Fenwick's Legal Wife

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 88, 15 April 1933, Page 9 (Supplement)

Fenwick's Legal Wife

By II - MARLEY CAMERON

CHAPTER XI. Sam Goes to Paris. Inspector Halloway had not encouraged Sam Wrench to present his letter of introduction to the Paris police until all the ordinary methods of obtaining the addresses for foreign visitors had failed. He applied first to the American Express Company, on whom Fenwick had drawn the cheque for £100 for information about the man who cashed it, only to learn that persons who cashed cheques were not required to give their addresses. His next visit was to the Aliens' Registry on the ground floor of the Prefecture where cards of identity are issued. There he found a queue of 50 people waiting, and a doorkeeper ordered him sternly to take his place at its tail. It was in vain to argue with this Cerberus that he had not come for an identity card; the man was deaf to both argument and entreaty and the place was too public for using the kind of persuasion which softens the heart. There was nothing for it but to trudge across to the headquarters of the Police Judiciaire on the Quai des Orfevres— the Criminal Investigation Department of Paris. Ho toiled up a gloomy little staircase to a long gallery. There he was directed to a waiting-room furnished with a table and red velvet divans. A messenger immured in a glass case glanced sourly at him and resumed the reading of his newspaper. Sam approached the little window and tendered his open letter of introduction. "This letter is addressed to the prefect, monsieur; you have come to the wrong office." ' "Here is my card. Will you have the kindness to take it to the Chief of the Judicial Police?" < "It would be useless, monsieur; he is out." "Then please have the kindness to take it to the gentleman who takes his place during his absence." "I hive already told you,, monsieur, that your letter is addressed to the Prefect." The man pushed back the letter and the card and resumed his reading. Sam wondered what would have happened if he had been treated so cavalierly at Scotland Yard, and how it was that in fiction the French detective was extolled above his English compeer. He went out into the gallery to consider what should be his next step. At that moment a man whom he took to bo an office clerk, emerged from a room in the gallery, and was passing him when Sam stopped him. "Excuse me, mohsieur, but do you belong to the Police Judiciairc?" "Yes, monsieur. What can I do for you 1" Sam briefly explained his business. The man shrugged his shoulders with a contemptuous gesture towards the office of his chief. "It is always so, monsieur. You would have lost time by seeing them in there. They know nothing. I think that I could get you the information you want if you will give yourself the trouble to come this way!" He conducted Sam to the room from which he had just emerged—a room furnished with four writing-table's, of which threo were, occupied by men like himself. There was a free go-as-you-'please atmosphere in the place. The others half rose from their chairs in vacknowledgment of Sam's bow. A chair was brought forward for him, > and the threo listened to his story and exchanged glances. Sam noticed that their tables were in confusion; that cupboards were bulging with files of papers, not neatly tied up, as in a wellordered office, but bundled in anyhow. Apparently these gentlemen trusted more to their memories than to papers. His friend explained that all were inspectors of the Judicial Police, and that the senior was the gentleman seated near the window —a man with an enormous blue-black moustache. He addressed Sam. "Do you know, monsieur, whether either of these Englishmen has been prosecuted in Paris?" Sam replied that he could not. answer that question. There was an animated discussion between the four in an undertone, and the senior asked at what hotel he was staying. Learning that he would be at the Hotel Terminus at eight o'clock that evening, he said, "Commissary Delarue will place himself at your disposition for any inquiry you may desire. He will call at your hotel this evening to report the.result." The three of them returned to their work, leaving Sam and Delarue to discuss the business together. Sam shrewdly suspected that any tip that he might give to his good Samaritan would be equally divided between the four, and that therefore he must tip on a fairly liberal scale. ' "I fear that you will be put to some expense over this, Monsieur Delarue, but of course that will be my affair, I shall not question your bill or expenses." He' seemed to feel the warmth engendered between them by this little hint of favours to come. "I ought to tell you, monsieur, that the register forms of foreigners in Paris are all filed in this building, but since so many months have elapsed since your men were here the business of searching for their forms would take a considerable time. Now, these two Englishmen appear to belong to a class all too common in Paris—a class which preys upon other foreign visitors —but if I were to show you photographs of such rascals I gather that you, having never seen them, would not be able to identify them. Happily wo know the type of hotel to which such men go. I could give you the names of 20 or 30 of them. We know them all, and their managers can be relied upon to give us every inr formation, though .they, might not give it to you. I shall now take this description that you have given me round to. a number of these hotels, and I shall call upon you at eight o'clock .this evening to report the result of my inquiry." There wae nothing for Sam to do until eight o'clock, and when his notes had been written up, the time hung heavy on his hands. He idled at the Cafe de la Paix and the Cafe Weil and listened to the laments of the waiters on the scarcity of British and American tourists since the economic world crisis. Apparently it was the British who were most missed, not from any sense of solidarity between the two nations, but because, when it came to tipping, the Englishman was liberal and the American the reverse. "Can you explain it, monsieur?" asked one of them. "It was not always so. In the days just after the war the Americans were lavish. They threw our money about because the exchange wae so much in their favour, but now there is a reaction: they eeoni to think that we jute.j

