“It’s a plant!” Gorleston muttered at length. “A frame-up! You know!”
“Try that on the magistrate,” smiled the other. “Of course, it’s always open to you, when you get to Bow Street, to subpoena Gorleston himself. If there is such a strong likeness between the two of you, you might get off that way.”
“My dear Allan,” chimed in his friend sarcastically, “do think of what he’s told us! He is Gorleston. Though if he can prove it, then Heaven help him, because we can quite easily establish that he is Elwes as well. So all the bank does is to charge him with trying to obtain twenty-five thou” by means of a trick.“
“Well, hop it and call a policeman,” replied his friend. “I’m sick of all this cackle.”
But as the other moved over to the door Gorleston sprang up trembling.
“Can’t we – can’t we settle this?” he exclaimed desperately.
The man at the door smiled.
“There’s Gorleston to be considered,” he replied.
“I tell you I am Gorleston.”
The other strode back, his hands clenched.
“Yes,” he snapped, his voice like a whiplash, “and John Elwes as well! Don’t you dare to interrupt me-” as Gorleston made as if to speak. “What about the nine-eleven up to London from Tavistock on the day the forgery was committed? What about the chauffeur who drove you here the moment you arrived so that your landlady could prove that John Elwes was in town that day? What about your telling her that you were in a hurry to get to the Universal Bank to cash a check? Excellent corroborative evidence, eh, that John Elwes was a real live person? And then you drove on to the bank, gave the chauffeur ten shillings and walked in as Richard Henry Gorleston – and caught the three-sixteen back to Tavistock, picked up your fishing rod en route to Portworth and walked into the hotel and said you’d had a blank day. Want any more, you lying devil?”
But evidently Gorleston didn’t. He fell back in his chair the picture of absolute rage and despair.
“I – don’t know – who on earth you are-”
“And you won’t!” interrupted the other. “Now, then, which is it to be – the police, or a confession?”
“A con – con – confession!” stammered Richard Henry Gorleston.
Once more Sir John Colston sat opposite Daphne Wrayne in her private room.
“You will probably agree with me, Sir John,” she began in her cool little voice, “that if Richard Henry Gorleston decided to drop his action, gave you a written undertaking to that effect, agreed furthermore to accept the loss and never proceed against you on the same count – you would then, I think, be quite satisfied? In other words, you would sooner let the matter drop – providing your bank didn’t suffer – rather than he should get, say, seven years, and the public should know that although you had been swindled, you had been just a little careless?”
“Why, of course, my dear young lady. Publicity is the thing we’re most anxious to avoid. But you don’t mean to say that Gorleston will do that?”
Daphne Wrayne unlocked a drawer in her table and drew out a paper.
“Please listen to this, Sir John,” she said:
“I, Richard Henry Gorleston, of 849, The Albany, London, W., being of sound mind, do declare as follows that the check for twenty-five thousand pounds, cashed under my signature at the Universal Banking Corporation, of 99, Lombard Street, in the City of London, on June 15th, 1927, was written by me, and that the error in the signature was made wilfully by me with intent to deceive. Furthermore, that the name of John Elwes was invented by me, and the person and identity of John Elwes was no other than myself.”
“Great Heavens! May I – may I see it?”
“Sir John!” Daphne Wrayne leant forward in her chair and her hazel eyes were earnest on his. “You have perhaps a right to ask to see this paper, but I am going to ask you as a gentleman not to exercise that right. This paper bears the signatures, as witnesses, of two men whose names are household words for uprightness, and integrity, throughout England – two of my colleagues – the Adjusters!”
Just for a moment silence, while he gazed at her spellbound. Then she went on:
“In asking you not to insist on seeing this paper. I know that I am asking you a favour. But so that there shall be no uneasiness in your mind, I will give you a letter which will no doubt satisfy you equally.”
Daphne took out of her drawer a sealed envelope and handed it to him. He slit it open. Then:
“Do you know what is in this letter, Miss Wrayne?”
“Well, I think I do,” with a smile.
“It is from Gorleston’s solicitors! In it they say that he has discontinued his action against us, that he exonerates us from all liability, and that no further proceedings will be taken over this matter.”
“And you can go on cashing his checks, Sir John,” she added sweetly, “and can henceforward reckon him the most scrupulously honourable client – so far as you’re concerned – whom you have on your books. You see, he knows that if he tries such a thing again well, we produce this paper!”
For some moments he gazed at her, too bewildered to speak.
“Miss Wrayne,” he said at length, “words simply fail me. How on earth have you managed this?”
For answer she lay back in her chair, merriment dancing in her hazel eyes.
“Ever play poker, Sir John?”
“Why, certainly, Miss Wrayne-” surprised.
“Ever been bluffed out and induced to chuck in a good hand?”
“Afraid I have once or twice,” he admitted, “and been a bit mad afterwards.”
Smiling she put out a slim hand to him.
“Oh, Sir John,” she exclaimed merrily, “if Richard Henry Gorleston ever knows what a good hand he threw in on, he’ll be a million times madder than you’ve ever been!”
THE TEA-LEAF by Edgar Jepson And Robert Eustace
(Sleuth: Ruth Kelstern)
Ruth Kelstern is one of the few women ranked among the scientific detectives like Craig Kennedy, Dr. Thorndike, and Luther Trent. Her creators, Edgar Jepson and Robert Eustace, were both prolific. Eustace collaborated with Dorothy L. Sayers on The Documents in the Case, and with L. T. Meade dozens of stories and novels, including Belclass="underline" Master of Mysteries (1898); Jepson, famous in his day for the “Lady Noggs” and “Poolyooly” wrote more than seventy-five books. Jepson’s son, Selwyn, a successful mystery author in his own right, also created one of the legendary women detectives, Eve Gill, who brings criminals to justice in such novels as The Golden Dart (1949) and The Hungry Spider (1950).
Arthur Kelstern and George Willoughton met in the Turkish bath in Duke Street, St. James’s, and rather more than a year later in that Turkish bath they parted. Both of them were bad-tempered men, Kelstern cantankerous and Willoughton violent. It was indeed difficult to decide which was the worse-tempered; and when I found that they had suddenly become friends, I gave that friendship three months. It lasted nearly a year.
When they did quarrel they quarrelled about Kelstern’s daughter Ruth. Willoughton fell in love with her and she with him and they became engaged to be married. Six months later, in spite of the fact that they were plainly very much in love with one another, the engagement was broken off. Neither of them gave any reason for breaking it off. My belief was that Willoughton had given Ruth a taste of his infernal temper and got as good as he gave.
Not that Ruth was at all a Kelstern to look at. Like the members of most of the old Lincolnshire families, descendants of the Vikings and the followers of Canute, one Kelstern is very like another Kelstern, fair-haired, clear-skinned, with light blue eyes and a good bridge to the nose. But Ruth had taken after her mother: she was dark with a straight nose, dark-brown eyes of the kind often described as liquid, dark-brown hair, and as kissable lips as ever I saw. She was a proud, rather self-sufficing, high-spirited girl, with a temper of her own. She needed it to live with that cantankerous old brute Kelstern. Oddly enough in spite of the fact that he always would try to bully her, she was fond of him; and I will say for him that he was very fond of her. Probably she was the only creature in the world of whom he was really fond. He was an expert in the application of scientific discoveries to industry; and she worked with him in his laboratory. He paid her five hundred a year, so that she must have been uncommonly good.