Christopher Quarles Part 36

"Extremely clever. We have a curious rogue to deal with, the motive obscure. There's a very strange mental twist somewhere."

"And we're no nearer a solution of the problem," I said.

"Anyway, we'll visit the bank again to-morrow. Eleven o'clock, Wigan.

Until then I want to be alone. Good night!"

We could not see Mr. Wickstead at once when we went to the bank next day, and although the general manager apologized for keeping us waiting, he was evidently very busy, and wanted to be rid of us as quickly as possible.

"I'm afraid you don't make much progress," he said. "My directors are beginning to say that the publicity is worse than the loss."

"We go slowly," I answered; "but for the general safety publicity is necessary in an affair of this kind."

"We will not detain you," said Quarles. "I can see we have come at an inconvenient time. Just one question. Had the locks of the strong-room doors been repaired recently?"

"No. They were in excellent order."

"It has not even been necessary to have new keys made?"

"No."

Quarles rose, and thanked him; then, as he reached the door, he paused.

"Oh, it may interest you to know that we have got on the track of Frederick Ewing," he said.

"Then there has been some progress. I am glad. Still, I am afraid Ewing will not be able to throw much light on this affair. Where is he?"

"Abroad," Quarles answered. "We expect to have definite information this afternoon. It is often easier to find criminals when they go abroad than when they remain hidden in England."

When we were outside the bank Quarles began to chuckle.

"It doesn't do to let these fellows think we are doing nothing, Wigan; and, in a sense, we have got on Ewing's track. We have found the woman. Isn't that always considered the great point?"

"This seems to be one of the exceptions which are supposed to prove the rule," I answered.

"We'll get back to Chelsea. I daresay Zena can give us some lunch."

From that moment until the three of us retired to the empty room after lunch Quarles would not talk about the case, but when we were in the empty room he began at once.

"Zena from the first suggested that we must find Frederick Ewing,"

said Quarles; "and her intuition was right. We know--at least I think we may take it as an established fact--that a very expert gang has been at work in London during the past few months, and it was reasonable to a.s.sume that this robbery was their work, with the help of someone connected with the bank. Practically speaking, it would have been impossible without inside and absolutely accurate information. A process of elimination left Ewing as the likely person to give this help. We need not go over all the difficulties the gang would have to contend with; they were many, not the least being the successful removal of the spoil; but I asked myself whether this gang was not a sort of obsession with us, whether the robbery might not have been a one-man job. You will remember I questioned the general manager on the possibility of Ewing being alone in the strong-rooms, and whether the gold might not have been removed by degrees. He laughed at the idea, but ridicule never yet made me give up a theory.

I looked for something to support my theory, and I found many things.

The action of the explosive had been peculiar. The manner of the damage was not quite what one would have expected from gelignite, or some equally powerful preparation. Further, why was Coulsdon found in the outer safe? It is reasonable to suppose that he was rendered insensible before the explosion took place, or he might have heard it.

Why, then, should he be dragged into the safe? A gang would not have troubled to do this, but, if the job were a one-man affair, the thief might reasonably want to keep his eye upon the porter in case he should recover consciousness. Now, to come back to the explosion, it seemed to me that so far as the door of the inner strong-room was concerned it had not been locked, at any rate not fully locked, when the explosion took place. Was there any support to this theory to be found? Yes. I will show you presently the debris I picked out of the lock. It contains portions--small, but quite recognizable--of a key, not polished, as would be the case if used constantly, but rough. This suggested that duplicate keys had been made. That key, Wigan, I believe, was in the lock when the explosion took place. It was blown to pieces by the explosion, but the burglar must have discovered his mistake, and gathered up the pieces, for I could discover nothing either on the strong-room floor or in the pa.s.sage without. I found another support to my theory in the window on the roof. Someone had got out as well as in--got out, Wigan, to hide, and got in again when the moment for action had come."

"But----"

"I haven't finished yet," said Quarles, interrupting me. "Obviously one man couldn't remove all that gold and get it away from the city that night. The robber, with the duplicate keys he had in his possession, could go to that strong-room when he liked; all he had to do was to take the precaution that he was not seen. A very few visits sufficed, no doubt; but on each occasion he brought away some spoil with him, which he concealed, I imagine, somewhere in the bank, where he could easily get at it. The robbery extended over a period of time, that is my point, and whether dummy bags were subst.i.tuted for those taken, or a bag was gradually emptied, does not matter."

"But, my dear professor, your ingenious theory overlooks the fact that, if it were true, there would be no use for the final catastrophe--for attacking the porter and blowing up the strong-room."

"Ah! that brings me to the mental att.i.tude of the thief. I think we shall find that an inspection of those strong-rooms was imminent, and the thief was anxious, first, to make a last addition to his store, and, secondly, to suggest the work of a gang, and so minimize all risk to himself. Besides----"

The professor paused. There was a knock at the door, and the servant brought in a telegram. Quarles opened it and read it.

"Besides, one has to consider the mental twist a man may have," he went on. "We shall probably find in this case that at the back of the robbery was an awful dread of the future, of the helplessness and poverty that might come into it, an abnormal morbidness which so constantly drives men to strange actions."

"But how could Ewing manage to conceal himself in the bank, or get into it even? Everybody knew him, everybody probably knew of his dismissal."

"How about the window in the roof?" said Quarles, handing me the telegram, and I read: "Left early this afternoon; returned home."

