Part 19
“So you never guessed, Sir Fergus?” he chuckled cunningly. “We kept the secret well, but it doesn’t matter now. _I am Charles Babbage!_”
The noise of wheel and connecting-rod cut off the chance of a reply, even if anyone had been prepared to make one. But no one, in that bewildering moment, was.
“The solution,” announced Spinola with a flourish, and he passed a little slip of metal stamped with a row of figures into Sir Fergus’s hand. Then, with a curious indifference to their verdict, he turned away from the group and applied himself to the machine again.
“What is it? Is it not correct?” demanded Mercia in an agonised whisper. She had not looked at the solution, but at her lover’s face, and her hand suddenly gripped his arm.
“It is incomprehensible,” replied Sir Fergus, dropping his voice so that the old man could not overhear. “It isn’t a matter of right or wrong--it is a mere farrago of nonsense.”
“But harmless nonsense--quite harmless,” interposed Carrados softly from behind them. “Come, we can safely leave him here; you will always be able to leave him safely here. Help Miss Dugard out, Copling. It is better, believe me, to leave him now.”
Spinola did not turn. He was bending over the machine to which he had given life, brain and fortune, touching its wheels and sliding rods with loving fingers. They passed silently from his presence and crept back to the deserted salon, where the deposed head of Aurelius leered cynically at them from the floor.
VIII
The Kingsmouth Spy Case
“Not guilty, my lord!” There was a general laugh in the lounge of the Rose and Plumes, the comfortable old Cliffhurst hotel that upheld the ancient traditions unaffected by the flaunting rivalry of Grand or Metropole. The jest hidden in the retort was a small one, but it was at the expense of a pompous, pretentious bore, and the speaker was a congenial wag who had contrived in the course of a few weeks to win a facile popularity on all sides.
Across the room one of the later arrivals--“the blind gentleman,” as he was sympathetically alluded to, for few had occasion to learn his name--turned slightly towards the direction of the voice and added a pleasantly appreciative smile to the common tribute. Then his attention again settled on the writing-table at which he sat, and for the next few minutes his pencil travelled smoothly, with an occasional pause for consideration, over the block of telegraphic forms that he had picked out. At the end of ten minutes he rang for a waiter and directed that his own man should be sent to him.
“Here are three telegrams to go off, Parkinson,” he said in the suave, agreeable voice that scarcely ever varied, no matter what the occasion might be. “You will take them yourself at once. After that I shall not require you again to-night.”
The attendant thanked him and withdrew. The blind man closed his letter-case, retired from the writing-table to the obscurity of a sequestered corner and sat unnoticed with his sightless eyes, that always seemed to be quietly smiling, looking placidly into illimitable space as he visualised the scene before him, and the laughter, the conversation and the occasional whisper went on unchecked around.
* * * * *
Max Carrados had journeyed down to Cliffhurst a few days previously, good-naturedly, but without any enthusiasm. Indeed it had needed all Mr Carlyle’s persuasive eloquence to move him.
“The Home Office, Max,” urged the inquiry agent, “one of the premier departments of the State! Consider the distinction! Surely you will not refuse a commission of that nature direct from the Government?” Carrados, looking a little deeper than a Melton overcoat and a glossy silk hat, had once declared his friend to be the most incurably romantic of idealists. He now took a malicious pleasure in reducing the situation to its crudest terms.
“Why can’t the local police arrest a solitary inoffensive German spy themselves?” he inquired.
“To tell the truth, Max, I believe that there are two or three fingers in that pie at the present moment,” replied Mr Carlyle confidentially. “It doesn’t concern the Home Office alone. And after that Guitry Bay fiasco and the unmerciful chaffing that we got in the German papers--with rather a nasty rap or two over the knuckles from the _Kölnische Zeitung_--both Whitehall and Downing Street are in a blue funk lest they should do the wrong thing, either let the man slip away with the papers or arrest him without them.”
“Contingencies with which I am sure you could grapple successfully, Louis.”
Mr Carlyle’s bland complacency did not suggest that he, at any rate, had any doubt on that score.
