“We must give it up, Jervis,” said Thorndyke. “I will send him anonymously the number of the cab, and that is all we can do. But I am sorry for Badger.”
With this we dismissed the incident from our minds—at least, I did; assuming that I had seen the last of the two strangers. Little did I suspect how soon and under what strange and tragic circumstances I should meet with them again!
It was about a week later that we received a visit from our old friend, Superintendent Miller of the Criminal Investigation Department. The passing years had put us on a footing of mutual trust and esteem, and the capable, straightforward detective officer was always a welcome visitor.
I’ve just dropped in,” said Miller, cutting off the end of the inevitable cigar, “to tell you about a rather queer case that we’ve got in hand. I know you are always interested in queer cases.”
Thorndyke smiled blandly. He had heard that kind of preamble before, and he knew, as did I, that when Miller became communicative we could safely infer that the Millerian bark was in shoal water.
“It is a case,” the superintendent continued, “of a very special brand of crook. Actually there is a gang, but it is the managing director that we have particularly got our eye on.”
“Is he a regular ‘habitual,’ then?” asked Thorndyke.
Well,” replied Miller, “as to that, I can’t positively say. The fact is that we haven’t actually seen the man to be sure of him.”
“I see,” said Thorndyke, with a grim smile. “You mean to say that you have got your eye on the place where he isn’t.”
“At the present moment,” Miller admitted, “that is the literal fact. We have lost sight of the man we suspected, but we hope to pick him up again presently. We want him badly, and his pals too. It is probably quite a small gang, but they are mighty fly; a lot too smart to be at large. And they’ll take some catching, for there is someone running the concern with a good deal more brains than crooks usually have.”
“What is their lay?” I asked.
“Burglary,” he replied. “Jewels and plate, but principally jewels; and the special feature of their work is that the swag disappears completely every time. None of the stuff has ever been traced. That is what drew our attention to them. After each robbery we made a round of all the fences, but there was not a sign. The stuff seemed to have vanished into smoke. Now that is very awkward. If you never see the men and you can’t trace the stuff, where are you? You’ve got nothing to go on.”
“But you seem to have got a clue of some kind.” I said.
“Yes. There isn’t a lot in it; but it seemed worth following up. One of our men happened to travel down to Colchester with a certain man, and when he came back two days later, he noticed this same man on the platform at Colchester and saw him get out at Liverpool Street. In the interval there had been a jewel robbery at Colchester. Then there was a robbery at Southampton, and our man went at once to Waterloo and saw all the trains in. On the second day, behold! the Colchester sportsman turns up at the barrier, so our man, who had a special taxi waiting, managed to track him home and afterwards got some particulars about him. He is a chap named Shemmonds; belongs to a firm of outside brokers. But nobody seems to know much about him and he doesn’t put in much time at the office.
“Well, then, Badger took him over and shadowed him for a day or two, but just as things were looking interesting, he slipped off the hook. Badger followed him to a restaurant, and, through the glass door, saw him go up to an elderly man at a table and shake hands with him. Then he took a chair at the table himself, so Badger popped in and took a seat near them where he could keep them in view. They went out together and Badger followed them, but he lost them in the Celestial Bank Chambers. They went up in the lift just before he could get to the door and that was the last he saw of them. But we have ascertained that they left the building in a taxi and that the taxi set them down at Great Turnstile.”
“It was rather smart of you to trace the cab,” Thorndyke remarked.
“You’ve got to keep your eyes skinned in our line of business,” said Miller. “But now we come to the real twister. From the time those two men went down Great Turnstile, nobody has set eyes on either of them. They seem to have vanished into thin air.”
“You found out who the other man was, then?” said I.
“Yes. The restaurant manager knew him; an old chap named Luttrell. And we knew him, too, because he has a thumping burglary insurance, and when he goes out of town he notifies his company, and they make arrangements with us to have the premises watched.”
“What is Luttrell?” I asked.
“Well, he is a bit of a mug, I should say, at least that’s his character in the trade. Goes in for being a dealer in jewels and antiques, but he’ll buy anything—furniture, pictures, plate, any blooming thing. Does it for a hobby, the regular dealers say. Likes the sport of bidding at the sales. But the knock-out men hate him; never know what he’s going to do. Must have private means, for though he doesn’t often drop money, he can’t make much. He’s no salesman. It is the buying that he seems to like. But he is a regular character, full of cranks and oddities. His rooms in Thavies Inn look like the British Museum gone mad. He has got electric alarms from all the doors up to his bedroom and the strong-room in his office is fitted with a puzzle lock instead of keys.”
“That doesn’t seem very safe,” I remarked.
“It is,” said Miller. “This one has fifteen alphabets. One of our men has calculated that it has about forty billion changes. No one is going to work that out, and there are no keys to get lost. But it is that strong-room that is worrying us, as well as the old joker himself. The Lord knows how much valuable stuff there is in it. What we are afraid of is that Shemmonds may have made away with the old chap and be lying low, waiting to swoop down on that strong-room.”
“But you said that Luttrell goes away sometimes,” said I.
