The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  “But we didn’t come straight home. We kept up the appearances of a cruising yacht. You won’t want particulars of the voyage, but there is one little incident that I must mention. It was at Rotterdam, our last port of call, on the morning when we started for home. We had got the sails loosed and was just about to cast off, when a cove appeared on the quay and hailed Bassett, who was on deck giving orders. Bassett replied as if he had expected this bloke, and reached up and took the man’s luggage—a small suitcase and a brown-paper parcel with a rug-strap fastened to it—and helped the covey down the ladder. Then we cast off and put out to sea; so we could see that this stranger had arranged with Bassett for a passage to England.

  “Shortly after we had started, Bassett sends me to the fore peak for one of the empty cases what our provisions had been stowed it. I took it to the cabin, but I didn’t know what it was wanted for until I saw the passenger stowing it in the locker what belonged to his berth. Later, I found the brown paper from the parcel and a big bit of oiled silk which seemed a bit damp and had a nasty smell; so I chucked it overboard. I don’t know whether Bassett knew what was in that parcel, but none of us ever guessed.

  “Now, when we was about abreast of the Swin Middle light-ship, we met a stumpy barge what was bound, as it turned out, from London to Colchester. Bassett hailed her, and, when we was near enough, he asked the skipper if he would take a passenger. The skipper wanted further particulars, so Wicks and Park went off to the barge in the boat, taking the passenger’s case with them. Apparently it was all right, for Wicks waved his hand and Park started to row back to the yacht.”

  “Had Wicks or Bassett told you anything about this business?” the Superintendent asked.

  “No. Not a word was said at the time; but Wicks told me all about it afterwards, and I may as well tell you now. It seems that the passenger—his name was Sanders—had got Bassett’s permission to make an arrangement with Wicks to smuggle the case ashore and take it to Fenchurch Street Station and leave it in the cloak room. He gave Wicks ten pounds for the job and a pound for the barge skipper; and a rare mug he must have been to pay Wicks in advance. Well, the skipper took Wicks with him up the Colne and put him ashore, after dark, somewhere between Rowhedge and Colchester; and Wicks took a walk inland with his case and picked up a motor bus that took him into Colchester. He stayed there a day or two, having a bit of a beano, because he wasn’t due to dump the case in the cloak room until the following Monday, so that it shouldn’t be waiting there too long. But on Saturday evening he took the train to London and went straight to the house of my brother-in-law, Bert Wallis, where I was in the habit of living.”

  “Why did he go there?” asked Miller.

  “Ah!” said Bunter, “that’s another story, and I may as well tell you that now. You must know that, after Wicks found out about the platinum, he got very discontented. He reckoned that the swag might be worth anything from ten to twenty thousand pounds; and he said we’d been done in the eye. Two hundred pounds apiece, he said, wasn’t anything like a fair share, seeing that we’d taken a equal share of the risk. And he was very suspicious of Bassett. He doubted whether he was a perfectly honest man.”

  “What a horrible suspicion!” Miller exclaimed with a grin.

  “Yes,” agreed Bunter. “But I believe he was right. He suspected that Bassett meant to clear off with the whole of the swag and not pay us anything. And so did I; so we arranged that I should keep an eye on Bassett and see that he didn’t get away with it.

  “Now, when we had done with the Customs at Southend—of course they didn’t twig nothing—we ran up into Benfleet Creek and took up moorings. Then, on Saturday, Bassett said he was going to take the stuff up to a dealer what he knew of and wouldn’t be back for a day or two. So, in the evening, I helped him to carry the case, with the two doctored weights in it, up to the station and saw him into a first-class carriage and shut him in. But I didn’t go back to the yacht. I’d taken the precaution to get a ticket in advance, and given Park the tip that I mightn’t be back that night; so, when I left Bassett, I went to the rear of the train and got in. I travelled up to town in that train, and I followed Bassett and saw him stow the case in the cloak room. Then, when I had seen him out of the station, I nipped straight off home to Bert Wallis’s place at Walworth.

