The Caper Club

The Caper Club

Copyright 2018 Ronald E. Hudkins

Published by Ronald E. Hudkins at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

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Summary – The Caper Club

Already reluctantly faced with inheriting a vast fortune, Sir Jayden Finlay finds his life complicated further when he surprises a ruffian in the act of rummaging through his kit-bag. By a strange coincidence, the very same scoundrel also happens to be blackmailing the woman whose portrait Finlay has become enamored of! Will the multi-millionaire manage to frustrate Captain Matthew and the Corruption Caper Bunches’ evil designs to save the fair lady from humiliating ruin?

A book that will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat! An incognito, newly titled and extremely rich, Sir Jayden finds himself embroiled in blackmail, murder, and political intrigue beyond his imagining when he boards a steamer to London in search of the beautiful lady in a photo. Lady Isabella and her father, the Prime Minister are in dire trouble with nowhere to turn until this brash stranger with the arresting eyes single-handedly takes an arch-blackmailer, Matthew and his Corruption Caper Club.

Copyright © Ronald E. Hudkins

All Rights Reserved

ISBN- Pending

In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than review purposes) prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher in writing @ ronald.hudkins@yahoo.com

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This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Table of Contents

Summary

Copyright

I. The Blackmailer

II. Sir Jayden Finlay Buys a Crime Syndicate

III. The Girl in the Park

IV. The Red-Haired Woman

V. The Caper Club

VI. Downing Street

VII. Lady Isabella’s Doubts

VIII. Scotland Yard Intervenes

IX. The Higher Burglary

X. Sir Jayden in Peril

XI. Murder Mysterious

XII. The Prime Minister is Compromised

XIII. The Gaming House

XIV. Lady Isabella’s Mission

XV. By Order of the Czar

XVI. Strange Happenings

XVII. Melodrama at Trant Hall

XVIII. At the Empire

XIX. The Capture of Lady Isabella

XX. The Farm on the Hill

XXI. The Kidnapping of the Prime Minister

XXII. The Premier's Story

XXIII. A Grisly Threat

XXIV. Finlay's Way Out

XXV. The Last Fight

About the Author

Book Review

Ronald Hudkins Other Books

CHAPTER I

THE BLACKMAILER

Hearing the sound of lightly-falling footsteps behind him, Captain Matthew ceased his investigations of Sir Jayden Finlay's kit-bag and cautiously turned his head.

As he did so, the captain experienced a painful sensation. He felt a little cold ring of steel pressed against his right temple, and from past experience, both objective and subjective, he knew that a Colt cartridge was held, so to speak, in leash within five inches of his head.

It was very still on board the Commodious. The liner rose and fell easily on the long, oily Atlantic swell of the Bay of Biscay. Moreover, there was upon the entire vessel that peace which comes between the post-prandial exercises, such as deck quoits, of Atlantic passengers and the comparative bustle which arrives with tea-time. In short, the hour was half-past three o'clock.

Captain Matthew for several infinitely long seconds was offered an opportunity of enjoying the supreme calm of the liner. But he did not entirely revel in the moments so offered to him.

It was, indeed, with some relief that he heard a distinctly pleasant, though slightly mocking, voice break the accentuated silence and say:

Don't be alarmed, Captain Matthew. I mean you no harm. I am simply psychologically interested in your movements. The fact that I am attempting to protect the contents of my kit-bag from your attentions is of comparatively small importance.

The captain drew a little breath of relief, not the less sincere because he was conscious that the nozzle of the revolver was withdrawn from his temple.

He heard the door of the state-room close softly; then the pleasant voice spoke again, though with a slightly harder ring in its tones.

Stand up, Captain Matthew, said the voice, and be seated. I have a good deal to say, and it is not my habit to talk to any man when I find him on his knees.

Captain Matthew rose a little unsteadily and faced about, to find the most disconcerting eyes of Sir Jayden Finlay bent full upon him.

Still retaining the revolver in his hand, the baronet seated himself upon the edge of his bunk and then motioned to Captain Matthew to sit down upon the only available couch.

For a few minutes the two men gazed at each other with curiosity and interest; and it would have been hard to find a greater contrast in physique and physiognomy.

Captain Matthew had an olive face set with dark, almond-shaped eyes beneath a pair of oblique and finely-penciled brows; his nose was aquiline and assertive, his mouth shrewd and mean and scarcely hidden by a carefully-trained and very faintly-waxed moustache. He was exceedingly tall and astonishingly spare in build. Indeed, his whole aspect suggested a man who brooded over defeated ends. For the rest, his dress was unmistakably associated with that service to which he had never been a credit and which he had left unwept, unhonored, and unsung.

