The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  Thereupon, while the hum of conversation once more pervaded the court room, the jury drew together and compared notes. But their conference lasted only a very few minutes, at the end of which the foreman signified to the coroner that they had agreed on their verdict.

  “Well, gentlemen,” said the latter, “what is your decision?”

  “We find,” was the reply, “that deceased was murdered by some person or persons unknown.”

  “Yes,” said the coroner, as he entered the verdict at the foot of the depositions, “that is what common sense suggests. I don’t see that you could have arrived at any other decision. It remains only for me to thank you for your attendance and the careful attention which you have given to the evidence, and close the proceedings.”

  As the court rose, Mr. Buffham emerged hurriedly from the corner in which he had been seated and elbowed his way towards Mr. Pippet and his daughter.

  “My dear sir,” he exclaimed, effusively, “let me offer my most hearty congratulations on the brilliant way in which you gave your evidence. Your powers of observation positively staggered me.”

  The latter statement was no exaggeration. Mr. Buffham had been not only staggered but slightly disconcerted by the discovery of his friend’s remarkable capacity for “keeping his weather eyelid lifted.” In the peculiar circumstances, it was a gift that he was disposed to view with some disfavour; and he found himself wondering, a little uncomfortably, whether Mr. Pippet happened to have observed any other facts which he was not expected or desired to observe. But he did not allow these misgivings to interfere with his suave and ingratiating manner. As Mr. Pippet received his congratulations without obvious emotion, he bestowed on Miss Jenny a leer which was intended to express admiring recognition and then turned with an insinuating smile to her father.

  “This charming young lady,” said he, “is, I presume, the daughter of whom I have heard you speak.”

  “You have guessed right the first time,” Mr. Pippet replied. “This is Mr. Buffham, my dear; but you know that, as you heard him give his evidence.”

  Miss Jenny bowed, with a faint suggestion of stiffness. The ingratiating smile did not seem to have produced the expected effect. The “charming young lady” was not, in fact, at all favourably impressed by Mr. Buffham’s personality. Nevertheless she exchanged a few observations on the incidents of the inquest, as the audience was clearing off, and the three moved out together when the way was clear. Here, however, Mr. Buffham suffered a slight disappointment. For when the taxi which Mr. Pippet hailed drew up at the curb, the hoped-for invitation was not forthcoming, and the cordial hand-shake and smiling farewell appeared an unsatisfactory substitute.

  CHAPTER V

  The Great Platinum Robbery

  Thorndyke’s rather free and easy custom of receiving professional visitors at unconventional hours tended on certain occasions to result in slightly embarrassing situations. It did, for instance, on an evening in early October when the arrival of our old friend Mr. Brodribb, was followed almost immediately by that of Mr. Superintendent Miller. Both were ostensibly making a friendly call; but both, I felt sure, had their particular fish to fry. Brodribb had almost certainly come for a professional consultation, and Miller’s informal chats invariably developed a professional background.

  I watched with amused curiosity to see what would happen. Each man would probably give the other a chance to retire, and the question was, which would be the first to abdicate? The event would probably be determined by the relative urgency of their respective fish frying. But the delicate balance of probabilities was upset by Polton, our invaluable laboratory assistant, who happened to be in the room when they arrived; who instantly proceeded to make the arrangements which immemorial custom had associated with each of our visitors. The two cosiest armchairs were drawn up to the fire and a small table placed by each. On one table appeared, as if by magic, the whisky decanter, siphon and cigar box which clearly appertained to Miller, and on the other, three port glasses.

  “This is your chair, sir,” said Polton, shepherding the Superintendent in the way he should go. “The other is for Mr. Brodribb,” and with this he vanished, and we all knew whither he had gone.

  “Well,” said Brodribb with slight indecision, as he subsided into his allotted chair and put his toes on the curb, while Thorndyke and I drew up our chairs, “if I shan’t be in the way, I’ll just sit down and warm myself for a few minutes.”

