Part 1

Dorcas Dene, Detective Her adventures

by George R. Sims

Table of Contents I. THE COUNCIL OF FOUR II. THE HELSHAM MYSTERY III. THE MAN WITH THE WILD EYES IV. THE SECRET OF THE LAKE V. THE DIAMOND LIZARD VI. THE PRICK OF A PIN VII. THE MYSTERIOUS MILLIONAIRE VIII. THE EMPTY HOUSE IX. THE CLOTHES IN THE CUPBOARD X. THE HAVERSTOCK HILL MURDER XI. THE BROWN BEAR LAMP

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_I. THE COUNCIL OF FOUR_

When I first knew Dorcas Dene she was Dorcas Lester. She came to me with a letter from a theatrical agent, and wanted one of the small parts in a play we were then rehearsing at a West End theatre.

She was quite unknown in the profession. She told me that she wanted to act, and would I give her a chance? She was engaged for a maid-servant who had about two lines to speak. She spoke them exceedingly well, and remained at the theatre for nearly twelve months, never getting beyond "small parts," but always playing them exceedingly well.

The last part she had played was that of an old hag. We were all astonished when she asked to be allowed to play it, as she was a young and handsome woman, and handsome young women on the stage generally like to make the most of their appearance.

As the hag, Dorcas Lester was a distinct success. Although she was only on the stage for about ten minutes in one act and five minutes in another, everybody talked about her realistic and well-studied impersonation.

In the middle of the run of the play she left, and I understood that she had married and quitted the profession.

It was eight years before I met her again. I had business with a well-known West End solicitor. The clerk, thinking his employer alone, ushered me at once into his room. Mr. ---- was engaged in earnest conversation with a lady. I apologised. "It's all right," said Mr. ----, "the lady is just going." The lady, taking the hint, rose, and went out.

I saw her features as she passed me, for she had not then lowered her veil, and they seemed familiar to me.

"Who do you think that was?" said Mr. ---- mysteriously, as the door closed behind his visitor.

"I don't know," I said; "but I think I've seen her before somewhere. Who is she?"

"That, my dear fellow, is Dorcas Dene, the famous lady detective. _You_ may not have heard of her; but with our profession and with the police, she has a great reputation."

"Oh! Is she a private inquiry agent, or a female member of the Criminal Investigation Department?"

"She holds no official position," replied my friend, "but works entirely on her own account. She has been mixed up in some of the most remarkable cases of the day--cases that sometimes come into court, but which are far more frequently settled in a solicitor's office."

"If it isn't an indiscreet question, what is she doing for you? You are not in the criminal business."

"No, I am only an old-fashioned, humdrum family solicitor, but I have a very peculiar case in hand just now for one of my clients. I am not revealing a professional secret when I tell you that young Lord Helsham, who has recently come of age, has mysteriously disappeared. The matter has already been guardedly referred to in the gossip column of the society papers. His mother, Lady Helsham, who is a client of mine, has been to me in the greatest distress of mind. She is satisfied that her boy is alive and well. The poor lady is convinced that it is a case of cherchez la femme, and she is desperately afraid that her son, perhaps in the toils of some unprincipled woman, may be induced to contract a disastrous mésalliance. That is the only reason she can suggest to me for his extraordinary conduct."

"And the famous lady detective who has just left your office is to unravel the mystery--is that it?"

"Yes. All our own inquiries having failed, I yesterday decided to place the case in her hands, as it was Lady Helsham's earnest desire that no communication should be made to the police. She is most anxious that the scandal shall not be made a public one. To-day Dorcas Dene has all the facts in her possession, and she has just gone to see Lady Helsham. And now, my dear fellow, what can I do for you?"

My business was a very trifling matter. It was soon discussed and settled, and then Mr. ---- invited me to lunch with him at a neighbouring restaurant. After lunch I strolled back with him as far as his office. As we approached, a hansom cab drove up to the door and a lady alighted.

"By Jove! it's your lady detective again," I exclaimed.

The lady detective saw us, and came towards us.

"Excuse me," she said to Mr. ----, "I want just a word or two with you."

Something in her voice struck me then, and suddenly I remembered where I had seen her before.

"I beg your pardon," I said, "but are we not old friends?"

"Oh, yes," replied the lady detective with a smile; "I knew you at once, but thought you had forgotten me. I have changed a good deal since I left the theatre."

"You have changed your name and your profession, but hardly your appearance--I ought to have known you at once. May I wait for you here while you discuss your business with Mr. ----? I should like to have a few minutes' chat with you about old times."