Sir Jayden rivalled the captain in inches. Indeed, he must have overtopped him by half a head. He was spare, too, as Matthew was, but his was the leanness of a man who has been worn fine by activity. His hair was undeniably red in tint, and his face had that pronounced ruddiness possessed only by red-haired folk. His nose was inelegantly short and emphasized the length of his upper lip, which was, however, covered, as indeed were both his face and chin, with a short, crisp auburn beard.

Strong though it was, his face, under the covering of its beard, would have lacked both distinction and power but for the amazing eyes. These, beneath brows which were rather beetling for so young a man, were of a shade which can only be described as of duck's-egg green. They gave the man an aspect of superhuman coldness and at times an air of almost superhuman cruelty. They were the eyes of a man who could look unmoved upon a sea of troubles or survey with untouched heart a panorama of undeserved suffering.

Sir Jayden was, in fact, no uncommon man. Leaving a wild youth behind him, he had for ten years which followed his landing in the United States pursued the hard and humble and most exacting calling of miner in the West. Life he had always held cheap, not only as it touched others, but as it touched himself. He had learnt a hard lesson in the school of life, and taking it hardly had become a hard man. So inured, indeed, had he become both to suffering and to danger that, when at length a greedy lawyer had tracked him down, he had at first resented bitterly and blasphemously the fate which made him the richest man on earth.

For his uncle, from whom he inherited the baronetcy, had been a rich man when he died; and for five years his well-invested fortune had lain in the hands of able men, slowly accumulating still greater wealth, which a Logand of secondary relatives had striven to prove did not belong to the vanished and scapegrace nephew.

At first the fact that he was the undisputed owner of quite as many millions as would have justified an American plutocrat in being jealous had annoyed the new baronet more than he could tell.

Week after week the lawyer, mindful of his fees, had pleaded with the new baronet to return to England and enter into possession of his own. Week after week Finlay had hesitated to return, for, in spite of the hardships which he had undergone, there lived with him still sufficient of the old life to tell him that the possession of millions would entail the labor of a social treadmill which he not only dreaded but despised.

There had, however, come to him quite by chance a motive for returning. On thinking it over he had come to the conclusion that it is not, after all, so bad a thing to be able to indulge a whim. And the secret of the whim he meant to follow lay, he knew, within the kit-bag which he had found Captain Matthew ransacking.

Utterly cut off from the world as he had been, the names which mean so much in Society in London, Paris, Vienna, and even in New York, had been lost to him. The faces of the great men of those great cities were to him as a closed book. The faces of their womenkind were as dreams which he had long since forgotten. But there was a dream in the kit-bag.

Even Finlay's roistering had not been ill-spent. His knowledge of the world, which, after all, means a certain cognizance of the evil that men do, had taught him that Captain Matthew was not a man to perpetrate a common theft.

Long years spent in a land peopled practically by Ishmaelites had taught him deep distrust of the stranger—particularly distrust of the stranger who would be friendly.

So, many hours had not passed on board the Commodious before the shrewd inquiries that followed on his suspicions had laid bare before him, as far as could be unfolded, the history of Captain Matthew.

The captain, it seemed, moved in the best society in London and New York; none the less, he was not liked. There was no actual charge against him, but there appeared to have been bound up in his career in America a number of unpleasant episodes. The record of the episodes was vague, but that suspicion of them was justified lay in the fact that whereas Captain Matthew had landed in the States poor he was leaving them enriched. And to lend color to this justification was the captain's exceedingly unfortunate reputation as a card-player.

Now Finlay, if truth must be told, loved play, and high play. In the old days he had not cared for what stakes he played against men so long as they were honest men; but now he resented as an insult to his good sense the suggestion that he should play, despite the resources at his command, for high stakes against a man who, by some subtle means, seldom, if ever, lost.

It was with these things in his mind—a mind active and of great intelligence, a mind moreover sharpened by adversity—that he looked stonily at Captain Matthew.

It had almost become second nature for Finlay to draw a gun upon a man whom he had caught apparently intent on theft. Swiftly, however, it came to him that a man in Matthew's position was not likely to be engaged in theft. There sprang into his brain the notion that Matthew was simply searching through his belongings with the idea of blackmail.

It almost made Finlay laugh to think that any man should attempt to blackmail him. He had nothing to disguise, nothing to hide.

Indeed, as he sat easily on the edge of his bunk looking at the dark, disconcerted face before him, Finlay had half a mind to throw his weapon aside and to tell Matthew to go his way in peace. Then there came to him a certain recollection, and the blood crept into his face so that it seemed to burn, and his sinister eyes gleamed beneath his brows, bright and green and dangerous.

His control over himself was, however, perfect, and still in the soft, smooth voice, which long absence in the West had not robbed of its initial and birth-given refinement, he asked: