The Gold Masters

by Norman Russell

  The murder of Lord Jocelyn Peto by his wife had come as a shock. Lady Marion had behaved impeccably, and had seemed calm and fully collected when he had handed her over into the custody of Inspector Price. Nevertheless, a strange, wild light had suddenly been kindled in her eyes, a light that Box had seen before in others. He thought it more than likely that Lady Marion Peto would be found unfit to plead.

  Box turned out of Northumberland Street and into Great Scotland Yard. The granite pavements gleamed in the morning rain. Crossing the cobbles into King James’s Rents, he hurried up the steps into Number 4. The floorboards in the entrance hall were already soaked by the passage of many wet boots, and the few officers assembled there waiting for orders smelt like wet sheep.

  Box glimpsed the welcome fire burning in the grate of his office beyond the swing doors, but that Monday his priority was to call upon Superintendent Mackharness, and secure the warrant for Sir Hamo Strange’s arrest on charges of embezzlement, fraudulent conversion, and conspiracy to defraud.

  Superintendent Mackharness sat behind his big desk, a number of documents spread out in front of him. His face was stern, and there was a dangerous glint in his eye.

  ‘Ah, Box! Sit down there, will you, and listen very carefully to what I am going to say— No, don’t ask any questions, or make any requests. Just listen to me. I know how difficult you can be, how determined to thwart me whenever the fancy takes you.’

  Mackharness fiddled restlessly with a paperknife, and Box saw the wariness which was always reserved for him alone flicker in his superior officer’s eyes. Then he threw the knife down angrily on the table.

  ‘Box,’ said Mackharness, ‘with effect from this moment, you are to drop all proceedings of any kind against Sir Hamo Strange. You will not seek to harass or question him about the events of these recent weeks. Your task now is to apprehend Francis Xavier Mahoney for the murders of the Reverend Mr Vickers and Police Constable Lane. I think that is all. Good morning.’

  ‘But sir, those vaults at Carmelite Pavement were full of lead! There was no gold there. The man’s a criminal fraud—’

  Mackharness’s face flushed red with anger. He banged his big right fist on the desk.

  ‘Stop it, will you? I’ve told you that Sir Hamo Strange is not to be inconvenienced. If you think that you saw lead instead of gold, then you must persuade yourself that you were mistaken. I knew that you would forget yourself, and call my orders in question! The robbery at Carmelite Pavement will remain unsolved. There will be no warrant for Sir Hamo’s arrest, either now, or subsequently. Do you hear? Do you understand me? That is all, Box. Good morning.’

  Arnold Box flung out of his master’s office, leaving the door ajar. It was clear what had happened. Mackharness had received orders from the top, and was content to thwart the demands of justice for the convenience of the established order. What was the point of continuing in the police?

  Somebody asked him a question as he reached the hall floor, but he waved the man away, and hurried along the musty passage leading to the ablutions and the exercise yard. He would choke with rage and despair if he stayed any longer indoors, closeted with the stink of corruption.

  The rain poured down relentlessly. Box crossed the secluded yard, and stood under the colonnade, looking back at the soot-blackened buildings of Number 4. He must control his rage! But one thing was certain: the time had come for him to quit the Metropolitan Police. It would be more wholesome to work with men like Paul Lombardo, men who could exercise their skills and talents free from political pressure. Yes; perhaps that was the way forward.

  There was a noise behind him, and Superintendent Mackharness appeared from a door at the back of the colonnade. His face was no longer red with anger, but his wrath had not entirely abated. He seized Box by the arm, and shook him as though he were a recalcitrant little child.

  ‘Do you think I like it?’ he hissed. ‘To have to stand there, saying nothing while I’m told that the Government has ordered me to drop a case? How do you think a man of my age and background feels? I have to swallow my rage and obey, because I’m there to obey orders as well as to give them to others. And the same applies to you. So get back in there, Box, and get on with your work.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir—’

  ‘It makes me feel that I’m simply in charge of a box of marionettes,’ Mackharness continued, looking not at Box but at the vertical summer rain washing across the yard. ‘I’m allowed to pull the strings for a while, but when someone more important wants to take over, he pushes me aside. The commissioner himself is angry, and is going to storm the Foreign Office this very morning. That might afford us both a grain of comfort.’

  ‘Sir Edward himself is going to complain? That certainly helps me, sir. Sir Edward Bradford is the best commissioner we’ve had for years.’

  ‘He is, Box. Nobody would disagree with you on that. So, let us both move forward. I’ll get over today’s humiliation, Box, and so will you. Now, get back in there, do as you’re told, and go after Mahoney. Leave Sir Hamo Strange alone.’

  Sir Charles Napier sat sphinx-like behind his vast ornate desk in the Foreign Office, and listened gravely to the angry voice of Sir Edward Bradford, Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis. Few men had earned so much public and private respect, but his world was not the world of politics. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to give him a soothing answer to the question of Sir Hamo Strange.

  ‘My officers had concluded a brilliant investigation,’ Sir Edward was saying, ‘in the course of which they had proved beyond doubt that Strange had engineered a fake robbery, and calmly pocketed the insurance paid to him for his non-existent loss. Inspector Box discovered that the man’s vast bullion vaults were filled with nothing more precious than lead. It’s just possible that he was on the periphery of the murder of one of my constables. And yet you tell me that I must drop all proceedings against Strange. Why?’

  ‘Because, Commissioner,’ said Sir Charles Napier, ‘it is in the national interest to do so. The consequences of interfering with Sir Hamo Strange would be of the gravest import, doing enormous damage to Britain and her standing in the world.’

  ‘Incalculable damage,’ echoed the other man in the room.

  Colonel Augustus Temperley, strategic adviser to the China Desk, felt the same distaste as Napier at the prospect of fencing with Sir Edward Bradford. He looked at him now, his empty left sleeve pinned to the lapel of his frock coat, his firm features adorned by a white cavalryman’s moustache. He was the very portrait of integrity. He and Napier must tell him the truth. But would he ever understand?

  ‘You see, Commissioner,’ said Temperley, ‘Sir Hamo Strange has only recently co-operated with us in a special act of secret diplomacy which has triumphantly strengthened our unwritten agreements with the Russian Empire. You know all about India. You served in the Madras Cavalry, and you understand the situation on the Sino-Indian border—’

  ‘Colonel Temperley is referring to our attempts to keep Russia’s eyes away from Afghanistan,’ said Napier. ‘Last time they crossed the border it cost us eleven million pounds to repel them. This time, Sir Hamo Strange raised private money to render Russian interest in the area quiescent. His power and influence stretches far beyond the United Kingdom.’

  ‘Some parts of Britain’s foreign policy, Sir Edward, are carved in letters of stone,’ Temperley continued. ‘One such part is, that the borders of India are inviolable, and not open to negotiation. Any violation of those borders will lead to war. Sir Hamo Strange has helped us to avert any such possibility.’

  ‘How did he do that?’ asked Sir Edward Bradford. Despite himself, he was becoming absorbed by the way in which these two men thought.

  ‘He did it, Commissioner,’ said Napier, ‘by raising an enormous sum of money at practically no notice to buy a railway for the Tsar of Russia, which will carry him – and his subjects – away from India and towards China. Hamo Strange does things like that. He never says “No”, and his
word is as good as his bond. He’s vital to Britain’s interests, both at home and in the Empire.’

  Sir Edward remained silent for a long while, mulling over what the two professional diplomats had told him. Napier and Temperley waited.

  ‘Very well,’ said Sir Edward at length in a tired voice. ‘I can see your point of view – no, I’m sorry, it’s more than that, isn’t it? You have a long view of Britain’s vital interests denied to the layman. But you can’t get away from the fact that my officer, Inspector Box, was not exaggerating when he said that Strange’s vaults were filled with worthless lead. You may know all about India and China, but I’m quite sure that you didn’t know that.’

  Sir Charles Napier blushed scarlet. For once, his diplomatic mask failed to conceal his embarrassment. He glanced briefly at Bradford, and then looked away.

  ‘Of course I knew,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Everybody here knows about Strange’s disappearing gold. And nobody cares, I tell you! Perhaps he arranged a fictitious raid on his own empty vaults, and perhaps he claimed the insurance – and perhaps Her Majesty’s Government quietly made good the loss! It’s because he knows that we will turn a blind eye to some of his peculiar habits, that he is able to organize these instantaneous loans of unimaginable sums to the Government.’

  ‘You knew his vaults were empty?’

  ‘Yes. They frequently are. And then, as year succeeds to year, the gold comes in again, the lead disappears, and the vaults beneath Carmelite Pavement are once more as fabulously rich as the mines of Southern Africa. Meanwhile, Sir Hamo Strange continues to be of national and international value. Leave him alone. Mr Gladstone wishes it, and so does Lord Salisbury. I know Inspector Box quite well. Let him pursue the murderers who were peripheral to this business, and bring them to justice. But once again let me repeat my injunction: leave Sir Hamo Strange alone.’

  ‘It’s high time, Mahoney,’ said the urbane Mr Curteis, ‘that you quit these shores for foreign climes. Or, to put it in words that you’ll understand, it’s time for you to cross the Channel, where friends of ours will see that you come to no harm.’

  Francis Xavier Mahoney looked at the man who was both his friend and tormentor, and felt as grateful as such a man could be for the chance he was being given to escape the gallows. What cursed luck! Dead men told no tales, which is why he’d finished off that old clergyman and the dangerous PC Lane. He’d made a mistake, though, with Knollys. He’d crossed his path, but had lived to tell the tale. Curse him! There was unfinished business there.

  Curteis had found a set of rooms on the third floor of one of a number of tumbledown tenements in Garlick Hill, and here he had installed the fugitive Mahoney.

  ‘Let me tell you what you must do,’ said Curteis. ‘At the bottom of this street, and on the far side of Upper Thames Street, you’ll find a place called Syria Wharf. There are a lot of tall warehouses there, and beyond them you’ll find a private landing-place called Stew Lane Steps. On this coming Friday, the eleventh, make sure that you are there, on the steps, at seven o’clock in the morning. A tug boat, the Mary Barton, on its way out for duty at Sheerness, will pick you up and take you out to a French freighter lying off the Isle of Grain. It will convey you to Boulogne, where friends will be waiting for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Curteis. I’ll be there, never fear. How are things with old Strange? Has he managed to throw the vultures off his back?’

  ‘He has. Everybody’s praising him to the skies for rescuing Peto’s Bank. He and I went there on Tuesday, the day after they’d reopened for business. A crowd of customers caught sight of him, and gave a rousing cheer.’ Curteis laughed. ‘Sir Hamo actually blushed, and made them a little speech there and then. “This is my confidential secretary, Mr Curteis”, he said, realizing that I was standing there, smiling like an idiot. So I got a rousing cheer as well!’

  ‘So you should, so you should. And Spooky Portman? What’s happened to him?’

  ‘Mr Arthur Portman’s been transferred to Sir Hamo’s central business room at Medici House, on three times his former salary. He’s to be in charge of day-to-day administration. I believe he’s going to drop spiritualism, and join the Church of England. Very wise of him.’

  ‘Some people have all the luck.’

  ‘Well, you won’t do so badly. When you get to Boulogne, you’ll find a bank account opened in your name, with a thousand pounds in it. Well, I must be on my way. Goodbye, Mahoney. Perhaps we’ll meet again. Meanwhile, let’s shake hands.’

  Mahoney grasped the secretary’s hand, and a moment later found himself lying in a crumpled heap across the ash-strewn hearth.

  ‘A letter for you, sir. With an Austrian stamp.’

  ‘Thank you, Portman,’ said Sir Hamo Strange. ‘Are you enjoying your work here at Medici House?’

  ‘I am, sir. I can hardly believe my good fortune. You have been very kind.’

  ‘Not at all. Curteis tells me that you have already improved some of the daily procedures here in the business room.’

  Mr Arthur Portman placed the letter on Sir Hamo Strange’s desk, and returned to his own business table, which stood like an altar on a dais surrounded by wooden rails. What wonderful luck! It was fascinating to work in this long Renaissance room, with its ancient frescoes and painted ceilings, and the battery of telegraph machines and telephones at the far end, bringing financial news from the four corners of the world!

  It was time, he thought, to dismiss his inventive treacheries concerning Peto’s Bank from his mind, and give his whole attention to the present. He had already persuaded the badly shaken committee of the Temple of Light to wind the business up, and sell the premises to the highest bidder. Mrs Pennymint would continue to be a good friend, but he and his wife would return to the bosom of the Established Church.

  Sir Hamo Strange slit open the letter from Austria with a silver-bladed paper knife, reputed to have belonged once to Pope Pius V. He extracted a banker’s draft for £5000 made payable to him, and a brief note, written in a spiky German hand.

  Count Fuentes proved to have been a rogue. He sold the authentic work to Lord Jocelyn Peto, and fobbed me off with his impudent falsification. May bad luck dog his heels! I thus failed to comply with the bargain struck between you and me, and I accordingly return your £5000. The foundation of successful business is trust. I had rather lose this money than forfeit your esteem.

  The note was signed by Aaron Sudermann.

  Well, well, thought Sir Hamo Strange. It was refreshing to see that there was at least one honest businessman in the world! He put the letter and its enclosed draft aside, and picked up a document, sent to him by an agent in Lima, which suggested that a substantial loan would be required later in the year by the Government of Peru.

  On the bright, hot Thursday morning, Francis Xavier Mahoney glanced out of the single grimy window of his third-floor hideaway, and saw the massively unmistakable figure of Detective Sergeant Knollys striding purposefully along the dingy and arid canyon of Garlick Hill. Curse him! What was he doing there?

  Mahoney watched him. As he passed the towering church of St James, Garlickhythe, he glanced up at the great clock suspended over the road, and then walked rapidly down the hill towards Upper Thames Street.

  He thought he’d left him for dead when he’d attacked him in the lodge at Carmelite Pavement, but there’d been no time to make sure. The other policeman – PC Lane – had been an easy job, and in a quiet moment when all the staff at the vaults had been busy below, he’d carried his body down to the launch, where it had been taken aboard by Sir Hamo Strange’s mysterious gang of mariners.

  Count on it, that hulking bobby had found out where he was hiding. He’d pretend to hurry past the house, and then he’d double back, and come creeping up the stairs to take him into custody. Well, Knollys’ number was up. Better safe than sorry.

  Mahoney dragged on the dark pea jacket and nautical cap with a glazed peak that Mr Curteis had given him for disguise. Seizing a stout walking st
ick fitted with a heavy ball of lead as a handle, he clattered down the three flights of stairs and out into the heat and bustle of Garlick Hill.

  Jack Knollys had been out all night, engaged on a case which had ended very satisfactorily with the arrest of three coiners in their cellar headquarters out at Bethnal Green Road. He and the three constables assisting him had travelled through the dawn in the police van, sitting opposite their mournful and manacled prisoners on their way to New Street Police Station.

  He had allowed himself the luxury of a cab as far as the Mansion House, and had then struck out through the sunny streets that would take him into Garlick Hill, and so down to his lodgings on the sixth floor of a tall warehouse belonging to Anton Berg, an importer of silk, at Syria Wharf. From the many windows of his sixth-floor eyrie he could enjoy panoramic views of London, and the sense of airiness and light denied to most dwellers below him in the crowded city.

  Soon after he had passed the church of St James, Garlickhythe, Jack Knollys realized that he was being followed. He glanced very briefly over his shoulder, and his trained eye, passing over the people walking just behind him, saw the ungainly bulk of Francis Xavier Mahoney, walking at a swift pace, clutching a dangerous-looking weighted stick, and making a clumsy attempt to hide his face in the upturned collar of his jacket.

  Jack Knollys felt a sudden surge of excitement. He was no stranger to men of Mahoney’s ilk. Mahoney would have regarded the man whom he had stunned but not killed at Carmelite Pavement as a piece of unfinished business.