Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 6

by R. Austin Freeman

  “And has an assay been made?” the judge asked.

  “I believe it has, my lord, but I have no information as to the result. Mr. Superintendent Miller is now in court.”

  Here the Superintendent rose and approached the solicitor’s table carrying a small but obviously heavy box, which he laid on the table.

  “I think,” said the judge, “that what the Superintendent has to tell us should go in evidence.”

  Accordingly, Miller once more evicted Thorndyke from the witness-box, and the judge continued: “You have already been sworn, Superintendent. Will you now give the facts, so far as they are known to you, concerning the contents of this coffin?”

  The Superintendent stood at “attention” and delivered himself of his evidence with a readiness born of long practice.

  “In consequence of certain information communicated by Dr. Thorndyke, I took possession of the contents of the coffin alleged to be that of Josiah Pippet deceased and conveyed them forthwith to the premises of Mr. Daniels in Bishopsgate and delivered them to him with instructions to make a trial assay and report to me what he found. On the same evening, I received a report from him in which he informed me that he had ascertained the following facts:—the roll of sheet lead was practically pure lead almost completely free from silver, and was probably of recent manufacture. The large pot-leaving was also pure lead of the modern silver-free type. The three smaller pot-leavings were composed of a lead-platinum alloy, of which about half by weight was platinum. On receiving this report, I directed Mr. Daniels to recover the whole of the platinum in a pure state and deliver it to me. He did this, and I have here, in the box on the table, the platinum which I received from him and which he assured me is practically the whole of the platinum which was contained in the pot-leavings. It amounts, roughly, to just under half a hundredweight.”

  As he concluded, he stepped down from the witness-box, and, approaching the table, unlocked a small padlock of the Yale type by which the hasp of the box was secured and opened the lid. Then, from the interior, he lifted out, one after another, eight little bright, silvery-looking bars, or ingots, and laid them in a row on the table. Picking up the end one, he handed it up to the judge; who weighed it in the palm of his hand, looking at it with a faint smile of amusement. When he received it back from the judge, Miller carried it round the court and allowed each of the interested parties to take it in his hand; and, when it came to my turn, and the Superintendent handed it to me (with something exceedingly like a wink, and a sly glance at Thorndyke), I understood the judge’s smile. There was something ridiculous in the monstrous disproportion between the size of the little bar and its weight; for, small as it was, it had the weight of a good-sized iron dumbell.

  When Miller had returned the bars to the box and locked the padlock, he went back to the witness-box to await further questions or cross-examination; but, as neither of the counsel made any sign, the judge dismissed him and then announced the adjournment of the hearing. “I regret,” he added, “that, in consequence of other and more urgent business, it will have to be adjourned for a week. The delay is unfortunate; but,” here he glanced at McGonnell with a faint smile, “it will have the advantage that learned counsel will have time to consider their cross-examination of Dr. Thorndyke.”

  Hereupon the court rose and we all prepared to take our departure. Glancing at “the other side,” I observed Mr. Pippet looking a little wistfully in our direction as if he would have liked to come and speak to us. But apparently his native wisdom and good sense told him that the occasion was inopportune, and, after a momentary hesitation, he turned away with a somewhat troubled face and followed his legal representatives out of the court.

  XV. A JOURNEY AND A DISCUSSION

  “This adjournment,” remarked the Superintendent as he attached a strong leather rug-strap to his precious box, “is a piece of luck for me—at least I am hoping that it is. You’ll have tomorrow free I suppose, Doctor?”

  “I have got plenty to do tomorrow,” Thorndyke answered, “but I haven’t any appointments, as I expected to be here. Why do you ask?”

  “Because,” replied Miller, “I have had a bit of luck of another sort. I told you that the suspected yacht was laid up in Benfleet Creek with her hatches sealed and a local boat-builder told off to keep an eye on her. Well, it seems that this man—his name is Jaff—spotted some Johnnie trying to break into her in the cool of the evening, about eleven p.m. So Mr. Jaff collared the said Johnnie after a bit of a tussle, and handed him over to the local police.