“Yes; but then he always notifies his insurance company and he seals up his strong-room with a tape round the door-handle and a great seal on the door-post. This time he hasn’t notified the company and the door isn’t sealed. There’s a seal on the door-post—left from last time, I expect—but only the cut ends of tape. I got the caretaker to let me see the place this morning; and, by the way, doctor, I have taken a leaf out of your book. I always carry a bit of squeezing wax in my pocket now and a little box of French chalk. Very handy they are, too. As I had ’em with me this morning, I took a squeeze of the seal. May want it presently for identification.”
He brought out of his pocket a small tin box from which he carefully extracted an object wrapped in tissue paper. When the paper had been tenderly removed there was revealed a lump of moulding wax, one side of which was flattened and bore a sunk design.
“It’s quite a good squeeze,” said Miller, handing it to Thorndyke. “I dusted the seal with French chalk so that the wax shouldn’t stick to it.”
My colleague examined the “squeeze” through his lens, and passing it and the lens to me, asked: “Has this been photographed, Miller?”
“No,” was the reply, “but it ought to be before it gets damaged.”
“It ought, certainly,” said Thorndyke, “if you value it. Shall I get Polton to do it now?”
The superintendent accepted the offer gratefully and Thorndyke accordingly took the squeeze up to the laboratory, where he left it for our assistant to deal with. When he returned, Miller remarked: “It is a baffling case, this. Now that Shemmonds has dropped out of sight, there is nothing to go on and nothing to do but wait for something else to happen; another burglary or an attempt on the strong-room.”
“Is it clear that the strong-room has not been opened?” asked Thorndyke.
No, it isn’t,” replied Miller. “That’s part of the trouble. Luttrell has disappeared and he may be dead. If he is, Shemmonds will probably have been through his pockets. Of course there is no strong-room key. That is one of the advantages of a puzzle lock. But it is quite poss
ible that Luttrell may have kept a note of the combination and carried it about him. It would have been risky to trust entirely to memory. And he would have had the keys of the office about him. Any one who had those could have slipped in during business hours without much difficulty. Luttrell’s premises are empty, but there are people in and out all day going to the other offices. Our man can’t follow them all in. I suppose you can’t make any suggestion, doctor?”
“I am afraid I can’t,” answered Thorndyke. “The case is so very much in the air. There is nothing against Shemmonds but bare suspicion. He has disappeared only in the sense that you have lost sight of him, and the same is true of Luttrell—though there is an abnormal element in his case. Still, you could hardly get a search-warrant on the facts that are known at present.”
“No,” Miller agreed, “they certainly would not authorise us to break open the strong-room, and nothing short of that would be much use.”
Here Polton made his appearance with the wax squeeze in a neat little box such as jewellers use.
“I’ve got two enlarged negatives,” said he; “nice clear ones. How many prints shall I make for Mr. Miller?”
“Oh, one will do, Mr. Polton,” said the superintendent. “If I want any more I’ll ask you.” He took up the little box, and, slipping it in his pocket, rose to depart. “I’ll let you know, doctor, how the case goes on, and perhaps you wouldn’t mind turning it over a bit in the interval. Something might occur to you.”
Thorndyke promised to think over the case, and when we had seen the superintendent launched down the stairs, we followed Polton up to the laboratory, where we each picked up one of the negatives and examined it against the light. I had already identified the seal by its shape—a vesica piscis or boat-shape—with the one that I had seen on Mr. Luttrell’s finger. Now, in the photograph, enlarged three diameters, I could clearly make out the details. The design was distinctive and curious rather than elegant. The two triangular spaces at the ends were occupied respectively by a memento mori and a winged hour-glass and the central portion was filled by a long inscription in Roman capitals, of which I could at first make nothing.
“Do you suppose this is some kind of cryptogram?” I asked.
“No,” Thorndyke replied. “I imagine the words were run together merely to economise space. This is what I make of it.”
He held the negative in his left hand, and with his right wrote down in pencil on a slip of paper the following four lines of doggerel verse
Eheu alas how fast the dam fugaces
Labuntur anni especially in the cases
Of poor old blokes like you and me Posthumus
Who only wait for vermes to consume us.”
“Well,” I exclaimed, “it is a choice specimen; one of old Luttrell’s merry conceited jests, I take it. But the joke was hardly worth the labour of engraving on a seal.”
“It is certainly a rather mild jest,” Thorndyke admitted. “But there may be something more in it than meets the eye.”
He looked at the inscription reflectively and appeared to read it through once or twice. Then he replaced the negative in the drying rack, and, picking up the paper, slipped it into his pocket-book.
“I don’t quite see,” said I, “why Miller brought this case to us or what he wants you to think over. In fact, I don’t see that there is a case at all.”
“It is a very shadowy case,” Thorndyke admitted. “Miller has done a good deal of guessing, and so has Badger; and it may easily turn out that they have found a mare’s nest. Nevertheless there is something to think about.”
“As, for instance—?”
“Well, Jervis, you saw the men; you saw how they behaved; you have heard Miller’s story and you have seen Mr. Luttrell’s seal. Put all those data together and you have the material for some very interesting speculation, to say the least. You might even carry it beyond speculation.”
