The Best Martin Hewitt Detective Stories Page 9

  “DON’T EXPOSE ME, MR. HEWITT.”

  “Well, you see,” Hewitt replied, thoughtfully, “I’ve no doubt Lord Stanway will show you every consideration, and certainly I will do what I can to save you, in the circumstances; though you must remember that you have done some harm—you have caused suspicions to rest on at least one honest man. But as to reputation—I’ve a professional reputation of my own. If I help to conceal your professional failure, I shall appear to have failed in my part of the business.”

  “But the cases are different, Mr. Hewitt—consider. You are not expected—it would be impossible—to succeed invariably; and there are only two or three who know you have looked into the case. Then your other conspicuous successes——”

  “Well, well—we shall see. One thing I don’t know, though—whether you climbed out of a window to break open the trap-door, or whether you got up through the trap-door itself and pulled the bolt with a string through the jamb, so as to bolt it after you.”

  “There was no available window—I used the string, as you say. My poor little cunning must seem very transparent to you, I fear. I spent hours of thought over the question of the trap-door—how to break it open so as to leave a genuine appearance, and especially how to bolt it inside after I had reached the roof. I thought I had succeeded beyond the possibility of suspicion; how you penetrated the device surpasses my comprehension. How, to begin with, could you possibly know that the cameo was a forgery? Did you ever see it?”

  “Never. And if I had seen it, I fear I should never have been able to express an opinion on it; I’m not a connoisseur. As a matter of fact, I didn’t know that the thing was a forgery in the first place; what I knew in the first place was that it was you who had broken into the house. It was from that that I arrived at the conclusion—after a certain amount of thought—that the cameo must have been forged. Gain was out of the question—you, beyond all men, could never sell the Stanway Cameo again, and, besides, you had paid back Lord Stanway’s money. I knew enough of your reputation to know that you would never incur the scandal of a great theft at your place for the sake of getting the cameo for yourself, when you might have kept it in the beginning, with no trouble and mystery. Consequently, I had to look for another motive, and at first another motive seemed an impossibility. Why should you wish to take all this trouble to lose £5,000? You had nothing to gain; perhaps you had something to save—your professional reputation, for instance. Looking at it so, it was plain that you were suppressing the cameo—burking it; since, once taken as you had taken it, it could never come to light again. That suggested the solution of the mystery at once—you had discovered, after the sale, that the cameo was not genuine.”

  “Yes, yes—I see; but you say you began with the knowledge that I broke into the place myself. How did you know that? I cannot imagine a trace——”

  “My dear sir, you left traces everywhere. In the first place, it struck me as curious, before I came here, that you had sent off that cheque for £5,000 to Lord Stanway an hour or so after the robbery was discovered—it looked so much as though you were sure of the cameo never coming back, and were in a hurry to avert suspicion. Of course, I understood that, so far as I then knew the case, you were the most unlikely person in the world, and that your eagerness to repay Lord Stanway might be the most creditable thing possible. But the point was worth remembering, and I remembered it.

  “When I came here I saw suspicious indications in many directions, but the conclusive piece of evidence was that old hat hanging below the trap-door.”

  “But I never touched it, I assure you, Mr. Hewitt, I never touched the hat—haven’t touched it for months——”

  “Of course. If you had touched it, I might never have got the clue. But we’ll deal with the hat presently; that wasn’t what struck me at first. The trap-door first took my attention. Consider, now: here was a trapdoor, most insecurely hung on external hinges; the burglar had a screwdriver, for he took off the door-lock below with it. Why, then, didn’t he take this trap off by the hinges, instead of making a noise and taking longer time and trouble to burst the bolt from its fastenings? And why, if he were a stranger, was he able to plant his jemmy from the outside just exactly opposite the interior bolt? There was only one mark on the frame, and that precisely in the proper place.

  “After that, I saw the leather case. It had not been thrown away, or some corner would have shown signs of the fall. It had been put down carefully where it was found. These things, however, were of small importance compared with the hat. The hat, as you know, was exceedingly thick with dust—the accumulation of months. But, on the top side, presented toward the trap-door, were a score or so of raindrop marks. That was all. They were new marks, for there was no dust over them; they had merely had time to dry and cake the dust they had fallen on. Now, there had been no rain since a sharp shower just after seven o’clock last night. At that time you, by your own statement, were in the place. You left at eight, and the rain was all over at ten minutes or a quarter-past seven. The trap-door, you also told me, had not been opened for months. The thing was plain. You, or somebody who was here when you were, had opened that trap-door during, or just before, that shower. I said little then, but went, as soon as I had left, to the policestation. There I made perfectly certain that there had been no rain during the night by questioning the policemen who were on duty outside all the time. There had been none. I knew everything.

  “The only other evidence there was pointed with all the rest. There were no rain-marks on the leather case; it had been put on the roof as an after-thought when there was no rain. A very poor after-thought, let me tell you, for no thief would throw away a useful case that concealed his booty and protected it from breakage, and throw it away just so as to leave a clue as to what direction he had gone in. I also saw, in the lumber-room, a number of packing-cases—one with a label dated two days back—which had been opened with an iron lever; and yet, when I made an excuse to ask for it, you said there was no such thing in the place. Inference: you didn’t want me to compare it with the marks on the desks and doors. That is all, I think.”