  “It happened that I got there only a few minutes after Wicks had turned up. I told him what had happened, and we talked over what we should do to keep our eyes on the case of platinum. But, at the moment, Wicks was all agog to know what was in Mr. Sanders’s case. I pointed out to him that it was no business of his, but he said if it was worth all the money and trouble that had been spent on it, there must be something of value inside, and he was going to see what that something was, and whether it was worth while to take it to the cloak room at all.

  “Well, I got him a screwdriver and he had the screws out in a twinkling and pulled up the lid. And then he fairly hollered with surprise and I was a bit took aback, myself. You know what was inside—a man’s head, packed in some of our old duds. I tell you, Wicks slammed the lid down and ran the screws in faster than he took them out. Then I asks him what he was going to do about it. ‘Do!’ says he. ‘I’m going to plant the damn thing in the cloak room tomorrow morning and get clear of it; and I’ll send the ticket on to Sanders at Benfleet Post Office as I promised. I’ve been paid, and I’m going to carry out my contract like a honest man.’

  “But the sight of that man’s head seemed to have given him something to think about, for he was mighty thoughtful for a while. Then, all of a sudden, something seemed to strike him, for he turns to me and asks: What sort of case did Bassett pack them two weights in?’ ‘Why,’ I says, ‘one of the provision cases; same sort as that head is packed in.’ ‘Then, by gum,’ says he, ‘we are going to steal a march on that dishonest blighter, Bassett, if we can manage it. Do you know what marks there were on that case?’ Now, it happened that I did; for I had taken the precaution to make a copy of the label. I showed it to Wicks and he got a card like the one I had seen on Bassett’s case and wrote the name and address on it from my copy and tacked it on to Sanders’s case.

  “‘And now,’ says he, ‘the question is how we are going to get that case here from the station. We might take a taxi, but that wouldn’t be very safe. We don’t want to leave no tracks.’ Then I thought of Joe Wallis, Bert Wallis’s brother, what had a shop a couple of doors off and kept a motor van for carting timber about.”

  “What is his trade?” Miller asked.

  “He is a carpenter what does work for some small builders. He served his time as a undertaker, but he give that up. Said it wasn’t cheerful enough. He didn’t mind the coffins, but he couldn’t stick the corpses. Well, the end of it was that Wicks persuaded Joe to take on the job. I don’t know what story he told him, Of course, Joe didn’t know what was in either of the cases, but he is a big, strong chap and Wicks made it worth his while. Being Sunday, he put on a leather coat and a cap like a taxi-driver, for the sake of appearances.

  “Well, Wicks got rid of Sanders’s case all right and posted the ticket off to Benfleet; and then, in the afternoon, he set off to do the more ticklish job of swapping Sanders’s case for Bassett’s. But he brought it off all right and got the right case safely to Bert’s crib. Being Sunday, Bert wasn’t doing nothing, so we had the run of his workshop to do our little job in.”

  “What is Bert’s trade?” the Superintendent asked.

  “He is a plumber,” replied Bunter. “That’s what he is.”

  “Oh!” said Miller, with a sly look. “Doesn’t do anything in the pewter and plaster mould line, I suppose?”

  “I said he was a plumber,” Bunter replied, haughtily; “and, consequentially, he’d got a workshop with a big gas ring and some melting-pots; which was just what we wanted.

  “Well, we opened Bassett’s case and there, sure enough, was the two lead weights. And they seemed to be the right ones, by the punch marks on them—22 and 25. So we t
ook the biggest melting-pot, which was half full of lead, and, when we had tipped the lump of lead out on the floor, we put the pot on the ring and lighted up; and then we shoved one of the lead weights in it.

  “‘Now,’ says Wicks, ‘we are going to make our fortunes. But we shall have some difficulty in getting rid of this stuff. We shall have to go slow.’ So he sat on a chair by the gas ring and watched the weight and made all sorts of plans for getting rid of the platinum. The weight was a long time before it showed any signs of melting; but, at last it began to slip down the pot, and me and Wicks leaned over the pot and watched for the bits of platinum to stick out. But we couldn’t see no sign of them. We watched the weight as it slipped down further and further until it had crumpled up and was all melted. But still we couldn’t see nothing of the platinum. Then Wicks got a iron rod and raked about in the melted lead to see if he could feel the bits of platinum. But he couldn’t. Then he got a ladle and tried to fish out the bits that he couldn’t see; and, I tell you, he was fair sweating with anxiety, and so was I for that matter. For nothing came up in the ladle but melted lead.