“But, you know, Max, I am pledged to carry through the Vandeeming affair here in town. And--um--well, the Secretary did make a point of you being the man they relied on.”
“Oh! someone there must read the papers, Louis. But I wonder ... why they did not communicate with me direct.”
Mr Carlyle contrived to look extremely ingenuous. Even he occasionally forgot that looks went for nothing with Carrados.
“I imagine that they thought that a friendly intermediary--or something of that sort.”
“Possibly Inspector Beedel hinted to the Commissioner that you would have more influence with me than a whole Government Department?” smiled Carrados. “And so you have, Louis; so you have. If it’s your ambition to get the Government on your books you can tell your clients that I’ll take on their job!”
“By Jupiter, Max, you are a good fellow if ever there was one!” exclaimed Mr Carlyle with gentlemanly emotion. “But I owe too much to you already.”
“This won’t make it any more, then. I have another reason, quite different, for going.”
“Of course you have,” assented the visitor heartily. “You are not one to talk about patriotism, and all that, but you can’t hoodwink me with your dilettantish pose, Max, and I know that deep down in your nature there is a passionate devotion to your country----”
“Thank you, Louis,” interrupted Carrados. “It is very nice to learn that. But I am really going to Kingsmouth because there’s a man there--a curate--who has the second best private collection in Europe of autonomous coins of Thessaly.”
For a few seconds Mr Carlyle looked his unutterable feelings. When he did speak it was with crushing deliberation.
“‘Mrs Carrados,’ I shall say--if ever there is a Mrs Carrados, Max--‘Mrs Carrados, two things are necessary for your domestic happiness. In the first place, pack up your husband’s tetradrachms in a brown-paper parcel and send them with your compliments to the British Museum. In the second, at the earliest possible opportunity, exact from him an oath that he will never touch another Greek coin as long as you both live.’”
“If ever there is a Mrs Carrados,” was the quick retort, “I shall probably be independent of the consolation of Greek coins as, also, Louis, of the distraction of criminal investigation. In the meantime, what are you going to tell me about this case?”
Mr Carlyle at once became alert. He would have become absolutely professional had not Carrados tactfully obtruded the cigar-box. The digression, and the pleasant aroma that followed it, brought him back again to the merely human.
“It began, like a good many other cases, with an anonymous letter.” He took a slip of paper from his pocket-book and handed it to Carrados. “Here is a copy.”
“A copy!” The blind man ran his finger lightly along the lines and read aloud what he found there:
“A friend warns you that an attempt is being successfully made on behalf of another Power to obtain naval information of vital importance. You have a traitor within your gates.”
Then he crumpled up the paper and dropped it half-contemptuously into the waste-paper basket. “A copy is no use to us, Louis,” he remarked. “Indeed it is worse than useless; it is misleading.”
“That is all they had here. The original was addressed to the Admiral-Superintendent at the Kingsmouth Dockyard. This was sent up with the report. But I am assured that the other contained no clue to the writer’s identity.”
“Not even a watermark, ‘Jones, stationer, High Street, Kingsmouth’!” said Carrados dryly. “Really, Louis! Every piece of paper contains at least four palpable clues.”
“And what are they, pray?”
“A smell, a taste, an appearance and a texture. This one, in addition, bears ink, and with it all the characteristics of an individual handwriting.”
“In capitals, Max,” Mr Carlyle reminded him. “Our anonymous friend is up to that.”
“Yes; I wonder who first started that venerable illusion.”
“Illusion?”
“Certainly an illusion. Capitals, or ‘printed handwriting’ as one sees them called, are just as idiomorphic as a cursive form.”
“But much less available for comparison. How are you going to obtain a specimen of anyone’s printed handwriting for comparison?”
Carrados reflected silently for a moment.
“I think I should ask anyone I suspected to do one for me,” he replied.
Carlyle resisted the temptation to laugh outright, but mordacity lurked in his voice.
“And you imagine that the writer of this, who evidently has good reason for anonymity, will be simple enough to comply?”
“I think so; if I ask him nicely.”
“Look here, Max, I will bet you a box of any cigars you care to name----”
“Yes, Louis?”
