by Lewis Hockley [Percy Longhurst].
Originally published in The Magnet Library (The Amalgamated Press, Ltd.) vol.1 #5 (14 Mar 1908).
The Beginning of Maxennis' Career.
Lomax and Dennis were eating a frugal lunch in one of the A.B.C. shops; Dennis would have preferred a more
substantial meal at a restaurant, but his chem reminded him that they had already eaten a breakfast of considerable solidity, and that, considering their insecure financial condition, it would be advisable not to be spendthrift of the little capital they possessed. A decent meat, he said, could be made off bread, butter, a couple of cold sausages, and a cup of coffee, at a cost of eightpence apiece, whereas the restaurant charge for a lunch no more filling would be at least double. Dennis had given way to such profound logic; and, while the chums ate, they discussed the event which was, they hoped, to start "Maxennis" on his career.
"D'you really think, Bob, that it is all right?" Frank inquired. "That the old girl isn't a trifle cracked?"
"I do think it's all right; and it's going to be all right for us, too!" Lomax answered emphatically. "There's not a bit of doubt that someone is attempting to threaten her into parting with her money. It's a real, genuine case of blackmail. Look at all those postcards she showed us; same handwriting on every one of 'em!"
"That is so," Dennis admitted; "but it looks to me that it's very much like a silly joke on somebody's part!"
"Not a bit of it! Where's the point of it if it is?"
"Well, people do some tom-fool's things sometimes."
"Yes, but you've got to take the other circumstances into consideration. There's her late husband's brother she told us of; from what she said of him, it strikes me that he's just the sort of chap who'd do this kind of thing!"
"Might be," Dennis said doubtfully.
"Well anyway, it's our business to find out! The woman is in a most awful funk; anyone can see that. She takes it seriously enough, and we're going to take is seriously, for it'll be a good thing for us. We ought to got a rattling good fee!"
"If she'll engage us!"
"Oh, she will, right enough!"
"Well, we'll hear more about it to-morrow, if she turns up. And say, Bod, where is she going to turn up? You told her to come and see us at our office, and we haven't got an office! What the dickens were you thinking of, Bob? I thought you were cracked when I heard you say it, but I wasn't going to give you away!"
"That's all right," Lomax answered composedly; I know we haven't got an office, but we're going to have one, and we'll have it all ready for our client—our client, my lad; think of it!—to see us in to-morrow. I'm not cracked, Frank; far from it. We're going to hustle around after lunch and find an office, and we'll have it fitted up O.K. when she turns up. She's not the sharpest of old parties, and if things do look a bit rough-and-ready she won't feel hurt."
"She's not over bright," Dennis agreed. "Didn't she take down easily whet we said about being detectives?"
"Well, and why shouldn't she?" demanded Lomax, a trifle indignantly. "We are detectives; we weren't hum-bugging! Why, you talk as if we'd been playing tricks on the woman! We're the regular article, even if this is our first case!"
"All right, old chap," was the good-humoured answer; "don't get mad; I'm not suggesting anything! But she is a bit dull. Why, she never even asked where our office is—which in lucky!—never occurred to her, apparently, to inquire the address!"
"No; and I was afraid she would every minute!" And Lomax actually laughed. "But we've got her address all right, and, when we've found a place to pitch our tent—we've got all the afternoon and evening to do it—we'll drop her a line, regretting the oversight of not furnishing her with the address and giving it to her. By Jove, though, we would have been stuck up if she'd only thought to ask for it then!"
"I don't reckon, Frank," the Yorkshireman went on, "that we'll have any difficulty. There's plenty of places about the City where a room for an office can be rented pretty cheaply; and it doesn't matter very much where we go, so long as it isn't out of the way. We'll go and buy a lot of second-hand furniture, just to make the place look all right, and one of us can get out a board to go on the door with the name of our firm on it. We'll go along all right, my led, you can bet om it!"
