“No, they don’t. Unless it is — well, today is the eighteenth of the month.”
“Precisely. And that is just what I believe those eighteen seeds mean, from the context. Just consider, now. They begin by suggesting that you have the green diamond — the Eye of Goona — in your bottle, and that something unpleasant will happen to you in consequence. In other words, they want you to give it up. But how are you to give it up, and to whom? They must fix time and place. I believe those cloves and seeds represent the time, and since the eighteen seeds cannot represent an hour, they probably mean a day of the month; especially, remember, as these people are no doubt in a hurry, and to-day is the eighteenth. That being so, the cloves would tell the hour — ten. In fact, now I think of it, I am certain that I have heard of cloves being used before to indicate the hour in these letters. There you have it, then. You are to give up the Green Eye of Goona at ten o’clock to-night. Not very long notice, I’m afraid.”
Mr. Merrick turned away from the barber’s door and walked out of the hotel.
“This is all square?” he asked. “You ain’t pulling my leg?”
“Indeed I’m not. The thing seems grotesque enough to you, no doubt. But in India the object-letter is a matter pretty well known among those at all acquainted with native ways. The idea has been used here, that is all.”
“Very well. Then I understand that they want the diamond — which I haven’t got — and they threaten me unless I hand it over at ten to-night. Where?”
“That brings us to what seems in some ways the oddest part of the message. There is a grotesque incongruity about it, as I read it, which is quite fantastic. And yet that very fact tells us something about the person who made up the letter. See now, we have dealt with every object in the package but two — a chip of marble and an inch of thin brass pipe. Perhaps, as a stranger, you are ‘gnorant of some of the later Cockney slang terms — more so than the person who sent this package. But surely you can guess something of the meaning of those two little objects? The piece of marble, now; doesn’t that suggest a notable spot in London?”
“Not unless — why, you don’t mean the Marble Arch?”
“I do, and that is what I think the sender of this letter means, too, especially when the thing is considered in conjunction with the other object going with it. What is it? A tube. Haven’t you heard the new Central London Electric Railway called the Tube? And on that line is the Marble Arch Station. That is the place meant — the Marble Arch Station on the Tubel”
Mr. Merrick stared for a moment, and then laughed.
“Yes,” Crook assented, “it sounds a little odd, no doubt, but there it is, and, if you can think of a better interpretation of the letter, I wish you would; I can’t. For the thing is a letter, without a doubt. And note this, also. This chip of marble and the little piece of brass tube would scarcely be used as a direction by a person unfamiliar with London, would they? Inference: the Indian native who wants that diamond is either himself familiar with London, or is in confederation with another who is.”
“But — but — why shouldn’t they write an ordinary letter? The address is written well enough and clearly enough in English. Why not the letter?”
“Again I think that tells us something. That letter, written in plain English, would be a demand with threats — a thing the police could and would take action on, if you brought it before their notice. As it is, it is a mere jumble of odds and ends, which no police officer or magistrate would bother to look at twice. If you were to complain of a threat contained in such a form as that you would be regarded as a lunatic. It is an artfully protected intimation. Now this suggests that the sender knows something about the English law in this matter, and means to avoid risk.”
“But how are they to know I would tumble to all their hocus-pocus? Because, without your help, I should never have guessed what the stuff meant.”
“Not as matters are, perhaps. But suppose you had found that great green diamond in your magnum of Tokay, don’t you think you would have suspected the meaning of the message then? I think you would. With the worry of that enormous possession on your mind, your doubts as to what to do with it and what measures some unknown person might be taking to recover it, I think the receipt of that packet would strike you as a very significant thing, and you would have at least arrived at some vague idea of its purport.”
“And if I didn’t, then somebody would kill me, eh? As I suppose they will try to do now?”
Harvey Crook shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps not that,” he said, “at any rate, just yet. I think if they got no satisfactory reply to this letter, they’d probably follow it up with another a little more explicit — a few sketches, perhaps, designed to make their meaning plain to the meanest intelligence, so to speak. This is little more than a hint — a hint being safer than anything more explicit. But these hints seem pretty plain to me, and I think we had better answer this letter.”
“How?”
“That is not over easy. It is a far simpler thing to decipher one of these letters, if you have a guiding clue or two, than to devise one which shall be clearly understood by others — especially if you are not in the habit of conducting your correspondence in that way. I think we will turn up at the Marble Arch Station at ten and hand back the box to who ever applies for it. Inside the box we will put a little half-ounce bottle — we can get one at a chemist’s — tightly corked and empty. Outside the box, though inside the enclosing paper, we will put their little bit of green glass. That ought to express the fact that the jewel is not only not in your bottle, but it is quite outside your knowledge. And you shall write it in words if you like, as well. We haven’t any particular reason for secrecy, you know, except that the more we tell them about where the diamond is not the nearer they may be getting to where it is.”
“Well,” observed Merrick, as he turned toward the barber’s at last. “here is an adventure, at any rate; and that’s what I’ve been asking for!”
II.
