But contrary to his expectations, the next day passed without any news of the L’Escaut, and the next, and many days after that. Nor could all his efforts with the tracing throw any light on that mysterious document. As time passed he began to grow more and more despondent, and the fear that he was going to make a mess of the case grew steadily stronger. In vain he laid his difficulties before his wife. For once that final source of inspiration failed him. Mrs French did not take even one illuminating notion. When the third week had gone by, something akin to despair seized upon the inspector. The only possibility of hope now seemed to lie in the return of Arnold Price, and French began counting the days until his arrival.
One night about three weeks after his return from Belgium he settled down with a cigar after dinner, his thoughts running in their familiar groove: What were these people engaged on? Was there any way in which he could find out? Had he overlooked any evidence or any inquiries? Had he neglected any possible line of research?
The more he considered the affair in all its bearings, the more conscious be became of the soundness of the advice he had given to Cheyne, and which in his turn he had received from his chief. Unquestionably in the tracing lay the solution he required, and once again he racked his brains to see if he could not by any means devise a way to read its message.
On this point he concentrated, going over and over again everything he had learnt about it. For perhaps an hour he remained motionless in his chair, while the smoke from his cigar curled up and slowly dissolved into the blue haze with which the room was becoming obscured. And then suddenly he sat up and with a dawning, tremulous eagerness considered an idea which had just leaped into his mind.
He had suddenly remembered a statement made by Cheyne when he was giving his first rather incoherent account of his adventures. The young man had said that it had been arranged between himself and Joan Merrill that if either were lucky enough to get the tracing into his or her possession, the first thing he or she would do would be to photograph it. Now, in juxtaposition with that statement, French recalled the facts, first, that Joan must have reached her flat on the night of her abduction at least several minutes before Blessington and Sime arrived with their car; and secondly, that during those minutes she had the tracing with her—the genuine tracing, as there was every reason to believe. Had Joan photographed it?
French was overwhelmed with amazement and chagrin at his failure to think of this point before, nor could he acquit Cheyne of a like astounding stupidity. For himself he felt there was no excuse whatever. He had even specially noticed the girl’s camera and the flashlight apparatus which she used for her architectural details when he was searching her rooms, but he had then, and since then up till this moment, entirely and completely forgotten the arrangement made between the partners.
Late as it was, French decided to go then and there to ascertain the point. The key of Joan’s flat was at the Yard, and twenty minutes later he had obtained it and was in a taxi bowling towards Horne Terrace.
He kept the vehicle while he ran up the ten flights to No. 12 and secured the camera. Then hastening down, he was driven back to the Yard.
By a piece of good luck he found a photographer who had been delayed by other important work, and him he pressed into the service forthwith. With some grumbling the man returned to his dark room, French, too eager to await his report, accompanying him.
A few moments sufficed to settle the question. The camera contained a roll of films of which the first seven had been exposed, and a short immersion in the developer showed that numbers 5, 6 and 7 bore the hoped for impress.
Gone was French’s despondency and the weariness caused by his heavy day, and instead he was once more the embodiment of enthusiasm and cheery optimism. He had it now! At last the secret was within his grasp! Of his ability to read the message, now that he was sure he had the genuine one, he had no doubt. He had always liked working out ciphers, and since he had succeeded in extracting the hidden meaning from the stock and share list which had been sent to the elusive Mrs X in the Gething murder case, his belief in his own powers had become almost an obsession. He could hardly restrain his eagerness to get to grips with this new problem until the negatives should be dry and prints made.
The photographer was able to promise these for the following day, and till then French had to possess his soul in patience. But on his return from lunch he found on his desk three excellent prints of the document.
They were only half-plate size, or about one-third that of the tracing which had been given to Cheyne. He therefore instructed the photographer to prepare enlargements which would bring the document up to more nearly the size of the original. These were ready before it was time for him to leave for home, and he sat down with ill-controlled excitement to compare them with the document at which he had already spent so much time.
And then he suddenly experienced one of the most bitter disappointments of his life. To all intents and purposes the two were the same! There were the same circles, the same numbers, letters and signs enclosed therein, the same phrase, ‘England expects every man to do his duty,’ spaced round in the same way! The tracing had not been very accurately done, as some of the circles seemed slightly out of place, but the discrepancies were trifling, and seemed obviously due to careless copying. He gave vent to a single bitter oath, then sat motionless, wrapped in the most profound gloom.
He took tracing and photographs home with him, and spent the greater part of the evening making a minute comparison between the two. The enlargement unfortunately was not exactly the same size as the tracing, and he therefore began his work by covering the surfaces of both with proportionate squares.
Taking the tracing first he drew parallel lines one inch apart both up and down it and across, thus covering its whole surface with inch squares. Then he divided the prints into the same number of equal parts both vertically and horizontally and ruled them up in squares also. These squares were slightly smaller than the others—about seven-eighths of an inch only—but relatively the lines fell on each in the same positions. A comparison according to the squares thus showed at a glance similarity or otherwise between the two documents.
