“Did it rain on the day of the accident?” he asked sharply.
Stacey, after a moment’s thought, replied in the affirmative.
“Unfortunate,” commented Magnum. “Rain would have obliterated footprints. Come up here.”
At last Stacey understood what Magnum was driving at. “From the sky!” had been the concluding words of the warning to the dead man. Someone had crawled on the roof, pulled up the lamp over the compartment in which Jonasson was travelling, and then – In a flash he pictured the old man alone in the compartment, through the long tunnel, where a cry for help would be drowned in the roar of the rushing train, looking upwards to see a menacing face staring at him from the aperture of the lamp, a revolver at cock, and ready to shoot him down in any corner of the compartment. Trapped, helpless, terrified, Jonasson had tried to escape by the door, and had been thrown on to the line.
Magnum, moving forward over the roof, in plain view of the others, went to pull up the lamp and demonstrate his point.
But a sentence from the railway official checked him in mid-action.
“You are thinking of the old type of lamp, sir. These ones are not removable. They’re fixtures.”
Magnum, incredulous, went on; found the lamp screwed in tight, and the screws rusted in firmly.
The insurance lawyer permitted himself a dry laugh of cynical amusement.
“Facts,” said he, “have an unfortunate habit of contradicting the most ingenious and elegant theories.”
Magnum was now thoroughly roused by the mocking mystery of the railway compartment. He had, in plain words, made a fool of himself in front of the insurance lawyer. That was unbearable. The only way to get back his self-respect was to wrest out the secret, and flourish it in the lawyer’s face.
Before, Magnum had been only halfheartedly interested in a problem which was somewhat outside his professional line; now, he was resolutely determined to work at it with a red-hot concentration of energies.
Hurrying to New Cross Station with Stacey, he took ticket to Paddock Wood, beyond Tonbridge, where Jonasson had lived his recluse life in a country cottage a couple of miles away from the railway line, alone save for a housekeeper-servant. On the way, Magnum plied Stacey with question after question regarding the life-history, the habits and eccentricities of the dead man. Stacey’s information was limited; the housekeeper could tell much more.
On their arrival, they found the cottage bolted and barred. A hedger and ditcher, working in a neighbouring lane, expressed the thoughtful opinion that the housekeeper must have locked up and gone away. Where? demanded Magnum, assisting his cerebrations with a couple of half-crowns. He didn’t rightly know. Could he find out by asking neighbours? That struck the hedger as an idea of great brilliance, and, dropping his tools, he set off to make inquiries.
Meanwhile, Magnum, impatient of obstacles, broke a window in the cottage, and secured unconventional entrance. With Stacey’s guidance, he went through the dead man’s books and papers and personal possessions in search of a fresh light on the mystery.
Both were now firmly convinced that Jonasson had come to his death by foul play, or, more exactly, that he had been terrified out of the closed railway compartment by some human agency. Both were equally of the opinion that it was a matter of long-standing revenge, reaching back into the obscurities of Jonasson’s past life.
But mere opinions would be poor weapons for a big law-case. They must have facts. They must find out whom, why, how. They must be prepared to prove in court how a man, indisputably alone in a railway-compartment, with closed doors, closed windows, and no aperture for human entrance, could be so terrified as to be driven out. In case of danger the first thought of any man would be to pull the alarm-chain running through from compartment to compartment. Why had Jonasson not done so?
A long search through books, papers, and clothes proved annoyingly inconclusive. Jonasson’s tastes were evidently cultured and leisured. Whatever he might have been in his youth, in the immediate past he had been a trifler with books, garden, and fishing. That gave them no help.
In the bedroom of the dead man, Magnum on a sudden impulse threw up the window. Outside it, he was surprised to find a screen of fine-meshed wire netting.
“Why this?” he asked to Stacey.
“To keep out summer insects, I should imagine.”
Magnum suddenly became very thoughtful, hunching his bushy eyebrows and twisting at his straggly beard.
The hedger and ditcher, beaming with pride at the success of his detective work, came to announce that the housekeeper had gone to visit a married daughter living at Tonbridge.
“We’ll go there at once,” said Magnum; “and the first question to ask her is why Jonasson put up that wire netting.”
Stacey looked at him questioningly.
“The loaded revolver he kept in his bedroom,” pursued Magnum, “is nothing out of the ordinary for a nervous man living in a lonely country cottage. But the wire screen is highly unusual. The unusual is worth analysis.”
An hour later, they were at Tonbridge. Mrs Pritchett was readily found in the parlour above her daughter’s confectionery shop in the High Street – a time-worn, grey-haired, grey-minded woman, resigned to the arrows of misfortune, dull of speech, with that love for irrelevant, side-track detail which goes so often with one of limited interests and narrow outlook. Magnum, with his impatience of slowness, found his temper distinctly tried during his endeavours to get relevant answers to his pointed questions. In essence, her information amounted to this:
Mr Jonasson had had the wire screen fixed up six months previously. He was a very reserved man, liking to give orders without giving reasons. It was in wintertime, so that there was no reason to guard against wasps, gnats, or mosquitoes. No; she had no idea why he wanted it, but he was very concerned about having it put up at once.