DINNER went pretty quietly, and Daisy Merrick was anxious to know what so fully occupied the minds of her father and his guest. She was told readily enough that the object-letter was supposed to be a demand for the Green Eye of Goona, which the sender obviously imagined might be in Merrick’s possession; but nothing was said about any implied threat. And, dinner finished, the return parcel was made up as Crook had suggested.
“So much for the fool puzzle,” observed Merrick. “and now, if they can read English, here is a piece of it for them.”
And he took a sheet of note-paper and inscribed on it in large letters:
“Mr. Lyman W. Merrick begs leave to inform the gentleman who mailed him this box that he carries no jewels that do not belong to him, and that the only bottle of wine he has in this country contains nothing but the wine, if that is what the gentleman is driving at. Mr. Merrick has pleasure in giving the gentleman full permission to go and chase himself.”
The note was packed into the box with the little phial, and the whole thing neatly sealed. Then the two men left for die Marble Arch Station.
“We shall look a rare fool pair if nobody turns up to ask for this packet,” Merrick observed, with a laugh, as they crossed Cavendish Square. “The thing seems a shade ridiculous, after all, here in Cavendish Square, London. Don’t it?”
“Well, we shall see,” Crook replied. “If nobody comes there’s no harm done, and nobody to laugh at us but ourselves. I think, when we come to Oxford Street, we had better walk apart. You take the packet and keep on this side of the way, and I’ll cross to the other. It’s pretty certain they know you by sight, since they know where you are staying, and, if anybody dogs or watches you, I can watch him, unobserved.”
So they walked along Oxford Street, Merrick on the north side, Crook on the south. They had purposely delayed their departure till the last moment, and ten o’clock struck as Merrick was crossing the end of Portman Street. As the American strolled leisurely into the light of
the station, Crook crossed the road, with his eyes wide open for what might happen. There, sure enough, in the middle of the door to the booking-office stood a short, muffled man, a native of India, unmistakably. Merrick walked calmly past him, and the man turned, with a quick, nervous glance, and followed him into the booking-office. A cab was standing by the kerb, and Crook took a position in its shadow and watched. Merrick turned sharply and confronted the Hindoo, who instantly made a nervous bow, looking inquiringly into his face.
“My name,” said the American. “is Lyman W. Merrick, stayin’ at the Langham. Did you come here to see me?”
The man bowed again, more nervously than before, with a quick glance over his shoulder. Plainly he was a timid conspirator, and from that nervous glance Crook inferred that he must have a confederate near at hand. Might that confederate be Hahn?
“Expectin’ to receive a parcel, maybe?” asked Merrick.
The man bowed once more, with a low-voiced assent. And then at last Crook saw the confederate. It was not Hahn, but an other Indian, bigger in build than the man in the booking-office, and clearly of another and stronger race. He stood in shadow near the door, an unregarded newspaper crushed in his hand, and his face thrust eagerly forward to watch. Crook had seen the man when he first crossed the road, but he had feigned to read his paper, and it was only now that his excited movement had allowed his dark, aquiline face and bristling moustache to become visible. It was a face, too, that somehow seemed oddly familiar to Crook, though he could in no way associate it in his memory with the frock coat and tall hat which the man now wore.
“There’s the parcel,” said Merrick, placing it in the hand of the small man before him; and Crook saw the other Indian start visibly. “There’s the parcel, with a note in it. I don’t know what you mean, but, if you mean what I guess you mean, you’ll know what I mean when you open that parcel. Savvy? I haven’t got what you’re after, Sonny Snowball, and you’d better try the next store.”
The small man scarcely stopped to bow again, but scuttled out hurriedly. As he passed the watcher by the door the latter snatched eagerly at the parcel in his hand, and the two together vanished into the night. Crook came from his lurking-place and rejoined Merrick.
“The man,” he said, thoughtfully, “the other man — there was another outside whom I’ve certainly seen somewhere. Where? Probably at Delhi, but there I saw thousands. Still, I remember him in particular, and — why, yes! I know! It was! It was Mehta Singh, who was chief minister to the Rajah of Goona!”
“The same that was said to have cut down the thief who had almost got away with the green diamond?”
“Yes, the same! He did cut him down, in fact. Now just consider that! The stone found in the dead thief’s hand was found to be a mere worthless crystal. Now, did Mehta Singh kill his own confederate, or tool, as soon as he had succeeded in getting the jewel, and did he make the exchange when the wretched creature was dead? Was that his plan for stealing the diamond and at the same time gaining credit for faithful vigilance? And was Hahn at his back through the whole transaction? Do the facts suggest anything else — can they suggest anything else, indeed?”
The two men walked back along Oxford Street, in deep thought. Presently Crook burst into a laugh.
“There’s fun in it, after all,” he said. “I saw the way Mehta Singh snatched at that package, and I verily believe he thought the Green Eye of Goona was in it! He couldn’t hear your talk, of course, any more than I could myself. And, even if he could, he may not understand English. It will fall to the lot of that poor little Babu, his employee, to inform him that you have politely told him to — chase himself! I should dearly like to hear his rendering of that phrase in their vernacular!”
