The Old Man in the Corner: Twelve Classic Detective Stories

By Baroness Orczy and E. F. Bleiler

A nameless old man sits in the corner of a cozy London tea shop, and without leaving his seat, solves baffling crimes reported to him by an admiring lady journalist. Using only methods of pure deduction, the eccentric, self-assured sleuth unravels the mysteries behind a wide range of criminal acts--from gruesome murders ("The Lisson Grove Mystery") and daring thefts ("The Affair at the Novelty Theatre") to brilliant deceptions ("The Liverpool Mystery") and deadly blackmail schemes ("The Murder of Miss Pebmarsh").
Set in the fog-shrouded streets of London, where gas lamps flicker in the gloom and details of lurid crimes splash across the pages of the daily papers, these ingenious, well-crafted stories by the author of The Scarlet Pimpernel are among the first and great collections of detective fiction. They will delight devotees of Sherlock Holmes and other mystery-loving fans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: May 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9780486145709

Baroness Orczy

Baroness Emmuska Orczy was born in Hungary in 1865. She lived in Budapest, Brussels, Paris, Monte Carlo, and London, where she died in 1947. The author of many novels, she is best known for The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Book preview

THE OLD MAN IN THE CORNER

Twelve Classic Detective Stories

BARONESS ORCZY

Introduction by

E. F. Bleiler

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Mineola, New York

Copyright

Copyright © 1980 by Dover Publications, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 1980 and reissued in 2005, is a selection of Old Man in the Corner stories, originally published in Royal Magazine, 1901-05. The Introduction, which was written especially for the 1980 Dover reprint by E. F. Bleiler, is also included here.

International Standard Book Number eISBN 13: 978-0-486-14570-9

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

INTRODUCTION

It was all because of the steam-powered mill on the River Tarna in Hungary. If Baron Felix Orczy had not been an enthusiast of scientific farming, he would have let his peasants continue on in their Bronze-Age ways, cutting the grain with little sickles, threshing it with flails on a clay floor and grinding the grist with ox power.

But the Baron was a modernist and, despite peasant protests, spent a fortune on mechanical reapers and the steam mill, which were intended to revolutionize farming in this rich, agricultural area. At dusk, July 22, 1868, however, while the Orczys were entertaining guests in the gigantic manor with the huge Doric pillars, a glow was seen in the sky. At first it was thought to be sunset, but then the disaster was recognized. The peasants had burned down the mill and had also fired the Baron’s wheat fields, which were ready to be reaped.

The results were threefold: financial problems for the Baron, who had much land but little cash; disillusionment with farming and abandonment of the wide estates; and, eventually, The Scarlet Pimpernel and the Old Man in the Corner.

Baroness Emma Orczy (1865–1947) was born into the landed aristocracy of Hungary. Her family owned large estates and her parents were cultured and artistic. Her father, indeed, was a gifted amateur composer; in later years one of his operas was performed in London (to excellent reviews) under Colonel Mapleson. As a result of the peasant uprising, however, the Orczys decided to leave the wheat country, and live as urbanites, educating their children to their future places among the Austro-Hungarian nobility. For a time the family stayed in Budapest, where Baron Felix took on the position of Superintendant of the Royal Theaters. Then, deciding that their children needed more polish, the Orczys moved to Brussels, then Paris and finally London.

Emma (or Emmuska, as she preferred to be called), according to the family plan, was to become a musician. But it soon became obvious that music was not for her. In Paris, Franz Liszt, a family friend, told her sadly, after listening to her play one of his pieces, Non, ce n’est pas cela. What Rubinstein and Richter, who were also family friends said, the Baroness did not reveal, but possibly they were less polite than Liszt.

After the Orczys moved to London, it was decided that Emma should become an artist. She was enrolled in an art school, and while it was discovered that Non, ce n’est pas cela also held for her painting, she met her future husband and collaborator, Montagu Barstow.

For several years the Barstows lived in London. Montagu did illustrations for books and periodicals and Emma assisted him. Indeed, Emma’s first book, done anonymously, was a collection of fanciful animal illustrations for children, published by Raphael Tuck. Their life was uneventful, apart from the social whirl of London aristocracy, for the Baron’s antecedents permitted them entry to the highest circles. On the opposite pole of experience, the Barstows, not too long after they were married, used to wander about the less savory parts of London. On one occasion (as the Baroness relates it) they were present when one of Jack the Ripper’s victims was found.

If the Baroness was no musician and only a second-rate painter, she was to discover that she had another gift to a very high degree. This was story-telling. Despite the fact that she had never spoken a word of English until she was fifteen years old, she soon became one of the most widely read authors in the language.