  His “defeatist” tone I judged to be due to the fact that Miller, in ready response to my invitation, had mixed himself a stiff jorum, got a cigar alight and apparently settled himself comfortably for the evening. I think the old lawyer was disposed to give up the contest and retire in favour of the Superintendent. But at that moment Polton returned, bearing a decanter of port which he deposited on Mr. Brodribb’s table; whereupon the balance of probabilities was restored.

  “Ha!” said Brodribb, as Thorndyke filled the three glasses, “it’s all very well to sentimentalize about the Last Rose of Summer, but the First Fire of Winter makes more appeal to me.”

  “You can hardly call it winter at the beginning of October,” Miller objected.

  “Can’t you, by Jove!” exclaimed Brodribb. “Perhaps not by the calendar; but when I came through the Carey Street gateway just now, the wind was enough to nip the nose off a brass monkey. But I haven’t got a fire yet. It’s only you medico-legal sybarites who can afford such luxuries.”

  He sipped his wine ecstatically, spread out his toes and blinked at the fire with an air of enjoyment that suggested a particularly magnificent old Tom cat. The superintendent made no rejoinder, and Thorndyke and I filled our pipes and waited curiously for the situation to develop.

  “I suppose,” said Brodribb, after an interval of silence, “you haven’t got any forrarder with that Fenchurch Street mystery; I mean the box with the gentleman’s head in it?”

  “Gentleman, indeed!” exclaimed Miller. “He was about the ugliest beggar that I ever clapped eyes on. I don’t wonder they cut his head off. He must have been a lot better-looking without it.”

  “Still,” said Brodribb, “you’ve got to admit that the man was murdered.”

  “No doubt,” rejoined Miller; “and if you had seen him, you wouldn’t have been surprised. His face was an outrage on humanity.”

  “So it may have been,” retorted Brodribb, “but ugliness is not provocation in a legal sense. You don’t mean to say that you have abandoned the case?”

  “We never abandon a case at The Yard,” replied Miller, “but it’s no use fussing about when you’ve nothing to go on. As a matter of fact, we expect to approach the problem from another direction. For the moment, we are letting that particular box rest while we give a little attention to the other box—the one that was stolen.”

  “Ha!” said Brodribb. “Yes; very necessary, I should say. But what is your idea about it? You don’t think it possible that it contained the body which belonged to the head?”

  Miller shook his head. “No,” said he. “I think you can rule that out. If the original case had contained a headless corpse, Mr. Dobson would not have been so ready to open the doubtful one in the presence of the attendant. You see, until they got it open, it wasn’t certain that it was a different case.”

  “Then,” said Brodribb, “I don’t quite see the connexion. You said that you were approaching the problem of the head from another direction—through the stolen box, as I understood.”

  “That is so,” replied Miller; “and you must see that there is evidently some connexion between the two cases. To begin with, the second case, which we may call the head case, was exactly similar to the first one—the stolen case—and we may take it that the similarity was purposely arranged. The head case was prepared as a counterfeit so that it could be exchanged for the other. But from that it follows that the person who prepared the head case must have known exactly what the other case was like, even to what was written on the label; and as he was at a good deal o
f trouble to steal the first case, we may take it that he knew what that case contained. So there you have a clear connexion on the one side. As to whether the man, Dobson, recognized the head or knew anything about it, we can’t be sure.”

  “The way in which he made himself scarce when he had seen it,” said Brodribb, “rather suggests that he did.”

  “Not necessarily,” Miller objected. “The question is, What was in the stolen case? He stated that the contents were worth several thousand pounds, but in spite of that, he made no attempt at recovery or claim for compensation. It looks as if he was not in a position to say what was in the case. But that suggests that the contents were not his lawful property; in fact, that the case contained stolen property—perhaps the loot from some robbery. Now, if that were so, he would have to clear off in any event to avoid inquiries. Naturally, then, when he came on that head, he would have realized that he was fairly in the soup. The fact that he had been in possession of stolen property wouldn’t have been a bit helpful if he had been charged with complicity in a murder. I’m not surprised that he bolted.”

  “Is there any clue to what has become of the stolen case?” Brodribb asked.

