Crossword Mystery

by E. R. Punshon

  It was only later that he remembered how the candle near its end will flare up for one uncertain second before it goes out for ever.

  An eyelid fluttered, or he thought it did. Again he moistened Colin’s lips and temples, and now the dying man moved slightly, as if in an effort to rise, and seemed to be about to try to speak. Bobby leaned nearer, thought he saw a gleam of recognition in the other’s eyes.

  “Do you know me?” he asked.

  This time Colin spoke quite clearly.

  “Yes, of course,” he said, but the name he uttered was not one that Bobby knew. He added, still speaking quite clearly: “Why are you all here? All of you? Why?... How?...”

  “There is no one but me,” Bobby said. He stooped nearer still. “Can you tell me what happened?” he asked.

  But Colin’s eyes were already closing, the animation passing from his expression. He had evidently understood, and was trying to answer, but his words came brokenly, often dying away into an indistinguishable murmur. There was something about... always a sportsman... uncle meant... would have whacked up with Miles and Jimmy... worked it out at last... they followed me, the two of them... did me in, the gas first”; and then finally, in a louder voice: “Water! water!”

  Thinking he was thirsty and wanted to drink, Bobby put the dipper to his lips, but with a violent and apparently angry effort, his last, Colin pushed it aside.

  “No, no,” he muttered; and then, very loudly and clearly: “You’ve no guts! Give me the knife.”

  A long shiver passed through his body. It was finished, and Colin Ross’s life on earth was over. Bobby rose to his feet. He was a little pale himself now, a little shaken, for those last words had seemed to make all clear at last.

  “Plain enough now,” he said to himself. “That ought to be proof good enough for anyone.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Herr Nabersberg’s Story

  There was nothing now that could be done for this last victim of the tragic sequence that was so slowly wearing itself out, of which even now Bobby did not feel that the end had yet arrived. For a moment or two he stood still, brooding over the body. Then, remembering that there was work to be done, a task to be achieved, he covered the dead face decently with his handkerchief and turned towards the door, meaning to go for help.

  But as he left the garage he heard the sound of approaching motors, and he wondered, a little doubtfully, who it might be, for the idea flashed into his mind that in certain circumstances it might well be that his own name would figure as the fourth upon the list of victims.

  But, when he turned the corner of the house and came in sight of the drive that led up to it, he recognised, leading the little group of men who, having left their cars at the entrance-gate, were now walking towards the house, his own chief, Superintendent Mitchell. By his side was a stranger, a small round man, round of body, round of head, with broad, flat features and a small dark moustache. His cheeks were sunken, his dark, small eyes bright and feverish; he had altogether something of the air of an invalid, of a man just recovering from some severe illness or experience. Behind them came Major Markham with two of his assistants, Superintendent Andrews and Inspector Wake. Mitchell nodded a greeting to Bobby.

  “They told us in the village they had seen you pelting up here full tilt, and so we thought we had better see what the hurry was,” he remarked. “Found something, eh? You look as if you had.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bobby answered. “Colin Ross is there, in the garage. He’s dead – murdered, I think.”

  “Murdered?” Mitchell repeated gravely. “I was half afraid–” He turned to Major Markham. “Then that ends the question of arresting him,” he said.

  “Are you sure it is murder and not suicide?” Major Markham asked Bobby. “Ross must have known we were looking for him.”

  “It can hardly have been suicide, sir,” Bobby asserted. “I could see no weapon, and the garage was locked on the outside.”

  “Nothing to show how it happened? Who did it?” Mitchell asked.

  “He was still alive when I found him,” Bobby said. “I don’t know how he had lived so long. He had been stabbed in the chest, and poison gas has been released in the place, it reeks with it. I think perhaps the effect of the gas slowed down the bleeding, and the effect of the bleeding was to weaken the breathing and prevent so much gas being inhaled. He was quite unconscious, but after fresh air got into the place, and after I had bathed his face and mouth with some water, he seemed to revive a little. I asked him if he recognised me, and he said, ‘Yes,’ but I don’t think he did. Then I asked him what had happened, and he tried to tell me, but I couldn’t make out much of what he was saying – it was too indistinct, until just the very last. I think, at the end, he was repeating the last thing he had heard before he lost consciousness, something he had heard someone say. It was, quite plainly: ‘You’ve no guts! Give me the knife.’”

