The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries Part 29

After the First World War Rittenberg became an advertising consultant, establishing his own firm, and stopped writing fiction all together.

"What does it matter whether it were accident or suicide?" said Magnum into the telephone with decided irritation, because he was being interrupted in the midst of a highly complex calculation of a formula based on crystallographic angles and axes, requiring quaternions and perfect quiet.

"It matters fifty thousand pounds," replied the legal voice at the other end of the wire. "That's the value of his insurance policy. The company contend it was a case of suicide, and therefore the policy is null and void."

"At the present moment," snapped Magnum, "I don't care if he were insured for the National Debt! Find a detective, and don't bother me!"

Leaving the receiver off the hook, so that he could not be rung up further, Magnum plunged again into the world of sin and cos .

The interrupter was the junior partner in East, East, and Stacey, a young man of some pertinacity as well as legal ability. He happened to have a very special interest in the case of the deceased, because the next-of-kin was a particularly charming young lady; at least, particularly charming to himself. So he jumped into a taxi and drove from Clifford's Inn to Upper Thames Street, where the scientific consultant had his office and laboratories.

"The deuce!" was Magnum's welcome for him.

"Awfully sorry to interrupt. How long will you take to finish?" was the soft answer designed to turn away wrath.

"Till midnight!" snapped Magnum, hunching his bushy reddish eyebrows, and thrusting out his straggly reddish beard belligerently.

"I'll wait," decided Stacey. "I'll go and talk scandal with Meredith."

Ivor Meredith was a young Welshman, an a.n.a.lytical genius and Magnum's right-hand man. He was the very essence of shyness and modesty. Stacey went into the laboratories and began to chaff him in order to kill time.

"What's this I hear about you and a certain fascinating widow?" was his opening gambit.

Young Meredith, blushing furiously, protested that he didn't know any fascinating widow. Which was perfectly true, as he was mortally afraid of all the feminine s.e.x.

In an hour's time Magnum appeared from his office. His crystallographic a.n.a.lysis had borne out his personal guess exactly, and the thundercloud temper had vanished from his skies. He found that his young Welsh protege had scored off Stacey by challenging him to blow a gla.s.s bulb, which looks delightfully simple and in reality requires months of practice. Stacey, perspiring over the blow-lamp, was surrounded by a score of horrible bulbous monstrosities.

"Better stick to the law," smiled Magnum. "You can make a successful lawyer even if you have ten thumbs to your hands. Now what's this trouble about the insurance policy?"

Stacey answered him seriously with a resume of the case. Abel Jona.s.son, a somewhat eccentric recluse, a man of fifty-four and a bachelor, had insured his life for fifty thousand pounds with the Empire a.s.surance Company six months previously. On a railway journey through the Sevenoaks tunnel he had been alone in a second-cla.s.s compartment. In some way he had fallen out of the moving train; had been killed possibly by the fall; and had certainly been run over by a train pa.s.sing on the other line of metals. A coroner's jury had returned an open verdict. On the advice of their doctors and counsel, the Empire Company, a firm of first-cla.s.s reputation, had decided to fight the claim up to the House of Lords if necessary.

They contended that, for a man of his limited income, a fifty thousand pound policy was far too heavy, unless he deliberately intended to take his life in order to secure a large sum of money for his relatives. Such cases had cropped up before.

"Then they shouldn't have insured for such a heavy amount," interrupted Magnum.

"Well, they did," answered Stacey. "They took his premium, and now they fight the claim. Miss Gerard, his niece and next-of-kin, has very slender means, and so-"

Something in Stacey's tone gave Magnum the clue to this unusual interest in a client of slender means.

"Another wedding present to buy!" he interjected cynically.

Stacey took the remark on the half-volley, and flicked it neatly over the net: "Help us, and we'll consider it as the wedding-present."

"I don't see that the case lies in my province. Try Scotland Yard."

"I have. No satisfaction. A scientist is wanted. Scotland Yard can't tell me why the dead man carried in his pocket a phial of atoxyl."

"Specific against sleeping sickness."

"A Central African disease. It's unknown in England. Why should he carry the antidote about with him?"

"Have his serum examined."

"That's been done. No trace of the disease has been found. But the Empire doctor claims that Jona.s.son must have thought he had the disease, and therefore committed suicide. A book on the subject was found at his country cottage. Our side will have to prove some other reason for his carrying that phial of atoxyl. That's one point on which I want your help."

Magnum pulled out a disgracefully malodorous pipe from his baggy, shapeless working-jacket, and proceeded to stuff it with a smoking mixture of his own blending, strong to the point of rankness.

Meredith hastened to their library above the office, and returned with one of the twenty bulky volumes of Watts's Dictionary of Chemistry. His chief took it, and turned thoughtfully to the half-column description of the chemical properties of the drug, one of the a.r.s.enic derivatives. Presently he remarked: "Have you considered the possibility of foul play?"

