Ravensdene Court Part 32

He turned a quick eye on the naval officer.

"Then one of 'em's escaped--somehow!" he exclaimed. "There's only five here--and every man Jack is dead! Where's the other!"

"One did escape," said I. I, too, looked at the lieutenant. "He got off in a boat just as you and your men were approaching the bar yonder--I thought you'd see him."

"No," he answered, shaking his head. "We didn't see anybody leave. The yawl lay between us and him most likely. Where did he land?"

"Behind that spit," I replied, pointing to the place. "He vanished, from where I stood, behind those black rocks. That was just as you crossed the bar. And he can't have gone far away, for he was certainly wounded as he left the yawl--a man fired at him from the bows. He fired back."

"We heard those shots," said the lieutenant, "and we found a chap--Englishman--in the bows, dying, when we boarded her. He died just afterwards. They're all dead--the others were dead then."

"Not a man alive!" I exclaimed.

Scarterfield cast a glance astern--the glance of a man who draws back the curtain from a set stage.

"Look for yourselves!" he muttered. "Too late for any of your work, doctor. But--that sixth man?"

Lorrimore and I, giving no heed just then to the detective's questioning about the escaped man, went towards the after part of the deck. Busied with their labours in getting the fire under control, the blue-jackets had up to then left the dead men where they found them--with one exception. The man whom they had found in the bows had been carried aft and laid near the entrance to the little deck-house--some hand had thrown a sheet over him. Lorrimore lifted it--we looked down. Baxter!

"That's the fellow we found right forward," said the lieutenant. "He's several slighter wounds on him, but he'd been shot through the chest--heart, perhaps--just before we boarded her. That would be the shot fired by the man in the boat, I suppose--a good marksman! Was this the skipper?"

"Chief spirit," said I. "He was lively enough last night. But--the rest?"

"They're all over the place," he answered. "They must have had a most desperate do of it. The vessel's more like a slaughter-house than a ship!"

He was right there, and I was thankful that Miss Raven and I for whatever reason on the part of the Chinese, had been so unceremoniously sent ash.o.r.e before the fight began. As Lorrimore went about, noting its evidences, I endeavoured to form some idea, more or less accurate, of the events which had led up to it. It seemed to me that either Baxter or the Frenchman, awaking from sleep sooner than the Chinese had expected, had discovered that treachery was afoot and that wholesale shooting had begun on all sides. Most of the slaughter had taken place immediately in front of the hatchway which led to the cabin in which I had seen Baxter and his two princ.i.p.al a.s.sociates; some sort of a rough barricade had been hastily set up there; behind it the Frenchman lay dead, with a bullet through his brain; before it, here and there on the deck, lay three of the Chinese--their leader, still in his gaily-coloured sleeping suit, prominent amongst them; Lo Chuh Fen a little further away; the third man near the wheel, face downwards. He, like Chuh, was a small-made, wiry fellow. And there was blood everywhere.

Scarterfield jogged my elbow as I stood staring at these unholy sights. He was keener of look than I had ever seen him.

"That fourth Chinaman?" he said. "I must get him, dead or alive. The rest's nothing--I want him!"

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SILK CAP

I glanced round; Lorrimore, after an inspection of the dead men, had walked aside with the lieutenant and was in close conversation with him. I, too, drew the detective away to the side of the yawl.

"Scarterfield," I said in a whisper, "I've grounds for believing that the fourth Chinaman is--Lorrimore's servant--Wing."

"What!" he exclaimed. "The man we saw at Ravensdene Court?"

"Just so," said I, "and who went off to London, you remember, to see what he could do in the way of discovering the other Chinaman, Lo Chuh Fen."

"Yes--I remember that," he answered.

"There is Lo Chuh Fen," I said, pointing to one of the silent figures.

"And I think that Wing not only discovered him, but came aboard this vessel with him, as part of a crew which Baxter and his French friend got together at Limehouse or Poplar. As I say, I've grounds for thinking it."

Scarterfield looked round, glanced at the sh.o.r.e, shook his head.

"I'm all in the dark--about some things," he said.

"I got on the track of this craft--I'll tell you how, later--and found she'd come up this coast, and we got the authorities to send this destroyer after her--I came with her, h.e.l.l for leather, I can tell you, from Harwich. But I don't know a lot that I want to know, Baxter, now--you're sure that man lying dead there is the Baxter we heard of at Blyth and traced to Hull?"