  “Then the police had a brain-wave—quite a good one too. They phoned down to Southend for the Customs officers who had rummaged the yacht when she arrived from her voyage. So the Preventive men—there were two of them—hopped into the train and came over to have a look at the chappie who had been nabbed; and they both recognized him, at once, as one of the three men they had seen on board the yacht when they rummaged her. And one of them remembered his name—Bunter; and when it was mentioned, he didn’t deny it, though he had given a false name, as the police had already assumed, when he said it was John Smith. Of course, there are people in the world named John Smith. Plenty of them. But the crook is apt to exaggerate the number.

  “Well, when we got notice of the capture, we thought at first of having him sent up to the Yard to see if we could get a statement from him. But then I thought it would be better for me to go down and have a talk with him on the spot and just have a look at the yacht at the same time. And that’s where you come in; at least I hope you do, as you seem to be like one of those blooming spiders that I’ve heard about that have got eyes all over them. What do you say? I think you would find it an interesting little jaunt.”

  Thorndyke appeared to think so, too, for he accepted the invitation at once and included me in the acceptance, as I also had the day at my disposal. Accordingly, we settled the program, much to the Superintendent’s satisfaction, and, having arranged to meet on the following morning at Fenchurch Street Station, we escorted Miller, with his precious burden, to his car and bade him au revoir.

  “I agree with Miller,” said I, as, having achieved the perilous crossing of the Strand, we strolled towards the Temple Gate. “This is a bit of luck. A nice little trip to the seaside instead of a day in that stuffy court. And it will probably be quite amusing.”

  “I hope it will be more than amusing,” said Thorndyke. “We ought to be able to pick up some useful facts. We want them badly enough, for there are a lot of gaps that we have to fill up.”

  “What gaps are you referring to?” I asked.

  “Well,” he replied, “look at our case as it stands. It is a mere collection of disconnected facts. And yet we know that those facts must be connected, and that we have got to establish the connexion. Take this platinum, for instance. It disappears from the cloak room and is lost to view utterly. Then it reappears in the coffin; and the problem is, how did it get there, where has it been in the interval, and what is Gimbler’s connexion with it?”

  “Aren’t we rather guessing about that platinum?” I objected. “We all seem to be assuming that this platinum is the platinum that was stolen.”

  “And reasonably so, I think,” said Thorndyke. “Consider the probabilities, Jervis. If it had been a case of an ounce, or even a pound, there might have been room for doubt. But half a hundredweight, at a time when every grain of platinum is precious and worth many times its weight of gold, and at a time when that very weight of platinum has been stolen and is still missing—well, we may be mistaken, but we are justified in accepting the overwhelming probabilities. And, after all, it is only a working hypothesis.”

  “Yes,” I admitted, “I suppose you are right; and we shall soon know if you are on the wrong track. But you are also assuming that Gimbler has some connexion with it. You haven’t much to go on.”

  Thorndyke laughed. “You are a regular Devil’s advocate, Jervis,” said he. “But you are right, so far. We haven’t much to go on. Still, I suppose you
will agree that we have fair grounds for assuming that Gimbler has some connexion with that bogus coffin.”

  “Yes,” I was forced to admit, “I will concede that much, as the coffin appears to have been planted there to furnish evidence in support of his case. But I am not so clear as to the connexion between Gimbler and that platinum. He seemed mighty surprised when you mentioned it.”

  “He did,” Thorndyke agreed; “and there is certainly something extremely odd about the whole affair. But you see the position. Gimbler arranges for a dummy coffin to be planted, and that dummy coffin is found to contain the proceeds of a robbery. There is thus established a connexion of some sort between Gimbler and this stolen property. We cannot guess the nature of the connexion. It may be of the most indirect kind. Apparently, Gimbler had no suspicion of the nature of the metal in the coffin. But some kind of connexion between that loot and Mr. Gimbler there must be. And it is not impossible that the platinum may eventually be the means of pointing the way to some unguarded spot in Gimbler’s defences; for I take it that there will be considerable difficulty in getting direct evidence of his part in the planting of the coffin.”