"That was one of our first thoughts," returned Stacey. "But Jona.s.son was seen alone in the compartment at Tonbridge Junction, only five miles from the tunnel, and there were no traces on the footboard of anyone clambering along from one compartment to another."

"Windows?"

"All shut."

"A man under the seat?"

"No traces."

"When was the discovery made?"

"As soon as the train came out of the tunnel into Sevenoaks Station. The door of Jona.s.son's compartment was open, and banging to and fro . . . All the evidence goes to show that he was entirely alone in the compartment; that he opened the door himself fingerprints on the handle and fell out. We claim that he must have become suddenly frightened he was a nervous old man and that he lost his head, opened the door to call for help, and was thrown out by the rush of wind against the open door."

"Sounds very probable."

"The Empire Company say that if he wanted help he could have pulled the alarm-cord. There was no one else in the compartment that's certain from the footprints in the dust. He had nothing to be afraid of, they claim."

"Equally plausible."

"Can you tell me why he carried that atoxyl with him?"

Magnum was not a man to confess openly to ignorance. He replied curtly: "I'm not a theorist. Ask me practical questions."

For reply, Stacey produced from his pocket a blank ma.n.u.script-size envelope, and from the envelope a much-creased sheet of folded paper blank.

"I found this in Jona.s.son's study while hunting for his will. I have a strong feeling that it contains a message written in invisible ink. Miss Gerard tells me that he was the kind of eccentric who would do that. Will you try to get the message out?"

"Suppose," asked Magnum shrewdly, "it were to say that he intended to commit suicide?"

"In that case," laughed the lawyer, "I shouldn't call you as a witness."

"You young scoundrel!"

"But it won't do that," answered Stacey, returning to seriousness. "Miss Gerard knew him well he was very fond of her in his queer, angular way and she is perfectly certain that he had no intention of committing suicide."

"If you prove wrong," warned Magnum, "don't count on me to keep silent in a case of fraud."

He pa.s.sed the sheet of paper to Meredith, who examined it eagerly, his eyes alight at the thought of pitting his chemical knowledge against the secret of the apparently blank paper.

Meredith's first move was to cut the sheet into four quarters, so as to avoid the risk of spoiling the whole of it in the course of experimenting.

The heat test gave no result, nor did the iodide test, nor the sulphuretted hydrogen test.

Magnum, suspecting that they were in for a long session, looked at his watch, found it marking seven o'clock and sent out for three porterhouse steaks, a Stilton cheese and bread, and lager beer.

"I should prefer oysters, a fried sole, and a bottle of claret," suggested Stacey.

"You'll have what's good for you," retorted Magnum, who had unaesthetic views on food.

It was close on nine o'clock before Meredith at length triumphed. Fitting together three-quarters of the sheet of paper the other quarter had become spoilt in the course of testing the following wording stood out in roughly written capital letters: Magnum turned to Stacey.

"There's your wedding present," said he grimly.

All Stacey's pose of flippancy had dropped from him. Staring at the paper, he asked, in a hushed voice: "What does it mean?"

"A warning," returned Magnum. "A warning that must have put Jona.s.son's nerves on edge. In that railway compartment, alone, pa.s.sing through the long Sevenoaks tunnel, something happened to terrify him into trying to escape."

"If we could prove it! But what exactly happened?"

"The last words of the warning were, judging on the first two lines, 'FROM THE SKY!'"

"Yes, yes!" cried Stacey eagerly.

"That railway-carriage of course it's been sealed and shunted into a siding?"

"Naturally."

"Tomorrow morning we'll go and examine it."

"Yes, but what's your theory?"

Magnum's temperament included a strong dash of human vanity. He liked to have his achievements bulk large. He liked to display his results against an effective background. Having arrived at a simple explanation of a puzzling mystery, he preferred to keep silent about it until the morning should bring the glowing moment for the revelation.

Stacey had to be content to wait.

The railway-carriage possible evidence in a fifty thousand pound law-case had been shunted into a goods yard of the Chatham and South-Eastern, and housed in a shed under lock and key at the instigation of the insurance company.

A legal representative of the company, as well as a district goods manager of the Chatham and South-Eastern, accompanied Stacey and Magnum to the fresh inspection of it. The insurance lawyer dry, thin-lipped, pince-nezed, cynically critical, abundantly sure of himself allowed a ghost of an acidulated smile to flicker around his eyes as he viewed Magnum's air of expectant triumph. The goods manager preserved an att.i.tude of strict neutrality. Stacey was on a hair-trigger of expectation, masked under a pose of legal dignity and self-restraint.

The railway official broke the seals on the door of the compartment, and threw it open for Magnum's inspection. The latter's shrewd eyes darted about the interior, taking in every detail.