The circumstances of her entry into fiction are known. When she and Barstow were living in rooms in London, in fairly straitened circumstances, she became aware that the landlady’s daughter was perpetually sending little stories to the newspapers and periodicals. At first the Barstows laughed, but when the girl received a check for five guineas, the Baroness took serious thought. As her reasoning went, If an inexperienced London girl, with only a fraction of my education, can make money this easily, why cannot I—who am at home in four languages, have travelled, and have associated with the great of Europe—do even better?

She was right, of course. She mailed two stories to the offices of Pearson’s, where her husband had a business connection, and to her surprise received an invitation to lunch with the editor, and a commission. In a very short time, around 1899–1900, such stories as Juliette, A Tale of the Terror, The Trappist’s Vow, and The Revenge of Ur-Tasen began to appear in the sister periodicals, Pearson’s Magazine and The Royal Magazine. She received £10 for each story, which was considerably less than the £45 which Doyle had received for the first Sherlock Holmes short stories in The Strand some eight or nine years earlier. About this same time her first novel, The Emperor’s Candlesticks, appeared.

By most persons except detective-story enthusiasts Baroness Orczy is now remembered for the adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel; seemingly an effete young English snob, but really a daredevil, the Scarlet Pimpernel rescues French aristocrats from the Revolution and brings them to a haven of safety in England. What with the Baroness’s own history, it is easy to see why such a theme interested her.

As is often the case with books that later become best-sellers and almost folk-symbols, The Scarlet Pimpernel was rejected by one publisher after another. The best that the Baroness could achieve was a commitment from a second-line publisher that if she had her novel staged—since she had also prepared a dramatic version—it would publish her book. The Scarlet Pimpernel was staged in 1905 and after a slow start it became a hit, playing for four years. The book version was equally successful and remains in print to this day. The fortunes of the Barstows were made.

The Baroness continued writing until shortly before her death. The most successful of her works, financially speaking, were the books about Sir Percy Blakeney, the Scarlet Pimpernel. These were published in periodicals and multi-edition books, and translated into many languages. The original book was also made into a movie starring Leslie Howard, whom the Baroness did not consider especially well cast for the role.

The Barstows lived in England until World War I, but in 1916 they bought a small estate in Monte Carlo, where they spent the remainder of their lives, apart from yearly trips to England and elsewhere. During World War II they were trapped in first the Italian and later the German occupation of Monaco. Since the Baroness’s sympathies were pro-British and anti-Austrian and Barstow was British, life was very difficult for them. Barstow died in 1943 and the Baroness in 1947.

Baroness Orczy’s literary output was quite large, including, besides books, many periodical stories that have not been collected. Although she wrote in other fields, her forte was the historical romance and the detective short story. According to her memoirs, Links in the Chain of Life, her favorite work was By the Gods Beloved (American title, The Gates of Kamt), a novel about a colony of Ancient Egyptians surviving in the wastes of Africa. She had no illusions about her stature as a novelist, but considered herself a writer who made history vivid and attractive to the reader. She is remembered as an extraordinarily pleasant, shy woman, who felt and thought with the exuberance we usually associate with Hungarians.

II

Typologically the stories about the Old Man in the Corner are very important. They are the first significant stories about an armchair detective—one who resolves crimes simply from reports and by logic. They also present the ultimate development of the solution-denouement. Whereas explanations at the end of the story had been a standard feature of the detective story since Godwin and Charles Brockden Brown, the Baroness seems to have been the first to discard the story completely, and restrict herself to the ending, giving story details by flashback-quotation. As can be seen, this is a literary tour-de-force that requires considerably more skill than a chronological narrative in the conventional manner. According to the Baroness, her first step, at the advice of Barstow, was to create a detective in no respect like Sherlock Holmes and then to create cases around him. The result is before us.

The first Old Man in the Corner story appeared in The Royal Magazine for May 1901. Entitled The Fenchurch Street Mystery, it was followed by five others in succeeding months. In the last of these stories, The Mysterious Death in Percy Street, the Old Man, identity revealed, was given a comeuppance and forced into retirement by Polly Burton, but the series was so successful that a second series was commissioned and appeared in 1902, also in The Royal Magazine. This second series, which consisted of seven stories, devoted each case to a major city. At the time the story appeared, Pearson’s publicity staff would plaster the city in question with posters announcing the story. A third group of stories appeared in 1904, and a final group, now markedly inferior to the earlier stories, in 1924 and 1925. Altogether there are 38 stories that describe the disentanglements accomplished by Bill Owen, the Old Man in the Corner, as he plays with his piece of string.

By an oddity of publishing history the third series of stories was the first to appear in book form, under the title The Case of Miss Elliott (1905). It was not until 1909 that the first two series appeared in book form, under the now famous title of The Old Man in the Corner (American title, The Man in the Corner). The final series was entitled Unravelled Knots (1925).