  “No,” replied Miller; “but that is not the question which is interesting us. What we want to know is, not where it went, but where it came from, and what was in it.”

  “And that, I presume, you don’t know at present,” said Brodribb.

  The Superintendent took a long draw at his cigar, blew out a cloud of smoke and performed the operation that he would have described as “wetting his whistle.” Then he set down his glass and replied, cautiously:

  “As the Doctor is listening, I mustn’t use the word ‘know.’ But we think we’ve got a pretty good idea.”

  “Have you?” Brodribb exclaimed. “Now, I wonder what you have discovered. But I suppose it isn’t in order for an outsider like me to pry into the secrets of Scotland Yard.”

  The Superintendent did not reply immediately, but from something in his manner, I suspected that he had come expressly to discuss the matter with us, but was “inhibited” by Brodribb’s presence. At length, Thorndyke broke the silence.

  “We are all very much interested, Miller, and we are all very discreet.”

  “H’m yes,” said Miller. “Three lawyers and a detective officer ought to be able to produce a fair amount of discretion between them. And I don’t know that it’s such a deadly secret, after all. Still, we are keeping our own counsel, so you will understand that what I may mention mustn’t go any farther.”

  “You are perfectly safe, Miller,” Thorndyke assured him. “You know Jervis and me of old, and I can tell you that Mr. Brodribb is as close as an oyster.”

  Thus reassured, Miller (who was really bursting to give us his news) moistened his whistle afresh and began:

  “You must understand that we are at present dealing with what the Doctor calls hypothesis, though we have got a solid foundation of fact. As to what was in that stolen case, we have no direct evidence; but we have formed a pretty confident opinion. In fact, we think we know what that case contained. What do you suppose it was?”

  I ventured to suggest jewellery, or perhaps bullion. “You are not so far out,” said Miller. “We say that it was platinum.”

  “Platinum!” I exclaimed. “But there was a hundredweight of it! Why, at the present price, it must have been worth a king’s ransom!”

  “I don’t know how much that is,” said Miller, “but we reckon the value of the contents at between seventeen and eighteen thousand pounds. That is only a rough estimate, of course. We think that the witness, Crump, was mistaken about the weight, and it was only a guess, in any case. He hadn’t tested the weight of the package. At any rate, we can’t account for more than about half a hundredweight of platinum.”

  “You have some perfectly definite information, then?” said Thorndyke.

  “Definite enough so far as it goes,” replied Miller, “but it doesn’t go far enough. We are quite clear that a parcel of platinum weighing about twenty-five kilograms—roughly, half a hundredweight—was stolen and has disappeared. That is actual fact. The rest is inference, or, as the Doctor would say, hypothesis. But I will give you a sketch of the affair, leaving out the details that don’t matter.

  “Our information is that, about the end of last June, a quantity of platinum was shipped by a Latvian firm at Riga. It was packed in small wooden cases, each containing twenty-five kilos, and consigned to various dealers in Germany, France and Italy. Well, the cases were all duly delivered at their respective destinations, and everything seemed to be in order excepting the contents of one of the Italian cases. That happened to be the last one that was delivered, and, as the ship had made a good many calls on her voyage, it wasn’t delivered until the beginning of August. When it was opened, it was found to contain, instead of the platinum, an equal weight of lead.

  “Obviously, there had been a robbery somewhere, but, owing to the time which had elapsed, it was difficult to trace. One thing, however, was clear; the job had been done by somebody who was in the know. That was evident from the fact that the case was in all respects exactly like the original case and all the other cases.”

  “Why shouldn’t it have been the original case with the contents changed?” I asked.

  “That hardly seems possible. It would have been difficult enough to steal the case; but to steal it, empty it, refill it and put it back, looks like an impossibility. No, we can be pretty certain that the thieves had the dummy case ready and just made a quick exchange. That must have been the method, whoever did the job; but the puzzle was to discover the time and place of the robbery. The stuff had made a long journey to the port of delivery and the robbery might have taken place anywhere along the route.

