by AnonYMous
In another five minutes they were at the station. The station-master was waiting for them.
“Nothing has been found, sir!” were his first words.
Blake turned to Mr. Gaunt.
“I should like to seq the prisoner,” he said.
“That is easily arranged,” replied tire director. “He is still at the police-station. I’ll take you on in the car.”
The local authorities were quite ready to do anything to assist Sexton Blake. They took him to the cell, and Bathurst sat chatting to the police-sergeant nearly half an hour before his colleague reappeared.
“Thank you,” said Blake, in reply to the sergeant’s inquiries. “I have got all that Clibborn can tell me. Bathurst, we must go back to the railway-station.”
“Well,” said Bathurst, as they walked up the street, “does he stick to his story!”
“Absolutely! He swears there were two men, and that both attacked him. He declares that their object was to steal his patent bag, and he reiterates his entire innocence of the murder.”
“But the story’s absurd,” growled Bathurst.
“So absurd that I’m half inclined to believe it. No one short of a lunatic would have invented such a yarn!”
“But the third man,” urged Bathurst. “What became of him? He couldn’t have jumped from a train going at fifty miles an hour. At least, if he had the plate-layers would surely have found the pieces.”
Arrived at the station, Blake asked if it would be possible to run him down the line.
“Certainly,” said the station-master. An engine was ordered out, and in a few minutes the detective and his assistant were steaming southwards towards Barquay. Blake requested the driver not to exceed fifteen miles an hour, and as he stood on the footplate his quick eyes searched the ground on either side of the line.
In about an hour they reached the Long Bank, where the line dropped down, in a beautifully-engineered curve, through thick woods cut into the lovely valley of Longbourne. Halfway down the hill was a siding running to a gravel-pit.
“Can you stop here?” Blake asked the driver.
The driver said he could wait in the siding as long as necessary. He ran the engine in, and Blake jumped down.
“Come on, Bathurst!” he said, and, strolling leisurely away from the railway, plunged amongst the thickest of the trees.
III.
Blake walked on down the hill, through covert so thick one could not see five yards in any direction. Bathurst followed.
All of a sudden the trees opened, and they were standing on the brink of a wide, slow stream.
“Hallo!” exclaimed Bathurst, “here’s the railway again!”
They had emerged from the wood just below the spot where the line crossed it on a stone-built bridge. Here the river took a sharp curve to the right, so that the railway embankment ran for a distance of some two hundred yards close alongside the opposite bank.
Blake sat down leisurely on the grass.
“Bathurst,” he said, “what do you say to a swim?”
He began peeling off his clothes. Bathurst, whom experience had taught to fall in with every whim of Blake, followed his example.
Blake, having dived in, struck out towards the far side, and swam some distance down stream. Then he came back and swam up the left bank towards the spot where he had left his clothes.
When Bathurst rejoined him he was dressing. Both dressed, Blake led the way to the railway bridge, clambered up the embankment, and crossed. Arrived at a point some fifty yards beyond the bridge, he turned to the left and scrambled down towards the river.
The bank ran steeply into the water. Footing was difficult, but Blake worked his way along over the coarse, dry grass, and Bathurst followed cautiously.
The further they advanced the less steep became the slope. At last they reached a place where there was a tongue of level land between embankment and river. This was covered with a coarse growth of brambles and nettles.
Blake advanced cautiously. Suddenly he gave a triumphant cry, and, plunging down into the weeds, brought up a most extraordinary object.
It was a tangle of thin steel ribs crushed and broken in the most extraordinary fashion, and covered with tattered scraps of black leather.
He held it up before Bathurst’s eyes.
“The bag!” he said. “And now for the man. He hasn’t gone far.”
He was on the trail again like a questing bloodhound. Signs invisible even to Bathurst’s trained eyes were to him as plain as print.
Leaving the railway, he walked sharply across a water meadow, then, turning half-right, gained a dense osier-bed where the swampy ground squelched beneath their feet. Here the trail was plain to any eyes. The tall swamp weeds—marsh-mallow, ragged robin, and flag—were crushed and broken as by a heavy weight, but still there was no sign of the fugitive.
“I didn’t think he’d have got so far,” muttered Blake.
The words were hardly out of his mouth before a groan broke upon the stillness of the afternoon. Blake dashed on, forcing aside the pliant osier with both hands. Next moment Bathurst saw him drop on his knees beside a man who lay flat on his back on a patch of raised ground.
The man, whose ugly face was blackened and covered with dried blood, turned and glared.
“The ’tecs!” he groaned. “If it hadn’t been for that bag I’d have got clear.”
“Just so,” said Blake coolly. “How much damaged are you?”
“Too bad for the likes of you to put the rope round my neck,” retorted the other, a gleam of triumph in his eyes.
Blake made a brief examination.
“The fellow’s right,” he muttered. “He’s booked. Young Clibborn spoke the truth about his bag. You might just as well fool with an anarchist’s bomb. But what did you want the bag for?”
“The bag!” growled the fellow. “That warn’t the bag we was after. It were that fool Luigi made the mistake. We was after the chap from the Union Bank.”
“I thought so,” replied Blake coolly. “Bathurst, go and get help.”
It was hardly more than half an hour before Bathurst was back with two men and a hurdle. But when they reached the little opening in the osier bed it was too late. The murderer was dead. They left his body at a neighboring farm, and, mounting their engine, returned to Hesslewood.
“I see part of it,” said Bathurst, “but not all. Tell me!”
“Simple enough,” replied Blake. “Clibborn’s story was so extraordinary that I believed it, and acted on that belief.
“The first deduction was that the two thieves, after chloroforming Clibborn, whom they mistook for the bank clerk, quarrelled over their spoils. That gave a motive for the murder. The next was that the murderer, in panic, left the train en route.
“Now, a man can’t jump out of a fast train on to hard ground. It is suicide to try it. But he can jump into water. A very little pumping of our director friend showed me that the Longbourne was the only possible place where the murderer could have jumped. I argued that he would have thrown the bag out first on to the firm ground, and then himself have dived into the river.
“That swim proved that I was right. I spotted the place where the fellow climbed up the bank. The rest, of course, was easy. When I interviewed Clibborn this morning he told me about this bag of his. It is so constructed that, although the owner can open or shut it without difficulty or danger, violence causes the explosion of a small charge of a special explosive.
“The late unlamented pounded it with a large chunk of limestone, and suffered accordingly.
“That’s the whole story,” concluded Blake drily. “But all I can say is that if the reporters come worrying me about it I shall be extremely rude. I came to Hesslewood for some fishing, and that I’m going to have.”
FOR SAFE DEPOSIT
26 June 1909
I.
“Lord Arlingford wishes to see his box,” whispered the cashier. And Mr. Upton Greig, manager of the Barnmouth branch of the Southern Counties Bank, hurried out to greet his most important client.
“Come this way, my lord,” he said, lifting the flap in the counter.
Lord Arlingford, a stout and rather pompous-looking person of sixty, followed the manager into the large private room behind the office.
“We are home again sooner than I expected, Mr. Greig,” said his lordship affably. “Lady Arlingford is going to Dunglas tomorrow, and, as she desires to take her rubies with her, I came myself to fetch them.”
Mr. Greig unlocked a door in the right-hand wall and ushered his client down a wide flight of stone steps.
At the bottom was a great black door of solid metal, unrelieved except by a large brass handle and two small keyholes in the centre. Mr. Greig took a bunch of keys from his pocket, unlocked the two locks separately, then, wrenching round the handle, swung the massive steel door silently back upon its well-oiled hinges.
Beyond was a second grille door, made of latticed steel. A third key opened this. Mr. Greig stepped forward, switched on an electric light, and revealed a large brick-vaulted cellar with a floor of solid concrete. The only openings in the walls were narrow air-shafts over the door, and these but served to show the enormous thickness of the walls themselves.
Round the walls were shelves on which were ranged a number of boxes, mostly of iron or steel. Among them was a small, square steel one, which Mr. Greig lifted down from near the end of a shelf.
“It hasn’t had time to collect much dust, my lord,” said the manager, with a smile.
“No,” replied Lord Arlingford. “I think it was only on May 28th that I left it with you, was it not!”
“That was the date, I think. Exactly a week ago.”
Lord. Arlingford produced his keys, chose the right one, inserted it in the lock, and lifted the lid. In a tray lay five handsome jewel-cases of crimson morocco.
“Have you ever seen the Arlingford rubies?” asked the peer.
“No, my lord. I should like to, above all things,” replied the manager, with a bow.
“This is the tiara,” said Lord Arlingford, snapping open the largest care.
“Why, good heavens! What does this mean?” he stammered, gasping.
The case was empty. So were all the other four. The Arlingford rubies had utterly disappeared!
II.
“It means absolute ruin for me, Mr. Blake!” said Greig. The man’s voice vibrated with sternly-repressed emotion.
“You have told me the whole story,” replied Blake. “But are you sure, Mr. Greig, that you have omitted nothing? For instance, could no one have got at your keys?”
Greig flushed slightly under the steady gaze of the keen eyes.
“I will be quite open,” he said. “One evening I went to the swimming-bath and left my keys in my trouser-pocket while I was in the water.”
“And do you think that anyone could have got at them in the meantime? It doesn’t take long, remember, to get a wax impression.”
“I am almost certain that no one did so,” replied the manager vehemently. “The dressing-rooms open on the bath. I was not in the water for more than five minutes. I should certainly have seen any person who entered my dressing-box.”
“Very well. We will now take a look at the vault.”
Sexton Blake’s examination of the vault seemed to the jangled nerves of the manager unnecessarily long and tedious. The detective sounded the walls and floor. From the floor, Blake turned attention to the contents of the vault. He asked to be shown where Lord Arlingford’s box had stood. He went round and looked at every box and chest in the place, on the shelves and the floor, and made various entries in a small notebook.
At last the detective snapped the elastic on his book, put it back in his pocket, and said briskly: “That will do for the present, Mr. Greig. Now, if you will allow me, I will see the box-register.”