The Baroness also chronicled the adventures of two other detectives in Lady Molly of Scotland Yard (1910) and Skin o’ My Tooth (1928). The first, narrated by a female Watson, describes the deductions of a lady detective associated with Scotland Yard; the second is concerned with the cases of Patrick Mulligan, an Irish lawyer-detective.

On the whole the Baroness, undoubtedly with Barstow’s help, trod a safe path among the intricacies of British legal procedure, but there was a disaster in the second series of the Old Man in the Corner.

The Baroness knew Glasgow well enough, since she had spent some time there, and had no hesitation in writing The Glasgow Mystery. But it turned out that more was involved than geography. She did not know Scottish law, and she made the mistake of referring to coroners, who do not exist in Scotland any more than does an accessory after the fact. The Royal Magazine received hundreds of indignant letters from north of the Tweed. The Royal Magazine sent them on to the Baroness for reply, together with its own letter of complaint. The Baroness was in despair, but Barstow provided advice that was effective but highhanded. Throw away all the letters and berate your publisher for not having caught the error. You, as a Hungarian, cannot be expected to know the niceties of Scots law. It worked.

The Glasgow Mystery, however, was suppressed. Reprinting it now is probably safe, for I cannot imagine that an American audience of today will worry much about Scottish coroners.

E. F. BLEILER

CONTENTS

THE  FENCHURCH STREET MYSTERY

THE  MYSTERIOUS DEATH ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY

THE  MYSTERIOUS DEATH IN PERCY STREET

THE  DUBLIN MYSTERY

THE  GLASGOW MYSTERY

THE  LIVERPOOL MYSTERY

THE  CASE OF MISS ELLIOTT

THE  LISSON GROVE MYSTERY

THE  TRAGEDY IN DARTMOOR TERRACE

THE  TREMARN CASE

THE  MURDER OF MISS PEBMARSH

THE  AFFAIR AT THE NOVELTY THEATRE

THE FENCHURCH STREET MYSTERY

---

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

THE MAN

who tells the story.

THE LADY JOURNALIST

who listens to it.

WILLIAM KERSHAW

(the supposed victim).

HIS WIFE.

FRANCIS SMETHURST

(suspected murderer).

KARL MÜLLER

(friend of Kershaw).

---

I

The man in the corner pushed aside his glass, and leant across the table.

Mysteries! he commented. There is no such thing as a mystery in connection with any crime, provided intelligence is brought to bear upon its investigation.

Astonished I looked over the top of my newspaper at him. Had I been commenting audibly upon the article which was interesting me so much? I cannot say; certain it is that the man over there had spoken in direct answer to my thoughts.

His appearance, in any case, was sufficient to tickle my fancy. I don’t think I had ever seen anyone so pale, so thin, with such funny light-coloured hair, brushed very smoothly across the top of a very obviously bald crown. I smiled indulgently at him. He looked so timid and nervous as he fidgeted incessantly with a piece of string; his long, lean, and trembling fingers tying and untying it into knots of wonderful and complicated proportions.

And yet, I remarked kindly, but authoritatively, this article, in an otherwise well-informed journal, will tell you that, even within the last year, no fewer than six crimes have completely baffled the police, and the perpetrators of them are still at large.

Pardon me, he said gently, "I never for a moment ventured to suggest that there were no mysteries to the police; I merely remarked that there were none where intelligence was brought to bear upon the investigation of crime."

"Not even in the Fenchurch Street mystery, I suppose," I asked sarcastically.

"Least of all in the so-called Fenchurch Street mystery," he replied quietly.

Now, the Fenchurch Street mystery, as that extraordinary crime had popularly been called, had puzzled, I venture to say, the brains of every thinking man and woman for the last twelve months. The attitude of that timid man in the corner, therefore, was peculiarly exasperating, and I retorted with sarcasm destined to completely annihilate my self-complacent interlocutor.

What a pity it is, in that case, that you do not offer your priceless services to our misguided though well-meaning police.

Isn’t it? he replied with perfect good humour. "Well, you know for one thing, I doubt if they would accept them, and in the second place, my inclinations and my duty would—were I to become an active member of the detective force—nearly always be in direct conflict. As often as not my sympathies go to the criminal who is clever and astute enough to lead our entire police force by the nose.

I don’t know how much of the case you remember, he went on quietly. "It certainly, at first, began even to puzzle me. On the 12th of last December a woman, poorly dressed, but with an unmistakable air of having seen better days, gave information at Scotland Yard of the disappearance of her husband, William Kershaw, of no occupation, and apparently of no fixed abode. She was accompanied by a friend—a fat, oily-looking German, and between them they told a tale, which set the police immediately on the move.

