‘What you have remembered, and in particular the smell of fruit and your recollection of your mother making jam, has led us to Tiptree in Essex. I conclude that you were held somewhere near the famous preserves producer Wilkin and Sons. Watson, please will you look through the newspapers for the day concerned and determine the direction of the wind.’
After a search I was able to answer, ‘It was from the south west.’
‘That places the house somewhere to the north east of Tiptree. I conjecture that the smell of preserves in large quantities could be detected for up to a mile away. We need to look for a house with two dormer windows facing approximately south and not too far away from the preserves establishment.’
‘Shall I look up the times of trains to Colchester, or rather Witham, because that is closer to Tiptree?’
‘Please do. However, first we must bring Superintendent Lestrade into the case. The Admiralty and the abduction case are, I am now certain, one and the same thing.’
Miss Smith gave a startled look and became pale.
‘The Admiralty, Mr Holmes?’
‘Are you feeling all right?’ I said.
‘I am surprised. You see, my Jack is a clerk at the Admiralty.’
Holmes then said, ‘Has he held his position for some time?’
‘About a year. Previously he was with Handel, Farmer and Triton of Victoria Street, the consulting engineers to the Admiralty.’
Holmes made a note and then stood up and took Miss Smith’s hand saying, ‘We have questioned you enough for today. Please go home. I can assure you that we will find your fiancé.’
Part Four
One case, not two
A telegram to Lestrade brought him round as fast as a hansom could travel from Scotland Yard.
‘I received your message, Mr Holmes. You say that a case on which you are engaged may be connected to the disappearance of the Admiralty papers.’
‘More than may be. Watson and I are certain they are one and the same. Can you arrange for the local constabulary to assist us if we visit Tiptree in Essex? I shall explain further once we are on our way.’
‘Certainly, Mr Holmes. First I must send a message to the police at Colchester. May your boy take it round to the telegraph office?’
Lestrade composed his message and Billy took it to the telegraph office. I looked up the times of the trains and within an hour we were on our way to Witham. An inspector of the local police was there to meet us. A cab was hired and Holmes instructed the driver to take us to the east of the preserves factory. The wind was in the west and soon we could smell the aroma of fruit.
Holmes sniffed the air and said, ‘If I am not mistaken they are in the process of preparing marmalade.’
Under Holmes’ direction, the cabman took us along lanes that passed between fields of strawberries, rows of blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes and other fruits.
‘Stop. Look, there is a house with two dormer windows facing south. See, the one standing away from the others. Let us get closer. Go on, cabbie.’
We left the cab after making certain that it could not be seen from the house. When we got closer, I pointed up at the upper windows. ‘Look, they are papered over, as Miss Smith told us. This is the house. What happens now?’
‘A good question, Watson. Now, Lestrade, what do you suggest we do?’
Lestrade and the inspector conferred and they agreed that the latter would knock on the door. The rest of us kept to one side, ready to rush in. The knock was answered by a tall woman. Before she could say anything we all rushed into the hallway. Halfway down the stairs was a young man. Holmes said, ‘Mr Jack Forest, I believe.’
The two police officers seized him. Lestrade said, ‘We believe that you may be implicated in a robbery of crown property. Who else is in the house?’
Apparently, he and the woman were alone. We found the upper floor rooms and some drawings and papers. Lestrade believed they were some of those that had been ‘borrowed’ from the Admiralty for a few days.
On the way back to London, I asked Holmes why he knew it was Jack Forest on the stairs of the house.
‘Because up to that moment,’ he replied, ‘I had assumed he was a prisoner in the house. As he was obviously not under restraint I deduced instantly that he may have been involved with the crime. He must have gone to the Admiralty at the same time as the villains were taking his fiancée back to London. There he replaced the purloined pages and drawings. On realizing that an investigation had started, he returned to the house only to find that his accomplices had left.’
It was a very distraught Miss Smith when she was told of her fiancé’s involvement with espionage. Apparently, they had wanted to marry the previous year but she had no dowry, and he had lost all his savings on that downfall of many men, a ‘certainty’ at the races.
Part Five
The end was not the end
The Admiralty congratulated Holmes and Lestrade on clearing up the affair.
We were taking the air by walking in Regent’s Park.
‘By the way, Holmes, how did you know when Miss Smith came to see you that she was a lady typewriter?’
‘A very simple observation, Watson. Her fingernails were cut very short and there was a very faint red and blue stain on each of her thumbs and index fingers.’ Suddenly he stopped, turned and said, ‘Watson, we must find a telegraph office. The Admiralty case is not closed.’
The next morning we were standing in front of the cabinet with Lieutenant Dreyer. He had been surprised to find that there was more to consider.
‘Lieutenant, Miss Smith, Forest’s fiancée, told us that she was ordered to start copying from page three onward and therefore could not know that they were naval documents. In fact, as she said, the first two pages did not appear to be there. Please will you open the cabinet?’
The top drawer was pulled out and there lay the buff folder marked ‘Most Confidential’.
‘As you said, the papers may have been taken much earlier than you thought and, as there was no occasion to take the folder out, you never suspected that it was empty. That is, all except the title page and the next page. You did tell us that the secret device described had been approved, and that you were waiting for the plans to be collected by the company which was to build the device.’
‘That is so, Mr Holmes.’
‘Now what about Jack Forest? Had he access to the cabinet? No, of course not. You have the only key. I presume he knew about the secret?’
‘He was well aware of it because he took the minutes of all the meetings when it was discussed.’
‘Then he is very much implicated.’
Holmes produced the papers we had found in the house along with the rough copies that had been made of the drawings. ‘These may be some of the original pages. I presume that the title sheet and the next page were concerned purely with administrative matters and therefore of no interest to a foreign power.’
‘A correct assumption, Mr Holmes.’
‘If I am again correct, some of the pages of the original have been replaced by others typewritten by Miss Smith. If we look closely, even though the same make of typewriting machine and the same Admiralty paper have been used, there are differences. For example, the letter “p” has a broken descender. Furthermore the ink used for the mathematical symbols and the Greek letters is not the same as on the other pages. I suggest that when the plans were returned to the cabinet, deliberate changes had been made. I advise you to bring the inventor in and ask him to go carefully over every detail, particularly the fearsome equations. They may have been altered, thereby rendering the working of the device uncertain.’
‘I still do not understand, Mr Holmes. How were the papers taken out for a few days and then replaced without the cabinet door being forced?’ asked the lieutenant.
‘You may recall that I examined the floor in front of the cabinet. It was then that I was able to discern faint scratches. They indicated that the cabinet had been moved away from th
e wall. Now, gentlemen, let us pull it away.’
At the back of the cabinet and at the level of the topmost drawer a narrow slot had been cut through the back panel.
‘See, that is how the drawings and papers were removed and later replaced. I suspected that that may have been the method used. When I first examined the cabinet I noticed traces of sawdust in the back of the top drawer. In all this, Lieutenant, I fail to understand how Forest was able to move so freely between here and Tiptree and cut into the cabinet without you or others noticing?’
‘I regret to have to admit it, Mr Holmes, none of us was aware of the need for excessive security. I have been taught an important lesson. I now remember that it was part of Forest’s duties to visit the Admiralty patents agent in Chancery Lane. When he was absent for all or part of a day I assumed that is where he was. The doorkeeper would not have been surprised to see him arrive or leave at times outside the usual office hours. He would then have been alone in the office.’
Needless to say, Forest was convicted of stealing state secrets and was sentenced to thirty years’ hard labour breaking rocks in the mists of Dartmoor. The woman in the Tiptree house was sentenced to penal servitude for a number of years. As for their accomplices, they were never traced. Further investigation by the Admiralty revealed that the equations had been changed on the originals. Had the device then been made and assembled, the navy’s gunnery fire control system would have contained errors that may not have been detected for many years. Eventually the navy decided to abandon the device and encourage the development of another that was far more accurate. This was the invention of Arthur Pollen, who, by coincidence, was also a civilian having an interest in complex calculating devices.
Whenever I reach for a pot of conserve and the name Tiptree catches my eye, I am reminded of Miss Smith’s tragic face when she was told about her lover’s crime.
Notes
Female operators of typewriters at this time were called ‘typewriters’.
A railway was not constructed from the main line to Tiptree until the twentieth century.
Both Dreyer and Pollen were key figures along with Admiral Percy Scott in the development of fire control systems for the Royal Navy. At the time of this tale there were many alternative routes available from London to the principal cities.
The Mystery of the Wires
In which a four-wheeler is taken and not a hansom.
Part One
Among the many cases of Sherlock Holmes which I have the pleasure of setting before the reader are those involving the marvels of our age. I refer, of course, to the steamship, the railways, the submarine, the breech loading guns and, most importantly, the telegraph. The last enables us to communicate virtually instantaneously over vast distances.
One day in the spring of 1900, just as we were about to finish our breakfast, the page boy brought in a letter that had been delivered by special messenger. The seal on the envelope indicated that it had come from the Foreign Office.
‘What are we to make of this, Watson? Very official. Not another secret treaty stolen from under the noses of Her Majesty’s government! Perhaps a minister has been caught in flagrante and I have to mitigate the situation?’
I was impatient to learn of the contents. ‘Come on, Holmes. Open it.’ I pushed the paper knife across the breakfast table.
‘From the Foreign Minister himself and in, what I presume, is his own hand. Yes, it is. It’s signed Craneford.’ He read through the short letter and said, ‘Watson, we are requested to be at the Foreign Office as soon as possible. English can be a very subtle language. The tone of the letter is extremely polite. However, there is a veiled meaning that implies this is an order. I assume you will come with me?’
