The Lost Gallows by John Dickson Carr

If you are a lover of melodramatic detective stories with foggy London streets, old decaying London clubs, and mysterious Egyptians, then this is the book for you.

Henri Bencolin was visiting London to see the opening of a play and was staying at the notorious Brimstone Club with his friend Jeff Marle. Bencolin was the head of the Paris police. This brilliant detective is described as being a Mephisto with a face that was "moody, capricious and cruel". Also staying at the  Brimstone Club was Sir John Landervorne, a retired assistant commissioner of the London Metropolitan police and a very old friend of Bencolin's. A mysterious third guest was the Egyptian Nezam El Moulk who occupied an apartment on the forth floor with his peculiar staff. He employed Smail, a very large black man, as his chaffeur, Jayet as his valet, and most oddly, his secretary, Graffin, who was a drunkard who seemed incabable of doing much of anything.

This novel opens with the story told by a Mr. Dallings who met a mysterious woman and tried to accompany her home in a cab. She took the cab and left Dallings standing on the street. He tried to find his way home on foot in the fog and saw miraculously before him the shadow of a gallows projected on the wall of the building in front of him.

The next mysterious incident occurs when Bencolin, Marle, and Sir John were leaving the theater that evening. Out of the fog, came a car careening through the street outside of the theater. Marle had a brief look at the face of the driver, and realized that the driver was dead. They took a taxi to follow the out of control car as it made its way through the streets until it finally stopped in front of the Brimstone club. When the door was opened, the body of Smail, El Moulk's chaffeur, fell to the pavement. His throat had been cut.

Police inspector Talbot arrived at the Brimstone Club because the police has received a message that Nezam El Moulk had been hanged on the gallows on Ruination Street.  El Moulk had been threatened by someone who called him Jack Ketch, the London hangman. There was however no Ruination Street in London. Bencolin, Marle, Sir John, and Talbot set about to solve the mysteries of the dead chaffeur who drove through London,  and the disappearance of El Moulk

I have always been a fan of John Dickson Carr and have very much enjoyed his Gideon Fell and Henry Merrivale mystery novels. This was the first Bencolin mystery that I have read, and, for my taste, it was too melodramatic, too full of inflated adjectives, and with so much fog about that it is a wonder that anybody could find anything. I will say that everything was neatly tied up and explained at the end in a very satisfactory manner. This book was published in 1931 and was one of Carr's earliest works.