As he examined them in detail certain interesting facts began to emerge. The general appearance, the words ‘England expects every man to do his duty,’ and the circles with their attendant letters and numbers were identical on both sheets. But there were striking variations. The position of certain of the circles was different. Those containing numbers and crooked lines were all slightly out of place, while those containing letters remained unmoved. Moreover, the little crooked lines, while preserving a rough resemblance to the originals, were altered in shape. The more he considered the matter the more evident it became to French that these divergences were intentional. The tracing which had been given to Cheyne was intended to resemble the other superficially—and did so resemble it, but it had clearly been faked to make it valueless.
If French were right so far, and he had but little doubt of it, it followed that the essential feature of the circles and crooked lines was position. This, he felt, should be a useful hint, but as yet he could not see where it led.
He pondered fruitlessly over the problem till the small hours, and next morning he took the documents back to the Yard to continue his studies. But he did not have an opportunity to do so. Other work was waiting for him. To his delight he found that Arnold Price had reached home, and that he and Cheyne were waiting to see him.
Price proved to be a lanky and rather despondent-looking individual with a skin burned to the colour of copper and a pair of exceedingly shrewd blue eyes. He dropped into the chair French indicated, and instantly pulled out and lit a well-blackened cutty pipe.
‘Got in yesterday morning,’ he announced laconically, ‘and wired Torquay I was going down. By the merest luck I got a reply before I started that Cheyne was in town. I looked him up, and here I am.’
French smiled pleasantly. Though interested in the man,
he could not help noting with some amusement at once the restraint and the completeness of his statement. How refreshing, he thought, and how rare, to meet someone who will give you the pith of a story without frills!
‘I’m glad to meet you, Mr Price,’ he said cordially ‘I suppose Mr Cheyne has told you the effect that your letter has had on us all?’
The other nodded.
‘Not altogether surprising,’ he declared. ‘There’s money in the thing—or so I always believed, and this other crowd must believe it too; though how they got on to the affair licks me.’
‘We shall be very much interested to hear what you can tell us about it,’ French prompted. ‘Will you smoke, Mr Cheyne?’ He held out his cigar case.
‘I can’t tell you much,’ Price returned, ‘and nothing that will clear up this blessed mystery that seems to have started up. But this is my story for what it’s worth. Before the war I was on one of the Hudson and Spence boats and I had the luck to get into the R.N.R. when hostilities broke out. I stayed on in my old ship till she was torpedoed a couple of years later, then I was appointed third officer on the Maurania. We were on a trip from South Africa to Brest with army stores, when one day, just as we came into the English Channel, we were attacked by a U-boat. We had an 18-pounder forward, and by a stroke of luck we gave old Fritz one on the knob that did him in. The boat went down and a dozen of the crew were left swimming. We put out a boat and picked one or two of them up. The skipper was clinging on to a lifebelt, but just as we came up he let go and began to sink. I was in charge of the boat, and some fool notion came over me—I think in the hurry I forgot he was a U-boat skipper—but anyhow like a fool I got overboard and got hold of him. It was nothing like a dramatic rescue—there was no danger to me—and we were back on board inside fifteen minutes.’
French and Cheyne were listening intently to this familiar story. So far it was almost word for word that told by Dangle. Apparently, then, there was at least one point on which the latter had told the truth.
‘We weren’t out of trouble,’ Price resumed, ‘and next day we came up against another submarine. We exchanged a few shots and then a British destroyer came up and drove him off. But I had the luck to stop a splinter of shell, and when we got to Brest I was sent to hospital. The U-boat skipper had got a crack on the head when his boat went down, and he was sent in too. By a chance we got side by side beds in the same ward, and used to talk a bit, though he was a rotter, even for a Bosche.’
Price paused to draw on his cutty pipe, expelling great clouds of smoke of a peculiarly acrid and penetrating quality. Then, the others not speaking, he went on:
‘It turned out that the wound on Schulz’s head—his name was Schulz—was serious, and he grew steadily worse. Then one night when the ward was quiet, he woke me and said he knew his number was up and that he had a secret to tell me. We listened, but all the other fellows seemed asleep, and then he told me he could put me in the way of a fortune that he had hoped to get it himself after the war, but now that it would be a job for someone else. He said he would tell me the whole thing, and that I might make what I could out of it, if only I would pledge myself to give one-eighth of what I got to his wife. He gave me the address—somewhere in Breslau. He asked me to swear this and I did, and then he took a packet from under his pillow and handed it to me. “There,” he said, “the whole thing’s there. I put it in cipher for safety, but I’ll tell you how to read it.” Well, he began to do so, but just then a sister came in, and he shut up till she would leave. But the excitement of talking about the thing must have been too much for him. He got a weak turn and never spoke again.’
‘But,’ Cheyne interposed, ‘what about the hard copper? Dangle told us about Schulz’s discovery.’
Price gazed at him vacantly for some moments and then suddenly smote the table.
‘I’ve got it!’ he cried with an oath. ‘Dangle! I remember that chap now! He was in the next bed on the other side of Schulz. That’s right! I couldn’t call him to mind when you mentioned him before. Of course! He heard the whole tale, and that’s what started him on this do.’