III.
HARVEY CROOK was curious, and something more than curious, to know if any reply would be vouchsafed to Merrick’s packet-message, and for that reason he called at the Langham Hotel the next morning, at about eleven — as, indeed, he had arranged to do, before parting with Merrick at night. Nothing whatever had been received, and Mr. Merrick showed some signs of restlessness at the break in his daily hunts through London. Daisy Merrick was making preparations for a shopping walk, and her father was discussing the question as to whether he should go with her or not, when a message did arrive for Merrick — not at all of the sort they had been looking for. For it was a telegram, in these words:
“CAN YOU COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR FRIEND CROOK TO COME IMMEDIATELY, 8 REDWAY STREET, GRAY’S INN ROAD, POSSIBLY IDENTIFY PRITCHARD. — WICKES.”
“Got him!” shouted Merrick, pushing the telegram into Crook’s hands and rushing for his hat. “Come! You’re the man, Crook! What could have been better!”
Crook read the words with some excitement himself, but scarcely with Merrick’s enthusiasm.
“We won’t be sure just yet,” he said, as he prepared to follow his friend, “but we’ll see. At any rate, I think I can identify him if they have got him. My memory of that night at poor old Clifton’s house is certainly strong enough for that!”
No cab in London could have been fast enough for Merrick that day. The one they employed was really quite a brisk turnout, but it took something almost like force on Crook’s part to restrain his friend from getting out and hailing some other cab half a dozen times.
“The odds are we’ll only get into a slower cab,” Crook protested, “and we shall lose time changing. This horse is really smart, and, after all, if they’ve got Pritchard, you may be pretty sure they won’t let him go before we come.”
And so in the end Merrick was persuaded to sit still, if not quiet.
Redway Street, Gray’s Inn Road, might almost have been another part of Meldon Street, Euston, to which their last adventure had led them — except that Redway Street seemed to have reached a shade lower level in the down grade from complete respectability. At one or two houses children played on the steps, and the cards announcing “Apartments” were as often as not home-inscribed, in ill-assorted capital letters. At number eight a little wondering group stood by the area railings, and a policeman was on the top front step, guarding the door. Plainly a rumour of “something up” was pervading Redway Street, though nobody knew quite what. Matrons with brooms stopped to talk and stare at number eight, and straggler after straggler stopped to increase the group at the gate.
“We’ll keep the cab in case we want it again,” Crook said, and the two men sprang out and up the steps of the house.
“Sergeant Wickes?” asked Merrick, hurriedly, and the policeman at the door stood aside to let them pass.
Wickes met them in the passage, bony, square, clean-shaven, and matter of fact as ever.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said; “you’ve been quick. I didn’t expect you so soon. I haven’t been here much over an hour or so myself. I suppose you’d have no difficulty, Mr. Crook, in identifying Pritchard if you saw him?”
“No — I think not.”
“Even if he were dead?”
“Dead?”
“Yes, dead. Whether the man we have here is Pritchard or not I can’t say, though it’s likely; but dead he is, Pritchard or not. His throat’s cut.”
Crook and Merrick stared in amaze.
“I thought I’d mention it, you see,” the detective said, with businesslike cheerfulness, “in case it gave you a shock when you went into the room. These things do shock some people, you know. Come this way.”
They walked, with involuntarily hushed footsteps, to a back room, where, on a common iron-framed bed, a dead man lay, dabbled and terrible. The last time Crook had stood before such a sight was in Mr. Clifton’s house, where this man’s double crime had been committed. For Pritchard it was, as Crook could see at a glance. Gray and grisly he, lay there, but scarcely grayer than he had been when Crook first saw him in the hall of Downs Lodge; and his face seemed strangely commonplace and peaceful — almost grotesquely so by contrast with the fearful wound that lay below, and the dabbled bedclothes that lay about it.
“You do identify him, then? Quite positively?”
“Yes — there’s no doubt,” Crook answered. “That is the man who received me that night at Mr. Clifton’s house. Of that I am quite certain.”
“Yes — I thought so,” Wickes replied.
“Not merely from the description, you see, which wouldn’t be so much to go on for a man like me, who had never seen him alive, but because we have found one or two banknotes with numbers corresponding to those missing from Mr. Clifton’s safe. Mr. Clifton’s bank people were able to do that for us, you see — a list of the notes.”
“But who has done this.” Merrick asked.
Wickes shrugged his shoulders.
“Can’t say,” he said. “Not yet, at any rate. The landlady found him like this when she came to do the bed. Thought he’d gone out. He’s been going by the name of Neville here, it seems. The place hasn’t been robbed, so far as I can see — we found the banknotes, as I told you. We’ve searched the place pretty closely, but everything seems quite ordinary, except two rather odd little packets that seem to have come by post. The odd thing about ‘em is the way the address has been put on. See — here they are. Addresses made up of printed letters cut out of a newspaper.”
The addresses on both packets were certainly strange. They were built up just as Wickes described, by capital letters cut from paragraph headings in newspapers, and pasted in proper order to make the words.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 219