  Mr. Claridge looked dolorously down at the floor. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I took an unsuitable rôle when I undertook to rely on my wits to deceive men like you. I thought there wasn’t a single vulnerable spot in my defence, but you walk calmly through it at the first attempt. Why did I never think of those raindrops?”

  “Come,” said Hewitt, with a smile, “that sounds unrepentant. I am going, now, to Lord Stanway’s. If I were you, I think I should apologize to Mr. Woollett in some way.”

  “HAHN WALKED SMILINGLY INTO HIS OFFICE.”

  Lord Stanway, who, in the hour or two of reflection left him after parting with Hewitt, had come to the belief that he had employed a man whose mind was not always in order, received Hewitt’s story with natural astonishment. For some time he was in doubt as to whether he would be doing right in acquiescing in anything but a straightforward public statement of the facts connected with the disappearance of the cameo, but in the end was persuaded to let the affair drop, on receiving an assurance from Mr. Woollett that he unreservedly accepted the apology offered him by Mr. Claridge.

  As for the latter, he was at least sufficiently punished in loss of money and personal humiliation for his escapade. But the bitterest and last blow he sustained when the unblushing Hahn walked smilingly into his office two days later to demand the extra payment agreed on in consideration of the sale. He had been called suddenly away, he explained, on the day he should have come, and hoped his missing the appointment had occasioned no inconvenience. As to the robbery of the cameo, of course he was very sorry, but “pishness was pishness,” and he would be glad of a cheque for the sum agreed on. And the unhappy Claridge was obliged to pay it, knowing that the man had swindled him, but unable to open his mouth to say so.

  The reward remained on offer for a long time—indeed, it was never publicly withdrawn, I believe, even at the time of Clarid
ge’s death. And several intelligent newspapers enlarged upon the fact that an ordinary burglar had completely baffled and defeated the boasted acumen of Mr. Martin Hewitt, the well-known private detective.

  The Nicobar Bullion Case

  I.

  HE whole voyage was an unpleasant one, and Captain Mackrie, of the Anglo-Malay Company’s steamship Nicobar, had at last some excuse for the ill-temper that had made him notorious and unpopular in the company’s marine staff. Although the fourth and fifth mates in the seclusion of their berth ventured deeper in their search for motives, and opined that the “old man” had made a deal less out of this voyage than usual, the company having lately taken to providing its own stores; so that “makings” were gone clean and “cumshaw” (which means commission in the trading lingo of the China seas) had shrunk small indeed. In confirmation they adduced the uncommonly long face of the steward (the only man in the ship satisfied with the skipper), whom the new regulations hit with the same blow. But indeed the steward’s dolour might well be credited to the short passenger list, and the unpromising aspect of the few passengers in the eyes of a man accustomed to gauge one’s tip-yielding capacity a month in advance. For the steward it was altogether the wrong time of year, the wrong sort of voyage, and certainly the wrong sort of passengers. So that doubtless the confidential talk of the fourth and fifth officers was mere youthful scandal. At any rate the captain had prospect of a good deal in private trade home, for he had been taking curiosities and Japanese oddments aboard (plainly for sale in London) in a way that a third steward would have been ashamed of, and which, for a captain, was a scandal and an ignominy; and he had taken pains to insure well for the lot. These things the fourth and fifth mates often spoke of, and more than once made a winking allusion to, in the presence of the third mate and the chief engineer, who laughed and winked too, and sometimes said as much to the second mate, who winked without laughing; for of such is the tittle-tattle of shipboard.

  The Nicobar was bound home with few passengers, as I have said, a small general cargo, and gold bullion to the value of £200,000—the bullion to be landed at Plymouth, as usual. The presence of this bullion was a source of much conspicuous worry on the part of the second officer, who had charge of the bullion-room. For this was his first voyage on his promotion from third officer, and the charge of £200,000 worth of gold bars was a thing he had not been accustomed to. The placid first officer pointed out to him that this wasn’t the first shipment of bullion the world had ever known, and by a long way, nor the largest. Also that every usual precaution was taken, and the keys were in the captain’s cabin; so that he might reasonably be as easy in his mind as the few thousand other second officers who had had charge of hatches and special cargo since the world began. But this did not comfort Brasyer. He fidgeted about when off watch, considering and puzzling out the various means by which the bullion-room might be got at, and fidgeted more when on watch, lest somebody might be at that moment putting into practice the ingenious dodges he had thought of. And he didn’t keep his fears and speculations to himself. He bothered the first officer with them, and when the first officer escaped he explained the whole thing at length to the third officer.

  “Can’t think what the company’s about,” he said on one such occasion to the first mate, “calling a tin-pot bunker like that a bullion-room.”

  “Skittles!” responded the first mate, and went on smoking.