To all appearance, it was an entirely ordinary, humdrum, commonplace, second-cla.s.s compartment, carrying no hint of tragedy. The dead man's ulster, umbrella, and travelling-bag, replaced on the rack in the position where they had first been found, merely suggested that some traveller had left them there while he went out to buy a journal at a book-stall. A small volume of Lamb's Essays, lying on a corner seat, might have been put there to secure his place.

Then Magnum asked to see the two adjoining compartments one a smoker, one a general compartment. They were bare of extraneous objects and entirely unsuggestive.

"Well?" challenged the opposing lawyer, with his thin and acid smile. "Have you discovered some point we all have been dense enough to miss?"

"There are always two sides to every question," returned Magnum.

"Your side and my side?"

"The inside and the outside," amended Magnum, with a cutting edge to his words.

"And the application of that very sound maxim?"

"The application is that to view the outside one needs a ladder."

"And why a ladder, may I ask?"

"I am not a 'Child's Guide to Knowledge,' but if you are seriously anxious for an answer to your question, it is in order to climb." Having delivered this snub, Magnum turned, and addressed himself to the goods manager: "Please send for a short ladder, so that I can examine the roof."

When it arrived, Magnum mounted briskly to the roof of the carriage, and looked for the footprints or traces of a man having crawled over the roof, which he confidently expected to find. A grievous disappointment awaited him. The roof was streaked with raindrops trickling over soot, now dried into the semblance of a map of some fantastic mountain range. There were no footprints.

"Did it rain on the day of the accident?" he asked sharply.

Stacey, after a moment's thought, replied in the affirmative.

"Unfortunate," commented Magnum. "Rain would have obliterated footprints. Come up here."

At last Stacey understood what Magnum was driving at. "From the sky!" had been the concluding words of the warning to the dead man. Someone had crawled on the roof, pulled up the lamp over the compartment in which Jona.s.son was travelling, and then In a flash he pictured the old man alone in the compartment, through the long tunnel, where a cry for help would be drowned in the roar of the rushing train, looking upwards to see a menacing face staring at him from the aperture of the lamp, a revolver at c.o.c.k, and ready to shoot him down in any corner of the compartment. Trapped, helpless, terrified, Jona.s.son had tried to escape by the door, and had been thrown on to the line.

Magnum, moving forward over the roof, in plain view of the others, went to pull up the lamp and demonstrate his point.

But a sentence from the railway official checked him in mid-action.

"You are thinking of the old type of lamp, sir. These ones are not removable. They're fixtures."

Magnum, incredulous, went on; found the lamp screwed in tight, and the screws rusted in firmly.

The insurance lawyer permitted himself a dry laugh of cynical amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Facts," said he, "have an unfortunate habit of contradicting the most ingenious and elegant theories."

Magnum was now thoroughly roused by the mocking mystery of the railway compartment. He had, in plain words, made a fool of himself in front of the insurance lawyer. That was unbearable. The only way to get back his self-respect was to wrest out the secret, and flourish it in the lawyer's face.

Before, Magnum had been only halfheartedly interested in a problem which was somewhat outside his professional line; now, he was resolutely determined to work at it with a red-hot concentration of energies.

Hurrying to New Cross Station with Stacey, he took ticket to Paddock Wood, beyond Tonbridge, where Jona.s.son had lived his recluse life in a country cottage a couple of miles away from the railway line, alone save for a housekeeper-servant. On the way, Magnum plied Stacey with question after question regarding the life-history, the habits and eccentricities of the dead man. Stacey's information was limited; the housekeeper could tell much more.

On their arrival, they found the cottage bolted and barred. A hedger and ditcher, working in a neighbouring lane, expressed the thoughtful opinion that the housekeeper must have locked up and gone away. Where? demanded Magnum, a.s.sisting his cerebrations with a couple of half-crowns. He didn't rightly know. Could he find out by asking neighbours? That struck the hedger as an idea of great brilliance, and, dropping his tools, he set off to make inquiries.

Meanwhile, Magnum, impatient of obstacles, broke a window in the cottage, and secured unconventional entrance. With Stacey's guidance, he went through the dead man's books and papers and personal possessions in search of a fresh light on the mystery.

Both were now firmly convinced that Jona.s.son had come to his death by foul play, or, more exactly, that he had been terrified out of the closed railway compartment by some human agency. Both were equally of the opinion that it was a matter of long-standing revenge, reaching back into the obscurities of Jona.s.son's past life.

But mere opinions would be poor weapons for a big law-case. They must have facts. They must find out whom, why, how. They must be prepared to prove in court how a man, indisputably alone in a railway-compartment, with closed doors, closed windows, and no aperture for human entrance, could be so terrified as to be driven out. In case of danger the first thought of any man would be to pull the alarm-chain running through from compartment to compartment. Why had Jona.s.son not done so?

A long search through books, papers, and clothes proved annoyingly inconclusive. Jona.s.son's tastes were evidently cultured and leisured. Whatever he might have been in his youth, in the immediate past he had been a trifler with books, garden, and fishing. That gave them no help.