Legendary Women Detectives

“If you will come this way, sir, Miss Wrayne will see you,” he said.

The next morning the Daily Monitor brought out flaming headlines announcing that the Duchess of Hardington’s world-famous pearl necklace had been recovered by “The Adjusters of 179, Conduit Street.” But it was what followed that made the public rub its eyes in astonishment.

Armed with a letter of introduction from the Duchess of Hardington I succeeded in gaining an interview with Miss Daphne Wrayne, the secretary of the Adjusters. To comment on that interview is impossible. I can merely state what Miss Wrayne told me and leave the public to judge for themselves. Probably they will be as bewildered as I was – and still am.

Followed then an account of a lavishly furnished suite of offices and a beautiful young girl who called herself the secretary, who declined to give the names of her associates, but who said that the Adjusters came into being for the “adjustment of the inequalities that at present exist between the criminal and the victim.” Asked to explain this a little more fully Miss Wrayne said that where the police were chiefly interested in the capture and punishment of the criminal, the Adjusters were solely concerned with the restoration to the victim of the money, or property, out of which he or she had been defrauded. She added, furthermore, that they had unlimited money behind them and charged no fees whatsoever! Then the Monitor man went on:

But, frankly, to me Miss Daphne Wrayne is the most amazing part of this amazing firm. It is well-nigh impossible to believe that this singularly lovely girl, barely out of her teens, who looks as if she had just stepped out of a Bond Street modiste’s, is really in control of an enterprise of this kind. I say “in control” for even if she is not, she is, on her own statement, the only one whom the public will see, and behind the very up-to-date exterior, with its dainty Paris frock, silk stockings, etc., there is obviously a brain out of the ordinary.

I was bewildered at the rapidity with which this pretty, laughing-eyed schoolgirl who smoked cigarettes and used slang, changed into an earnest young woman, with the criminal life of London at her slim fingers’ ends.

I came away from Conduit Street trying to tell myself that it was foolish, impossible, ridiculous. And yet there is Miss Wrayne herself. I can still see those clear hazel eyes of hers, and hear her final words: “Is it so strange that some who have unlimited money and brains should want to help their less fortunate brethren?”

One week later, when Sir John Colston – the interview had been arranged that morning by telephone – was ushered into Daphne’s private room, he was conscious of a slight sense of annoyance. To, discover that he, Sir John Colston, the head of one of the biggest banks in London, had to lay his difficulties at the slim feet of a lovely, hazel-eyed girl hardly out of her teens – a girl who coolly waved him to a chair as she lighted another cigarette – it was almost preposterous!

“Well, Sir John, what can we do for you?”

Just as if he were nobody and his affair a trivial matter!

“I understand from the Duchess of–” he began stiffly, but Daphne Wrayne’s eyes narrowed a little as she cut in on him.

“I know, and you’re surprised at finding me so young.” She leant forward suddenly in her chair. “Forgive me for saying so, but you’re a little behind the times. You are obviously in trouble or you wouldn’t be here. If you want my services they are at your disposal. But in that case it will be very much better, both for you and for me, if you will forget that I am a girl and not yet twenty-one. You will excuse my plain speaking, won’t you?”

A little smile curved her lips, but her eyes were steady on his.

“You’re not the first, you know, Sir John,” she went on. “It’s a bit of a handicap sometimes, being a girl!”

His resentment vanished from that moment. Her ingenuousness disarmed him.

“I’m sorry, Miss Wrayne,” he said. “I’m an old man – a bit old-fashioned, I’m afraid, too. You – this place–” he waved a hand “rather took me by surprise.”

“Of course–” sweetly. “Now, let’s get to business. You, I take it, are the head of the Universal Banking Corporation of Lombard Street?”

“I am. I have a client of the name of Richard Henry Gorleston.”

“The bookmaker?”

“I begin to see that what the Duchess told me about you was true,” he smiled. He was becoming more impressed now every minute.

“I have a good memory for names,” she replied.

“He has been a client of mine for nearly three years. His father, I may tell you, left him fifty thousand pounds. The son has banked with us ever since, and until this week has been a trusted client.

“I must tell you,” he went on, “that ever since he opened an account with us it has been his habit to draw out large sums of money in notes and to replace them within a few days. He told me from the start that he lived by gambling.