Dorcas Lester--or rather Dorcas Dene, as I must call her now-- gave a little nod of assent, and I walked up and down the street smoking my cigar for fully a quarter of an hour before she reappeared.

"I'm afraid I've kept you waiting a long time," she said pleasantly, "and now if you want to talk to me you will have to come home with me. I'll introduce you to my husband. You needn't hesitate or think you'll be in the way, because, as a matter of fact, directly I saw you I made up my mind you could be exceedingly useful to me."

She raised her umbrella and stopped a hansom, and before I quite appreciated the situation, we were making our way to St. John's Wood as fast as a very bad horse could take us.

On the journey Dorcas Dene was confidential. She told me that she had taken to the stage because her father, an artist, had died suddenly and left her and her mother nothing but a few unmarketable pictures and the unpaid tradesmen's bills to settle.

"Poor dad!" she said. "He was very clever, and he loved us very dearly, but he was only a great big boy to the last. When he was doing well he spent everything he made and enjoyed life--and when he was doing badly he did bills and pawned things, and thought it was rather fun. At one time he would be treating us to dinner at the Café Royal and the theatre afterwards, and at another time he would be showing us how to live as cheaply as he used to do in his old Paris days in the Quartier Latin, and cooking our meals himself at the studio fire.

"Well, when he died I got on to the stage, and at last--as I daresay you remember--I was earning two guineas a week. On that I and my mother lived in two rooms in St. Paul's-road, Camden Town.

"Then a young artist, a Mr. Paul Dene, who had been our friend and constant visitor in my father's lifetime, fell in love with me. He had risen rapidly in his profession, and was making money. He had no relations, and his income was seven or eight hundred a year, and promised to be much larger. Paul proposed to me, and I accepted him. He insisted that I should leave the stage, and he would take a pretty little house, and mother should come and live with us, and we could all be happy together.

"We took the house we are going to now--a sweet little place with a lovely garden in Oak Tree-road, St. John's Wood--and for two years we were very happy. Then a terrible misfortune happened. Paul had an illness and became blind. He would never be able to paint again.

"When I had nursed him back to health I found that the interest of what we had saved would barely pay the rent of our house. I did not want to break up our home--what was to be done? I thought of the stage again, and I had just made up my mind to see if I could not get an engagement, when chance settled my future for me and gave me a start in a very different profession.

"In the next house to us there lived a gentleman, a Mr. Johnson, who was a retired superintendent of police. Since his retirement he had been conducting a high-class private inquiry business, and was employed in many delicate family matters by a well-known firm of solicitors who are supposed to have the secrets of half the aristocracy locked away in their strong room.

"Mr. Johnson had been a frequent visitor of ours, and there was nothing which delighted Paul more in our quiet evenings than a chat and a pipe with the genial, good-hearted ex-superintendent of police. Many a time have I and my husband sat till the small hours by our cosy fireside listening to the strange tales of crime, and the unravelling of mysteries which our kind neighbour had to tell. There was something fascinating to us in following the slow and cautious steps with which our kindly neighbour--who looked more like a jolly sea captain than a detective--had threaded his way through the Hampton Court maze in the centre of which lay the truth which it was his business to discover.

"He must have thought a good deal of Paul's opinion, for after a time he would come in and talk over cases which he had in hand-- without mentioning names when the business was confidential--and the view which Paul took of the mystery more than once turned out to be the correct one. From this constant association with a private detective we began to take a kind of interest in his work, and when there was a great case in the papers which seemed to defy the efforts of Scotland Yard, Paul and I would talk it over together, and discuss it and build up our own theories around it.

"After my poor Paul lost his sight Mr. Johnson, who was a widower, would come in whenever he was at home--many of his cases took him out of London for weeks together--and help to cheer my poor boy up by telling him all about the latest romance or scandal in which he had been engaged.

"On these occasions my mother, who is a dear, old-fashioned, simple-minded woman, would soon make an excuse to leave us. She declared that to listen to Mr. Johnson's stories made her nervous. She would soon begin to believe that every man and woman she met had a guilty secret, and the world was one great Chamber of Horrors with living figures instead of waxwork ones like those of Madame Tussaud's.

"I had told Mr. Johnson of our position when I found that it would be necessary for me to do something to supplement the hundred a year which was all that Paul's money would bring us in, and he had agreed with me that the stage afforded the best opening.

