Inspector French and the Cheyne Mystery

by Freeman Wills Crofts

  ‘We have,’ he went on, ‘evolved the idea that perhaps this tracing may be a map of England. On further thought that suggestion does not seem promising, but as we have no other let us work on it. Assume it is a map of England, and let us see if it leads us anywhere.’ There were murmurs of assent from his hearers, and he continued: ‘Now it seems to me the first thing to do is to try if we can fit these circles and lines into the map of England. Is there anything corresponding to them in English geography?’

  No one being able to answer this query, French went on:

  ‘I think we must distinguish between the letter circles on the one hand and those of the numbers and lines on the other. The position of the former was not altered in the faked copy; that of the latter was. From this may we not assume that the message lies in the numbers and lines only? Possibly the letters were added as a blind, as we have already assumed the words “expects every man to do his duty” were added as a blind to “England.” Suppose at all events that we eliminate the letter circles and concentrate on the others for our first effort?’

  ‘That sounds all right.’

  ‘Good. Then let us go a step further. Have you noticed the distribution of the numbers, letters and lines? The numbers are bunched, roughly speaking, towards the centre, the letters round the edge, and the irregular lines between the two. Does this central mass give us anything?’

  ‘I get you,’ Price replied. He had risen and begun to pace the room, but now he returned to the table and stood looking down at the photograph. ‘You know, as a matter of fact,’ he went on slowly, ‘if, as you say, you take that central part which contains numbers only, the shape of the thing is not so very unlike England after all. Suppose the numbers represent land and the letters sea. Then this patch of letters in the top left hand corner might be the Irish Sea, and this larger patch to the right the North Sea. And look, the letter circles form a band across the bottom. What price that for the English Channel?’

  French crossed the room, and taking a small atlas from a shelf, opened it at the map of England and laid it down beside the photograph. With a rising excitement all three compared them. Then Cheyne burst out irritably:

  ‘Confound the thing! It’s like it and it’s not like it. Let’s draw a line round those number circles and see if it makes anything like the shape.’ He seized the photograph and took out a pencil.

  But just as in the scientific and industrial worlds discoveries and inventions seldom come singly, so among these three men the begetting of ideas begot more ideas. Scarcely had Cheyne spoken when French made a little gesture of comprehension.

  ‘I believe I have it at last,’ he said quietly but with ill-concealed eagerness in his tones. ‘Those irregular lines in certain of the circles are broken bits of the coast line. See here, those two between 8 and U are surely the Wash, and that below H is Flamborough Head. Let’s see if we can locate correspondingly shaped outlines on the atlas, and fill in between those on the photograph with pencil.’

  A few seconds’ examination only were needed. Opposite, but slightly above the projection which French suggested as Flamborough Head was an angled line between GU and 31 which all three simultaneously pronounced St Bee’s Head. Short double lines on each side of 24 showed two parts of the estuary of the Severn, and projections along the bottom near X and 27 were evidently St Alban’s Head and Selsea Bill.

  That they were on the right track there could now no longer be any doubt, and they set themselves with renewed energy to the problem still remaining—the meaning of the circles and the numbers they contained.

  ‘We can’t locate the blessed things this way,’ French pointed out. ‘We’ll have to rule squares on the atlas to correspond. Then we can pencil in the coast line accurately, and see just where the circles lie.’

  For a time measuring and the drawing of lines were the order of the day. And then at last the positions of the circles was located. They were all drawn round towns.

  ‘Towns!’ Price exclaimed. ‘Guess we’re getting on.’

  ‘Towns!’ Cheyne echoed in his turn. ‘Then you must have been right, Inspector, about those letters being merely a blind.’

  ‘I think so,’ French admitted. ‘Look at it in this way. If only the towns and coast were marked, the shape of England would show too clearly. But adding those letter circles disguises the thing—prevents the shape becoming apparent. Now, I may be wrong, but I am beginning to question very much if this map has anything to do with indicating a position—I mean directly. I am beginning to think it is merely a cipher. Let us test this at all events. Let us write down the names of the towns in the order of the numbers and see if that gives us anything.’