  The others only stared, not understanding, but Mitchell put up a hand with a gesture of amazement, almost of fear.

  “He said that. He said that,” he repeated, twice over, but more to himself than to his companions. He turned to Major Markham: “That makes it plain enough, I think,” he said slowly.

  “I don’t see how,” retorted the Major, not too good-temperedly.

  “It confirms what I was saying, doesn’t it?” Mitchell asked. “You remember I was talking about Shakespeare’s Macbeth. There’s a quotation that comes in Macbeth, I think: ‘Infirm of purpose! Give me the dagger.’ Now, we’ve the same thing in modern idiom: ‘You’ve no guts! Give me the knife.’ I was telling you how once, some time ago, we had a case the papers got to calling at the trial: ‘Hamlet in Modern Dress.’ Well, what I think we’ve been watching is ‘Macbeth in To-day’s Setting.’”

  “It doesn’t seem credible,” Major Markham said slowly. “I don’t say you’re wrong, but it’s hardly credible. A bit far-fetched, too, isn’t it?”

  “The more circumstances and environment change,” Mitchell answered, “the more human nature remains the same. Ambition, the will to the end with no care for the means, a determination so fixed it considers nothing else – and in the end the result may add up to much the same total even though the background’s different.”

  They were inside the garage now. Bobby had warned them to be careful in entering, but the fresh, strong sea air, penetrating to every chink and crevice, had by now dispelled nearly every trace of the poison that had lingered there so long. Except for a certain watering of the eyes, and a tendency to cough, the newcomers experienced no inconvenience. They clustered round the dead man, but there was nothing they could do, except strengthen their resolve that his murderers should be brought to justice. They examined carefully, too, the cavity hollowed out under the garage floor, and the broken box that had apparently been hidden there. Wake, sniffing it too closely, got so strong a whiff of the gas with which the wood was still impregnated that he had to go outside to recover himself. Mitchell said:

  “Well, it’s pretty certain the gas was inside that box all right. As I see it, Ross found the box, opened it, the gas knocked him out. Then someone else came along, ran a knife into him to make sure, as they thought, and made sure, too, I suppose, of whatever was inside the box – which can’t have been much. What about that book?”

  “I think it must have been in the box, too, sir. I can’t think why,” Bobby said. “It smells of the gas so strongly, it must have been soaked in it for some time.”

  Mitchell picked it up, and held it cautiously at arm’s length. ‘‘The Ancient Mariner” he remarked. “Nightmarish sort of thing; nightmares enough in our line without reading about ’em. Someone’s been marking it.” He read aloud the line as it had been altered: “ ‘Water, water everywhere, nor any to drink.’ Hum,” he commented. “I suppose that means a whisky and soda would be preferred. Quite so, quite so! but curious, very curious.”

  “Hardly affects us just now, does it?” Major Markham asked with a touch of impatie
nce.

  “That’s just it,” agreed Mitchell, “but it’s odd, very odd.”

  “What strikes me, sir,” Bobby ventured to interpolate, “is that it’s such a small box – there can’t have been anything much in it.”

  “Except gas,” commented Mitchell. “Quite a lot of gas, if you ask me – gas, and a book of poetry. Curious. You haven’t told us yet what brought you along here, by the way? You don’t seem to have made any report?”

  “No, sir,” Bobby answered. “I only got the idea after our night’s work in the Fairview summer-house turned out such a wash-out. I went off then, by myself, to try to think things out, and I had another shot at that crossword puzzle Mr. Winterton was making up, and that we thought had been lost, and somehow all at once I seemed to see there might be a message hidden in it. It was only just a chance, but I had a feeling if it was right, there wasn’t much time to lose. So I came along as fast as I could, but I was too late by twelve hours, or more perhaps.”

