“What happened?” asked Major Markham.
“I was, of course, immediately arrested and interrogated,” Nabersberg answered simply; “but you can see how serious it would have been for me, if anything had become known of my gold purchasing transactions with the Wintertons. It is unfortunate that the Hitler Government does not feel it can fully depend on the zeal and the loyalty and devotion of Germans of Jewish descent. For me, of course, I denied that I was Jewish, but the truth was proved beyond doubt, and then it looked bad for me, because I had tried to claim I was pure Nordic. That was considered to make my case very grave, even though I pleaded that I had not known of my poor grandmother’s unhappy birth – it seems even that her father was a Rabbi, though her family cast her off entirely after her marriage with a Christian. My business, of course, was ruined. My friends forgot even my existence. I do not blame them. If any had tried to communicate with me, they might easily have been thrashed to death by the Storm Troopers, or perhaps sent to a concentration camp. Fortunately there were extenuating circumstances I was able to bring forward. It was proved that when I saw a number of high-spirited young Storm Troopers kicking an aged Jew into a canal, and then pulling him out to kick him in again, I gave the Nazi salute as I passed. Also, when the son of a friend of mine was baptised, I had sent, as a christening gift for the baby, one of the new youth dagger-knives with ‘Blood and Honour’ engraved on the blade; and to another child, for a present at Christmas, I had sent a box of tin soldiers, and two toy cannon. That weighed very much in my favour, and finally I was released on promising to hand over my business – I am an analytical chemist – to a real Nordic, a young Nazi who had distinguished himself greatly by his zeal against Jews, but who afterwards had the misfortune to blow up himself and my laboratory, through a misapprehension of chemical quantities – chemicals caring, apparently, very little whether you are Jew or Nordic, if you do not mix them in the right proportions. Another condition was that I should leave my country for its good, since only the pure Nordic may take part in the building up of the new pure Nordic State. I regretted it, for I should have liked to take my share in building up the magnificent new Germany, where all learning, all art, all science, will be purely Nordic, but I recognised that was impossible. It was the heavy strain of all these events that, when I reached Paris, made me collapse altogether. I had asked a man I met in prison – he had been arrested for having attended a Communist meeting some years before – to let the Wintertons know of my release, but without mentioning my name, for I was still nervous. There are some relatives of mine still in Germany – cousins on my father’s side, so that they are free from the Jewish taint there is in my blood – and they would probably suffer severely if this transaction of mine became known. There was danger of that, for one of the men we engaged to help navigate the launch suspected the contents of the boxes we landed, and Mr. Winterton had information that he might attempt to get help, and perhaps raid Fairview and try to seize the gold. That was why it was decided to remove it to a safer place. And when Archibald Winterton was drowned, in a way hard to understand, his brother suspected that the first step had been taken. He was inclined to believe that an attempt had been made to kidnap Archibald. He thought some boat had been lying off the coast, waiting for a chance, but that it had miscarried so far as the kidnapping was concerned, though, perhaps in trying to escape, Archibald had been drowned. I did not think it very likely myself. I thought more probably it was an accident – the drowning, I mean – but he wrote to me in a very nervous strain; and he said, also, that he thought he would be wise to apply for police protection, though he promised that he would not say more than he could help, or betray my share in the business, or even let his possession of the gold be known. Indeed, I knew he was anxious himself to keep that a secret, if it was at all possible.”
Major Markham had been listening to all this with close attention, and with great excitement. Now he burst out:
“Can that be the truth of what happened to the elder Winterton?”
But Mitchell was turning over and over in his hands the book of Coleridge’s poems, and now he said:
“What’s become of the gold? We must find that out – ten boxes, iron bound, are not so easily hid.” He paused and looked at Bobby: “I don’t know if I’m dreaming, but I should have thought this book made it plain enough. Don’t you think so, Owen?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Completed Evidence
Bobby could only look puzzled. For the life of him he could not see how Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner”, even when marked with a blue pencil, gave any clue to the hiding-place of the vanished gold. He held his tongue, therefore, and Herr Nabersberg broke out excitedly:
“You know where it is? You know where it is hidden? Ah, that is a relief. For one-eighth is mine,” he explained. “One-half belonged to George Winterton, and three-eighths was his brother’s; but the one-eighth is mine – and all I have in the world now I am no longer true German, true Nordic.”
