Four Square Jane

Four Square Jane by Edgar Wallace

A wealthy financier hosting a lavish country house party is robbed during the night by a cunning thief who infiltrates the gathering disguised as an American lady detective hired to protect the guests' jewels. The thief, who leaves behind a distinctive calling card bearing four small squares and the letter J, also drugs the real detective and escapes in a fraudulent ambulance with an accomplice posing as a physician. This mysterious criminal, known to the press and police as Four Square Jane, is no ordinary burglar. She targets exclusively those who have amassed fortunes through questionable means, and consistently donates the proceeds of her thefts, particularly gemstones, to hospitals and charities in desperate need of funds. When she steals a valuable Venetian armlet, she sends it to a struggling women's hospital so the reward for its return may fund the institution. When the miserly lord from whom it was taken cheats the hospital out of half the promised reward, she promptly robs him again. Scotland Yard assigns its most capable superintendent to the case. He is a methodical and philosophically minded detective who finds the puzzle irresistible, recognising in this criminal a formidable and original intelligence. He theorises that Four Square Jane is not merely a society thief with philanthropic leanings but someone with a very specific and personal grievance against one particular nobleman, Lord Claythorpe. Jane's exploits grow bolder. She removes a famous Romney portrait from a closely guarded gallery by rolling it into a window blind where it remains concealed within the room itself, having earlier positioned it there through careful timing and misdirection. She demands a charitable donation in exchange for its return. She steals a wedding ring on the eve of a society marriage, then burgles the home of the clergyman who is to perform the ceremony and takes the special marriage licence, preventing the wedding entirely. The young woman whose fortune is held in trust by Lord Claythorpe is Joyce Wilberforce. She has been manoeuvred into a proposed marriage with his weak-witted son in a scheme designed to keep her inheritance under his control. She is in love with a young engineer named Jamieson Steele whom Claythorpe has falsely accused of forgery to discredit him and justify refusing consent to the match. Steele fled abroad rather than stand trial on fabricated evidence. The detective gradually uncovers the truth. Claythorpe has been systematically plundering Joyce's inheritance over many years, replacing the contents of sealed security envelopes with blank paper. His confidential clerk, Remington, discovers this fraud and confronts him. Claythorpe shoots him dead, then stages the office to suggest Four Square Jane committed the robbery, using one of her old labels retrieved from a previous crime scene and spraying feminine perfume to mislead investigators. He plants a visiting card bearing Steele's name in the dead man's hand. The detective establishes through fingerprint evidence that Claythorpe himself committed the murder. Confronted and arrested, Claythorpe confesses, then takes his own life in his cell using a coat button secretly fashioned from compressed cyanide. Joyce and Steele, now revealed to be secretly married, are identified as the architects of the Four Square Jane scheme. Steele has been her principal accomplice throughout, including posing as the doctor at Lewinstein's house party. The name Four Square Jane refers to four London squares where the key figures in her story once lived. Joyce herself retrieved the surviving bond from Claythorpe's secret desk drawer after engineering a situation in which she was locked inside the sealed study, buying herself the time needed to locate it. The detective closes in on the couple at their hotel, but Steele drugs him with a prepared cigarette, and the pair escape across rooftops with the help of confederates planted in a neighbouring warehouse. They depart for South America. Two months later, the detective receives a cheerful and affectionate letter from Joyce declaring that Four Square Jane is retired, that all she ever sought was recovery of what was rightfully hers, and inviting him to visit. She adds a postscript advising him to bring his own cigarettes.

By Edgar Wallace · First published 1929 · Genre: Crime Fiction, Mystery, Thriller · 9 chapters · 42,752 words

First lines

Mr. Joe Lewinstein slouched to one of the long windows which gave light to his magnificent drawing-room and stared gloomily across the lawn.

The beds of geraniums and lobelias were half-obscured by a driving mist of rain, and the well-kept lawns that were the pride of his many gardeners were sodden and, in places, under water.

Genres

Tags

crime fiction · mystery · thriller · detective story · British literature · London setting · female protagonist · criminal investigation · suspense · romance · adventure · underworld

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Four Square Jane is listed on Textopian as a novel by Edgar Wallace, dated 1929 CE.

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