  He took a sheet of paper, while Price found No. 1 on the photograph and Cheyne identified its position with that of a town on the atlas map.

  ‘No. 1,’ said Cheyne, ‘is Salisbury.’

  French wrote down: ‘1, Salisbury.’

  ‘No. 2,’ went on Cheyne, ‘is Immingham.’

  ‘2, Immingham,’ wrote French, as he remarked, ‘Salisbury—Immingham: S—I. That goes all right so far.’

  The next three towns were Liverpool, Uttoxeter and Reading, and though none of the men could see where SILUR was leading, it was at least pronounceable.

  But when the next three letters were added French gave a mighty shout of victory. No. 6 was Ipswich, No. 7 Andover and No. 8 Nottingham. IAN added to SILUR made Silurian.

  ‘Silurian!’ French cried, striking the table a mighty blow with his clenched fist. ‘Silurian! That begins to show a light!’

  The others stared.

  ‘Don’t you recognise the name?’ went on French. ‘The Silurian was a big Anchor liner, and she was torpedoed on her way to the States with two and a half millions in gold bars aboard!’

  The others held their breath and their eyes grew round.

  ‘Any of it recovered?’

  ‘None: it was in mid-Atlantic.’

  ‘But,’ stammered Cheyne at last, ‘I don’t follow—’

  ‘I don’t follow myself,’ French returned briskly, ‘but when the cipher which leads to a maritime expedition begins with a wreck with two and a half millions aboard, well then, I say it is suggestive. Come along let’s read the rest of the thing. We’ll know more then.’

  With breathless eagerness the other towns were looked, up, and at last French’s list read as follows:

  1. Salisbury

  2. Immingham

  3. Liverpool

  4. Uttoxeter

  5. Reading

  6. Ipswich

  7. Andover

  8. Nottingham

  9. Oxford

  10. Northampton

  11. Evesham

  12. Doncaster

  13. Exeter

  14. Gloucester

  15. Ripon

  16. Ely

  17. Eastbourne

  18. Wigan

  19. Exmouth

  20. Swansea

  21. Tonbridge

  22. Nuneaton

  23. Ilfracombe

  24. Newport

  25. Eaglescliff

  26. Taunton

  27. Eastleigh

  28. Ebbw Vale

  29. Northallerton

  30. Folkestone

  31. Appleby

  32. Tamworth

  33. Huntingdon

  34. Oldham

  35. Middlesbrough

  36. Southend

  Taking the initials in order read: SILURIANONE DEGREEWESTNINETEENFATHOMS, or dividing it into its obvious words—‘Silurian one degree west nineteen fathoms.’

  The three men stared at one another.

  ‘Nineteen fathoms!’ Price gasped at last. ‘But if she’s in nineteen fathoms that gold will be salvable!’

  French nodded.

  ‘And I guess Dangle and Company have gone to salve it. They wouldn’t want a salvage boat for gold. They’d get it with a diver’s outfit.’

  ‘But,’ Cheyne went on in a puzzled tone, ‘I’ve not got this
straight yet. If she’s in nineteen fathoms, why has she not been salved by the Admiralty? Look at the Laurentic. She was put down off the Swilly in Ireland, and they salved her gold. Five million pounds worth. Salved practically every penny, and in twenty fathoms too.’

  Price was considering another problem.

  ‘One degree west,’ he murmured. ‘What under heaven does that mean? One degree west of what? Surely not the meridian of Greenwich. If so, what is the latitude: there’s no mention of it?’

  French could not answer either of the questions, and he did not try. Instead he picked up his telephone receiver and made a call.

  ‘Hallo! Is that Lloyd’s? Put me through to the Record Department, please … Is Mr Sam Pullar there? Tell him Inspector French of Scotland Yard wants to speak to him … Hallo, Sam! … Yes … Haven’t seen you for ages … Look here, Sam, I want you to do me a favour. It’s rather urgent, and I’d be grateful if you could look after it just now … Yes, I’ll hold on. I want to know anything you can tell me about the sinking of the Silurian. You remember, she had two and a half millions on her in gold, and the U-boats got her somewhere between this and the States, I think in ’17 … What’s that? … Yes, all that and anything else you can tell, me.’ He took the receiver from his ear. ‘Friend of mine in Lloyd’s,’ he explained. ‘We ought to get some light from his reply.’

