The Fanshawe Murder

by Guy Thorne

  Chapter 9

  Gerald Boynton sat in the director's room of the great Milton Paper Works. It was about eleven o'clock in the morning. Clerks and secretaries had been hurrying in and out for nearly two hours -- secretaries and clerks who had already learnt to recognize their new ruler. The young, keen-faced man so suddenly promoted to one of the most important commercial positions in Liverpool was beginning to make things hum. Yet they all liked him. As chief experimental chemist at eight hundred a year he had made no enemies. As director of the great concern with three thousand and commission he seemed likely to achieve a real loyalty among his subordinates. He was as simple and quiet as ever -- but they all knew that he must be obeyed.

  "No, I cannot see anyone else, except Sir Ramsey Homan. He will be here in a minute or so. I am leaving the works at midday and will not be back until Thursday."

  "Very good, Mr. Boynton," the secretary said, and left the large, richly furnished room.

  In a minute he was back again, opening the door and ushering in a short, thick-set man with a pointed grey beard and heavy black eyebrows.

  "This is extremely kind of you, Sir Ramsey," Boynton said, shaking hands. "I would have come to you, you know."

  The great man laughed. "Don't be humble," he said in a broad Scots accent. "Besides, ye're not that at all."

  Boynton grinned. "It is a new thing for me," he said, "to receive a famous captain of industry in a private room!"

  Sir Ramsey laughed again, and his keen grey eyes had a glint of affection in them as he looked at the young man. "You will be that yourself before long," he said. "I am glad that you have succeeded to that rascal Fanshawe's place. We've all of us had our eye on you, my boy, for a long time. I had it in my mind to get you from old Sir William Milton last year, but I waited. You've made good, as the Yankees say, on your own, laddie. Well, the more power to your elbow. What's this yarn going about that the works are now controlled by a young and lovely lady with her hair down her back and a governess in charge of her?"

  Gerald laughed -- it was beautifully done. "Oh," he said, "the young heiress did turn up here a week or two ago. She is not a flapper, though, Sir Ramsey, and she looked round the works. Then they ran her off to London, where, I suppose, she remains. And now my car will be ready in half an hour. We can discuss the paper engine-packing as we go. Will you just come with me to another part of the works and give me your private opinion on something I want to show you?"

  "By all means," Sir Ramsey answered, in high good humour with his young friend with whom he had just concluded an advantageous deal, and he passed out of the offices and began to cross the yard with him.

  "On what d'ye want an opinion?" the great iron-founder asked, every now and then remembering to drop into the Glasgow accent of his youth.

  "On something Fanshawe left behind him, Sir Ramsey. I know a good bit about machinery, of course, but only the machinery of the paper trade."

  "Fanshawe has left something behind him, then?"

  "Yes, I know you won't speak about this at all. We are going to the Experiment House, where Fanshawe was occupied a good deal -- and in a very private way -- before he disappeared."

  "Ah!" said Sir Ramsey, and there was a world of meaning in the exclamation.

  Doors were unlocked and the two men passed into the large hall, lit by its glass roof. On all sides stood masses of cold and lifeless machinery.

  "Let's start here and walk round," Gerald said.

  They did so, and it took a considerable time. More than once Sir Ramsey stopped in front of some complicated apparatus, bent forward, mounted a few steps up a little steel ladder and felt among wheels and levers.

  "Well, what should you say?" Gerald asked at length.

  The Scotsman looked at him. "You've got a working knowledge of hydraulics?" he said sharply.

  Gerald shrugged his shoulders. "Oh, yes," he said. "I am a chemist really, but I am a qualified engineer as well."

  Sir Ramsey nodded. "Then you will realize," he said, "that this is a very particular installation. There is an improved Pelton wheel here, a very queer and novel forging press and plate-bender. I've not seen the like before."

  Sir Ramsey had been smoking a cigarette. He threw it away, and bent and peered over the piston and ram of a flanging press. He felt in his waistcoat pocket and took out a little silver-mounted magnifying glass. Then he dropped on his knees and regardless of his beautiful dove-coloured trousers, crawled half out of sight. He emerged flushed in face and rusty of garments. His eyes were shining.

