. A visit of hers to the office of the steamship company gave me the clue I required.”

      Lady Mary grasped both his hands.

      “And Scotland Yard,” she exclaimed, with a withering glance at Dory, “have done their best to hang my brother!”

      Peter Ruff raised his eyebrows.

      “Dear Lady Mary,” he said, “remember that it is the business of Scotland Yard to find a man guilty. It is mine, when I am employed for that purpose, to find him innocent. You must not be too hard upon my friend Mr. Dory. He and I seem to come up against each other a little too often, as it is.”

      “A little too often!” John Dory repeated, softly. “But one cannot tell. Don’t believe, Lady Mary,” he added, “that we ever want to kill an innocent man.”

      “It is your profession, though,” she answered, “to find criminals—and his,” she added, touching Peter Ruff on the shoulder, “to look for the truth.”

      Peter Ruff bowed low—the compliment pleased him.

      DELILAH FROM STREATHAM

       Table of Contents

      First published in Pearson’s Magazine (US), Jan 1910

      It was a favourite theory with Peter Ruff that the morning papers received very insufficient consideration from the majority of the British public. A glance at the headlines and a few of the spiciest paragraphs, a vague look at the leading article, and the sheets were thrown away to make room for more interesting literature. It was not so with Peter Ruff. Novels he very seldom read—he did not, in fact, appreciate the necessity for their existence. The whole epitome of modern life was, he argued, to be found among the columns of the daily press. The police news, perhaps, was his favourite study, but he did not neglect the advertisements. It followed, therefore, as a matter of course, that the appeal of “M” in the personal column of the Daily Mail was read by him on the morning of its appearance—read not once only nor twice—it was a paragraph which had its own peculiar interest for him.

      Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald, if still in England, is requested to communicate with “M,” at Vagali’s Library, Cook’s Alley, Ledham Street, Soho.

      Peter Ruff laid the paper down upon his desk and looked steadily at a box of India-rubber bands. Almost his fingers, as he parted with the newspaper, had seemed to be shaking. His eyes were certainly set in an unusually retrospective stare. Who was this who sought to probe his past, to renew an acquaintance with a dead personality? “M” could be but one person! What did she want of him? Was it possible that, after all, a little flame of sentiment had been kept alight in her bosom, too—that in the quiet moments her thoughts had turned towards him as his had so often done to her? Then a sudden idea—an ugly thought—drove the tenderness from his face. She was no longer Maud Barnes—she was Mrs. John Dory, and John Dory was his enemy! Could there be treachery lurking beneath those simple lines? Things had not gone well with John Dory lately. Somehow or other, his cases seemed to have crumpled into dust. He was no longer held in the same esteem at headquarters. Yet could even John Dory stoop to such means as these?

      He turned in his chair.

      “Miss Brown,” he said, “please take your pencil.”

      “I am quite ready, sir,” she answered.

      He marked the advertisement with a ring and passed it to her.

      “Reply to that as follows,” he said:

      “DEAR SIR:— I notice in the Daily Mail of this morning that you are enquiring through the ‘personal’ column for the whereabouts of Mr. Spencer Fitzgerald. That gentleman has been a client of mine, and I have been in occasional communication with him. If you will inform me of the nature of your business, I may, perhaps, be able to put you in touch with Mr. Fitzgerald. You will understand, however, that, under the circumstances, I shall require proofs of your good faith. Truly yours, PETER RUFF.”

      Miss Brown glanced through the advertisement and closed her notebook with a little snap.

      “Did you say—‘Dear Sir’?” she asked.

      “Certainly!” Peter Ruff answered.

      “And you really mean,” she continued, with obvious disapproval, “that I am to send this?”

      “I do not usually waste my time,” Peter Ruff reminded her, mildly, “by giving you down communications destined for the waste-paper basket.”

      She turned unwillingly to her machine.

      “Mr. Fitzgerald is very much better where he is,” she remarked.

      “That depends,” he answered.

      She adjusted a sheet of paper into her typewriter.

      “Who do you suppose ‘M’ is?” she asked.

      “With your assistance,” Peter Ruff remarked, a little sarcastically—“with your very kind assistance—I propose to find out!”

      Miss Brown sniffed, and banged at the keys of her typewriter.

      “That coal-dealer’s girl from Streatham!” she murmured to herself….

      A few politely worded letters were exchanged. “M” declined to reveal her identity, but made an appointment to visit Mr. Ruff at his office. The morning she was expected, he wore an entirely new suit of clothes and was palpably nervous. Miss Brown, who had arrived a little late, sat with her back turned upon him, and ignored even his usual morning greeting. The atmosphere of the office was decidedly chilly! Fortunately, the expected visitor arrived early.

      Peter Ruff rose to receive his former sweetheart with an agitation perforce concealed, yet to him poignant indeed. For it was indeed Maud who entered the room and came towards him with carefully studied embarrassment and half doubtfully extended hand. He did not see the cheap millinery, the slightly more developed figure, the passing of that insipid prettiness which had once charmed him into the bloom of an over-early maturity. His eyes were blinded with that sort of masculine chivalry—the heritage only of fools and very clever men—which takes no note of such things. It was Miss Brown who, from her place in a corner of the room, ran over the cheap attractions of this unwelcome visitor with an expression of scornful wonder—who understood the tinsel of her jewellery, the cheap shoddiness of her ready-made gown; who appreciated, with merciless judgment, her mincing speech, her cheap, flirtatious method.

      Maud, with a diffidence not altogether assumed, had accepted the chair which Peter Ruff had placed for her, and sat fidgeting, for a moment, with the imitation gold purse which she was carrying.

      “I am sure, Mr. Ruff,” she said, looking demurely into her lap, “I ought not to have come here. I feel terribly guilty. It’s such an uncomfortable sort of position, too,