"One morning I made up my mind to go to the agent's. I had dressed myself in my best and had anxiously consulted my looking-glass. I was afraid that my worries and the long strain of my husband's illness might have left their mark upon my features and spoilt my 'market value' in the managerial eye.

"I had taken such pains with myself, and my mind was so concentrated upon the object I had in view, that when I was quite satisfied with my appearance I ran into our little sitting-room, and, without thinking, said to my husband, 'Now I'm off! How do you think I look, dear?"

"My poor Paul turned his sightless eyes towards me, and his lip quivered. Instantly I saw what my thoughtlessness had done. I flung my arms round him and kissed him, and then, the tears in my eyes, I ran out of the room and went down the little front garden. When I opened the door Mr. Johnson was outside with his hand on the bell.

"'Where are you going?' he said.

"'To the agent, to see about an engagement.'

"'Come back; I want to talk to you.'

"I led the way back to the house, and we went into the dining-room which was empty.

"'What do you think you could get on the stage?' he said.

"'Oh, if I'm lucky I may get what I had before--two guineas a week. You see, I've never played anything but small parts.'

"'Well then, put off the stage for a little and I can give you something that will pay you a great deal better. I've just got a case in which I must have the assistance of a lady. The lady who had worked for me for the last two years has been idiot enough to get married, with the usual consequences, and I'm in a fix.'

"'You--you want me to be a lady detective--to watch people?' I gasped. 'Oh, I couldn't!'

"'My dear Mrs. Dene,' Mr. Johnson said gently, 'I have too much respect for you and your husband to offer you anything that you need be afraid of accepting. I want you to help me to rescue an unhappy man who is being so brutally blackmailed that he has run away from his broken-hearted wife and his sorrowing children. That is surely a business transaction in which an angel could engage without soiling its wings.'

"'But I'm not clever at--at that sort of thing!'

"'You are cleverer than you think. I have formed a very high opinion of your qualifications for our business. You have plenty of shrewd common sense, you are a keen observer, and you have been an actress. Come, the wife's family are rich, and I am to have a good round sum if I save the poor fellow and get him home again. I can give you a guinea a day and your expenses, and you have only to do what I tell you.'

"I thought everything over, and then I accepted--on one condition. I was to see how I got on before Paul was told anything about it. If I found that being a lady detective was repugnant to me--if I found that it involved any sacrifice of my womanly instincts-- I should resign, and my husband would never know that I had done anything of the sort.

"Mr. Johnson agreed, and we left together for his office.

"That was how I first became a lady detective. I found that the work interested me, and that I was not so awkward as I had expected to be. I was successful in my first undertaking, and Mr. Johnson insisted on my remaining with him and eventually we became partners. A year ago he retired, strongly recommending me to all his clients, and that is how you find me to-day a professional lady detective."

"And one of the best in England," I said, with a bow. "My friend Mr. -- has told me of your great reputation."

Dorcas Dene smiled.

"Never mind about my reputation," she said. "Here we are at my house--now you've got to come in and be introduced to my husband and to my mother and to Toddlekins."

"Toddlekins--I beg pardon--that's the baby, I suppose?"

A shade crossed Dorcas Dene's pretty womanly face, and I thought I saw her soft grey eyes grow moist.

"No--we have no family. Toddlekins is a dog."

* * * * * * *

It was difficult for me to imagine, as I glanced around the delightful little drawing-room and noted everywhere the evidences of artistic simplicity and refinement, that I was in the house of the famous lady detective. I had not been introduced to the blind husband many minutes before I felt that we were old friends. Paul Dene, the blind artist, interested me at once. A handsome man, well above the medium height, with a mass of fair waving hair; there was something in the blind, gentle face that riveted your attention and claimed your sympathy at once. He rose as his wife entered the room, a questioning look upon his face, for my footstep was unfamiliar to him. Dorcas Dene took his hand and led him towards me. "Paul, dear," she said, "this is an old friend of mine. This is the gentleman who gave me my first chance as an actress."

We chatted together for a few minutes, and then a buxom, grey-haired lady came bustling into the room, followed by a big brindle bulldog, wagging the whole of his body. He ran to his mistress with a little snort of joy, stood up on his hind-legs, and licked her hands affectionately, and then turned and looked at me inquiringly.

"Friends, Toddlekins," said his mistress. Then turning to me, she added with a smile, "You can pat him quite safely now I have introduced you."

"He would come in, Dorcas," exclaimed the middle-aged lady, "and I didn't know you had company."

"This is Mr. Saxon, the dramatist, mother."