  “Then I suggested that we should ladle out the whole of the lead, a little at a time, into another pot, and I got three small empty pots and set them alongside the big one; and Wicks ladled out the lead from the big one into the little ones. But still we didn’t come to the platinum. And at last we come to the bottom of the pot; and then we could see that there wasn’t no platinum there.

  “By this time Wicks was nearly blue with rage and disappointment, and I was pretty sick, myself. However, we emptied the last drop of lead out of the big pot and started to melt the other weight. But it was the same story with that one. We ladled the lead out into the small pots, and, by way of doing the thing thoroughly, took the big pot up by its handle and drained the very last drop of lead out of it into the small pots. And there wasn’t a grain of platinum to be seen anywhere.

  “My eye! You ought to have seen Wicks’s face when he had done with the second weight and tried it right out. His language was something awful. And no wonder. For you see it wasn’t no mistake. The numbers on the weights was all right. It was a fair do. Bassett had deliberately sold us a pup. He’d got a pair of the plain lead weights, hammered the numbers out, and punched fresh numbers on them. It was a dirty trick, but I suppose he must have suspected Wicks and got this plant ready for him. At any rate, Wicks saw red, and he swore he would do Bassett in. We’d got Bassett’s address at Swanscombe, because we had got to go there for the money that was owing to us when the swag should have been disposed of; and, on the Tuesday, Wicks went off to see if Bassett was at home, and, if he was, to have a few words with him. And that was the last I ever saw of Wicks. When he didn’t come home, I supposed he had made himself scarce on account of the hue and cry about the head in the case. Now I know that he must have tried to do Bassett in, and Bassett must have got his whack in first. And that’s all I know about the business.”

  “Good,” said Miller. “You’ve made a very straightforward statement, and I can tell you that you have not done yourself any harm and what you have told us will probably be quite helpful to us. I’ll write it out presently from my notes and you can read it, and, if you are satisfied with it, I’ll get you to sign it. In the meantime, I want to ask you one or two questions. First of all, about this man Sanders; can you give us any description of him?”

  “He was a tall man,” replied Bunter; “a good six foot if he had stood up straight—which he didn’t, having a stoop at the shoulders. I should put his age at about fifty. He had dark hair and beard and he wore spectacles.”

  “What kind of spectacles?” Thorndyke asked.

  “I dunno,” replied Bunter. “Spectacles is spectacles. I ain’t a optician.”

  “Some spectacles are large,” said Thorndyke, “and some are small. Some are round and some are oval, and some have a line across as if they had been cracked. Would his fit any of those descriptions?”

  “Why, yes, now you come to mention it. They was big, round spectacles with a sort of crack across them. But it couldn’t have been a crack because it was the same in both eyes. I’d forgotten them until you spoke.”

  I noticed that Miller had cast a quick look at Thorndyke and was now eagerly writing down the description. Evidently, he “smelt a fox,” and so did I. For, though Thorndyke had not really put a “leading question,” he had mentioned a very uncommon kind of spectacles—the old-fashioned type of bi-focal, which is hardly ever made now, having been superseded by the cemented or ground lunette. I had no doubt, nor, I think, had Miller, that he was describing a particular pair of spectacles; and this suspicion was strengthened by his next questions.

  “Bid you notice anything peculiar in his voice or manner of speaking?”

  “Nothing extraordinary,” replied Bunter. “He’d got a squeaky voice, and there’s no denying it. And he didn’t speak quite proper English, like you and me. Seemed to speak a bit like a Dutchman.”

  I surmised that Mr. Bunter used the word “Dutchman” in a nautical sense, meaning any sort of foreigner who was not a “Dago,” and so, apparently, Thorndyke interpreted it, for he said:

  “He spoke with a foreign accent? Was it a strong accent, or only slight?”

  “Oh, it was nothing to notice. You’d hardly have taken him for a foreigner.”