"We will!" returned Dennis, catching his chum's enthusiasm. "By Jove, Bob, this is turning out quite as exciting as anything that the story-book detectives ever did! And it's to old Grip we're indebted again! If he hadn't made himself so officious we wouldn't have got on with the old dame. That terrier's going to be worth his weight in gold!"
Getting up, the two friends paid their checks, and with Grip—who had sat within the doorway while they dined,
complacently viewing the never-ending stream of traffic that passed along Holborn—at their heels, they sallied forth to discover the office where "Maxennis" was to be located.
After having simmered down: thanks, no doubt, to the soothing effects of the contents of the black flask; the owner of the many picture-postcards—Mrs. Brewer by name, as she informed "Maxennis," a widow, and living—queer place!—in two rooms over a shop in Great Turnstile, Lincoln's Inn—had given her two new acquaintances some information relative to the trouble that was disturbing her mind. She had not for a moment expected the young men of being anything different from what Robert Lomax had said; had accepted their statements without hesitation or question, and had accepted their offer of help without any thought or consideration of whet it's value might be.
The woman was, in fact, in a state of mind really pitiable; she was full of fear, and would have jumped at any offer of assistance. And it was the postcards—of which she had allowed Lomax and Dennis to make a cursory inspection—that had brought her to such a condition. Each and every one of them contained, in carefully-chosen words, a veiled threat to destroy her if she did not hand over a sum of money.
Her husband had died some eight months earlier, and, within a week of the funeral, the first of the postcards had arrived. Since then, with the regularity of clockwork, twice a week, every Monday and every Thursday, another had reached her. She was sure somebody wanted to put her out of the way, so that the little money she had might be obtained. Who it was she didn't know; the writing on the cards was not familiar to her; but she suspected her late husband's brother.
So much she had related, not very coherently, and not according to the sequence of events, but enough it was to cause Lomax to make the moat of the sudden inspiration that had come to him, end urge upon the frightened woman the necessity for seeking expert aid to assist her in dealing with the matter, and such as he and his partner were willing—for a suitable consideration, as he delicately hinted—to give. She had consented, and the arrangement made before they parted was such as the foregoing conversation between Lomax and his chum has indicated.
It was seven in the evening before Lomax and Dennis found an office to their liking. It was situated in one of those courts in the rear of the City side of Fleet Street, where some of the still standing homes erected over a century ago are let out in rooms and offices at moderate rentals not beyond the friends' means. Seven shillings a week was be be paid for the sole use of a fair sized room on the top floor, lighted by one window, and thick with dust and cobwebs. The caretaker protested that the previous tenant had vacated it but a fortnight before; and if such was the case Dennis decided that he must have been an individual uncommonly easily satisfied, for the walls, floor, end mantleshelf were covered with a layer of dust a quarter of an inch thick.
The landlord, proprietor of a coffee-house in Shoe Lane, was unearthed, a bargain struck, the first week's rental paid in advance, and both youngsters set to work to make their tenement habitable. And work they did; when they did go to bed they were both feeling more tired than if they had been engaging in a two hours' bout on the wrestling-mat.
Dennis first of all borrowed a broom from the caretaker and gave the interior a thorough sweeping down. Water, soap, and a scrubbing brush were procured, and, while Dennis tried to remove some of the grime from the window-panes, Lomax scrubbed the floor and woodwork. They bought coal and wood, lighted a fire, got the gas-jet into working order, and then sallied forth to obtain some furniture. It waa a night's work--their labours were not completed before one o'clock in the morning—neither ever forgot. But they went through it manfully; Dennis with a laugh and a joke ever on his lips. Lomax with a grim resolution that could not have been excelled if his life had depended upon a successful termination of the job.
They were indefatigable; went here, there, and everywhere, without the slightest diffidence or modesty, trying to get what they needed, and willing to pay down on the nail, if not at a very lavish rate for those articles they obtained. A table, a worn desk, an ancient inkstand, with pens and ink and a small stock of sheets of foolscap were obtained; a few pegs were driven into the walls, a ledger and memorandum-book bought and conspicuously placed upon the mantel-shelf, and a few other odds-and-ends such as they deemed necessary as proper accompaniments for the character and work they had undertaken. And when everything had been brought into the office, Dennis sat down, and, having fastened on a small piece of board a sheet of clean paper, he inscribed on it, in letters large enough to be read six feet away, the following:
"MAXENNIS."