  "This will be work from Skoda," he said. "This is a new application of the Sachs Multiplying Sheaves. Man, this installation here must have cost the better part of twenty thousand pounds! What was old Sir William Milton about? I knew him well, and I liked him, but I would not have said that the old gentleman had a soul above paper."

  Boynton laughed. "It was not Sir William at all," he said. "It was Fanshawe. I am very glad to have had your expert opinion, Sir Ramsey. Now you've seen everything, have you any idea as to the reason of it?"

  Sir Ramsey carefully lit another cigarette. "I've an idea in my mind," he said, "and I think you've got another one."

  "Well, tell me yours first."

  "This is the most ingenious and perfect machinery I've ever seen for exercising an almost unprecedented pressure on some material unknown."

  "Exactly," Gerald answered.

  "It was not steel," Sir Ramsey said.

  "No, it was not," Gerald replied.

  "And here, I think," Sir Ramsey continued, "we have certain moulds?"

  "Yes."

  The short, thick-set man polished his glasses, and for nearly five minutes inspected various huge trough-like cylinders of steel, together with various other pieces of machinery.

  "Well," he said at length, "you are going to motor to North Wales, and you are very kindly going to take me as far as Colwyn Bay and drop me at my little villa there. We're lunching at the 'Bear's Paw,' I think you said. Well, let's get to it."

  Ten minutes afterwards the two men rolled away towards the centre of Liverpool, Boynton driving the car. At lunch, which he much enjoyed, Sir Ramsey made no comment at all on what the young man had shown him. But when, warmly wrapped up, for the day was cold and misty, they had started again on their journey Sir Ramsey made one enigmatic remark.

  "It was papier-mâché, of course, that yon wastrel Fanshawe was employed on?"

  "Yes, Sir Ramsey, it certainly was that. It's the great problem in our trade. I have flirted with it myself. I have often thought that I've seen a way, but I've never had time or apparatus to get anywhere near it."

  "Well, it's a thing I've been watching for the last ten years. There are people all over Europe, to say nothing of America, who are trying to solve it."

  There was a long, straight road in front of them, a ten mile clear run. Gerald let her out, and the car shovelled the road behind her with a triumphant purr.

  "I am thinking that Fanshawe was very near the middle of it before he died. That man had a brain like Napoleon and a heart like Satan," said Sir Ramsey.

  "I know nothing about his heart," Gerald said dryly, as the great car rushed on by the side of the sea.

  "I expect," Sir Ramsey said, with a little chuckle, "you are wanting my expert opinion!"

  "It was why I asked you to come and look at the Experiment Room."

  Sir Ramsey put one big hand gloved in sealskin upon Gerald's arm. "This is between you and me," he said quietly. "You've asked me a question, and here's the answer. To get all that machinery into the Experiment House Fanshawe must have got round Sir William Milton. Sir William must have realized that Fanshawe had more or less solved the problem they were both looking for, or he would never have allowed the expenditure on machinery. My own opinion is that Fanshawe had a private axe to grind, and Sir William knew nothing of it."

  "I came to that conclusion myself a long time ago," Gerald said.

  They were doing sixty miles an hour, but the windscre
en protected them. With the most annoying deliberation Sir Ramsey Homan lit a cigar. Gerald kept his hands on the steering wheel and looked straight ahead. He knew that the elder man, with all his Northern caution and malicious humour, was keeping him in suspense.

  When he had had his little fun, Sir Ramsey leant to the side of the driver. "Young Boynton," he said, and his voice was very serious now, "I've been thinking it over."

  "Yes, Sir Ramsey?"

  "Fanshawe was making great cylinders of papier-mâché. One of the moulds was ten feet in diameter. What was he doing? Was he making a model of an underground railway tube, a little less than effective size?"

  "I don't think so, Sir Ramsey."

  "I've carried away a number of impressions from that carefully constructed machinery -- machinery that came from the Skoda Works in Austria, and nowhere else."

  "It's not likely that you would be mistaken?"

  "I am not mistaken. You know a good deal more than you've told me, Boynton. But those great moulds and the cylinders, what they must have stamped and pressed, only lead to one thought in my mind."

  The car swerved almost into the hedge and then righted itself.

  "Sorry," Boynton said. "You were saying, Sir Ramsey?"