  His conclusion brought us to our doorstep, at which point the discussion lapsed. But I felt that it was only an adjournment; for something in the Superintendent’s manner had suggested to me that he, also, had certain questions to propound.

  And so it turned out. On our arrival on the platform at Fenchurch Street, I perceived the Superintendent doing “sentry-go” before the door of an empty first-class smoking compartment, and I suspected that he had made certain private arrangements with the guard. At any rate, we had the compartment to ourselves, and when we had passed the first few stations in safety, he proceeded to fire his first shot.

  “I’ve been puzzling my brains, Doctor, about those pot-leavings.”

  “Indeed?” said Thorndyke. “What is the difficulty?”

  “The difficulty is how the deuce they became pot-leavings. I have always understood that platinum was almost impossible to melt. Isn’t that so?”

  “Platinum is very difficult to melt,” Thorndyke agreed. “It has the highest melting-point of all metals, excepting one or two of the rare metals. The melting-point is 1710 Centigrade.”

  “And what is the melting-point of cast iron?”

  “1505 Centigrade,” Thorndyke answered.

  “Then,” exclaimed Miller, “if it takes about two hundred degrees more to melt platinum than it does to melt iron, how the devil was it possible to melt the platinum in a common plumber’s melting-pot which is made of cast iron? It would seem as if the pot should melt before the platinum.”

  “So it would, of course, if the metal had been pure,” Thorndyke replied with a smile that suggested to me that he had been expecting the question, and that something of importance turned on it. “But it was not pure. It was an alloy; and alloys exhibit all kinds of queer anomalies in respect to their melting-points. However, with your permission, we will postpone the discussion of this point, as we shall have to consider it in connexion with certain other matters that we have to discuss. You have not told us whether those clothes from the two dead men yielded any information.”

  “They gave us the means of identifying the two men, as you will have learned from the reports of the inquest; and the names were apparently their real names, or at least their usual aliases. The murderer, Bassett, the skipper of the yacht, was a local man, as you guessed. He lived at Swanscombe, and seems to have been a Swanscombe man, which accounts, as you suggested, for his knowledge of the dene hole. The man he killed, Wicks, was living at Woolwich at the time, but he seemed to be a bird of passage. That is all that I got out of the clothes excepting the name and address of a man called Samuels, who describes himself as a gold refiner and bullion dealer, but who may be a fence. We know him by name, but we haven’t anything against him, though we bear him in mind. These small bullion dealers have to be kept in view, as they have so many facilities for getting rid of stolen jewellery and plate.”

  “Yes,” Thorndyke agreed; “and, in the special circumstances, any refiner and bullion dealer is of interest to us. It seems likely that Bassett intended to approach this man, Samuels, on the object of the disposal of the platinum, if he hadn’t already made some arrangements with him. You’ll have to continue to keep Mr. Samuels in view. But now tell us a little more about this present business.”

  “There isn’t much more to tell you,” said Miller. “It seems that Mr. Jaff, the boat-builder gent, was cruising about Benfleet Creek in his dinghy—he lives afloat, himself—when he saw our friend, Bunter, trying to prise open the yacht’s fore scuttle; whereupon, having a natural prejudice against people who break into yachts, he pulled alongside, stepped on board, and, creeping silently along the deck in his rubber mud-boots, grabbed Bunter and hauled him into his dinghy, where they seem to have had a mighty scrap until another mariner came along and lent a hand. Then they got him ashore and handed him over to the local police as I have told you.”

  “What do you suppose could have been his object in trying to break into the vessel?” I asked. “There wasn’t anything of value left on board, was there?”