"It appears that on the 10th of December, at about three o’clock in the afternoon, Karl Müller, the German, called on his friend, William Kershaw, for the purpose of collecting a small debt—some ten pounds or so—which the latter owed him. On arriving at the squalid lodging in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, he found William Kershaw in a wild state of excitement, and his wife in tears. Müller attempted to state the object of his visit, but Kershaw, with wild gestures, waived him aside, and—in his own words—flabbergasted him by asking him point-blank for another loan of two pounds, which sum, he declared, would be the means of a speedy fortune for himself and the friend who would help him in his need.

After a quarter of an hour spent in obscure hints, Kershaw, finding the cautious German obdurate, decided to let him into the secret plan, which, he averred, would place thousands into their hands.

Instinctively I had put down my paper; the mild stranger, with his nervous air and timid, watery eyes, had a peculiar way of telling his tale, which somehow fascinated me.

I don’t know, he resumed, "if you remember the story which the German told to the police, and which was corroborated in every detail by the wife or widow. Briefly it was this: Some thirty years previously, Kershaw, then twenty years of age, and a medical student at one of the London hospitals, had a chum named Barker, with whom he roomed, together with another.

"The latter, so it appears, brought home one evening a very considerable sum of money, which he had won on the turf, and the following morning he was found murdered in his bed. Kershaw, fortunately for himself, was able to prove a conclusive alibi; he had spent the night on duty at the hospital; as for Barker, he had disappeared, that is to say, as far as the police were concerned, but not as far as the watchful eyes of his friend Kershaw—at least, so the latter said. Barker very cleverly contrived to get away out of the country, and after sundry vicissitudes, finally settled down at Vladivostock, in Eastern Siberia, where, under the assumed name of Smethurst, he built up an enormous fortune, by trading in furs.

"Now mind you, every one knows Smethurst, the Siberian millionaire. Kershaw’s story that he had once been called Barker, and had committed a murder thirty years ago was never proved, was it? I am merely telling you what Kershaw said to his friend the German and to his wife on that memorable afternoon of December the 10th.

"According to him, Smethurst had made one gigantic mistake in his clever career; he had on four occasions written to his late friend, William Kershaw. Two of these letters had no bearing on the case, since they were written more than twenty-five years ago, and Kershaw, moreover had lost them—so he said—long ago. According to him, however, the first of these letters was written when Smethurst, alias Barker, had spent all the money he had obtained from the crime, and found himself destitute in New York.

"Kershaw, then in fairly prosperous circumstances, sent him a £10 note for the sake of old times. The second, when the tables had turned, and Kershaw had begun to go downhill. Smethurst, as he then already called himself, sent his whilom friend £50. After that, as Müller gathered, Kershaw had made sundry demands on Smethurst’s ever increasing purse, and had accompanied these demands by various threats, which, considering the distant country in which the millionaire lived, were worse than futile.

But now the climax had come, and Kershaw after a final moment of hesitation, handed over to his German friend the two last letters purporting to have been written by Smethurst, and which, if you remember, played such an important part in the mysterious story of this extraordinary crime. I have a copy of both these letters, here, added the man in the corner as he took out a piece of paper from a very worn-out pocketbook, and, unfolding it very deliberately, he began to read:

SIR,

Your preposterous demands for money are wholly unwarrantable. I have already helped you quite as much as you deserve. However, for the sake of old times, and because you once helped me when I was in a terrible difficulty, I am willing to once more let you impose upon my good nature. A friend of mine here, a Russian merchant, to whom I have sold my business, starts in a few days for an extended tour to many European and Asiatic ports in his yacht, and has invited me to accompany him as far as England. Being tired of foreign parts, and desirous of seeing the old country once again after thirty years’ absence, I have decided to accept his invitation. I don’t know when we may actually be in Europe, but I promise you that as soon as we touch a suitable port I will write to you again, making an appointment for you to see me in London. But remember that if your demands are too preposterous I will not for a moment listen to them, and that I am the last man in the world to submit to persistent and unwarrantable blackmailing.

I am, sir,

Yours truly,

FRANCIS

Reviews for The Old Man in the Corner

[vesper1931 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While lunching at the A.B.C. Shop, an old man sitting in the corner strikes up a conversation with reporter Polly Burton. Over time he narrates twelve mysteries which have confounded the police and offers his solutions.
An enjoyable, varied selection of short stories, each one easily read in fifteen minutes which were first published in 1908.
A NetGalley Book

[bzedan_2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This was under the "Detective" bookshelf on Gutenberg, but it's not quite so. Our lady reporter protagonist makes an odd acquaintance who fills her in on his theories of recent crimes. It's satisfying in that the twist to each one is moderately novel and well-explained. Though I'm all up for question-mark endings, it's nice to get a bunch of stories wrapped in a bow (including a fun surprise bow at the end).