Mr. Zero

Rating:
Summary: A master spy
Review: This isn't a Maud Silver novel, although it's set in the same universe - their common characters are in the realm of spy vs. spy (Colonel Garratt and his merry men) rather than ordinary crime. _Mr. Zero_ was first published in 1938, just after that long gap in the Silver series between _Grey Mask_ (1928, an unsatisfactory effort) and the 2nd Silver novel (1937). By this time, Wentworth's command of her craft had reached the standard that held through the rest of her life.

When they were at school together, Gay Hardwicke was always the one tapped to pull her cousin Sylvia out of a jam, and now that Sylvia is married to Sir Francis Colesborough, things haven't changed; Sylvia's sister Marcia still passes the buck to Gay, although Sylvia hasn't even written to Gay since her marriage, let alone offered any payback. However, Sylvia has never had brains (when she plays cards, the question isn't whether she lost, but how much) or character (she frankly married Sir Francis for his money, although she herself wouldn't put it so brutally), so nobody expects more of her than a pretty face and a pleasant manner.

This time it's serious; Sylvia lost 500 pounds at cards after her husband asked her to quit gambling, and she had neither the ability to pay nor the nerve to confess and ask him for help. Worse, she very, very stupidly answered an anonymous phone call, then stole some state papers in exchange for 200 pounds, to put it baldly. Now the mysterious Mr. Zero is coming back for more. (Sylvia is a double-dyed idiot, but a believable character; she's driven by a horror of returning to the genteel poverty in which she grew up.)

Gay, working on what to do without giving Sylvia away, tries to wangle hypothetical advice out of her escort, Algy Somers - and when one of *his* papers goes missing, he remembers being asked about blackmail. Joining forces, they begin attempting to peel back Mr. Zero's camouflage, but their efforts backfire spectacularly when a dead body turns up with Algy as a prime suspect. As with the theft, only Algy seems to have had an opportunity; my congratulations if you work out what happened.