Anthony Wynne was the pseudonym of Robert NcNair Wilson (1882-1963), a Scottish physician, writer, and politician. He specialized in cardiology and he was the medical correspondent for The Times for more than 30 years. He wrote nonfiction under his name and fiction under the Wynne name, introducing his series sleuth, psychologist Dr. Eustace Hailey, in 1925. Dr. Hailey featured in more than two dozen novels, a collection of short stories, and around three dozen more short stories published individually. Hailey’s second appearance was in The Double-Thirteen Mystery (Hutchinson & Company, London 1926/Spitfire Publishers 2022). US title: The Double Thirteen (1926). Serialized weekly in Flynn’s between 5 and 26 September 1925.
This story is a classic period piece. An exiled faded Russian countess, a stranger with a dueling scar, a wealthy young man about town with a disappearing fiance, late night car chases at the outrageous speed of 40 miles per hour, a dissipated Bright Young Thing who is in love with the wealthy young man, slips of paper with a string of numbers in an apparently unbreakable cipher. All that’s missing is a rendezvous at an abandoned warehouse at midnight. Add the ponderous and melodramatic prose with which the story is told and there’s nothing left to ask for.
Definitely not a brisk telling of a problem to be solved with plenty of clues for the reader to follow. Savor this story instead for its window into mysteries of 100 years ago. I was lucky enough to find the cover art for both the English and the U.S. first editions as well as the reprint, all three of which are wonderful.