  “Did you notice his nose?”

  “You couldn’t help noticing it. Lord! It was some boko. Reminded me of a parrot. And it had got a pretty strong list to starboard.”

  “You would say that he had a large, curved, or hook nose, which was bent towards the right. Is that so?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Then, Superintendent,” said Thorndyke, “I think we have a working description of Mr. Sanders. Shall we take a note of Mr. Bert Wallis’s address?”

  “I don’t see what you want with that,” Bunter objected. “He didn’t have nothing to do with the job. We used his work-shop, but he didn’t know what we wanted it for.”

  “We realize that,” said Thorndyke, “and we have nothing whatever against him. But he may be able to give us some information on some other matters. By the way, speaking of that lead that you ladled out of the pot; what did you do with it?”

  “Nothing. It wasn’t no good to us. We just left it in the pots for Bert, in case he had any use for it.”

  “And Bert’s address is—?”

  “Sixty-four Little Bolter Street, Walworth. But don’t you go worrying him. He don’t know nothing what he didn’t ought to.”

  “You needn’t be afraid of our giving him any trouble,” said Miller. “We may not have to call on him at all, but, in any case it will only be a matter of a few questions which he won’t mind answering. And now, perhaps you’d like another fag to smoke while I am writing up your statement.”

  Mr. Bunter accepted the “fag” readily and even hinted that the making of statements was dry work; on which Miller directed the sergeant to provide him with a further half-pint. Meanwhile, Thorndyke and I, having no concern with the formalities of the statement, went forth to stretch our legs and take a more detailed survey of the waterside. When we returned, the statement had been transcribed and duly signed by Mr. Frederick Bunter. And this brought to an end a very satisfactory day’s work.

  CHAPTER XVII

  The Unconscious Receivers

  During the return journey, the Superintendent showed a natural disposition to discuss the bearings of what we had learned from Bunter and reckon up his gains in the matter of evidence.

  “It was a pleasant surprise to me,” said he, “to hear Bunter let himself go in the way he did. I was afraid, from what the sergeant said, that we shouldn’t get much out of him.”

  “Yes,” said I, “he was rather unexpectedly expansive. I think what started him was your insistence that Wicks had got possession of the platinum, when he knew, as he supposed, that Bassett had planted the wrong weights. He was mightily staggered when you told him that the swag
had been recovered. Still, we’ve a good deal more to learn yet before we shall know exactly what did happen.”

  “That is true,” agreed Miller. “We’ve learned a lot from Bunter, but there is a lot more that we don’t know, and that Bunter doesn’t know. The question is, how much do we know? What do you say, Doctor? I should like to hear you sum up what we have gained by this statement, and tell us exactly how you think we stand.”

  “My feeling,” said Thorndyke, “is that we have advanced our knowledge considerably. We have shortened the gap between the two parts of the problem which are known to us. When we came down, our knowledge of the platinum ceased with its disappearance from the cloak room and began again with its reappearance in the coffin. That was a big gap. But, as I have said, that gap is now to a great extent filled up. The problem that remains is to trace those lumps of alloy from Bert Wallis’s workshop to the false coffin; and I don’t think that we shall have much difficulty in doing it. But, before we proceed to count up our gains, we had better consider what it is that we want to know.

  “Now, I remind you that there are two distinct problems, which we had better keep quite separate: the platinum robbery and the substituted coffin. Bunter’s statement bears on both, but we must not get them confused. Let us take the robbery first. My impression is that we now know all that we are likely to know about it. We all have probably formed certain suspicions; but suspicions are of no use unless there is some prospect of confirming them. And I do not think that there is. But, after all, is there any object in pursuing the matter? The two visible principals in the robbery are dead. As to poor Bunter, he was a mere spectator. He never knew any of the details.”

  “He was, at least, an accessory after the fact,” said Miller.

  “True. But is he worth powder and shot? Remember, this robbery was committed outside British jurisdiction. It will be an extradition case, unless you charge Bunter with complicity in the theft from the cloak room. It will be for the Latvian police to make the first move, which they probably will not, as the property has been recovered and the principal offenders are dead.”