  He produced the crossword puzzle, and showed how he had managed at last to extract from it that message which had brought him here hotfoot, but too late.

  “I suppose,” he said finally, “that poor Mr. Ross had worked out the same message and acted upon it. I think he had been watched, and was followed. But I must say I never thought such a small sum was in question. That box can’t have held more than two or three hundred pounds’ worth of gold at the outside.”

  There was a very obvious disappointment in his tone as he said this, for, indeed, a sum so comparatively paltry seemed to him a trivial cause for three murders – he felt that so rich a harvest of death should have had a richer, more plenteous seed. But Mitchell turned to the sickly looking stranger, who so far had not spoken.

  “Herr Nabersberg,” he said, “how much did you say was involved?”

  “The amount of gold I purchased on behalf of the Winterton brothers and on my own, acting as joint partners, and indented to them at Fairview, Suffby Cove,” Herr Nabersberg answered precisely, “was to the value of thirty thousand pounds at par. It was contained in ten iron-bound boxes, each weighing somewhere about fifty pounds. The gold itself was nearly all in English sovereigns – minted in 1915 and 1916. I was told it was part of money sent out by the English Government during the war to facilitate their operations in the East. There were a few American gold ‘eagles,’ as they call them, as well, but only a few. That box” – he pointed to the one lying on the floor – “was not one of ours, and that hole is not big enough to have held even one of them.”

  He had spoken in an English well enough phrased, but marked by a very strong German accent. A little gasp went up from his listeners as he mentioned the amount of the gold concerned, and Wake, who had come back to join them, said, half aloud:

  “Thirty thousand in solid gold. No wonder there’s been some dirty work going on.”

  “It seems we aren’t at the end of the story yet,” Mitchell remarked, “for there’s nothing here to show what has become of the gold. That Ross had worried out the message of the crossword, seems pretty sure, but that message certainly didn’t mean the gold was hidden there. Perhaps what was hidden, what Ross found, what his murderers killed him for and escaped with, was just the secret of where it is really hidden. He turned to Nabersberg: “You can’t give us any idea?” he asked.

  “Only that the first plan was to bury it in an old summer-house,” the German answered, “but then it was thought that was not very safe, and it was moved somewhere else, but where, I do not know, for I only had word that it was to be moved just an hour before I was arrested and put in prison. After that, of course, I heard nothing.”

  “Herr Nabersberg,” Mitchell explained to Bobby, seeing how bewildered the young man looked, “has only recently been released from prison in Germany.”

  “I was a political prisoner,” Nabersberg explained. “Of course, that made it much more serious – meant much severer treatment.”

  “Pretty slow of us not to think of that,” observed Mitchell. “The whole lot of us ought to go to the bottom of the class. Every man jack of the lot of us took it for granted an English prison was referred to. But there are lots of prisons on the Continent, and, by all accounts, some of them are pretty full just now.”

  “Full?” repeated Nabersberg with a gesture of two lifted hands. “They are – stuffed. That is the right English word, is it not? Why, where I was sent, they were furious; they said they had no room at all; even in the Governor’s bathroom there was a prisoner, they said. Oh, they made a great fuss, but they had to take me in all the same.”

  “Simple enough when you’ve been told,” Mitchell observed; “but I kicked myself pretty hard for not having thought of it before, especially when you remember about that launch coming from abroad, and the sack, made in Holland, used for wrapping Jennings’s head in. I suppose,” he added to Bobby, “from the ’phone message you turned in after your visit to the Brilliant Hotel, you thought it might be something like that?”

  “I just thought,” Bobby answered, “that a man with a name that might be German, who registered as coming from Dover, did rather suggest a foreigner.”

  “It did,” agreed Mitchell, “and when we tumbled to your hint, and had inquiries made of every alien we could trace, if any of them knew anything of the Wintertons, or of anyone doing business with them, it wasn’t long before we found Herr Nabersberg.”