  “Oh, that’s all very well for you who aren’t responsible,” Brasyer went on, “but I’m pretty sure something will happen some day; if not on this voyage on some other. Talk about a strong room! Why, what’s it made of ?”

  “Three-eighths boiler plate.”

  “Yes, three-eighths boiler plate—about as good as a sixpenny tin money box. Why, I’d get through that with my grandmother’s scissors!”

  “All right; borrow ’em and get through. I would if I had a grandmother.”

  “There it is down below there out of sight and hearing, nice and handy for anybody who likes to put in a quiet hour at plate cutting from the coal bunker next door—always empty, because it’s only a seven-ton bunker, not worth trimming. And the other side’s against the steward’s pantry. What’s to prevent a man shipping as steward, getting quietly through while he’s supposed to be bucketing about among his slops and his crockery, and strolling away with the plunder at the next port? And then there’s the carpenter. He’s always messing about somewhere below, with a bag full of tools. Nothing easier than for him to make a job in a quiet corner and get through the plates.”

  “But then what’s he to do with the stuff when he’s got it? You can’t take gold ashore by the hundredweight in your boots.”

  “Do with it? Why, dump it, of course. Dump it overboard in a quiet port and mark the spot. Come to that, he could desert clean at Port Said—what easier place?—and take all he wanted. You know what Port Said’s like. Then there are the firemen—oh, anybody can do it!” And Brasyer moved off to take another peep under the hatchway.

  The door of the bullion-room was fastened by one central patent lock and two padlocks, one above and one below the other lock. A day or two after the conversation recorded above, Brasyer was carefully examining and trying the lower of the padlocks with a key, when a voice immediately behind him asked sharply, “Well, sir, and what are you up to with that padlock?”

  Brasyer started violently and looked round. It was Captain Mackrie.

  “There’s—that is—I’m afraid these are the same sort of padlocks as those in the carpenter’s stores,” the second mate replied, in a hurry of explanation. “I—I was just trying, that’s all; I’m afraid the keys fit.”

  “Just you let the carpenter take care of his own stores, will you, Mr. Brasyer? There’s a Chubb’s lock there as well as the padlocks, and the key of that’s in my cabin, and I’ll take care doesn’t go out of it without my knowledge. So perhaps you’d best leave off experiments till you’re asked to make ’em, for your own sake. That’s enough now,” the captain added, as Brasyer appeared to be ready to reply; and he turned on his heel and made for the steward’s quarters.

  Brasyer stared after him ragefully. “Wonder what you want down here,” he muttered under his breath. “Seems to me one doesn’t often see a skipper as thick with the steward as that.” And he turned off growling towards the deck above.

  “Hanged if I like that steward’s pantry stuck against the side of the bullion-room,” he said later in the day to the first officer. “And what does a steward want with a lot of boiler-maker’s tools aboard? You know he’s got them.”

  “In the name of the prophet, rats!” answered the first mate, who was of a less fussy disposition. “What a fatiguing creature you are, Brasyer! Don’t you know the man’s a boiler-maker by regular trade, and has only taken to stewardship for the last year or two? That sort of man doesn’t like parting with his tools, and as he’s a widower, with no home ashore, of course he has to carry all his traps aboard. Do shut up, and take your proper rest like a Christian. Here, I’ll give you a cigar; it’s all right—Burman; stick it in your mouth, and keep your jaw tight on it.”

  But there was no soothing the second officer. Still he prowled about the after orlop deck, and talked at large of his anxiety for the contents of the bullion-room. Once again, a few days later, as he approached the iron door, he was startled by the appearance of the captain coming, this time, from the steward’s pantry. He fancied he had heard tapping, Brasyer explained, and had come to investigate. But the captain turned him back with even less ceremony than before, swearing he would give charge of the bullion-room to another officer if Brasyer persisted in his eccentricities. On the first deck the second officer was met by the carpenter, a quiet, sleek, soft-spoken man, who asked him for the padlock and key he had borrowed from the stores during the week. But Brasyer put him off, promising to send it back later. And the carpenter trotted away to a job he happened to have, singularly enough, in the hold, just under the after orlop deck, and below
the floor of the bullion-room.

  As I have said, the voyage was in no way a pleasant one. Everywhere the weather was at its worst, and scarce was Gibraltar passed before the Lascars were shivering in their cotton trousers, and the Seedee boys were buttoning tight such old tweed jackets as they might muster from their scanty kits. It was January. In the Bay the weather was tremendous, and the Nicobar banged and shook and pitched distractedly across in a howling world of thunderous green sea, washed within and without, above and below. Then, in the Chops, as night fell, something went, and there was no more steerage-way, nor, indeed, anything else but an aimless wallowing. The screw had broken.

  The high sea had abated in some degree, but it was still bad. Such sail as the steamer carried, inadequate enough, was set, and shift was made somehow to worry along to Plymouth—or to Falmouth if occasion better served—by that means. And so the Nicobar beat across the Channel on a rather better, though anything but smooth, sea, in a black night, made thicker by a storm of sleet, which turned gradually to snow as the hours advanced.