"That refers to the general manager, Mr. Wickstead," said Quarles.

"Probably he does not intend to remain at home, but we may catch him there. I have a man watching him. I thought my statement that we had traced Ewing would frighten him. He is the thief, Wigan. He is also the friend Ewing spoke about to Ursula Yerbury. Don't you see the cleverness? He helped Ewing out of the country, after frightening him by saying that a prosecution had been decided upon; sent him somewhere where he was not likely to hear of the robbery, and tried to throw dust in our eyes by expressing pity for him and a belief in his innocence."

"If you are right, what a villain!" I exclaimed.

"An abnormal dread of the future, Wigan; I think we shall find that is at the bottom of it, and we shall probably find also that the whole of the spoil is intact. The law, of course, cannot enter into these curious mental att.i.tudes. Come! I think we shall provide a sensation for the world of finance."

The arrest of Mr. Wickstead when he was on the point of bolting, and his subsequent confession, certainly made a sensation; and, as Quarles had surmised, the whole of the money and the jewels were found concealed in Mr. Wickstead's house.

The manner of the robbery was much as Quarles had imagined it, and there is little doubt that Wickstead was in an abnormal mental condition. But he was not mad, and was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment.

It was a sad case altogether, the only bright spot in it being the marriage of Ursula Yerbury to the man she had trusted, in spite of his lapse from the path of rect.i.tude.

CHAPTER XIII

THE WILL OF THE ECCENTRIC MR. FRISBY

I have said that, owing to Quarles's dislike of publicity, I was constantly receiving praise which I did not merit; but in the curious affair of Mr. Frisby's will, although I received substantial benefits, the professor was obliged to put up with the eulogy. The case was never in my hands professionally; indeed, strictly speaking, there was no case for the police to deal with. All I really did was to use my position to clear away difficulties and give Quarles a clear field for his investigations. He declared that he went into the thing for the sake of the reward which was offered, but it was undoubtedly the intricacy of the problem which attracted him.

I will tell Mr. Frisby's history as a connected narrative at once; but, of course, the theory was not complete when Quarles decided to attempt the solution of the difficulty. We got the outline from newspaper paragraphs and comments; but some of the details, such as the tenor of Mr. Frisby's letter to his nephew, were only filled in after we had taken up the case seriously.

James Frisby, a native of Boston, in Lincolnshire, was apparently a very ordinary young man indeed. He was a clerk in the office of a solicitor in the town, named Giles, and in his leisure hours was inclined to consort with the most undesirable companions, and to be a too frequent visitor to the public-house bars. Without his doing anything very outrageous, the position of black sheep of his family was a.s.signed to him, and a too puritanical spirit, perhaps, had judged him to be well on the downward path, when a girl named Edith Turner, the daughter of a small but prosperous farmer at Spilsby, came into his circle. According to all accounts, she was the sort of girl any man might fall in love with; exactly what she saw in James Frisby was not so apparent. However, there was undoubtedly mutual affection; but the girl's family strongly objected to the friendship, and the girl herself was not to be persuaded to act in opposition to her father's wishes. Frisby pleaded, made all sorts of promises for the future, and, when these proved of no avail, he threw up his situation and went to Australia.

There was evidently more in him than people gave him credit for. Some twenty-five years afterward he returned to Boston an exceedingly wealthy man, and an eccentric one. He immediately entered into negotiations to purchase the Towers, a large house some three miles out of Boston on the Spilsby Road. It had stood empty a long time, and he spent an immense amount of money upon alterations and in furnishing it, giving no information to anyone concerning himself or his intentions.

Twenty-five years had brought many changes. The old town nestling, and dozing a little perhaps, under the great church with its high tower, a landmark far across the fen country and out to sea, was much the same; but a new generation of people lived in it. Frisby's friends had gone, were dead or scattered about the world, and he had only one relation living, a nephew, the son of an elder sister. Frisby Morton was in business in London, was married and doing fairly well, and had so lost touch with his native place that he heard nothing about his uncle's return until James Frisby had settled at the Towers.

Five or six years after Frisby had left Boston, Edith Turner had become Edith Oglethorpe, the wife of a farmer. There was nothing to show that she had grieved very much for her first lover, no suggestion that she had not been a happy wife and mother. Both she and her husband were dead when Frisby returned, and their later years had been clouded with misfortune. Bad harvests and ill-luck had eaten up their savings, and they had been able to do very little for their only son.

They appear to have had many ambitions for him, all of which remained unfulfilled.

James Frisby found the lad, then between seventeen and eighteen, in a grocer's shop in Wide Bargate, one of the main thoroughfares of the town, and at once proposed to adopt him. It was natural that Frisby should be interested in the son of the woman he had loved; it was natural, too, that the boy should jump at the prospect which opened out to him, but it was curious how quickly these two came to love each other. For Frisby probably there was in the son something of what he had loved in the mother; and the lad, no doubt, saw in the man all those good and lovable qualities which Frisby took no trouble to exhibit to the world.

A tutor came to the Towers; in due course young Oglethorpe went to Cambridge, and came home to be the constant companion of his adopted father. Such a life would have been bad for most young men, but Edward Oglethorpe appeared to be an exception to the rule. He had everybody's good word, not because of his wealthy position, but for his own sake.

That he would come into all Frisby's money no one doubted.