The poor little, round little, flat-faced, dark-skinned man sighed heavily as he said this. It was evident that even the prospect of recovering his money hardly cheered a spirit so depressed by the loss of its proud claim to be a “true Nordic of the purest type,” torn from him by the discovery of his Hebraic maternal grandmother. Probably he would willingly have given up the whole of his share of the gold to have the right to call himself once again “pure Nordic.” But none of the others quite understood his grief, or even took much interest in it. Major Markham had the volume of Coleridge in his hand, and was vaguely turning over the leaves.
“You mean there’s some message, plan – something here that shows where the gold is hidden?” he asked. “I don’t see anything.”
“Well, I may be wrong,” Mitchell admitted, “only I don’t think that box was put there just for fun. I don’t suppose, either, that the book was put inside it for no reason, any more than the gas was.” He turned sharply upon Nabersberg. “You say you are a chemist. Did you provide the gas?” he demanded.
“It was my suggestion,” the German admitted. “The box itself could be opened safely, but it was divided into two chambers, and, if you removed the partition between, the gas was released. It was not dangerous,” he added, “except to the stomach and the eyes – no one should have died of it, though consciousness might be lost. You would be very sick, very dizzy for a very long time. But you should not die.”
Mitchell looked at him a little oddly.
“We have a law in this country,” he remarked, “forbidding the use of man-traps. But I take it, then, there were two compartments – one holding gas, and an upper one in which was this book? I take it there was a reason for that book being there. The crossword was headed ‘Key word: Gold.’ But there’s nothing about gold in the puzzle itself, so I take it, again, what that means is that gold is somehow the reason for the puzzle’s existing at all. The message the crossword hid tells how to find the box. But there’s no gold in it, only gas, and a book of poems. The gas is for protective purposes. The book is there – why? I take it, because it tells where the gold is really hidden. At least, that’s how it strikes me.”
“Yes, but” – said Markham, still feverishly turning the pages – “I don’t see anything. You mean, hidden writing?” he asked. “Invisible ink, letters pricked out – what do you suggest looking for?”
Mitchell glanced at Bobby, as if inviting him to reply. But Bobby could only continue to look puzzled, and Nabersberg, with growing excitement, took the book from Markham.
“There is something here,” he cried, “you have seen. What have you seen?”
“Only what you’ve all seen,” Mitchell answered. “A very well-known quotation, marked with blue pencil, altered so as to read: ‘Water, water everywhere, nor any to drink.’ Looks to me like a pretty broad hint, quite in line of the man who made up that crossword, with its meaning hidden with such careful carelessness you would never guess there was any meaning there at all.”
/> “‘Water, water everywhere,’” Bobby burst out. “Why, that might mean the big tank overhead.” He added: “Ross said something, just before he died, about water. I thought he wanted to drink, but he didn’t.”
“Plenty of water up there in the tank,” agreed Mitchell, “but not to drink.”
“To hide, then,” Bobby cried. “To hide the lost gold.”
“Anyhow, the bottom of the tank would make a good hiding-place, and one likely to occur to the Wintertons,” Mitchell said. “Drive your car into the garage with the boxes of gold on board, dump them into the tank, the work of a few minutes, lock up the garage, and walk off, and who was to guess anything out of the way had happened? Burying them under the garage floor, or anywhere else, would have been a much longer, much more troublesome job. You couldn’t be sure of not being seen, or of not leaving some traces behind someone about the place – servants or someone – mightn’t notice.”
“We’ll have a look,” Major Markham cried, and Andrews, who had been listening very intently, said:
“There’s a tap somewhere, you can empty the tank by quite easily. Perhaps that’s why it was put in. The builder who had the job told me about it. Of course, the tank can be emptied by cutting off the supply from the spring and opening all the taps in the house. When he had the tap put in, Mr. Winterton said he wanted a quicker way of emptying the tank when it had to be cleaned, but perhaps it was the gold he wanted to be able to get at in a hurry, if he had to.”