  The great iron-founder tossed away the end of his cigar. "Ah!" he said. "You've been asking yourself this for many weeks. My conclusion? Laddie, it's just this. Fanshawe was crack it. He was mad. He thought that he'd get his papier-mâché as hard, or harder than steel. It's clear enough! The man was spending thousands to make a great gun -- a cannon that would shoot the moon!" Sir Ramsey leant back in his seat and laughed.

  "A great gun?"

  "Lad, if you'd been making ordnance for as many years as I have in my workshops, the thing would have been patent to ye from the moment you saw the poor softie's mechanical insanities! Probably the cloud rolled up from his brain for a moment -- for he was a great man in his way was Fanshawe -- and he saw the futility of his madness, and cast himself into the river. Now you have it!"

  Gerald duly dropped the genial baronet at Colwyn Bay, and after a brief stop at Sir Ramsey's charming seaside villa, where he drank a whisky and soda and smoked a cigarette, he pulled out for Conway. Then, as the great car settled down once more to its work, and the Welsh mountains grew nearer and nearer, Gerald thought deeply.

  Sir Ramsey knew what he was talking about, there was no doubt about that. It really did seem as if he had discovered part of Fanshawe's secret. Everything fitted in with the surmise. Gerald, though he had depreciated himself as a mechanical engineer, was in reality a highly trained expert. Yet until the keyword had been spoken he had been far away from what appeared to be the real solution. Now he saw it all plainly. Certainly those gigantic moulds had been used for some such purpose as Sir Ramsey said. There was technical evidence on every side. It was more than probable, indeed almost certain, that Fanshawe had been constructing something like an immense piece of artillery.

  As soon as he had determined that, the wild absurdity of the notion made him actually smile. In the first place, such a gun would be the monster of a dream -- even in these days of mighty weapons. Why, a section of the mould that Sir Ramsey had shown him pointed to a breech of many feet in diameter. The thing was preposterous, unless, indeed, Fanshawe was mad!

  Gerald had told Sir Ramsey nothing about the mysterious night occurrences at the works, but said nothing of the white yacht, and nothing of Lord Llandrylas. The peer's name evolved another thought. Whatever it was Fanshawe was making for that man with such secrecy, it was not what Sir Ramsey said. What on earth would be the use of a great dummy gun to the recluse of the mountains? Carpenters could build one for him of wood in a fortnight. But then, supposing that Fanshawe had, after all, discovered the secret of papier-mâché and found out how to produce it with a toughness and strength beyond that of highly tempered metal!

  The subject was too baffling and elusive, and he resolutely put it away from his mind for the time being. Conjecture was useless. It was better to do as they were doing -- to take practical steps to discover what was behind it all. Gerald longed to have Winterbotham's report. He was in a fever of anxiety to know if the keen-witted fellow had been able to get to work.

  By rights there should have been a telegram from Violet, either last night or early this morning -- a telegram in the cipher code that had been decided upon between them. But it had not arrived, nor was there even a letter. From that fact, Gerald thought that something must be going on, some active work not yet completed, and his eagerness to be at Pwylog increased.

  The grey towers of Conway Castle, overhanging the river, came into sight at last, and as the petrol in his tank was running low he resolved to replenish it in the town. He drove to the garage of an hotel that was known to him and, while the petrol was being fetched, entered the building and ordered a cup of tea. He would be at Pwylog in less than half an hour.

  A big fire was burning in the hotel lounge, and he went up to it and stamped to renew his circulation, for the afternoon had now become damp and cold, and there was a white mist coming down from the mountains.

  "It's going to be a thick night," said the barmaid as she brought his tea. "I don't think the mist will clear till morning."

  "Very likely not," Gerald answered. "But I am, more or less, a stranger here and not weather-wise."

  "Nor was the poor young lady from Pwylog," said the barmaid. "Poor thing! I can't help thinking of her."

  "Pwylog? I'm going to Pwylog. What young lady do you mean?"

  "Oh, haven't you heard?" said the girl. "A young lady staying at the Victoria Hotel at Pwylog went up the mountains after lunch yesterday and never came down again. They've sent search parties all over the hills for her, but up to midday she had not been found. My sister is in the lounge bar of the Victoria, and she telephoned to me. That's how I know about it. Aren't you well, sir?"