To the manager this seemed almost as futile a proceeding as the examination of the vault, but he made no objection, and presently Blake was deep in the ledger which recorded the dates of the deposit of boxes in the strong-room, their description, and the names and addresses of the clients who had deposited them.
“Here is Lord Arlingford’s, I see, on May 28th,” said Blake.
“Yes, it was only in the vault a week. The loss was discovered the day before yesterday—June 4th,” replied the other, with a puzzled frown.
“I see that a large plate-chest was deposited on the following day—the 29th—by a Mr. and Mrs. Matheson-Finch,” said Blake.
“Yes; it’s there now,” answered Greig.
“And are these old clients of yours?”
“No, not very. Their account was opened in April, I think. Wait; I’ll tell you.”
He went out of the private room into the office, and while he was gone Blake whipped out his pocket-book and compared certain entries with those in the box-register.
The door opened again.
“Yes; April 2nd,” said Greig.
“I’ll just take a note of their address, and you may expect me again about three o’clock,” said Blake, and walked off briskly, leaving the manager in a state of profound perplexity.
III.
Punctually at the hour mentioned the detective returned to the bank, and, as soon as he was shown into the private room, his first words were: “Greig, I must examine that chest—the Matheson Finch’s, I mean.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed the manager in shocked tones. “It would be a crime. If such a thing became known it would ruin the bank.”
“Oh, very well, Mr. Greig! But I warn you that, if you refuse, I must throw up the case.”
“Very well,” said Greig at last with a sort of groan. “It must be as you wish, Mr. Blake. When will you do it?”
“At once,” replied, Sexton Blake sharply. “If we wait till night it will probably be too late.”
Once more the two descended to the vault. Greig carefully closed and locked the doors behind them, then helped Blake to lift the weighty chest into the open.
Blake examined the box closely. It was very large, being about four feet deep, three long, and three broad. It was rather new, made of yellow pine and clamped with iron. On the top was painted in black the name, “H. Matheson-Finch”—nothing else.
Suddenly Blake gave a low chuckle.
“Look at this!” he said.
“This” was a small slit almost hidden under one of the metal clamps.
He pulled out a bunch of skeleton keys, and, after examining the lock selected a couple. The second turned the wards, and in a moment the lid was flung back.
“It’s empty!” gasped the manager, his face like ashes. “Have they robbed that too?”
“No; it’s not empty,” returned Blake. “Look here!”
He plunged his hand into the depths of the box, and lifted out a large chunk of pig-iron. Another and another were removed, until a pile of ten in all lay upon the floor.
Greig looked on in a state of blank amazement.
“But what does it mean?” he asked helplessly.
For answer Blake picked up one of the lumps of iron and held it out to the manager.
“What do you think that weighs?” he asked.
Greig took it unwillingly and balanced, it in his hand.
“Oh, about a stone, I suppose.”
“And there are ten of them,” remarked Blake. “One hundred and forty pounds in all. Does that tell you anything?”
Greig shook his head again. He was clever at his own work, but his brain had none of that lightning power of deduction which had made Sexton Blake the greatest detective in England.
“Well, I’ll tell you this much, Mr. Greig,” s
aid Blake, in his quiet way. “I see light. And, though I have no idea whether or not I can recover the rubies, I think I can lay my hand on the people who stole them.”
“And now,” he went on, “as I shall have to stay in the bank for the present, I’ll go back upstairs again, and, if you’ll allow me, sit in your private room.”
“The place is at your disposal,” said Greig earnestly. In one minute half the lines were gone which the last two days had stamped upon his tired face.
No sooner were they back up the stairs than a clerk came into the room and spoke to the manager: “A carriage has called for Mr. Matheson-Finch’s plate-chest.”
The manager actually smiled as he stood on the steps of the bank and watched a brougham—plainly a jobbed one—driving away with a huge iron-bound yellow chest on the top.
“No. 5, Lipton Terrace, Murley,” was the address which had been given to the driver, but as soon as the carriage was round the corner the driver turned his horse in a direction which was certainly not that of Barnmouth’s pretty suburb, Murley.
At last it stopped outside a small, ugly house with a square of shabby grass between its rusty iron railings and its blistered front door.
The man inside—presumably Mr. Matheson Finch—got out, and he and the driver, with much perspiration and many gasps, lifted the chest off the carriage and carried it through a narrow passage into a dirty, ill-furnished back-room.
The driver then departed.
A small man, with a pinched face and a cast in his left eye, came down.
“So you’ve got it, Josh?” he said in a queer, squeaky voice. “It’s my belief t ’ud have been a sight better to leave it where it were.”
“Not much it wouldn’t!” retorted the other. “Didn’t you hear, Bill? They got that plaguey detective Sexton Blake down. Emily saw him this morning at the station. First thing you know, he’d have spotted this box and wanted to know what them air-holes meant.”
“Maybe you knows best,” replied Bill apologetically. “Anyway, it were a good plant. An’, now, what are you going to do with the chest?”
“Bury it along with the other,” replied Josh emphatically.