‘I know,’ Cheyne returned. ‘He admitted that all right. But he told us about the hard copper. You haven’t mentioned that.’
Price shook his head.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he declared. ‘What do you mean by hard copper?’
‘Dangle mentioned it. He was listening to the conversation. He told us all that about Schulz’s story of the fortune, and about his wife and all that, just as you have, but he said Schulz went on to explain what the fortune was: that he had hit on a way of treating copper that made it as hard as steel. The cipher contained the formula.’
Again Price shook his head.
‘All spoof,’ he observed. ‘Not a word of truth in it. Schulz never mentioned copper or said anything more than I’ve told you.’
French spoke for the first time.
‘We found this Dangle a man of imagination, all through, and it is easy to see why he invented that particular yarn. By that time he had undoubtedly read the cipher, and he wanted something to mislead Mr Cheyne as to its contents. The story of the hard copper would start a bias in Mr Cheyne’s mind which would tend to keep him off the real scent.’ He paused, but his companions not speaking, continued: ‘Now we have that bias cleared away, at least one interesting fact emerges. The whole business starts with the sea—the U-boat commander, Schulz, and it looks as if it was going to end up with the sea, the tramp, the L’Escaut.’
As French said these words an idea flashed into his mind, and he went on deliberately, but with growing excitement:
‘And when we connect the idea of a U-boat commander giving a message which ends with a sea expedition, with the fact, which I have just discovered, that the essence of his cipher is the position of the markings on it, we seem to be getting somewhere.’
Price smote his thigh.
‘By Jimima!’ he cried. ‘I’ve got you. That blessed tracing is a map!’
‘A map, yes. That’s what I think,’ French answered eagerly, and then as suddenly he saw the possible significance of Nelson’s exhortation, he went on dramatically: ‘A map of England!’
Cheyne swore softly.
‘My word, if we aren’t a set of blithering idiots!’ he exclaimed. ‘Of course! “England” is the title. That’s as clear as day! The other words are added as a blind. Let’s have the thing out, Inspector, and see if we can’t make something of it now.’
As French produced his enlarged photographs not one of the three men doubted that they were at last well on the way towards wresting the secret from the document which had so long baffled them.
19
The Message of the Tracing
Inspector French spread the photograph on his desk, and Cheyne and Price having drawn up chairs, all three gazed at it as if expecting that in the light of their great idea its message would have become obvious.
But in this they were disappointed. The suggestion did not seem in any way to help either French or Cheyne, and Price, who of course had not seen the document before, was satisfactorily mystified. Granted that the thing was a map, granted even that it was a map of England, its meaning remained just as provokingly hidden as ever.
Presently Price gave vent to an exclamation. ‘Hang it all!’ he cried irritably, and then: ‘I suppose those numbers couldn’t be soundings? Could they give depths at the circles?’
‘That’s an idea,’ Cheyne cried, but French shook his head.
‘I think there’s more in it than that,’ he observed. ‘If you examine those numbers you’ll find that they’re consecutive, they run from one to thirty-six. Soundings wouldn’t lend themselves to such an arrangement. You may be right, Mr Price, and we must keep your idea in view, but I don’t see it working out for the moment.’
Silence reigned for a few moments, then Price sat back from the table and spoke again.
‘Look here, Inspector,’ he said, knocking the
ashes out of his pipe and beginning to fill it with his strong, black mixture, ‘you said something just now I didn’t quite follow. Let’s get your notion clear. You talked of this thing beginning with the sea—at Schulz, and ending with the sea—at the L’Escaut, and Schulz’s message being a map. Just what was in your mind?’
‘Only the obvious suggestion that if you leave a message which provokes an expedition, you must also convey in your message the destination of that expedition, and a map seems the simplest way of doing it. But on second thoughts I question my first conclusion. There must be an explanation of the secret as well as a direction of how to profit by it, and it would seem to me doubtful that such an explanation could be covered by a map.’
‘Sounds all right, that,’ Price admitted. ‘Have you any idea what the secret might be? Sounds like treasure or salvage or something of that kind.’
‘I scarcely think salvage,’ French answered. ‘The L’Escaut is not a salvage boat, and a boat not specially fitted for the purpose would be of little use. But I thought of treasure all right. This Schulz might have robbed his ships—there would always be money aboard, and even during the war many women travelled with jewellery. The man might easily have made a cache of valuables somewhere round the coast.’
‘Easily,’ Cheyne intervened, ‘or he might have learnt of some valuable deposit in some out of the way cove round the coast, like those chaps in that clinking tale of Maurice Drake’s, WO2.’
‘As at Terneuzen?’ said French. ‘I read that book—one of the best I ever came across. It’s a possibility, of course.’
The talk here became somewhat rambling, Price not having read WO2 and wanting to know what it was about, but French soon reverted to his photograph. He reminded his hearers that they were all interested in its elucidation. Miss Merrill’s safety, his own professional credit, Cheyne’s peace of mind, and Price’s fortune, all were at stake.
Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery Page 23