  "Can you tell me the young lady's name?" he said in an unsteady voice.

  "Watkins or Wilkins I think it was. Aren't you going to drink your tea, sir?"

  Gerald had put down a half-crown on the table and rushed out of the room. Scenting a romance, and highly interested and excited, the barmaid ran to the window in time to see a great grey motorcar glide past. The man's face at the steering wheel was set and stern.

  "Well, I never!" said the young lady to herself. "I should not wonder if that's the poor girl's fiancé." And she hastened to the telephone to ring up her sister at Pwylog.

  First some outlying villas, some of them cold and unoccupied, others beginning to light up in the dusk, then a straight run for half a mile -- covered, in despite of regulations, in much less than a minute -- and the Victoria Hotel. The car swerved into the drive and stopped in front of the porch with a jar of its brakes, Gerald hurried in. He passed through the outer vestibule and the swing doors into the little lounge. The fire was burning on the hearth. The shaded electric lights sent down a soft radiance upon the armchairs and settees. There was not a soul there.

  He stood in the middle of the room for a moment and then called out in a loud and angry voice. A glass door opened and Mr. Price, the proprietor, hurried in. "I'm very glad you've come, sir. We're all awaiting you."

  "What's happened?"

  Mr. Price made a despairing gesture with his hands. "They are searching the mountains and the quarries now, sir," he said. "The police and many willing helpers are there, but nothing has been heard of the young lady yet."

  Gerald pulled off his gloves with great deliberation and threw them upon a little copper-topped table. All the strength of his nature was needed now. He made a supreme effort at self-control and succeeded.

  "Mrs. Wilkins," he asked sharply, "where is she?"

  "The poor lady is in a dangerous state, sir. She falls out of one fainting fit into another. She can't speak, she can't think. The doctor is with her now. She is only being kept alive by chicken soup and oysters."

  Gerald ground his teeth. "I want to hear every detail," he said ster
nly. "What do you know?"

  "Very little indeed. Only that Miss Wilkins left the hotel yesterday morning to take some comforts to her old servant, Mr. Winter the gardener, at Carnedd Farm. Mr. Winter is here now, sir. He has been waiting for your arrival."

  "Where is he?"

  "In the private sitting room, sir."

  Gerald leapt up the stairs, ran along the corridor, flung the door open and saw Winterbotham crouching in a chair by the fire.

  "Thank God! Thank God, you've come, Mister Boynton!" cried the little man.

  "Winterbotham, I only heard of Miss Milton's disappearance when I was at Conway half an hour ago."

  "You didn't get my telegram?"

  "I got no telegram from you or from Miss Milton. I expected one from her last night or early this morning to tell me what you had been doing."

  "My telegram must have just missed you," Winterbotham said. "I wired to the works at the first moment I had."

  Gerald stamped on the carpet. "Get on! Get on, man!" he said. "Can't you see I am in an agony?"

  "Yesterday Miss Milton came up to see me at Carnedd Farm. She brought me the things you had posted to her -- the gas cylinder, the binoculars and the periscope. She took some food and we had a talk and I told her my plans, and then she set out for the hotel."

  "Go on. Go on quickly."

  "When Miss Milton left, I went to my bedroom to get some sleep. I knew that the moon was nearly full and I planned to be out scouting round Castle Ynad most of the night. The old farm lady called me at nine at night and brought me a bowl of hot milk. I told her it was good for my complaint to be on the hilltops at midnight, and she believed me. But when I went out there was no light at all. A great mist had come down from the mountains, and it would have been useless for me to attempt it, so I went back to bed again. You'll realize, Mister Boynton, that I had no idea that the mist had come down so early and swallowed up missie in the afternoon."

  "Of course, of course, Winterbotham," Gerald said. "Forgive me if I seemed hard, but this news is so terrible. They woke you up at midnight, you said. Who were they?"

  "An inspector of police, a constable and two quarrymen from Pendrylas village -- men who know the moor well. They told me they had had great difficulty in getting to the farm as it was."

  "What happened then?"