  Silence reigned for a couple of minutes, then French spoke again. ‘Let me repeat that,’ he said, seizing a pad and scribbling furiously. ‘Latitude 41 degrees 36 minutes north, longitude 28 degrees 53 minutes west. Right. How was that known? … But there was no direct information? … Was the gold insured? … Well, it’s an involved business, I could hardly tell you over the ’phone. I’ll explain it first time we meet … Thank you, Sam. Much obliged.’

  He rang off and then made a departmental call.

  ‘Put me through to Inspector Barnes … That you, Barnes? I’m on to something a bit in your line. Could you come down here for half an hour?’

  ‘Barnes is our authority on things nautical,’ he told the others. ‘Began life as a sailor and has studied all branches of sea lore. We always give him shipping cases. We’ll wait till he comes and then I’ll tell you what I learned from Lloyd’s.’

  ‘Isn’t it a strange thing,’ Cheyne remarked, ‘that Schulz should have chosen England for his map and English for his cipher. Wouldn’t the natural thing have been for him to have chosen Germany and German? He could have headed it, for instance, “Deutschland uber Alles,” and used the initials of German towns for his phrase.’

  ‘I thought of that,’ French returned, ‘but we have to remember he prepared the cipher to mislead Germans, not English. In that case I think he was right to use English. It made the thing more difficult.’

  He had scarcely finished speaking when the door opened, and a tall, alert-looking young man entered the room. French introduced him as Inspector Barnes and pointed to a chair.

  ‘Seat yourself, Barnes, and listen to my tale. These gentlemen are concerned with a curious story,’ and he gave a brief resumé of the strange events which had led up to the existing situation. ‘Now,’ he went on, ‘when we found it was connected with the Silurian, I rang up Sam Pullar at Lloyd’s, and this is what he told me. The Silurian sailed from this country on the 16th of February, 1917. She was bound for New York, and she had two and a half millions on her in bullion as well as a fair number of passengers. She was a big boat—an Anchor liner of some 15,000 tons. You remember about her?’

  ‘Well, I should think so,’ Barnes returned, as he lit a cigarette. ‘Why, I was on that job—getting her away, I mean. All kinds of precautions were taken. A tale was started that she would load up the gold at Plymouth and would sail—I forget the exact date now, but it was three days after she did sail. It was my job to see that the German spies about Plymouth got hold of this tale, and we had evidence that they did get it, and moreover sent it through to Germany, and that the U-boats were instructed accordingly. As a matter of fact the Silurian came from Brest, where she had landed army stores from South America, and the bullion went out in a tender from Folkestone, and was transferred at night in the Channel in the middle of a ring of destroyers. While preparations were being made at Plymouth for her arrival she was away hundreds of miles towards the States.’

  ‘But they got her all the same.’

  ‘Oh yes, they got her, but not all the same. She escaped the boats that were looking out for her. It was a chance boat that found her, somewhere, if I remember rightly, near the Azores.’

  ‘That’s right,’ French answered. ‘Instead of going directly west, so Sam Pullar told me, she went south to avoid those submarines you spoke of and which were supposed to be operating off the Land’s End. Her course was followed by wireless, down to near the Spanish coast, and then across fairly due west. She was last seen by a Cape boat some thirty miles west of Finisterre. Then a message was received from her when she was some 250 miles north of the Azores, that a U-boat had come along, and had ordered her to stop. The message gave her position and went on to say that a boat was coming aboard from the submarine. Then it stopped, and that was the last thing that was heard of her. Not a body or a boat or a bit of wreckage was ever picked up, and it was clear that everyone on board was lost. Then after a time confirmation was obtained. Our intelligence people in Germany intercepted a report from the commander of the submarine who sank her, giving details. She had been sunk in latitude 41°36’ north, longitude 28°53’ west, which confirmed the figures sent out in her last wireless message. Four boats had got away, but the commander had fired on them and had sunk them one after another, so that not a single member of the passengers or crew should survive.’

