Merrick put his helmet against Hewitt’s, and shouted—
“Satisfied now? Seen enough of the bottom?”
“In a moment!” Hewitt shouted back; and he straightway began striding out in the direction of the ship. Arrived at the bows, he turned back to the point he started from, striding off again from there to the white stone he had kicked over, and from there to the vessel’s side again. Merrick watched him in intense amazement, and hurried, as well as he might, after the light of Hewitt’s lamp. Arrived for the second time at the bows of the ship, Hewitt turned and made his way along the side to the ladder, and forthwith ascended, followed by Merrick. There was no halt at the deck this time, and the two made there way up and up into the lighter water above, and so to the world of air.
On the tug, as the men were unscrewing them from there waterproof prisons, Merrick asked Hewitt—
“Will you try the ‘lotion’ now?”
“No,” Hewitt replied, “I won’t go quite so far as that. But I will have a little whisky, if you’ve any in the cabin. And give me a pencil and a piece of paper.”
These things were brought, and on the paper Martin Hewitt immediately wrote a few figures and kept it in his hand.
“I might easily forget those figures,” he observed.
Merrick wondered, but said nothing.
Once more comfortably in the cabin, and clad in his usual garments, Hewitt asked if Merrick could produce a chart of the parts thereabout.
“Here you are,” was the reply, “coast and all. Big enough, isn’t it? I’ve already marked the position of the wreck on it in pencil. She lies pointing north by east as nearly exact as anything.”
“As you’ve begun it,” said Hewitt, “I shall take the liberty of making a few more pencil marks on this.” And with that he spread out the crumpled note of figures, and began much ciphering and measuring. Presently he marked certain points on a spare piece of paper, and drew through them two lines forming an angle. This angle he transferred to the chart, and, placing a ruler over one leg of the angle, lengthened it out till it met the coast-line.
“There we are,” he said musingly. “And the nearest village to that is Lostella—indeed, the only coast village in that neighbourhood.” He rose. “Bring me the sharpest-eyed person on board,” he said; “that is, if he were here all day yesterday.”
“But what’s up? What’s all this mathematical business over? Going to find that bullion by rule of three?”
Hewitt laughed. “Yes, perhaps,” he said, “but where’s your sharp look-out? I want somebody who can tell me everything that was visible from the deck of this tug all day yesterday.”
“Well, really I believe the very sharpest chap is the boy. He’s most annoyingly observant sometimes. I’ll send for him.”
He came—a bright, snub-nosed, impudent-looking young ruffian.
“See here, my boy,” said Merrick, “polish up your wits and tell this gentleman what he asks.”
“Yesterday,” said Hewitt, “no doubt you saw various pieces of wreckage floating about?”
“Yessir.”
“What were they?”
“Hatch-gratings mostly—nothin’ much else. There’s some knockin’ about now.”
“I saw them. Now, remember. Did you see a hatch-grating floating yesterday that was different from the others? A painted one, for instance—those out there now are not painted, you know.”
“Yessir, I see a little white ’un painted, bobbin’ about away beyond the foremast of the Nicobar.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Certain sure, sir—it was the only painted thing floatin’. And today it’s washed away somewheres.”
“So I noticed. You’re a smart lad. Here’s a shilling for you—keep your eyes open and perhaps you’ll find a good many more shillings before you’re an old man. That’s all.”
The boy disappeared, and Hewitt turned to Merrick and said, “I think you may as well send that wire you spoke of. If I get the commission I think I may recover that bullion. It may take some little time, or, on the other hand, it may not. If you’ll write the telegram at once, I’ll go in the same boat as the messenger. I’m going to take a walk down to Lostella now—it’s only two or three miles along the coast, but it will soon be getting dark.”
“But what sort of a clue have you got? I didn’t—”
“Never mind,” replied Hewitt, with a chuckle. “Officially, you know, I’ve no right to a clue just yet—I’m not commissioned. When I am I’ll tell you everything.”
Hewitt was scarcely ashore when he was seized by the excited Brasyer. “Here you are,” he said. “I was coming aboard the tug again. I’ve got more news. You remember I said I was going out with that railway clerk this afternoon, and meant pumping him? Well, I’ve done it and rushed away—don’t know what he’ll think’s up. As we were going along we saw Norton, the steward, on the other side of the way, and the clerk recognised him as one of the men who brought the cases to be sent off; the other was the skipper, I’ve no doubt, from his description. I played him artfully, you know, and then he let out that both the cases were addressed to Mackrie at his address in London! He looked up the entry, he said, after I left when I first questioned him, feeling curious. That’s about enough, I think, eh? I’m off to London now—I believe Mackrie’s going tonight. I’ll have him! Keep it dark!” And the zealous second officer dashed off without waiting for a reply. Hewitt looked after him with an amused smile, and turned off towards Lostella.
III.
It was about eleven the next morning when Merrick received the following note, brought by a boatman:—
Dear Merrick,—
Am I commissioned? If not, don’t trouble, but if I am, be just outside Lostella, at the turning before you come to the Smack Inn, at two o’clock. Bring with you a light cart, a policeman—or two perhaps will be better—and a man with a spade. There will probably be a little cabbage-digging. Are you fond of the sport?—
Yours,
Martin Hewitt.