"Certain!" said I. "Listen, and I'll give you a brief account of what's happened since yesterday, and of what I've learned since then--it will make things clear to you."

Standing there, where the beauty of the fresh morning and the charm of sky and sea made a striking contrast to the horror of our immediate surroundings, I told him, as concisely as I could, of how Miss Raven and myself had fallen into the hands of Netherfield Baxter and the Frenchman, of what had happened to me on board, and, at somewhat greater length, of Baxter's story of his own career as it related to his share in the theft of the monastic treasure from the bank at Blyth, his connection with the _Elizabeth Robinson_ and his knowledge of the brothers Quick. Nor did I forget Baxter's theory about the rubies--and at that Scarterfield obviously p.r.i.c.ked his ears.

"Now there's something in that," he said, with a regretful glance at the place where Baxter's dead body lay under its sheet. "I wish that fellow had been alive, to tell more! For he's right about those rubies--quite right. The Quicks had 'em--two of 'em."

"You know that?" I exclaimed.

"I'll tell you," he answered. "After we parted, I was very busy, investigating matters still further in Devonport and in London.

And--through the newspapers, of course--I got in touch with a man who told me a lot. He came to headquarters in London, asking for me--wouldn't tell any of our people there anything--it was a day or two before I got at close quarters with him, for when he called I was away at the time. He left an address, in Hatton Garden--a Mr. Isidore Baubenheimer, dealer, as you may conclude, in precious stones. Well, I drove off at once to see him. He told me a queer tale. He said that he'd only just come back from Amsterdam and Paris, or he'd have been in communication with me earlier.

While he'd been away, he said, he'd read the English newspapers and seen a good deal about the two murders at Saltash and Ravensdene Court, and he believed that he could throw some light on them, for he felt sure that either Noah Quick or Salter Quick was identical with a man with whom he had not so long ago talked over the question of the value of certain stones which the man possessed. But I'll show you Baubenheimer's own words--I got him to make a clear statement of the whole thing and had it taken down in black and white, and I have a typed copy of it in my pocket-book--glance it over for yourself."

He produced a sheet of paper, folded and endorsed and handed it to me--it ran thus:

My place of business in Hatton Garden is a few doors away from the Hatton Garden entrance to the old Mitre Tavern, which lies between that street and Ely Place. On, as far as I can remember, the seventh or eighth of March last, I went into the Mitre about half-past eleven o'clock one morning, expecting to meet a friend of mine who was often there about that time. He hadn't come in--I sat down with a drink and a cigar to wait for him.

In the little room where I sat there were three other men--two of them were men that I knew, men who dealt in diamonds in a smallish way. The other was a stranger, a thick-set, middle-aged, seafaring sort of man, hard-bitten, dressed in a blue-serge suit of nautical cut; I could tell from his hands and his general appearance that he'd knocked about the world in his time. Just then he was smoking a cigar and had a tumbler of rum and water before him, and he was watching, with a good deal of interest, the other two, who, close by, were showing each other a quant.i.ty of loose diamonds which, evidently to the seafaring man's amazement, they spread out openly, on their palms.

After a bit they got up and went out, and the stranger glanced at me.

Now I am, as you see, something of the nautical sort myself, bearded and bronzed and all that--I'm continually crossing the North Sea--and it may be he thought I was of his own occupation--anyway, he looked at me as if wanting to talk.

"I reckon they think nothing of pulling out a fistful o' them things hereabouts, mister," he said. "No more to them than sovereigns and half-sovereigns and bank-notes is to bank clerks."

"That's about it," said I. "You'll see them shown in the open street outside."

"Trade of this part of London, isn't it?" he asked.

"Just so," said I. "I'm in it myself." He gave me a sharp inquiring look at that.

"Ah!" he remarked. "Then you'll be a gentleman as knows the vally of a thing o' that sort when you sees it?"

"Well I think so," I answered. "I've been in the trade all my life.

Have you got anything to dispose of? I see you're a seafaring man, and I've known sailors who brought something nice home now and then."

"Same here," said he; "but I never known a man as brought anything half as good as what I have."

"Ah!" said I. "Then you have something?"

"That's what I come into this here neighbourhood for, this morning,"

he answered. "I have something, and a friend o' mine, says he to me, 'Hatton Garden,' he says, 'is the port for you--they eats and drinks and wallers in them sort o' things down that way,' he says.