“At once?” questioned Magnum, seizing on the suggestiveness of the phrase.
It was directly after he received a visit from the dark gentleman with the gold-rimmed spectacles. High words had passed between them. No; she had no idea who he was. Mr Jonasson was very reserved, keeping his affairs entirely to himself. The dark gentleman was a foreigner – he looked like a half-caste. He was seen in the neighbourhood of Paddock Wood three months later. She believed that this man must have tried to murder Mr Jonasson in the train. She was convinced that he was hiding under the seat of the compartment.
“That has been proved impossible,” put in Stacey.
Mrs Pritchett was of the opinion that nothing was impossible to a foreigner.
Regarding the past life of the dead man, her information was mostly conjecture, embroidered fantastically after the fashion of country gossip. The only definite fact was that he had gone to Africa as a young man. The name “Uganda” persisted in her memory. At one time he had kept souvenirs of Africa in his study, but some years back he had made a clean sweep of them, burning them in a bonfire at the end of the garden.
Letters? When Mr Jonasson received letters, he usually burnt them. No, indeed, she never pried into his private papers! She hoped she knew her place! No; she didn’t listen to the conversation between Mr Jonasson and the foreigner. She couldn’t help hearing that they were angry with one another, but to suggest that she would stoop to listen at a keyhole—
“If you had,” retorted Magnum impatiently, “Mr Jonasson might be alive today.”
Mrs Pritchett relapsed into the easy tears of old age, and it took all Stacey’s efforts to comfort her.
“You’ll be saying next as it was me as murdered him!” she cried accusingly at Magnum.
He offered a sovereign as consolation for wounded feelings, and the interview proceeded. But no further information of importance resulted.
Magnum and Stacey returned to town. The scientist chose an empty second-class compartment of the same type as the mystery carriage, and asked Stacey to leave him there alone during the journey.
At Cannon Street, when Stacey went t
o rejoin his friend, he found Magnum glowing with excitement.
“I think we’ve got it!” he cried, slapping Stacey on the shoulder with a lusty thump. “First set your detectives on the hunt for that half-caste with the gold-rimmed spectacles.”
“Yes, I’d settled to do that,” returned the young lawyer; “but even if we find him, it doesn’t help much for our side of the case. Assume that he threatened to murder Jonasson-assume that Jonasson was in deadly terror of him-assume that he travelled in the next compartment to Jonasson. Even then the Empire Company would claim that the deceased threw himself out of the train-suicide while temporarily insane, but still suicide. The fifty thousand pound policy money will never come to Miss Gerard unless we can show the court how Jonasson was terrified out of an empty compartment.”
“I believe I can do it,” returned Magnum emphatically. “The phial of atoxyl he carried in his pocket, the book on sleeping sickness, the wire screen to his bedroom window, Uganda the home of the tsetse fly – they fit together like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. One more piece in place, and the whole pattern would stand out. To-morrow we’ll search that sealed compartment once again.”
“In the presence of the Empire’s lawyer?”
“Naturally. Arrange it for the afternoon. And if I can show him that Magnum is not quite the fool he imagines—”
As mentioned before, Magnum was not without a dash of very human vanity.
On the following afternoon, the same four were back in the shed where the mystery carriage stood mutely waiting to deliver up its secret. The insurance lawyer’s acidulated smile was now fattened out to a mellow tolerance. He was no longer afraid of any of Magnum’s theories. The goods manager, while still outwardly neutral, had transferred his sympathies to the side of the Empire Company.
Although it was summer, Magnum wore a pair of thick gloves. In his side-pocket a packet bulged out noticeably.
“I want every inch of the compartment swept out,” he said to the railway official. “Will you do it yourself, so as to avoid any suspicion that might arise if I were to do so?”
Tolerantly, the goods manager called for a carriage-cleaner’s broom, and proceeded to the task, sweeping around the cornices, behind the cushions, and underneath the seats, and gathering the sweepings into a small pile, while the other three watched intently from outside.
“Stop!” called Magnum suddenly, his eyes alight with unsuppressed triumph. From the sweepings he picked up a large insect, dead, and displayed it emphatically in his gloved hand in front of the insurance lawyer.
“A tsetse fly!” he stated.
“Well; and what if it is?”
“The carrier of the sleeping sickness. Deadly. One sting from it, and a man would stand a poor chance.”
“I don’t follow your argument,” objected the lawyer, with chilly impassiveness.
“That’s what drove Jonasson to his death. That one, and perhaps a dozen others. The rest probably flew out of the open door in the Sevenoaks tunnel. This one was killed by him.”
“Still, I don’t follow you. How could your dozen tsetse flies enter a closed compartment?”
“Get inside, and I’ll demonstrate!” snapped Magnum.