P.S.—Keep all your men aboard; bring the spade artist from the town.
Merrick was off in a boat at once. His principals had replied to his telegram after Hewitt’s departure the day before, giving him a free hand to do whatever seemed best. With some little difficulty he got the policemen, and with none at all he got a light cart and a jobbing man with a spade. Together they drove off to the meeting-place.
It was before the time, but Martin Hewitt was there, waiting. “You’re quick,” he said, “but the sooner the better. I gave you the earliest appointment I thought you could keep, considering what you had to do.”
“Have you got the stuff, then?” Merrick asked anxiously.
“No, not exactly yet. But I’ve got this,” and Hewitt held up the point of his walking-stick. Protruding half an inch or so from it was the sharp end of a small gimlet, and in the groove thereof was a little white wood, such as commonly remains after a gimlet has been used.
“Why, what’s that?”
“Never mind. Let us move along—I’ll walk. I think we’re about at the end of the job—it’s been a fairly lucky one, and quite simple. But I’ll explain after.”
Just beyond the Smack Inn, Hewitt halted the cart, and all got down. They looped the horse’s reins round a hedge-stake and proceeded the small remaining distance on foot, with the policemen behind, to avoid a premature scare. They turned up a lane behind a few small and rather dirty cottages facing the sea, each with its patch of kitchen garden behind. Hewitt led the way to the second garden, pushed open the small wicket gate and walked boldly in, followed by the others.
Cabbages covered most of the patch, and seemed pretty healthy in their situation, with the exception of half a dozen—singularly enough, all together in a group. These were drooping, yellow, and wilted, and towards these Hewitt straightway walked. “Dig up those
wilted cabbages,” he said to the jobbing man. “They’re really useless now. You’ll probably find something else six inches down or so.”
The man struck his spade into the soft earth, wherein it stopped suddenly with a thud. But at this moment a gaunt, slatternly woman, with a black eye, a handkerchief over her head, and her skirt pinned up in front, observing the invasion from the back door of the cottage, rushed out like a maniac and attacked the party valiantly with a broom. She upset the jobbing man over his spade, knocked off one policeman’s helmet, lunged into the other’s face with her broom, and was making her second attempt to hit Hewitt (who had dodged), when Merrick caught her firmly by the elbows from behind, pressed them together, and held her. She screamed, and people came from other cottages and looked on. “Peter! Peter!” the woman screamed, “come ’ee, come’ee here! Davey! They’re come!”
A grimy child came to the cottage door, and seeing the woman thus held, and strangers in the garden, set up a piteous howl. Meantime the digger had uncovered two wooden boxes, each eighteen inches long or so, bound with hoop-iron and sealed. One had been torn partly open at the top, and the broken wood roughly replaced. When this was lifted, bars of yellow metal were visible within.
The woman still screamed vehemently, and struggled. The grimy child retreated, and then there appeared at the door, staggering hazily and rubbing his eyes, a shaggy, unkempt man, in shirt and trousers. He looked stupidly at the scene before him, and his jaw dropped.
“Take that man,” cried Hewitt. “He’s one!” And the policeman promptly took him, so that he had handcuffs on his wrists before he had collected his faculties sufficiently to begin swearing.
Hewitt and the other policeman entered the cottage. In the lower two rooms there was nobody. They climbed the few narrow stairs, and in the front room above they found another man, younger, and fast asleep. “He’s the other,” said Hewitt. “Take him.” And this one was handcuffed before he woke.
Then the recovered gold was put into the cart, and with the help of the village constable, who brought his own handcuffs for the benefit and adornment of the lady with the broom, such a procession marched out of Lostella as had never been dreamed of by the oldest inhabitant in his worst nightmare, nor recorded in the whole history of Cornwall.
“Now,” said Hewitt, turning to Merrick, “we must have that fellow of yours—what’s his name—Gullen, isn’t it? The one that went down to measure the hole in the ship. You’ve kept him aboard, of course?”
“What, Gullen?” exclaimed Merrick. “Gullen? Well, as a matter of fact he went ashore last night and hasn’t come back. But you don’t mean to say—”
“I do,” replied Hewitt. “And now you’ve lost him.”
IV.
“But tell me all about it now we’ve a little time to ourselves,” asked Merrick an hour or two later, as they sat and smoked in the after-cabin of the salvage tug. “We’ve got the stuff, thanks to you, but I don’t in the least see how they got it, nor how you found it out.”
“Well, there didn’t seem to be a great deal either way in the tales told by the men from the Nicobar. They cancelled one another out, so to speak, though it seemed likely that there might be something in them in one or two respects. Brasyer, I could see, tried to prove too much. If the captain and the steward were conspiring to rob the bullion-room, why should the steward trouble to cut through the boiler-plate walls when the captain kept the keys in his cabin? And if the captain had been stealing the bullion, why should he stop at two cases when he had all the voyage to operate in and forty cases to help himself to? Of course the evidence of the carpenter gave some colour to the theory, but I think I can imagine a very reasonable explanation of that.