The old lady gave me a rather distant bow, and eyed me somewhat suspiciously. "I've heard of you, sir," she said, "and I know how good you were to my daughter years ago, but I don't hold with melodramas, and I never shall; and how Christian people can pay money to see their fellow-creatures blown up with dynamite, and murdered, and condemned to death for what they never did, and turned out of house and home to die in the snow, is what I shall never understand."

I suppose I looked slightly uncomfortable, for Dorcas Dene broke in with a merry little laugh. "Mother doesn't mean any harm, Mr. Saxon, it's only her funny little way; she puts us all right here--don't you mother dear?"

"I always say what I think," replied the old lady. "It's old-fashioned I dare say, but I'm one of the old-fashioned sort. But I'd better take the dog out--Mr. Saxon's afraid of him."

"No, no, I assure you," I exclaimed, reddening, "I--I _love_ dogs," and I stooped down and timidly patted Toddlekins, who was sniffing suspiciously at my calves.

"You needn't be ashamed of being afraid of Toddlekins," the old lady exclaimed, with evident disbelief in my disclaimer. "Most people are at first. He hates strangers coming to the place."

I saw a shade of annoyance pass over the blind artist's gentle face. "An old friend of my wife's won't be a stranger here very long," he said quietly, then gave a little whistle, and the bulldog ran quickly across the room and laid his great head on his master's knee.

"Well, I suppose I'm wrong as usual!" exclaimed the old lady, tossing her head, "but all the same, Mr. Saxon may just as well know that the dog nearly killed a man once, and I'm as certain as I am that I'm alive that one day he'll kill another if he's ever left alone with that young man that comes to wind up the clocks. He's taken a dislike to that young man, has Toddlekins, and, Dorcas, my dear, don't say I haven't warned you. When it does happen, don't expect me to interfere; I was never brought up to bite bulldogs' tails to make them leave go, and it's not the sort of thing you can ask a respectable servant to do." And with that, the old lady turned upon her heel and sailed out of the room, and her daughter followed her, evidently to pacify her.

"You mustn't mind Mrs. Lester," said Paul Dene, as the door closed behind them. "She's a dear, good soul, really, and I don't know what we should do without her; but she has an idea that she is the only person in the house who has any sense, and she has a mania for speaking what she calls 'her mind.' The dog's as gentle as a lamb, but he _did_ once nearly kill a man, and that is how my wife came by him. He was reared from a puppy by a rough at the East End. This man was constantly ill-using his wife, to whom the dog was devotedly attached. One day the man, in a drunken frenzy, knocked his wife down. As she lay on the floor, he bent over her, and was about to strike her with a poker, when the dog suddenly sprang at him, and seized him by the throat, and held him till the neighbours rushed in. The dog had saved the woman's life, but the man was terribly injured, and it was a question with the police of having the dog killed, when my wife, who had heard the story, asked the officer in charge of the case to let her have him; and Toddlekins has been our faithful friend and guardian ever since."

I looked at Toddlekins, who had curled himself up at his master's feet and was sleeping with one eye open, and I made up my mind that when I said "Good-bye" to Dorcas Dene, I would put out my hand in a manner that should not admit of the slightest misinterpretation, and I was rather relieved when Paul Dene turned the conversation on to another topic.

He presumed I was aware of his wife's present profession. I explained how I had met her at the solicitor's, and that she had told me I might be of use to her in the case on which she was present engaged. Had he heard the particulars?

He said he had not, as his wife had only received her instructions that day, but in all business matters she invariably consulted him. "You see," he said, "my blindness is a very valuable quality. Seeing nothing physically, my mental vision is intensified. I can think a problem out undisturbed by the surroundings which distract people who have their eyesight. When people want 'a good think,' as they call it, they often shut themselves in a room and close their eyes. I am a man who is always thinking with closed eyes. In all her difficulties my wife comes to me, and generally we hold a council of four."

"Of four?"

"Yes, the council consists of myself, Dorcas, her mother, and Toddlekins."

I was obliged to give a little laugh. "I should hardly have thought that Mrs. Lester could have been of much service in unravelling a mystery."

"That is where you are wrong. Mrs. Lester often hits the right nail on the head before either of us. We are building up an elaborate theory, and she takes a plain, straightforward, matter-of-fact, common-sense view, and it turns out to be the right one. Detectives are only human, you know, and, like the rest of the world, they frequently go looking about in every direction for something that lies close to their hand all the time."

At that moment the door opened, and I started up in astonishment. A dark-skinned old gipsy woman, such as one meets on the racecourses, had come into the room.