Mr Carlyle had hesitated. He was recalling one or two things from the past, and on those occasions his friend’s unemotional face had looked just as devoid of guile as it did now.
“No, Max, I won’t bet this time, but I should like to send across a small box of Monterey Coronas for Parkinson to pack among your things. Well, so much for the letter.”
“Not quite all,” interposed Carrados. “I must have the original.”
The visitor made a note in his pocket diary.
“It shall be sent to you at once. I stipulated an absolutely free hand for you. Oh, I took a tolerably high tone! I can assure you, Max. You will find everything at Kingsmouth very pleasant, and there, of course, you will learn all the details. Here they don’t seem to know very much. I was not informed whether the Dockyard authorities had already had their suspicions aroused or whether the letter was the first hint. At all events they acted with tolerable promptness. The letter, you will see, is undated, but it was delivered on the seventeenth--last Thursday. On Friday they put their hands on a man in the construction department--a fellow called Brown. He made no fight of it when he was cornered, but although he owned up to the charge of betraying information, there was one important link that he could not supply and one that he would not. He could not tell them who the spy collecting the information was, because there was an intermediary; and he would not betray the intermediary on any terms. And, by gad! I for one can’t help respecting the beggar for that remnant of loyalty.”
“A woman?” suggested Carrados.
“Even that, I believe, is not known, but very likely you have hit the mark. A woman would explain the element of chivalry that prompts Brown’s attitude. He is under open arrest now--nobody outside is supposed to know, but of course he can’t buy an evening paper without it being noted. They are in hope of something more definite turning up. At present they have pitched their suspicions on a German visitor staying at Cliffhurst.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Max. They must fix on someone, you know. It’s expected. All the same they are deucedly nervous at this end about the outcome.”
“Did they say what Brown had given away?”
“Yes, egad! Do you know anything of the Croxton-Delahey torpedo?”
“A little,” admitted Carrados.
“What does it do?” asked Mr Carlyle, with the rather sublime air of casual interest which he attached to any subject outside his own knowledge.
“It’s rather an ingenious contrivance. It is fired like any other uncontrolled torpedo. At the end of a straight run--anything up to ten thousand yards at 55 knots with the superheated system--the diabolical creature stops and begins deliberately to slash a zigzag course over any area you have set it for. If in its roving it comes within two hundred feet of any considerable mass of iron it promptly makes for it, cuts its way through torpedo netting if any bars its progress, explodes its three hundredweight of gun-cotton and finishes its existence by firing a 24 lb. thorite shell through the breach it has made.”
“’Um,” mused Mr Carlyle, “I don’t like the weapon, Max, but I would rather that we kept it to ourselves. Well, Mr Brown has given away the plans.”
Carrados disposed of the end of his cigar and crossed the room to his open desk. From its appointed place he took a book inscribed “Engagements,” touched a few pages and scribbled a line of comment here and there. Then he turned to his guest again.
“All right. I’ll go down to Kingsmouth by the 12.17 to-morrow morning,” he said. “Now I want you to look up the following points for me and let me have the particulars before I go.”
Mr Carlyle again took out his pocket diary and beamed approvingly.
* * * * *
As a matter of fact the tenor of the replies he received influenced Carrados to make some change in his plans. Accompanied by Parkinson he left London by the appointed train on the next day, but instead of proceeding to Kingsmouth he alighted at Cliffhurst, the pretty little seaside resort some five miles east of the great dockport. After securing rooms at the Rose and Plumes--an easy enough matter in October--he directed his attendant to take him to a sheltered seat on the winding paths below the promenade and there leave him for an hour.
“Very nicely kept, these walks and shrubberies, sir,” remarked an affable voice from the other end of the bench. A leisurely pedestrian whose clothes and manner proclaimed him to be an aimless holiday-maker had sauntered along and, after a moment’s hesitation, had sat down on the same form.
“Yes, Inspector,” replied Carrados genially. “Almost up to the standard of our own Embankment Gardens, are they not?”
Detective-Inspector Tapling, of New Scotland Yard, went rather red and then laughed quietly.