Private Detective, and Investigator of All Cases Requiring Ability, Tact, Scrupulous Secrecy, and Despatch. 3rd Floor.
With the pride of the creative artist, he showed this notice to Robert Lomax, who grunted.
"Well, if that doesn't fetch 'em, nothing will!" the Yorkshireman remarked, "And now let's go tn bed, for I'm dog-tired, and I guess, you're about the same!"
"I am!" Dennis agreed, rubbing his eyes. "I'll fasten this board up on the door-post first thing tomorrow morning; we're not going to hide our shining light under a bushel!"
Lomax had spoken of going to bed; but as a matter of fact, they had no bed to go to. Whatever they might arrange for the future, that night had to be spent where they were within a stone's throw of a very good hotel where a bed-room would here been surely obtainable, but the expenditure on the fitting up of their office had made a big hole in a sovereign, and it was necessary to be economical. Not a penny could be spent on luxuries, and so they passed the night in the office. Lomax slept on the table, in a half-reclining position, with his shoulders up against one of the walls; Dennis made of the three chairs as comfortable a bed as such unresisting things as chair-seats will permit. For covering, the latter had his overcoat, while Lomax was content with a big woollen rug, a parting gift from hie mother when he had left his north county home.
There is nothing like physical weariness for inducing sound sleep; and had the two chums been tucked up on
the soften down beds, their slumbers could not have been sounder. Once, it is true, Lomax slipped down from the wall, but the fall didn't awaken him, and he was blissfully unconscious that he spent the bettor part of the short night with his feet and legs dangling over the end of the table. And though the chair-seat edges made grooves in Dennis's flesh, he was insensible of the fact, until the morning came and he awakened.
When that happened both he and his chum became painfully aware thet a wooden mattress possesses quite unexpected disadvantages. Both were as stiff and sore as if someone had thrashed them thoroughly the evening before. Lomax's legs were cold end numbed; Dennis could hardly bend his back, and both had acquired a disagreeable crick and stiffness in the neck.
Still, such inconveniences, disagreeable as they were at the time, are fortunately only temporary, and their pains and stiffness were speedily dispelled by a round or two of pleasant sparring, wherein each was careful to do no damage to his opponent's physiognomy; for "Maxennis" to have faced his first client with a discoloured eye or a swollen proboscis would have been distinctly "off."
Their boxing bout over, the young men sought out the caretaker, and a few complimentary words procured permission to use, for washing purposes, the sink in the cellar, which the Lady declared was a scullery. This necessary part of the day's work accomplished, another was commenced—they went out to breakfast.
Plain food, no matter how simple, providing it is clean and wholesome, never yet hurt anybody, and the budding detectives were not fastidious in other respects. They got what they wanted at an eating-house not far from their office, and after a stroll along the Embankment returned thereto. The all-important letter to Mrs. Brewer had not been forgotten during the multifarious duties of the night before. The lady had been acquainted at what address Maxennis might be consulted: ten o'clock had been fixed for the time of the appointment with her, end after their stroll the friends had nothing to do but kill tine for an hour and a half by discussing their prospects.
Dennis had hung up the name-plate when they went to breakfast, and it was with no small pride both looked at it as they returned. The caretaker, another woman, and two men and a boy were examining it as they entered. They looked curiously at the young men as they passed in, but said nothing. Once within their office, Dennis wrote out the firm's name on a sheet of paper, fastened it with drawing pins to the outside of the door, and reentered.
Ten o'clock came at last, but not Mrs. Brewer. At twenty-five minutes past the hour, however, a heavy step sounded on the staircase; there was a pause for several seconds, and then a rattling of the handle.
"Our first client!" Lomax said solemnly.