I did not pursue the subject, for I knew that when Thorndyke used the word “speculation,” nothing would induce him to commit himself to an opinion. But later, bearing in mind the attention that he had seemed to bestow on Mr. Luttrell’s schoolboy verses, I got a print from the negative and studied the foolish in exhaustively. But if it had any hidden meaning—and I could imagine no reason for supposing that it had—that meaning remained hidden; and the only conclusion at which I could arrive was that a man of Luttrell’s age might have known better than to write such nonsense.
The superintendent did not leave the matter long in suspense. Three days later he paid us another visit, and half-apologetically reopened the subject.
“I am ashamed to come badgering you like this,” he said, “but I can’t get this case out of my head. I’ve a feeling that we ought to, get a move of some kind on. And, by the way—though that is nothing to do with it—I’ve copied out the stuff on that seal and I can’t make any sense of it. What the deuce are fugaces? I suppose ‘vermes’ are worms, though I don’t see why he spelt it that way.”
“The verses,” said Thorndyke, “are apparently a travesty of a Latin poem; one of the odes of Horace which begins:
Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, Labuntur anni,
which means, in effect, ‘Alas! Postume, the flying years slip by.’”
“Well,” said Miller, “any fool knows that—any middle-aged fool, at any rate. No need to put it into Latin. However, it’s of no consequence. To return to this case; I’ve got an authority to look over Luttrell’s premises—not to pull anything about, you know, just to look round. I called in on my way here to let the caretaker know that I should be coming in later. I thought that perhaps you might like to come with me. I wish you would, doctor. You’ve got such a knack of spotting things that other people overlook.”
He looked wistfully at Thorndyke, and as the latter was considering the proposal, he added: “The caretaker mentioned a rather odd circumstance. It seems that he keeps an eye on the electric meters in the building and that he has noticed a leakage of current in Mr. Luttrell’s. It is only a small leak; about thirty watts an hour. But he can’t account for it in any way. He has been right through the premises to see if any lamp has been left on in any of the rooms. But all the switches are off everywhere, and it can’t be a short circuit. Funny, isn’t it?
It was certainly odd, but there seemed to me nothing in it to account for the expression of suddenly awakened interest that I detected in Thorndyke’s face. However, it evidently had some special significance for him, for he asked almost eagerly “When are you making your inspection?”
“I am going there now,” replied Miller, and he added coaxingly, “Couldn’t you manage to run round with me?”
Thorndyke stood up. “Very well,” said he. “Let us go together. You may as well come, too, Jervis, if you can spare an hour.”
I agreed readily, for my colleague’s hardly disguised interest in the inspection suggested a definite problem in his mind; and we at once issued forth and made our way by Mitre Court and Fetter Lane to the abode of the missing dealer, an old-fashioned house near the end of Thavies Inn.
“I’ve been over the premises once,” said Miller, as the caretaker appeared with the keys, “and I think we had better begin the regular inspection with the offices. We can examine the stores and living-rooms afterwards.”
We accordingly entered the outer office, and as this was little more than a waiting-room, we passed through into the private office, which had the appearance of having been used also as a sitting-room or study. It was furnished with an easy-chair, a range of book-shelves and a handsome bureau book-case, while in the end wall was the massive iron door of the strong-room. On this, as the chief object of interest, we all bore down, and the superintendent expounded its peculiarities.
It is quite a good idea,” said he, “this letter-lock. There’s no keyhole—though a safe-lock is pretty hopeless to pick even if there was a keyhole—and no keys to get lost. As to guessing what the ‘open sesame’ may be—well, just look at it. You could spend a life
time on it and be no forrader.”
The puzzle lock was contained in the solid iron door post, through a slot in which a row of fifteen A’s seemed to grin defiance on the would-be safe-robber. I put my finger on the milled edges of one or two of the letters and rotated the discs, noticing how easily and smoothly they turned.
“Well,” said Miller, “it’s no use fumbling with that. I’m just going to have a look through his ledger and see who his customers were. The book-case is unlocked. I tried it last time. And we’d better leave this as we found it.”
He put back the letters that I had moved, and turned away to explore the book-case; and as the letter-lock appeared to present nothing but an insoluble riddle, I followed him, leaving Thorndyke earnestly gazing at the meaningless row of letters.
The superintendent glanced back at him with an indulgent smile.
“The doctor is going to work out the combination,” he chuckled. “Well, well. There are only forty billion changes and he’s a young man for his age.”
With this encouraging comment, he opened the glass door of the book-case, and reaching down the ledger, laid it on the desk-like slope of the bureau.
“It is a poor chance,” said he, opening the ledger at the index, “but some of these people may be able to give us a hint where to look for Mr. Luttrell, and it is worth while to know what sort of business he did.”
He ran his finger down the list of names and had just turned to the account of one of the customers when we were startled by a loud click from the direction of the strong-room. We both turned sharply and beheld Thorndyke grasping the handle of the strong-room door, and I saw with amazement that the door was now slightly ajar.
The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 98