  “I landed at Dover in the afternoon,” Nabersberg remarked, “and by ten o’clock in the evening I was in your police bureau, answering your questions, and then, before sunlight this morning, you had me from my bed again. But for my illness I should have been here in your country before. As soon as I was released I procured a friend who was travelling to England to send a message for me, without mentioning my name, to Mr. Winterton, that I would be with him soon.”

  “It was that precipitated the murder, I expect,” Mitchell observed. “I think the receipt of that message got known, and it was felt there was no time to lose – that the gold must be secured, and Winterton removed, before your arrival.”

  “It is very likely,” Nabersberg agreed. “It is a pity I was delayed, but though I was well in prison, for, indeed, there I did not dare to be ill, as soon as I was released – as soon as I got to Paris and knew that there I was safe – then I was very ill indeed. I should be there still in my bed, but that I was anxious about the gold consignment, and how it was to be handled. For long years I have had business relations with the Wintertons; it is inexpressibly shock to know that such a fate has been theirs. In England, they should have been safe. One does not expect such things in England. Of course, in Germany to-day–” He broke off with a shrug. “That is,” he said, “provided you are not of those who are in power there. But our gold, the ten boxes, surely it should not be difficult to find them?”

  “Looks to me,” observed Major Markham, “as if someone else had found them first.” He added: “I suppose it’s this gold that was smuggled in by that motor-launch Jennings reported in the spring?”

  “Was it smuggling?” Nabersberg asked. “I do not know the English law, but both Mr. George and Mr. Archibald Winterton told me it was not smuggling, and could not be, for you have here no duty on gold, no prohibition on its import. But that the affair should be kept secret was necessary for me, for if the German Government had heard of it, and known that I was implicated – well, I should not have found it so easy to get released from prison, or so comfortable while I was there.”

  “Was it gold that was bought in Germany and smuggled out, do you mean?” Major Markham asked.

  “It is what one might have been accused of,” Nabersberg replied. “Actually it was shipped from Holland. For me, it would have been very serious if our transaction had become known – there are so many of what used to be ordinary business deals that to-day one is subject to sharp punishment for attempting. The two Mr. Wintertons, too, they wished for absolute secrecy. Mr. George Winterton believed that in gold alone – in the possessi
on of gold itself – is there safety to-day. Paper anyone can print, or forge, or copy, but God alone makes gold. And he had a fear that your Government – like the Bolshevik Government, or in America, too – would take away their gold from those known to possess it – impound it, confiscate it, take it over, buy it at a fixed price, the Governments use different names but at the end it is the Government that has the gold and not you. That, George Winterton thought, might happen here, too, and he did not mean that it should happen at his expense. For gold means power, safety, security: who has gold, has the mastery, but not if others know and can come and take it from him.”

  “I don’t know so much about power and safety,” Mitchell observed. “There’s no safety anywhere in this world, so far as I’ve ever noticed. And power lies with circumstance.”

  “Who has gold, has the mastery,” Nabersberg repeated obstinately. “So they believed, so I believe. If you have gold, you have all. But, apart from their own feelings, they promised me to take no action till I had been able to leave Germany. You see, gentlemen,” he explained with a slight hesitation, “my position there had grown serious. I knew I was in grave danger.”

  “Working against the new Government?” Major Markham asked.

  “Oh, no. I never interested myself in politics,” Nabersberg answered quickly. “I wished only from any Government that it should leave me alone. No, it was discovered” – he hesitated; he braced himself for a disclosure; it came out at last, with an obvious effort, with a certain dread of the effect – “it was discovered that my maternal grandmother was a Jewess.”

  He paused. As there were no exclamations of horror; no outward manifestation of terror or abhorrence; as, indeed, his hearers only looked puzzled, he went on:

  “I had no idea that was so. I had never dreamed of such a thing. If I had been asked, I should have said I was Nordic – Nordic of the purest type. But someone discovered the truth, and whether out of malice, or because they felt it their plain duty, I was denounced in a letter to the authorities.”