“I wasn’t quite sure at first if it was you, Mr Carrados,” he apologised, moving nearer and lowering his voice. “I was to report to you here, sir, and to give you any information and assistance you might require.”
“How are you getting on?” inquired Carrados.
“We think that we have got hold of the right man, sir; but for reasons that you can guess the Chief is very anxious to have no mistake this time.”
“Muller?”
“Yes, sir. He has a furnished villa here in Cliffhurst and is very open-handed. The time he came fits in, so far as we can tell, with the beginning of the inquiries in Kingsmouth. Then, whatever his real name is, it isn’t Muller.”
“He is a German?”
“Oh yes; he’s German right enough, sir. We’ve looked up telegrams to him from Lubeck--nothing important though--and he has changed German notes in Kingsmouth. He spends a lot of time over there--says the fishing is better, but that’s all my eye, only the Kingsmouth boatmen get hold of the dockyard talk and know more of the movements than the men about here. Then there’s a lady.”
“The intermediary?”
“That’s further than we can go at the moment, but there is a lady at the furnished villa. She’s not exactly Mrs Muller, we believe, but she lives there, if you understand what I mean, sir.”
“Perfectly,” acquiesced Carrados in the same modest spirit.
“So that all the necessary conditions can be shown to exist,” concluded Tapling.
“But so far you have not a single positive fact connecting Muller with Brown?”
The Inspector admitted that he had not, but added hopefully that he was in immediate expectation of information that would enable him to link up the detached surmises into a conclusive chain of direct evidence.
“And if I might ask the favour of you, sir,” he continued, “you would be doing us a great service if you would allow us to continue our investigation for another twenty-four hours. I think that by then we shall be able to show something solid. And if you certify what we have done, that’s all to our credit, whereas if you take it out of our hands now----You see what I mean, Mr Carrados, but of course it lies entirely with you.”
Carrados assented with his usual good nature. His actual business was only to examine the evidence before the arrest was made and to guarantee that the Home Office should not be involved in another spy-scare fiasco. He knew Tapling to be a reliable officer, and he did not doubt that the line he was working was the correct one. Least of all did he wish to deprive the man of his due credit.
“I can very well put in a day on my own account,” he accordingly replied. “And so long as Muller is here there does not appear to be any special urgency. I suppose the odds are that the papers have been got away before you began to watch?”
“There is just a chance yet, we believe, sir; and the Admiralty is very keen on recovering those torpedo plans if it’s to be done. Some of these foreign spies like to keep the thing as much as possible in their own hands. There’s more credit to it, and more cash, too, at headquarters if they do. Then if it comes to a matter of touch-and-go, a letter, and especially a letter from abroad, may be stopped on the way. You will say that a man may be, for that matter, but there’s been another reason against posting valuable papers about here for the past week.”
“Of course,” assented Carrados with enlightenment. “The Suffragettes down here are out.”
“I never thought to have any of that lot helping me,” said the Inspector, absent-mindedly stroking his right shin; “but they may have turned the scale for us this time. There isn’t a posting place from a rural pillar-box to the head office at Kingsmouth that has been really safe from them. They’ve even got at the registered letters in the sorting-rooms somehow. That’s why I think there’s a chance still.”
Parkinson’s approaching figure announced that an hour had passed. Carrados and the Inspector rose to walk away in different directions, but before they parted the blind man put a question that had confronted him several times, although he had as yet given only a glancing attention to the case.
“Now that Muller has got the plans of the torpedo, Inspector, why is he remaining here?”
It was a simple and an obvious inquiry, but before he replied Inspector Tapling looked round suspiciously. Then he further reduced the distance between them and dropped his voice to a whisper.
* * * * *
St Ethelburga’s boasted the most tin-potty bell and the highest ritual of any church in Kingsmouth. Outside it resembled a brick barn, inside a marble palace, and its ministration overworked a vicar and two enthusiastic curates. It stood at the corner of Jubilee Street and Lower Dock Approach, a conjunction that should render further description of the neighbourhood superfluous.