“You told me, of course, that you were down with the men yourself when they opened the bullion-room door and got out the cases, so that there could be no suspicion of them. But at the same time you told me that the breach in the Nicobar’s side had laid open the bullion-room partition, and that you might more easily have got the cases out that way. You told me, of course, that the cases couldn’t have fallen out that way because of the list of the vessel, the position of the rent in the boiler-plate, and so on. But I reflected that the day before a diver had been down alone—in fact, that his business had been with the very hole that extended partly to the bullion-room: he had to measure it. That diver might easily have got at the cases through the breach. But then, as you told me, a diver can’t bring things up from below unobserved. This diver would know this, and might therefore hide the booty below. So that I made up my mind to have a look under water before I jumped to any conclusion.
“I didn’t think it likely that he had hidden the cases, mind you. Because he would have had to dive again to get them, and would have been just as awkwardly placed in fetching them to the light of day then as ever. Besides, he couldn’t come diving here again in the company’s dress without some explanation. So what more likely than that he would make some ingenious arrangement with an accomplice, whereby he might make the gold in some way accessible to him?
“We went under water. I kept my eyes open, and observed, among other things, that the vessel was one of those well-kept ‘swell’ ones on which all the hatch gratings and so on are in plain oak or teak, kept holystoned. This (with the other things) I put by in my mind in case it should be useful. When we went over the side and looked at the great gap, I saw that it would have been quite easy to get at the broken bullion-room partition from outside.”
“Yes,” remarked Merrick, “it would be no trouble at all. The ladder goes down just by the side of the breach, and any one descending by that might just step off at one side on to the jagged plating at the level of the after orlop, and reach over into the bullion safe.”
“Just so. Well, next I turned my attention to the sea-bed, which I was extremely pleased to see was of soft, slimy claystone. I walked about a little, getting farther and farther away from the vessel as I went, till I came across that clean stone which I turned over with my foot. Do you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that was noticeable. It was the only clean, bare stone to be seen. Every other was covered with a green growth, and to most clumps of weed clung. The obvious explanation of this was that the stone was a new-comer—lately brought from dry land—from the shingle on the sea-shore, probably, since it was washed so clean. Such a stone could not have come a mile out to sea by itself. Somebody had brought it in a boat and thrown it over, and whoever did it didn’t take all that trouble for nothing. Then its shape told a tale; it was something of the form, rather exaggerated, of a loaf—the sort that is called a ‘cottage’—the most convenient possible shape for attaching to a line and lowering. But the line had gone, so somebody must have been down there to detach it. Also it wasn’t unreasonable to suppose that there might have been a hook on the end of that line. This, then, was a theory. Your man had gone down alone to take his measurement, had stepped into the broken side, as you have explained he could, reached into the bullion-room, and lifted the two cases. Probably he unfastened the cord, and brought them out one at a time for convenience in carrying. Then he carried the cases, one at a time, as I have said, over to that white stone which lay there sunk with the hook and line attached by previous arrangement with some confederate. He detached the rope from the stone—it was probably fixed by an attached piece of cord, tightened round the stone with what you call a timber-hitch, easily loosened—replaced the cord round the two cases, passed the hook under the cord, and left it to be pulled up from above. But then it could not have been pulled up there in broad daylight, under your very noses. The confederates would wait till night. That meant that the other end of the rope was attached to some floating object, so that it might be readily recovered. The whole arrangement was set one night to be carried away the next.”
“But why didn’t Gullen take more than two cases?”
“He couldn’t afford to waste the
time, in the first place. Each case removed meant another journey to and from the vessel, and you were waiting above for his measurements. Then he was probably doubtful as to weight. Too much at once wouldn’t easily be drawn up, and might upset a small boat.
“Well, so much for the white stone. But there was more; close by the stone I noticed (although I think you didn’t) a mark in the claystone. It was a triangular depression or pit, sharp at the bottom—just the hole that would be made by the sharp impact of the square corner of a heavy box, if shod with iron, as the bullion cases are. This was one important thing. It seemed to indicate that the boxes had not been lifted directly up from the sea-bed, but had been dragged sideways—at all events at first—so that a sharp corner had turned over and dug into the claystone! I walked a little farther and found more indications—slight scratches, small stones displaced, and so on, that convinced me of this, and also pointed out the direction in which the cases had been dragged. I followed the direction, and presently arrived at another stone, rather smaller than the clean one. The cases had evidently caught against this, and it had been displaced by their momentum, and perhaps by a possible wrench from above. The green growth covered the part which had been exposed to the water, and the rest of the stone fitted the hole beside it, from which it had been pulled. Clearly these things were done recently, or the sea would have wiped out all the traces in the soft claystone. The rest of what I did under water of course you understood.”
“I suppose so: you took the bearings of the two stones in relation to the ship by pacing the distances.”
The Arthur Morrison Mystery Page 42