“It might be that,” Mitchell agreed.
The tap in question was soon found, and by the aid of tools, brought from the motor-car tool-boxes, it was easily opened. Watching the water running away by the channel provided, Major Markham remarked:
“We may be too late. It may not be there now.”
“You mean, perhaps we aren’t the first to guess the riddle of the blue pencil correction of “The Ancient Mariner”?” Mitchell remarked. “No. But it would be a long, awkward job to fish up all those ten boxes. They had to be found, hoisted to the edge of the tank, carried away. And there’s not been too much time, for it can’t be many hours since Ross was attacked. I doubt if there’s been more than one night to remove the gold in. And they would hardly dare to bring a car right up to the house, any more than they would dare empty the tank the way we are doing – even if they knew about the tap. They had to work in silence. They would never dare risk the noise and commotion of all that water running off. Most likely they left their car on the main road, and carried each box of gold to it in turn as each box was retrieved.” Andrews, who had been up above, watching the lowering of the level of the water, came to the head of the steps.
“There’s something showing, sir,” he called, with excitement in his voice. “Looks like boxes.”
They all joined him. Someone had an electric torch, and was flashing its light into the interior of the tank. The retreating, gurgling water showed the tops of five boxes. Mitchell said:
“Looks like they got away with just half of them. To-night, I expect the other half would have gone.”
They waited a little longer, till all the water had run off, save for a few puddles and trickles that remained in the cracks of the cemented floor. Andrews, followed by Bobby, dropped over the edge of the tank. Mitchell, who had the torch in his hand now, and was flashing its beam to and fro, called out:
“What’s that just by your foot, Owen?”
Bobby stooped to pick it up. It was a leather pocket-book, soaked through and through by its immersion. Bobby got it carefully on his folded handkerchief, and then passed it up to Mitchell, who retreated with it to the garage below, where he busied himself with it while the rest of them occupied themselves with the five remaining boxes.
That task accomplished, and the boxes safely deposited on the floor of the garage, Major Markham crossed to where Mitchell was still busy with the pocket-book and its soaked contents.
“Found anything useful?” he asked.
“It has Cooper’s name and address on it,” Mitchell answered. “Quite useful when criminals leave their name and address behind. I suppose it fell out of his pocket while he and his wife were busy hauling up the five boxes they got away with. They were a bit over-excited, most likely, and forgot to be as careful as usual. At last they had the gold in their possession that they had been working for so long, and a detail like a dropped pocket-book got overlooked. Like those two in Chicago who planned a perfect murder and then left a spectacle-case belonging to one of them on the scene of the crime. And it would be their excitement and hurry recovering the gold prevented them from making sure Ross was really dead.”
“That was why they left his body here, instead of trying to hide it, I suppose,” Major Markham remarked.
“Well, as for that,” Mitchell answered slowly, “they may have thought this was as good a hiding-place for the body as anywhere else for the time being. It couldn’t have been removed without a good deal of risk, and they had their hands full – working out where the gold was, and then getting hold of it. Later on, I expect they would have come round in a boat and sunk the body far out to sea, well weighted. If they had done that, and the gold and Ross were both missing, what with that, and the evidence already against him, no one would have felt much doubt of his guilt, and we should have been looking for him all over the world, while all the time his body was lying quietly a few miles out there at the bottom of the North Sea. This is interesting, too,” he went on, and showed, among other papers – some of them had been packed tightly round it, and had largely protected it from the action of the water – the original of the crossword puzzle, carefully written out in George Winterton’s handwriting, with his signature, and a note of the date, two days before his death, when it had been completed. But the puzzle had all its blanks filled in in a different writing, and the words from which Bobby had constructed the hidden message were scribbled in the same writing all over the margin. Then in one place they were written in the order in which Bobby also had placed them, and were followed by the initials:
“C R.”
“That’s Ross’s writing, and his initials, too,” Bobby said.