  ‘Dirty savages,’ Barnes commented. ‘But people in open boats wouldn’t have had much chance there anyway, particularly in February. If they had been able to keep afloat at all, they would probably have missed the Azores, and it’s very unlikely they would have made the Spanish or Portugese coast—it would have been too far.’

  French pushed forward his atlas.

  ‘Just whereabouts did she sink?’ he inquired.

  ‘About there.’ Barnes indicated a point north of the Azores. ‘But this atlas is too small to see it. Send someone to my room for my large atlas. You’ll see better on that.’

  French having telephoned his instructions Barnes went on.

  ‘She’s evidently lying on what is called the Dolphin Rise. The Dolphin Rise is part of a great ridge which passes down the middle of the Atlantic from near Iceland to well down towards the Antarctic Ocean. This ridge is covered by an average of some 1700 fathoms of water, with vastly greater depths on either side. It is volcanic and is covered by great submarine mountain chains. Where the tops of these mountains protrude above the surface we get, of course, islands, and the Azores are such a group.’

  A constable at that moment entered with the large atlas, and Barnes continued:

  ‘Now we’ll see in a moment.’ He ran his finger down the index of maps, then turned the pages. ‘Here we are. Here is a map of the North Atlantic Ocean: here are the Azores and hereabout is your point, and—By Jove!’ the young man looked actually excited, ‘here is what your cipher means all right!’

  The other three crowded round in almost breathless excitement. Barnes pointed with a pencil slightly to the east of a white spot about a quarter of an inch in diameter which bore the figure 18.

  ‘Look here,’ he went on, ‘there’s about the point she is supposed to have sunk. You see it is coloured light blue, which the reference tells us means over 1000 fathoms. But measure one degree to the west—it is about fifty miles at that latitude—and it brings us into the middle of that white patch marked 18. That white patch is another mountain chain, just not high enough to become an island, and the 18 means that the peaks come within 18 fathoms of the surface. So that your cipher message is probably quite all right, and your Antwerp party are more than likely working away at the gold at the present time.’


  French swore comprehensively.

  ‘You must be right,’ he agreed. ‘One can see now what that blackguard of a U-boat commander did. He evidently put some men aboard the Silurian to dismantle their wireless, then made them sail on parallel to his own course until he had by the use of his lead manœuvred them over the highest peak, and then put them down. The whole thing must have been quite deliberate. He returned to his own government a false statement of her position, which he knew would correspond with the last message she sent out, intending it to be believed that she was lost in over 1000 fathoms. But he sunk her where he could himself afterwards recover her bullion, or sell his secret to the highest bidder. The people on the Silurian would know all about that two or three hours’ steam west, so they must be got rid of. Hence his destroying the boats one after another. No one must be left alive to give the thing away. To his own crew he no doubt told some tale to account for it, but he would be safe enough there, as no one except himself would know the actual facts. Dirty savage indeed!’

  With this speech of French’s a light seemed to Cheyne suddenly to shine out over all that strange adventure in which for so many weeks he had been involved. With it each puzzling fact seemed to become comprehensible and to drop into its natural place in the story as the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle eventually make a coherent whole. He pictured the thing from the beginning, the submarine coming up with the ship in deep water, but comparatively close to a shallow place where its treasure could be salved: the desire of the U-boat commander, Schulz, to save the gold, quite possibly in the first instance for the benefit of his nation. Then the temptation to keep what he had done secret so as, if possible later, to get the stuff for himself. His fall before this temptation, with its contingent false return to his government as to the position of the wreck. Then, Cheyne saw, the problem of passing on the secret in the event of his own death would arise, with the evolution and construction of the cipher as an attempted solution. As a result of Schulz’s fatal wound the cipher was handed to Price, and Schulz was doubtless about to explain how it should be read, when he was interrupted by the nurse. Before another chance offered he was dead.