‘Certainly. I’ve always wanted to see the inside of the Foreign Office.’
‘My reply will request that you accompany me.’
A ministry porter was waiting for us as we alighted from a hansom. We were led up the great staircase at the top of which stood an elderly gentleman. He greeted us, saying, ‘Good morning. Please come with me. His lordship received your message and agrees that your companion may accompany you. I did not greet you by name. This was deliberate because his lordship does not want your presence to be known for reasons which he will explain.’
We went along a corridor, past numerous large paintings depicting notable events in our country’s history, and were shown into the room in which important decisions had been taken concerning Britain’s standing in the world.
After greeting us, Lord Craneford introduced the other person in the room.
‘Mr Holmes, Doctor Watson, this is Mr Harcourte-Smith, the postmaster general, who will now explain a matter of the gravest concern.’
‘Good morning, gentlemen. As his lordship says, this is a very grave matter and one which not only places the government in a very difficult position, it threatens the commercial standing of the post office telegraphs, were the press to get wind of the affair.’
‘Grave indeed,’ responded Holmes.
‘For some years,’ said the postmaster general, ‘we have operated telegraph lines for the exclusive use of the Foreign Office between here and two telegraph stations: one on the shore of the German Ocean and the other on the south coast. From those two points messages are carried by the commercial submarine telegraph cables to the continent.’
‘The information is extremely confidential and involves matters passing between here and Her Majesty’s ambassadors in many countries,’ said the Foreign Minister.
‘When did you become aware that your messages to ambassadors were being illegally read?’ asked Holmes.
‘It was about a month ago. I called in our intelligence people immediately. Unfortunately they are out of their depth when it comes to this sort of situation.’
‘The delay is most unfortunate. Any clues may have been obliterated by time.’ Holmes turned to the postmaster general and said, ‘Please tell me more about the wires along which the messages are sent.’
‘My engineers tell me that the telegraph wires between the principal London telegraph exchange and the shore end of the undersea cable are mostly on poles alongside the railway. Only between the telegraph office here in the Foreign Office and the top end of Whitehall is it possible to identify particular wires, because there are only a few. From that point onward they are carried on the same poles as the public and private lines. Somewhere between here and the top end of Whitehall we are sure the wires are being “tapped”. That is, an illegal connection is being made which enables someone to read the messages.’
Holmes made some notes and then said, ‘Do I understand then that someone might be able to reach the wires and, as you say, “tap” them in order to extract messages?’
‘That is possible, Mr Holmes. The wires are strung on insulators mounted on poles on the tops of most buildings between here and where they join the other wires. Access to the roofs is not difficult, otherwise our linesmen would not have been able to install them in the first place.’
‘You would say that in order to tap the wire or wires, someone has to have special understanding of telegraphy?’
‘Indeed, Mr Holmes, I am given to understand, by those who know about such things, that just to attach a wire and a Morse apparatus would, as they say, unbalance the circuit. Specialized knowledge would be essential in order to devise an apparatus whose presence could not be detected.’
‘Presumably you have searched along the wires for an illegal connection?’
‘Certainly, that’s the first thing my engineers and linesmen did. We suspect that the eavesdropper removed the connection when he heard our men approaching. Once they had moved on to the next roof he reconnected it.’
‘Therefore we have to find a rogue wire, as it were, leading off the wire into a room or some place in one of the buildings along Whitehall. A very difficult task.’ Holmes paused for a moment and then said, ‘A heavy-handed search would only alert the criminals and they would flee.
I shall have to have time in which to consider a number of possible methods of solving the problem. In the meantime, my lord, I recommend that you either limit your messages in number or change the cipher more frequently. Which brings me to the question, how do you convey to your ambassadors the need to change the cipher?’
‘We send a message that includes a number, and that indicates which of over a dozen ciphers is to be used.’
‘And that of course leads to the conclusion that whoever is “tapping” into your most secret telegrams must have acquired all the ciphers. It also means, of course, that we are looking for three criminals: one, I regret to say, is more than likely within the Foreign Office, another on a roof or in an attic and a third, the mastermind, who deciphers and makes use of the information. Having three quarries can be an advantage. It increases the chances of success. Find one and you bag the other two. Ah, wait a minute, what about your own telegraphist? We must include him as a suspect because he is, surely, aware of the nature of your very confidential messages?’
‘He is obviously aware of their importance although, of course, cannot read them. They are just a string of random letters. Furthermore they are handed to him personally by my private secretary. He stays beside the telegraphist as the encrypted message is sent. When it has gone and been acknowledged, the message is brought back and filed with the others in the safe.’
‘May I examine the safe?’
‘Of course. It’s in a room next to my office.’
The Foreign Secretary unlocked the door and led Holmes into a small windowless room.
‘I see you have no electrified lighting in this room,’ commented Holmes.
‘The office of works people have yet to get round to providing it.’
Sherlock Holmes at the Breakfast Table Page 20