Legendary Women Detectives

“No,” said Mr. Griffiths; “it’s au revoir, for you’ll have to come back again for the assizes, and give the evidence that will shut old Mr. Craven in an asylum for the rest of his life.”

THE MAN WHO SCARED THE BANK by Valentine

(Sleuth: Daphne Wrayne)

In the history of British male mystery fiction there are countless heroes of distinguished parentage and sporting nature, who put natural gifts to use detecting crime – Reggie Fortune and Peter Wimsey to name several. On the distaff side, there is Daphne Wrayne. The brainchild of the prolific and pseudonymous Valentine (Archibald Thomas Pechey), Daphne Wrayne is the youngest of all the female sleuths in this volume, whom the author describes in The Adjusters (1930), as “barely out of her teens.” But, she is no Nancy Drew – she is an adult detective and so are the cases that challenge her.

The editor of the Daily Monitor rang his bell.

“Send Mr. Ma

He sat drumming on the table with his fingers and frowning at the letter in his hand until a knock sounded on the door. Then:

“Come in, Ma

The other took it, sca

“I know the Duchess, sir,” he said.

“Exactly. That’s why I sent for you. Go up and see her at once. Find out all you can about this story. Maybe she’ll get you an interview with these Adjusters people. Hitherto no one’s been able to get one. Get hold of every bit of news you can lay your hands on… The moment we publish the fact that they’ve recovered her necklace the public will be on its toes to know who and what they are. It’s over three months since the necklace was stolen from Hardington House, and the police have owned themselves beat.”

For four weeks the Adjusters had been intriguing public curiosity.

Who and what they were no one seemed to know. Four times had a full-page advertisement appeared in the Daily Monitor:

IF THE POLICE CANNOT HELP YOU

THE

ADJUSTERS

CAN

179, CONDUIT STREET, W.

Just that and no more. Interviewers and reporters had called, but had come away empty-handed. All that they could say was that the Adjusters occupied the whole of the first floor at 179, Conduit Street, that a stalwart commissionaire – an ex-army man with a string of ribbons across his chest – replied to all callers that “Miss Wrayne could see no one except by appointment, and no pressmen in any circumstances whatever.”

Now he gave the same reply when Ma

“Perhaps you will be good enough to give that to Miss Wrayne,” he said. “It’s from the Duchess of Hardington.”

Five minutes later the commissionaire came back.

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

The next morning the Daily Monitor brought out flaming headlines a

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 a

“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.