“Evidently he worked the thing out the same way as you did,” Mitchell agreed. “Then he came along here, and the Coopers followed him. I expect they had been watching him. Perhaps they had guessed that the crossword held the secret of the gold. They watched and followed. They saw him overcome by the gas he released. They took their precautions, before they entered the garage after him. They found he was still breathing, and used a knife on him to make sure, as they thought, and afterwards forgot everything else in their eagerness to discover where the boxes of gold were hidden. Possibly, too, the gas had affected them to some extent. Perhaps Mrs. Cooper’s head was not as clear as usual. We could wait for them here, if we liked, for I take it they are sure to return to-night. But I don’t think there’s any need. It seems to me our evidence is complete.”
He looked at Major Markham, who answered slowly:
“They will be at Fairview, I suppose. Yes, I think we can go and find them there.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Some Explanations
It was decided that one of the constables of the county police, who had been acting as chauffeur for Major Markham, should remain on the spot until arrangements could be made for the removal of the body of the unfortunate Colin Ross. Meanwhile the five remaining boxes of gold, all in sovereigns minted in 1915-16, were removed from the bottom of the tank, and packed safely in the waiting cars – an operation taking up some time. While it was being carried out, Major Markham, in the company of Mitchell, went through the rest of the soaked papers in the pocket-book they had discovered. There seemed to be nothing more of much interest, and Major Markham observed thoughtfully:
“Anyhow, there’s enough to prove the thing is Cooper’s property, and that’s all we want. Yet, apart from that, I doubt if even now we have enough foolproof evidence to convince a jury, after a clever counsel has been s
uggesting doubts and picking holes in it for an hour or two. And I don’t see we have much except pure assumption to put forward to identify the two Coopers with the murder of George Winterton.”
“Luckily that doesn’t matter,” Mitchell remarked. “Even for three murders, one hanging is quite satisfactory. All the same, it makes a fully coherent story.”
“Even now,” Major Markham said, “I don’t quite understand how they managed to carry out the first murder – that of Archibald Winterton, assuming they did, that is.”
“It was the first step in Mrs. Cooper’s planned scheme to get possession of the gold she knew the Winterton brothers were importing secretly,” Mitchell answered. “It was the secrecy that gave her her chance. They wanted secrecy so as to be secure against official interference, and all the general upset and confusion of the outside world. A poor sort of security it proved that led to both their deaths. In this world, the more you seek security, the more you invite danger.”
“You suspected the Coopers from the first?” Major Markham asked.
“Only one suspicion among a host of others,” answered Mitchell. “Suspicion’s easy; it’s proof that’s difficult. The start was the certainty that something of value had been landed from that motor-launch, and that in consequence George Winterton was afraid of something. The difficulty was to find out what the something of value actually was, and to understand why a man apparently engaged in secret, and therefore probably illegal, activities of some sort or another, should himself invite police protection. One can understand that, now one knows what he was doing was importing boxes of English gold sovereigns. There is nothing illegal or immoral, I suppose, about bringing into a country its own gold coinage, even in these days when all kinds of what used to be ordinary business transactions have become criminal. Yet one can understand, too, that Winterton, with his ideas, his fanatical belief in gold, his conviction that in gold alone lay real actual value, and that only if you held actual gold did you hold actual value, was anxious to keep secret his possession of a store of it. He felt safe then – the old story of seeking security, and so creating a greater peril. Of course, in his case, there was the additional factor that, until his associate and partner, Herr Nabersberg, was released, any hint of their transactions that had got public, and reached the German Government’s ears, might have been very serious for Nabersberg – sort of ‘shot at dawn’ for him. Only the other day I read in the papers about some poor devil in Berlin getting a stiff sentence for paying his own money from a Swiss bank to an Hungarian one, and already in Russia and the United States it’s a criminal offence to have gold in your possession. Apparently, too, Winterton was more than half afraid of an attack by the men who had been on the launch in which the gold was brought over. He seems to have thought they might make a night landing and try to secure it by force, and apparently he suspected it was they who were responsible for Archibald Winterton’s death. If he had only known it, his real danger lay in his own household. But I suppose he never thought of quiet Mrs. Cooper, going about her household duties, or ever realised how she felt her managing and organising abilities were cramped and stifled, or how she saw a chance in his gold to give them a wider field where they could grow and expand as she knew they could.”
Crossword Mystery Page 25