The lawyer, with a gesture of disbelief, entered the compartment, and the door was closed on him. Magnum immediately proceeded to the smoking compartment alongside, lit himself a cigar, and then produced from his pocket the box which was causing the bulge. It contained a dozen live wasps, angry at their long imprisonment. Magnum, standing on a seat, took out one of the buzzing insects with his heavily gloved fingers, and placed it in the tube of the alarm-chain passing from compartment to compartment. A few puffs from his cigar drove the insect to find escape through the further end of the tube. The other wasps quickly followed.
What then took place in the insurance lawyer’s compartment would have been highly comic had it not been in demonstration of a tragedy.
Fighting with the furious insects, ruffled, dishevelled, and wiped clear of cynical smiles, the lawyer made a hurried and undignified escape to the outside.
“And that,” clinched Magnum, “was how Jonasson was sent to his death.”
The murderer was never captured, and so the inner history of the tragic feud never came to light. But it became abundantly clear that the dead man had been fearing an attack by the tsetse fly; it was for that reason that he screened his bedroom window and carried in his pocket the drug which might counteract the terrible effects of the sting. No doubt the unknown murderer had threatened him with that particular form of revenge. Jonasson had insured his life heavily, either in the superstitious hope that it might avert death, or in order to leave his niece well provided for, or for both reasons.
The fact of importance which Magnum had demonstrated was the method by which Jonasson had been driven out of the railway-carriage. On that, the Empire Company compromised out of court for forty thousand pounds.
Magnum, who did not believe in hiding his light under a bushel, sent to Stacey’s wedding-present table a neatly framed sheet of writing-paper with the wording: “To Mr and Mrs Stacey, forty thousand pounds, from Magnum.”
The Red Ring
William Le Queux
William Le Queux (1864–1927) was considerably more prolific than Max Rittenberg and far better known. He is regarded as one of the progenitors of the spy novel, producing works of international intrigue just before John Buchan and E.P. Oppenheim. His early works, which rapidly established his reputation, include A Secret Service (1896), England’s Peril (1899) and the bestselling The Invasion of 1910 (1905). Le Queux was a dab hand at self-publicity, perhaps using some author’s licence to add to the mystery. But he was clearly a fascinating character, deeply involved with the secret service, and often acting on his own initiative – all manner of secrets are revealed in Things I Know (1923). The following story – first published in 1910 and which so far as I know escaped inclusion in any of his many collections-is presented in the first-person, giving an added verisimilitude to the mystery. Who knows but that something very like this might just have happened in Le Queux’s world.
The Usborne affair, though very remarkable and presenting a number of curious features, was never made public, for reasons which will quickly become apparent.
It occurred in this way.
Just before eight o’clock one misty morning last autumn, Captain Richard Usborne, of the Royal Engineers, and myself were strolling together up and down the platform at Liverpool Street Station, awaiting the arrival of the Hook of Holland boat-train. We had our eyes well about us, for a man was coming to London in secret, and we, members of the Secret Service, were there to meet him, to examine his credentials, and to pass him on to the proper quarter to be questioned, and to receive payment-substantial payment – for his confidential information.
I had arranged the visit of the stranger through one of our secret agents who lived in Berlin, but as I had never before met the man about to arrive, we had settled that I should hold a pale green envelope half concealed in my handkerchief raised to my nose, and that he should do the same.
“By Jove, Jerningham,” Dick Usborne was saying, “this will be a splendid coup-the revelation of all the details of the new Boravian gun. The Department ought to make you a special grant for such a service. I hope, however,” he added, glancing about him with some suspicion – “I hope none of our foreign friends have wind of this visit. If so, it will fare badly with him when he gets back.”
I had kept my eyes well about me and was satisfied that no other secret agent was present.
A moment later the train drew into the station, and amid the crowd I quickly distinguished a short, stout, middle-aged man of essentially Teutonic appearance, with a handkerchief to his face, and in it an envelope exactly similar to my own.
Our greeting was hasty. Swiftly we put him into the taxi we had in readiness, and as we drove along he produced certain credentials, including a letter of introduction from my friend in Berlin.
We had both witnessed such misgivings on the part of informants before. Therefore we repeated our assurances in German – for the stranger did not speak English – and at St Clement Dane’s Church, in the Strand, I stopped the taxi and alighted, for Dick Usborne was to conduct our friend to the house of our chief, General Kennedy, in Curzon Street, it not being considered judicious for Günther to be taken to the War Office.
The German was to return by the Hook of Holland route at nine o’clock that same night, therefore he had brought no baggage. Secret visits of this character are always made swiftly. The British public are in blissful ignorance of how many foreigners come to our shores and tell us what we most desire to know – for a substantial consideration.
The Secret Service never advertises itself. Yet it never sleeps, night or day. While pessimists declare that our authorities know nothing of what is progressing in other countries, a gallant little band of men – and women too-are ever watchful and ever travelling across the face of Europe, gathering information which is conveyed to London in secret and carefully docketed in a certain room of a certain Government Department that must, of necessity, be nameless.
We, its agents, often live through exciting times, crises of which the public never dream.
It is one of these which I am permitted to here relate.
The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes & Impossible Mysteries Page 31