The Rev. Byam Hosier, the senior curate, whose magnetic eloquence filled St Ethelburga’s from chancel steps to porch, lodged in Jubilee Street, and there Mr Carrados found him at ten o’clock on the following morning. The curate had just finished his breakfast, and the simultaneous correction of a batch of exercise books. He apologised for the disorder without justifying himself by explaining the cause, for instead of being a laggard Mr Hosier had already taken an early celebration, and afterwards allowed himself to be intercepted on his way back to attend to a domestic quarrel, a lost cat, and the arrangements for a funeral.
“I got your note last night, Mr Carrados,” he said, after guiding his guest to a seat, for Parkinson had been dismissed to make himself agreeable elsewhere. “I am glad to show you my small collection, and still more so to have an opportunity of thanking you for the help you have given me from time to time.”
Carrados lightly disclaimed the obligation. It was the first time the two had met, though, as the outcome of a review article, they had frequently corresponded. The clergyman went to his single cabinet, took out the top tray and put it down before his visitor on the now available table.
“Pherae,” he said.
“May I touch the surfaces?” asked the blind man.
“Oh, certainly. Pray do. I am sorry----” He did not quite know what to say before the spectacle of the blind expert, with his eyes fixed elsewhere, passing a critical touch over the details that he himself loved to gaze upon.
In this one thing the Rev. Byam was fastidious. His clothes were generally bordering on the shabby, and he allowed himself to wear boots that shocked or amused the feminine element in the first half-dozen pews of St Ethelburga’s. He might--as he frequently did, indeed--make a breakfast of weak tea, bread and butter and marmalade without any sense of deficiency, but in the matter of Greek coins his taste was exacting and his standard exact. His one small mahogany cabinet was pierced for five hundred specimens, and it was far from full, but every coin was the exquisite production of the golden era of the world’s creative art.
It did not take Carrados three minutes to learn this. Occasionally he dropped a word of comment or inquiry, but for the most part tray succeeded tray in fascinated silence.
“Still Larissa,” announced the clergyman, sliding out the last tray.
Under each coin was a circular ticket with written particulars of the specimen accompanying it. For some time Carrados took little interest in these commentaries, but presently Hosier noticed that his guest was submitting many of them to a close but quiet scrutiny.
“Excuse my asking, Mr Carrados,” he said at length, “but are you quite blind?”
“Quite,” was the unconcerned reply. “Why?”
“Because I noticed that you held some of the labels close to your eyes and I fancied that perhaps----”
“It is my way.”
“Forgive my curiosity----”
“I can assure you, Mr Hosier, that other people are much more touchy about my blindness than I am. Now will you do me a kindness? I should like a copy of the inscriptions on half-a-dozen of these gems.”
“With pleasure.” The curate discovered pen and ink and paper and waited.
“This didrachm of the nymph Larissa wearing earrings; this of Artemis and the stag; this, and this, and this.” The trays had been left displayed upon the table and Carrados’s hand selected from them with unerring precision.
Hosier took the chosen coins and noted down the legends in their bold Greek capitals. “Shall I describe the type of each as well?” he asked.
“Thank you,” assented his visitor. “If you don’t mind writing that also in capitals and not blotting I shall read it so much the easier.”
He accepted the sheet of paper and delicately touched the lettering along each line.
“I have a friend who will be equally interested in this,” he remarked, taking out his pocket-book.
The clergyman had turned to remove a tray from the table when a sheet of paper, fluttering to the ground, caught his eye. He picked it up and was returning it into the blind man’s hand when he stopped in a sudden arrest of every movement.
“Good heavens, Mr Carrados!” he exclaimed in an agitated voice, “how does this come in your possession?”
“Your note?”
“You know that it is mine?”
“Yes--now,” replied Carrados quietly. “It was sent to me by the Admiral-Superintendent of the Yard here. He wished to communicate with the writer.”
“I am bewildered at the suddenness of this,” protested the poor young man in some distress. “Let me tell you the circumstances--such at least as do not violate my promise.”
He procured himself a glass of water from the sideboard, drank half of it and began to pace the room nervously as he talked.