Scotland Yardsman

In London last week, Peggy O'Neill, old-time Irish-American actress, had just finished starring in Merry, Merry, a London hit, and was feeling gay and affluent, when from her flat near Cadogan Square $10,000 worth of jewels disappeared.

Actress O'Neill was alarmed. She remembered that not so long ago she had barely escaped death after eating chocolates filled with arsenic, which she found in her dressing room.

When crime looms in London there is but one thing to do--report to Scotland Yard. As any reader of the best detective fiction knows, the "C. I. D." (Criminal Investigation Department) will unravel the knottiest mystery in the shortest possible time. In fiction there is usually an amateur on hand to simplify the C. I. D.'s work. In actuality, for many a long year, the master mind of Scotland Yard, the prototype of Sherlock Holmes, a sleuth in no need of amateur assistance, has been Chief Constable Frederick Wensley, a real super-detective credited with solving more murders than any living man.

To Actress O'Neill's dismay, Chief Constable Wensley had announced his resignation just before her loss was discovered. The coincidence suggested a new plot to detective-story authors, but to her it just seemed jolly bad luck. Able though his assistants and successors might be, it would have been a lark to have one's jewels found, one's would-be poisoner apprehended, by the greatest Sherlock of them all.

Aged 64, Chief Constable Wensley has been on the Force for 42 years. He joined it as an ordinary "bobby." He has left his mark upon the Chinese dens of Limehouse. the anarchists' haunts and crime slums of Shoreditch, Hackney. Wapping. There he learned to be fearless while carrying no gun (London "bobbies," the world's best, are forbidden firearms). From the very first he saw excitement. In 1888 the Whitechapel District of London was being terrorized by the murders of "Jack the Ripper." Suddenly in a great crowd of people a child or a young girl would be found murdered and mutilated with a knife. No one ever saw "Jack." The C. I. D. and Policeman Wensley gradually caught his accomplices but "Jack the Ripper" never was found. Timid English women still stiffen and pale when strange men address them in Whitechapel.

After two years. Policeman Wensley was made a detective. Courteous to the worst of crooks, he received their respect in return. He was never known to arrest a criminal while he was at a meal. Famed Wensley crime-solutions were:

The Regents Park Case. A woman was missing. Sleuth Wensley traced her to a house in Regents Park; found her there, murdered, and with her one Maltby, a tailor who had locked himself in the house and lived for weeks alone beside her body.

The Gerard Case. A Mme. Gerard was murdered, with only two clues--a laundry mark, a cryptic message. Sleuth Wensley deduced the murderer.

The "S" Case. A Jew, one Leon Beron. was found murdered and robbed on Clapham Common. The letter S was roughly carved on his cheeks. A black-and-red silk handkerchief, a paper bag from Whitechapel, some stab marks evidently made by a tall, strong, left-handed man were the clews. Sleuth Wrensley tracked and arrested Notorious Murderer "Steinie" Morrison.

The Wensley method for solving a particularly trying mystery was always the same. Slumping into a big armchair in his second-story room at Scotland Yard, he would light his pipe, stare out at the muddy Thames, sit for hours like a stone. In London last year there were 18 murders. Eleven were solved and the murderers convicted.

Chief Constable Wensley's reason for resigning was, he said, that he had reached the age-limit. He was urged to stay on for five years more but he declined. Upon his retirement, control of the C. I. D. and its 900 detectives will most probably revert to the "big five" area superintendents. The office of Chief Constable was specially created as a compliment for the remarkable record of Frederick Wensley. Additional honor was the King's Police Medal awarded him for protecting, unarmed, one of his subalterns under gunmen's'fire.