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Everybody who knows London knows the Progress Club. It is one of the most impressive buildings in Pall Mall, and every line of its architecture proclaims that for the best people Progress stopped in 1850 or thereabouts. I am not a member, but my friend Prothero is, and I was his guest there at dinner one evening recently. Prothero likes to call himself a “criminologist”. Murder is his hobby, and I have long since lost count of the famous crimes which he has “written up”. I was not surprised, therefore, that among the friends of his who joined us in the smoking-room after dinner was a rather exalted official at Scotland Yard by the name of Wrestall.

Over our coffee and liqueurs Wrestall happened to ask me whether I had been in the club before.

“Yes,” I told him, “but not for several years. I remember that the last time I was here the member who entertained me was Sylvester Kemball.”

It was not a very tactful remark, seeing that Kemball had quite recently been hanged for murdering his wife. But my companions took it in good part.

“I have always thought,” said Prothero, rather pontifically, “that the Kemball case was one of the most successful examples of modern detective methods. It was a great triumph for our police organization—and for you personally, Wrestall,” he added.

“If you say so,” said Wrestall modestly. “But, as a matter of fact, it was only by the merest stroke of luck that we obtained the evidence to bring it home to him.”

“Luck!” said Prothero. “When you come to think of it, it is astonishing how often the most astute and careful criminal is defeated by some quite unforeseen accident—often by an extravagantly unlikely event which he could not possibly have guarded against. Take the Abertillery murder, for example....”

But we never took the Abertillery murder. A man in the far corner of our group interrupted him without ceremony. “The unluckiest murderer within my recollection,” he said, “was Anthony Edward Fitzpatrick Pugh.”

Everybody turned to look at him. He was not much to look at—a small, insignificant fellow with a disagreeably complacent expression. I recollected that his name was Hobson and that like myself he was present as the guest of a member.

“Pugh?” repeated Prothero, and he contrived to make the name sound almost insulting. “Anthony Pugh, did you say?”

“Anthony Edward Fitzpatrick Pugh.”

“You surprise me very much. I think I am tolerably well acquainted with every crime of any significance during the last century and a half, and I have never come across the name before. Wrestall, are you familiar with the case of the homicidal Mr. Pugh?”

Wrestall shook his head.

“You see, Mr. Hobson,” Prothero went on, “you appear to be the possessor of knowledge quite unknown even to Scotland Yard. I hesitate to make the suggestion, but are you quite sure of your facts?”

“Perfectly. Would you care to hear them?”

“We are all ears.” Prothero settled himself back in his chair with an indulgent smile.

“It’s a very simple story, really,” said Hobson, “and I only mentioned it because whenever the subject of bad luck comes up it always brings Pugh to my mind. Mind you, he deserved his luck, as people generally do. He was a disagreeable type, selfish and greedy as they make them. His bad luck began when he entrusted practically the whole of the fortune he had inherited from his parents to a get-rich-quick schemer in the City. He should have known better, of course, but there it was. He lost the lot. Then he brought an action at law to recover his money. He secured a judgment quite easily. Ten thousand pounds and costs. It must have sounded most impressive. But it’s one thing to get a decision from the courts and quite another to make it effective, as Pugh found out. His lawyers went through the usual motions, of course, which added quite a tidy figure to the bill of costs which Pugh had to foot. It was no good. Their man went gracefully and artistically bankrupt. Pugh could whistle for his money—it simply wasn’t there. What made things still more aggravating for him, destitution didn’t seem to make the slightest difference to the debtor’s style of living. He remained in residence on his comfortable estate in Sussex. He continued to travel up to London every day with a reserved seat in a first-class smoker, and the porters touched their caps to him. Poor Pugh lived in the same neighbourhood and caught the same train, travelled third-class non smoker, because he grudged the cost of a packet of cigarettes, thinking about his ten thousand pounds every mile of the way.

“The secret of the happy bankrupt’s prosperity, of course, was that he personally had never owned anything. Every stick and stone of the Sussex mansion, the pedigree Jerseys in the park, the racehorses in the stables, the money that paid the servants’ wages and the butcher’s bills and the first-class fares to London—the whole boiling, in fact—was the sole, separate property of his wife—who was, incidentally, a very attractive, good-natured woman, and much too good for her scamp of a husband, who treated her extremely badly.

“That daily encounter on the railway station platform made Pugh feel positively murderous. One could hardly have blamed him if one fine morning he had slaughtered the man out of hand. But Pugh wasn’t that sort. Money was what he cared about, not revenge, and killing his debtor wouldn’t have got his ten thousand back. What he wanted was to find some means of putting money into his debtor’s pocket, where his lawyers could get at it. He thought the matter over in his cold-blooded way, and hit upon a very simple, logical solution. The fellow had made his property over to his wife. Pugh proposed to reverse the process. He could be fairly certain that in such a setup the lady would have made a will leaving everything to her husband. He had only to put her out of the way, and there would be more than enough money in the husband’s hands to satisfy his little claim. That was his calculation and, as it turned out, he was dead right.