  "I got up and joined them and we began to search. We could not go very far until the dawn came. It was impossible to see more than a yard or two before one's nose. We discovered absolutely nothing. About ten o'clock we had to stop, while the inspector went down the mountain to organize bigger search parties. The manager of the quarries lent a lot of his men and they have scoured the mountains for ten miles in every direction. They haven't found a trace of our young lady."

  Boynton sat down heavily at the table and covered his face with his hands. "She has fallen down some precipice," he said in a broken voice. "We shall never see her again."

  Only a single electric light had been turned on. It only made emphasised the gloom of the big room. Winterbotham got up from his chair by the fire.

  "Sir," he said, "I never thought to see ye give up so soon. There's no precipice within four miles of the Carnedd Farm. There's absolutely no danger spot whatever. By now the whole tableland up yonder has been searched yard by yard. A lapdog could not have escaped notice, let alone a young lady like ours. Man, pull yourself together! Can't you see what's happened to t'lass?"

  Boynton looked up. "I'm sorry, Winterbotham," he said. "It was only for a moment. Did she tell you----"

  "That you and she had fixed it up to get married? Aye, she did that. I'll be having at ye with an old shoe and a pound of rice yet! Missie never lost herself. I've worked the whole thing out with mathematical certainty till there's only one possible explanation left, though you may be sure I've said nothing of it to anyone."

  "You think...?"

  "There's one man at the bottom of it," Winterbotham answered simply. "It's the man that sent yon white yacht slinking to our wharf at midnight. It's the man that bought Mr. Fanshawe and killed him afterwards. It's the owner of the great dogs that range the moors at night."

  The two men were facing each other, and Gerald's face, pale and lined, was growing terribly stern. "Great dogs?" he asked.

  "Aye; you listen to me, Mister Boynton," and Winterbotham poured the story of his discoveries into the young man's ear.

  The narrator concluded by producing a rough map of the high tableland, with distances carefully marked upon it. Men whose business it is to deal with scientific facts speak a language among themselves. Boynton's trained mind understood Winterbotham's explanation in a very few moments. He only asked two questions. Then he looked up.

  "Your system of elimination is faultless, Winterbotham," he said. "There's only one possible explanation. By some means or other Miss Milton has gone or has been decoyed into Castle Ynad!"

  "That's so," the other answered grimly; "and we're up against a wall of rock, Mister Boynton. We've no proof of what we say, however strongly we believe we're right. Even if we had proof, it'd be easier to steal the Crown Jewels, or break into the gold vaults of the Bank of England, than for you and me to get into Castle Ynad."

  Boynton nodded. There was no need for Winterbotham to insist upon that point of view.

  There was a knock upon the door. Mr. Price, the landlord, entered. "There's a gentleman called, sir," said Mr. Price. "He wanted to see Mrs. Wilkins, but I told him I thought she was too unwell to speak to anyone, but that a friend of the family was here."

  "Who is he, Mr. Price?"

  "It's Mr. Conway Flint, sir, his lordship's agent. Mr. Flint manages everything for his lordship. His lordship has heard of the unfortunate young lady's disappearance and sends to ask if he can do anything."

  "Ask him to come up, please, Mr. Price," Boynton said.

  He turned to Winterbotham as the landlord withdrew. "You sit there by the fire and don't say a word. We don't know what this may mean."

  Footsteps and voices were heard on the landing outside, then the door opened and a tall man entered.

  Winterbotham crouched in his chair as he had been ordered. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the newcomer was big, upright and clean-shaven, though in the dim and indifferent light given by the single bulb at the other end of the room he could see no more than this.

  "I have called," the visitor began in a smooth voice, "to say how very sorry indeed Lord Llandrylas is to hear of this unfortunate event. He has asked me to say that his services and those of anyone at Castle Ynad are entirely at your disposal, Mr. ..."

  Gerald did not answer for several seconds. Winterbotham, listening keenly, thought it very odd. Then he nearly jumped out of his chair.

  "Winterbotham," came in tones of sharp command, "turn on the other electric lights quickly!"

  The little man stretched out his hand in a flash and pressed the switch by the fire. Then he gasped aloud. Gerald Boynton was covering the newcomer with a revolver.

  "So we meet again, Mr. Fanshawe," he said.