  “Eventually, suspicion arose with regard to an English yacht, the Cormorant, which had berthed close to the Kronstadt—that was the name of the ship which carried the stuff while she was taking in her cargo at Riga. It was recalled that she had occupied the next berth to the Kronstadt at the time when the platinum was being shipped, and someone remembered that, at that very time, the Cormorant was taking stores on board, including one or two big hampers. Accordingly, the Latvian police made some inquiries on the spot, and, though they didn’t discover anything very sensational, the little that they did learn seemed to favour the idea that the platinum might have been taken away on the yacht. This is what it amounted to, together with what we have picked up since.

  “The Cormorant is a sturdy little yawl-rigged vessel—she appears to be a converted fishing lugger from Shoreham—of about thirty tons. She turned up at Riga on the 21st of June and took up her berth alongside the quay where the Kronstadt had just berthed. She went out from time to time for a sail in the Gulf but always came back to the same berth. Her crew consisted of four men, of whom three seemed to be regular seamen of the fisherman type, while the fourth, the skipper, whose name was Bassett, was a man of a superior class. The description of Bassett agrees completely with that of the man whom we have called Dobson—the man who deposited the case that was stolen from the cloak room; and the description of one of the crew seems to tally with that of the man who stole the case—the man whom we have called ‘the head man.’ Perhaps we had better call him Mr. ‘X’ for convenience.

  “Well, as I have said, at the time the platinum was shipped, the Cormorant was taking in stores; and her hampers and cases were on the quay at the same time as the cases of platinum and quite close to them. The platinum was unloaded from a closed van and dumped on the quay, and the Cormorant’s stores were unloaded from a wagon and also dumped on the quay. Then, as soon at the Cormorant had got her stores on board, she put out for a sail in the bay. But she was back in her berth again in about a couple of hours; and there she remained, on and off, for the next five days. It was not until the 26th of June that she left Riga for good.”

  “Doesn’t the fact that she stayed there so long rather conflict with the idea that she had the stol
en platinum on board?” I suggested.

  “Well,” Miller replied, “on the face of it, it does seem to. But if you bear all the circumstances in mind, I don’t think it does. As soon as all the platinum was on board the Kronstadt, the danger of discovery was over. Remember, there was the right number of cases. There was nothing missing. It was practically certain that the robbery would not be discovered until the dummy case was opened by the consignees. Bearing that in mind, you see that it would be an excellent tactical plan to stay on at Riga as if nothing had happened; whereas it might have looked suspicious if the yacht had put to sea immediately after the shipment of the platinum.

  “The next thing we hear of the yacht is that she arrived at Southend on the 17th of August.”

  “Have you ascertained where she had been in the interval?” I asked.

  “No” he replied, “because, you see, it doesn’t particularly concern us, as our theory is that she still had the platinum on board. But I must admit that, apart from the cloak room incident, we can’t get any evidence that she had. At Southend she was boarded by the Customs Officer, and, as she had just come from Rotterdam and had been cruising up the Baltic and along the German and Dutch coasts, he made a pretty rigorous search, especially for tobacco. He turned out every possible place in which a few cigars or cakes of ‘hard’ could have been stowed, and he even took up the trap in the cabin floor and squeezed down into the little hold. But he didn’t find anything beyond the few trifles that had been declared. So his evidence is negative.”

  “It is rather more than negative,” said I. “It amounts to positive evidence that the platinum wasn’t there.”

  “Well, in a way, it does,” Miller admitted. “It certainly doesn’t help us. But there was one curious fact that we got from him. It seems that there were still four men on board the yacht; but they were not the same four men. One of them, at least, was different. The Customs man didn’t see anybody corresponding to the description of Mr. ‘X.’ On the other hand, there was a tall, clean shaved, elderly man who didn’t look like a seaman—looked more like a lawyer or a doctor and spoke like a gentleman, or, at least, an educated man, though with a slight foreign accent, and didn’t seem very anxious to speak at all; seemed more disposed to keep himself to himself. But the interesting point to us is the disappearance of Mr. ‘X.’ That seems to give us something like a complete scheme of the whole affair, including the transaction at the cloak room.”