  “There was not supposed to be,” said Miller, with a knowing look, “but I have an idea that there may have been. My notion is that there may have been more platinum than we thought, and that he had come to snap up what was left. What do you say, Doctor?”

  Thorndyke shook his head. “I don’t think so, Miller,” he replied. “You have recovered practically all the platinum that was said to have been stolen. My impression is that, as our friend Mr. Pippet might express it, you are barking up the wrong tree.”

  “Am I?” said Miller. “Then if you will point out the right tree, I’ll bark up that. What do you think was his object in trying to break in?”

  “My idea is,” Thorndyke replied, “that he supposed that the whole of the platinum was still on board.”

  “But,” protested Miller, “how could he? He knew that Bassett had carted the bulk of it away.”

  Thorndyke chuckled. “My impression is, Miller,” said he, “that it was at this point that the chapter of accidents began; and it is here that the answer to the question that you raised just now comes in.”

  “About the melting-pot?” demanded Miller.

  “Yes. I have a theory that the whole mystery of the murder and the appearance of the platinum in the coffin hinges on that question. Perhaps, as we have some time at our disposal, there would be no harm in my giving the reins to my fancy and sketching out my hypothetical scheme of the events as I believe they occurred.”

  “Do, by all means,” Miller exclaimed, eagerly, “for, if your imaginary scheme satisfies you, it is likely to satisfy me.”

  “Then,” said Thorndyke, “I will begin with what I believe to have been the hiding-place in which the platinum was concealed on the yacht.”

  “But, good Lord, Doctor” Miller exclaimed, “you’ve never seen the yacht!”

  “It wasn’t necessary,” Thorndyke replied. “I had your description of the yacht and of the search made by the Customs officer, and they seemed to me to indicate an excellent hiding-place. When you described how that officer crept down into the hold and found it all perfectly clear and empty with the exception of the lead ballast-weights, it occurred to me that it was quite possible that the platinum was staring him in the face all the time. Remember that he was not looking for platinum but for tobacco.”

  “Do you suggest that the platinum was hidden in the ballast-weights?” Miller demanded.

  “That is exactly what I do suggest,” replied Thorndyke; “and I will describe to you what I believe to have been the method used in concealing it. You will remember that these weights were proper yacht’s ballast; lead weights cast to a correct shape to fit the timbers and sits comfortably along the kelson. Each would probably weight about half a hundredweight, that being the usual and most convenient weight. Now, my theory is that our friends took with them a mo
uld of the ballast-weights—an ordinary sand-flask would do, though a fireclay mould would be more convenient—so that they could cast new weights whenever they might want them. Possibly they also took some spare lead with them.

  “Now, as soon as they had got possession of the platinum—which, you will remember, was in thin sheets—they cut it up into suitably sized pieces, or rolled or folded it up to a size that would go easily into the mould. They put the pieces into the mould, probably propping them up a little with some pieces of lead to keep them off the bottom, so that the platinum should not be visible on the surface. Then they melted some spare lead, or one of the ballast-weights and poured the molten lead into the mould. When the lead set solid, there would be a quite ordinary-looking ballast-weight. Then they did the same with the rest of the platinum, producing a second ballast-weight; and the two could be laid down with the rest of the weights alongside the keel. If there was any lead left over, that would be thrown overboard together with the mould.”

  “Yes,” said Miller, “that sounds quite convincing. Deuced ingenious, too. Uncommonly neat. That’s how they were able to walk past the customs in the way they did. But where does the chapter of accidents come in?”

  “It came in at that point,” said Thorndyke. “Somebody had made a trifling miscalculation. I don’t say that Bassett made the mistake, though I suspect that he did. But someone did. You know, Miller, as well as I do that people who embark on a fake of any kind need to have a good deal of knowledge. And usually they haven’t. Our friend, Gimbler, didn’t know enough about dust; and the craftsman who made the bogus coffin didn’t know enough about screws. And I suspect that the downy bird who invented the ballast-weight dodge didn’t know enough about platinum.