out to cheat them, and many of them do not even give us the 10 per cent on what they consume." Sam dined early, and after telling the porter where he was to be found when a visitor called upon him, he moved to the reading room. His visitor was punctual, but before approaching Sam he scanned the faces of the other occupants of the room. Then he strolled over to Sam and greeted him like an acquaintance whom he had not met for months, and they sat down. "I think, monsieur, that I have found what you want. Arthur Brown was the name on your paper. An Englishman of that name stayed at the Hotel Falquiere from October 2'to the 14th two years ago. He was accompanied by a second Englishman, who registered in the name of Dennis Plume. Brown returned to the hotel on the following January 21 and stayed until the 27 th, but on that occasion his companion was not with him." "What kind of hotel is the Falquiere ?" The Commissary made an expressive grimace. "It is not like the Ritz, monsieur, nor are its charges so high, or its clients so oorrect, but for a hotel of that class, it is respectably conducted." "I am very much indebted to you, inspector," said Sam, quietly slipping two hundred-franc notes into Delarue's hand. "That is for your expenses," he added in order to soften the insult, but he was relieved to see the finger's close upon them. "I thank you, monsieur, for your liberality. Ido not know that my expenses amounted to quite so much. I beg you remember that if at any future time you should require help, you have only to ask for Inspector Delarue." They shook hands with mutual good will, and, after giving his t friend a few minutes start, Sam hailed a taxi and asked to be put down at the corner of the Rue Duguesclin. Having paid off the vehicle, he strolled down the street until he reached the unpretentious door of the Hotel Falquiere. The manager seemed to have been prepared for his visit, and he was better informed about his guests than his confrere in the Hotel Beau Rivage. Probably because he had fewer guest to deal with he remembered very well Captain Arthur Brown, the British officer who had stayed in the hotel twice during the past two years. He was a very pleasant and correct gentleman. No, lie did not take his meals in the hotel: he had bed and breakfast only and was out during the day. His French was quite passable, and he had always a joke or a pleasant word with the hotel servants. Was he aline? No indeed; an English friend was with him on his first visit— a tall, big man, who spoko no French. Their rooms were next to one another with a communicating door. They were always together, and they left on the same day—October. 14." "Did they pay their bills by cheque?" "Yes and no, monsieur. It was in this way. Two days before they left the captain asked mc to cash a cheque for five hundred dollars. I might well have declined so unusual a request, but I am always anxious to meet my clients, and this one was sympathetic to me. I do not remember who signed the cheque, but I do remember that it wp.s drawn upon the American Express Company. I sent it to my bank, the Societe Generale and called there for the money when there had been time for the cheque to be cleared. Then, with the captain's consent, I deducted the accounts of both gentlemen and paid over the balance to him." "Can you give me a description of Captain Brown?" "Ho was like the other British officers who were in Paris after the war—tallish and thin. Beyond that it is difficult to describe him. But you need have no concern about him, monsieur. He was a distinguished man. He spoke to me of his visits to the British Embassy and of what the Ambassador had. said to him. He seemed also to be on intimate terms with the British Consul-General." "He returned to you on January 21 last year?" "Yes, Monsieur, but only for six days." "Was his friend with him on that occasion ?" "No, Monsieur. He told me that his friend, Monsieur Plume, had been recalled to service in the British Navy.' "Did Monsieur Plume strike you as looking like a naval officer?" "To be frank, Monsieur, I cannot truthfully say that lie did. Ihcre was a certain roughness about his appearanca and his manners." "When the captain left you at the end of that second visit did he say where he was going?" "Oh yes, Monsieur, he made no mystery of that. He said that he had a friend in Paris, a gentleman from Cuba, and that they were going out there together in an English boat." On the following morning Sam Wrench called at the British Embassy in the Faubourg St. Honore to inquire whether Captain Arthur Brown was known to any member of the staff. The military attache shook his head and reached for an Army List. The Browns were fairly numerous, but none of them bore the Christian name of Arthur, nor did the visitors' book disclose any visit paid by a man of that name during the previous two years. Sam's inquiry at the British Consulate disclosed the same result; the Consul had never lieprd of the man. Sam spent the afternoon in writing lip his notes and caught the night boat train to London the same evening. The information he had gained in Paris threw a clear light upon the behaviour of poor James, Fenwick. In Paris he must have made a chance acquaintance with a blackmailer who posed as a British officer and had Dennis Plume in tow. Plume must have told his companion about his early life and his fight with .James Fenwick, and as soon as Brown heard the name of his chance acquaintance he must have set to work to turn the fact that the former wife was still living into money, by threatening Fenwick with exposure and arrest. That was the time-honoured practice _ with blackmailers. He must lose no time in communicating his discovery to his friend, Halloway. The inspector received him in a mood very different from his state of depression three days earlier. "Back already, Mr. Wrench? Nothing doing?" "I've done something, Mr. Halloway. That's why you see me here." Thereupon he related his experiences in Paris, and when he came to the identity of the two Englishmen; he saw his friend's free flush with excitement, j. "We're making Mr. Wrench. We've not been idle here while you were away. You will remember advising me to pay attention to the man, Dennis Plume ? Well, we haven't run across him yet, but we've been on his track. You > didn't know that lie was an exconvict?"