“Once having made up his mind to commit the murder, he carried it out with great simplicity and ease. He discovered by observation that his intended victim was in the habit of driving herself into Worthing every day. To get to the main road from the park she had to go through a gate across the drive which was kept shut on account of the Jersey cows. He concealed himself behind a hedge at that point, waited till she came along and then shot her through the head at close range as she got out of the car to open the gate. He used an old German pistol he had picked up years before. Then he walked quietly away, leaving the pistol in the hedge. He saw no reason why anyone should connect him with a woman to whom he had never even spoken in his life. And, indeed, there was none.”

“Then how was he convicted?” asked Prothero.

“He wasn’t,” Hobson replied. “I never said that he was. I merely said that he was the unluckiest murderer within my recollection, and that was strictly true. You see, although he had been absolutely right in his calculations and completely successful in his crime, he never got his ten thousand pounds.

“Pugh had been so careful to avoid being suspected himself that it had never occurred to him to wonder who would be likely to be accused of the crime in his place. But of course when a rich woman with a penniless husband is murdered there is one obvious person for the police to pick on, if you don’t mind my putting it that way, Mr. Wrestall. If Pugh had thought the matter out a little more carefully he would have seen that he was also the one person he couldn’t afford to have convicted.

“When the authorities began to look into the case against the husband Pugh’s bad luck started to operate in real earnest. It turned out that the couple had had a flaming row that very morning and that the wife was actually on her way to see her lawyer about making a new will at the moment when she was killed. It turned out, further, that the cheap revolver Pugh had used was the dead spit of one owned by the accused and—so he said—lost by him only a week or two before. That made quite a sizeable case against him, but the crucial piece of evidence arose from the unlikeliest stroke of luck you could well imagine.

“A witness was found to prove that the husband was near the scene of the crime within ten minutes or so of the critical moment. He was the prisoner’s gardener, and he had no business to be there at all at that hour. His presence was due solely to the fact that his wife had scalded herself by upsetting a kettle and he was on his way to telephone for the doctor. Result: The alibi which the defence tried to set up was blown to bits, and the husband was hanged. His conviction, of course, deprived him of all his rights in the deceased’s estate and he died as penniless as he had lived. You may say, then, that Pugh lost ten thousand pounds just because somebody else’s gardener’s wife was a bit clumsy taking a kettle off the hob. Oh, he was unlucky all right! So, when you come to think of it, was the chap who was convicted.”

There was a long pause, and then Hobson’s host said, “By the way, what was the husband’s name? I don’t think you mentioned it.”

Hobson didn’t seem to have heard the question. He was looking at his watch. “Heavens! I’d no idea it was so late!” he exclaimed. “I’ve a train to catch at Victoria. Do you mind if I rush away now, old man?”

His departure broke up the party, and as I am not fond of late hours I took the opportunity to thank Prothero for a pleasant evening and made my way out. As I went, I caught sight of Wrestall, looking, it seemed to me, distinctly thoughtful. I found Hobson outside the club hunting for a taxi. As I may have indicated, I had not taken to the man very much, but I had my car round the corner and Victoria was on my way home, so it seemed only decent to offer him a lift.

“I suppose the husband in your story was Sylvester Kemball?” I asked, as we took the corner by Marlborough House.

“Oh yes,” said Hobson complacently.

“And his execution was a complete miscarriage of justice! How horrible!”

“Oh, you needn’t waste any pity on him. He deserved all he got. His treatment of his wife alone merited hanging.”

“You seem to know a lot about him,” I observed.

“Well, she was my aunt. The only relation I had in the world.”

I said no more until we were passing Buckingham Palace.

“When did you come to learn the truth about your aunt’s murderer?” I asked him.

“About halfway through Kemball’s trial,” said Hobson calmly. “I knew Pugh fairly well, and I used to discuss the evidence with him. One evening we were dining together and he got a bit tight. He slipped out something that he hadn’t meant to say and I broke him down. He told me the whole story.”

“What on earth did you do?”

“Nothing at all. I looked at it this way: Kemball was every bit as bad as a murderer. I think he would probably have killed my aunt anyway, if Pugh hadn’t got in first. And hanging Pugh wouldn’t have done her any good. Besides, I couldn’t afford to see him hanged.”

“What do you mean?” Thank heaven, Victoria was just ahead. I could hardly bear the man’s presence any longer.

“Well, I was a poor man, and I was my aunt’s next of kin. If Kemball was acquitted it meant that her will leaving everything to him was good. If he was convicted, I scooped the pool. I am sure my dear aunt would have preferred to have it that way.”

I stopped the car with a quite unnecessary jerk. Hobson got out.

“Thanks for the lift,” he said. “Perhaps I shall see you again some day. I’m putting up for election to the Progress, by the way.”

I wondered, as I drove home, whether I ought to warn Prothero about this candidate for his club. I decided not to do so. After all, I am not a member.