"He is. I sent his name over to our Convict Supervision Office and they turned him up—convicted under that name too. / Then I went over to the Convict Record Office at the Home Office and asked to have a look at his Penal Record. It contained everything that was known about him—a newspaper cutting of his trial describing him as, the mate of a coasting steamer. His crime was committed at sea on the voyage from Hull to London. He was tiled for wounding Joseph Nairns, a fireman, with an iron bar after a previous conviction for the same sort of offence for which he had had eighteen months' hard labour. This time the judge gave him three years' penal servitude and remarked that he was lucky in not having to stand his trial for wilful murder. There were photographs of him in convict dress and in the" clothes he was discharged in. There was also the usual prison description, height and weight; body scars and marks; birthplace—Belfast; religion—Protestant. "Then I had a look at the conduct sheet. He had incurred six reports for misconduct—two for fighting; two for talking after being cautioned and' two for assaulting warders. The application sheet was nearly blank. He never asked for special letters or other privileges, hut I found in his record one suppressed letter and I got leave to photograph it; attached to it was the envelope addressed to 'Mrs. Plume, 17, Armagh Street, Belfast.' Here is the photograph; you will see that handwriting was not his strong point." "Ah! It begins 'Dearest Bella.' Mrs. Fenwick's first name w® Isabel. That record throws a clear light upon the man's character, it seems to me. Plume is hot-tempered and quarrelsome; too proud to truckle to authority to ask for favours; he never appealed against his sentence. I suppose that there was nothing in the record to show that he had ever been guilty of dishonesty." "No, nothing; he seems to have been a dangerous ruffian, and that was all that was wrong with him." "As an ex-convict would he have had much difficulty in signing on for another voyage ?" "No, I fancy that they doir't ask many questions on these coasting vessels." "Then what was he doing in Paris in company with a blackmailer, do you think ?" "That's what we have got to find out when we get him. Did you gather that he was taking an active part in the blackmail ?" "No; the other man seems to have done all the talking. The hotel people hardly ever heard him speak." "Then the sooner that wo get him here the better. Probably the man who called himself Arthur Brown knew his history, and as soon as Fenwick let out that he had a wife in Cuba, he telegraphed for Plume to come over in order to make sure that he was on to the right man. As soon as he knew that, Brown did the rest. He must have made that poor man's .life a hell. Probably he was pretending all the-time to be acting as his protector against Plume, and„it was he who induced Fenwiek to make a new will, with the intention of stealing it. He may even have pushed him overboard." "Or frightened him into jumping overboard. But what could have been his object in getting him to *make a new will?" "To "et hold of something which he could use to blackmail the first wife and the son when they came into their inheritance. It is just the sort of thing that a blackmailer would do." (To be continued daily.)