XIX
French Propounds a Riddle
If Captain Davis experienced surprise on seeing French reappear at the door of his cabin, he gave no indication of his feelings.
“Good afternoon, Inspector,” he greeted him quietly. “Come aboard again? You should have stayed with us, you know.” He smiled quizzically. “It would have been much less tiring than going all that way round by land, and for the matter of that, a good deal cheaper. Found your criminals?”
“Well, I’ve not,” French answered slowly, “—yet. But I hope to soon. Captain, I’ve had a wire from the Yard that those people are on board after all.”
The Captain frowned.
“No doubt the Yard is a wonderfully efficient organisation,” he said gravely, “but when it comes to telling me who is or is not aboard my ship—well, I think that is a trifle, shall we say, thick? How do they profess to know?”
“I’ll tell you. I got a wire shortly after the ship left Havre on Saturday, and it said that one of the Liverpool detectives, Sergeant Mackay, was watching your ship before she sailed. He was looking out for a man also wanted for murder, not this Vane—a different person altogether. He saw the Vanes going on board, though, of course, he did not realise they also were wanted. But he saw them right enough, at least, he was able to convince the Yard as to their identity. Mackay waited until the ship sailed, and he states the Vanes did not go ashore. I know Mackay personally, and he is a most careful and accurate officer. I am satisfied that if he makes this statement it is true. Now, none of your people saw them go ashore, and with all due respect to you and your purser, the suggestion is that they’re still on board. The wire ended by instructing me to follow up the ship either here or to Lisbon, and investigate further.”
“You’ve certainly followed us up all right, but having overtaken us I should like to ask, if it is not an indiscreet question, what you propose to do next?”
French saw that if he was to retain the help of Captain Davis he would have to be careful how he answered.
“There, Captain, I was going to ask for your kind help, though I feel I have troubled you more than enough already. I’ll tell you what I was thinking over in the train. Suppose for argument’s sake the Yard is right, and that these people really are on board. It is obvious from your search that they’re not here in their own characters, therefore they must be posing as two other people. That, I take it, is what the people at the Yard had in mind also.”
“Well?”
“This is not such an unlikely supposition as it sounds. The woman is, or rather was, an actress, and we know she is a clever one. Not only was she well thought of when on the stage, but she has recently carried off successfully a far stiffer test than that. She crossed from New York to Southampton on the Olympic, and convinced the people on board that she was English, and then she went on to London and convinced the people there that she was an American. I have seen the people in each case—critical, competent people who know the world—and each lot ridiculed the idea that she was not what she seemed. If she could do that, she could surely manage another impersonation. A comparatively simple disguise would do, as there would be nothing to make you or the purser suspect.”
The Captain was listening with considerable interest, but it was evident that his ruffled feelings were not yet entirely smoothed down.
“That may be all very well,” he admitted, “but you have not taken into consideration the evidence of the bookings. 176 passengers booked from Liverpool, and in almost every case their tickets were taken and their staterooms reserved several days in advance. The exceptions in all cases were men. 176 passengers turned up, Mr. and Mrs. Vane among them. But there were only 174 passengers on board when we left Liverpool. You follow what I mean; that all the other passengers on board are accounted for?”
“I see that,” French admitted slowly, “and you may be right. It certainly doesn’t seem easy to answer what you say. At the same time, in the face of the instructions I have had from the Yard, I daren’t do other than go on and sift the thing further.”
“Naturally, but how?”
“I don’t know. I don’t see my way clear as yet. For one thing, I shall have to meet every woman on board, with the special object of trying to penetrate any disguise which may have been attempted. If that fails I may give up the search or I may try something else. I suppose you can take me on as far as Lisbon at all events?”
“With pleasure.” The Captain seemed to have recovered from his momentary irritation. “Let me know if there is anything I can do to help you. Though I confess I think you’re on a wild goose chase, I’ll give you every facility I can.”
“Thank you, Captain. You will understand that whatever I may think myself, I am not my own master in the matter. The only thing I should like at present is a chat with the purser over the passenger list.”
“That, at all events, is easily arranged,” answered Captain Davis as he touched a bell.
The purser had not observed French’s arrival, and professed amazement on finding him on board.
“I begin to wonder if the ship’s not haunted,” he smiled as he shook hands. “Mr. and Mrs. Vane we leave behind at Liverpool, and you say they’re aboard at Havre. You we leave behind at Havre—I saw you myself on the wharf—and here you are aboard at Leixoes! What distinguished stranger are we to expect to find on board at Lisbon?”
“I hope there’ll be a clearance of four at Lisbon,” French rejoined. “Though it sounds impolite, nothing would please me better than to change to a homeward bounder in company with my Sergeant and Mr. and Mrs. Vane.”
“What? Do you still think they’re on board?”
“The Inspector still thinks so,” the Captain intervened, “and he wants to talk to you about it. Better take him to your cabin and give him any help you can.”
“Right, sir. Will you come along, Mr. French?”
Mr. Jennings, in spite of his obvious competence, had a pleasant, leisurely manner which conveyed to the many who sought his counsel that though he might be busy enough at other times, he was not too hurried at that moment to give them his most careful and undivided attention. So he listened to French’s story, and so he took out the passenger list, and set himself to discuss the personalities of those enumerated thereon.
“I’ll deal with the women first,” French explained. “You say that there are sixty-seven on board, as against about twice as many men. Besides, I have more information about Mrs. Vane than her husband. Now, if you don’t mind, let’s get on with them.”
The purser ran his finger down the list.
“Miss Ackfield is the first,” he explained. “She is a lady of between fifty and sixty, I should say. You can easily see her, but in my opinion there is not the slightest chance that she could be otherwise than what she seems.”
French noted the particulars.
“Right,” he said. “Next, please.”
“The next is Miss Bond. She’s also pretty well on in years, but she couldn’t be your friend because she’s at least four inches taller.”
“Very good.”
“Then there is Mrs. Brent. She is a young girl. Her husband is on board, and they are evidently newly married. She’s too young.”
They worked on down the list, provisionally eliminating the unlikely. Mrs. Cox was too tall, Miss Duffield too short, Mrs. Eaglefield too stout, Miss Felton too thin, and so on. In the end they had reduced the number to ten, of which French had to admit that not one seemed in the least promising.
There was indeed one couple who had at first appealed to him, a Mr. Pereira da Silva, and his daughter, Miss Maria da Silva, because they kept almost entirely to their cabins, mixing but little with the life of the ship. Mr. da Silva, a man of over seventy, Mr. Jennings thought, was an invalid, and had come on board with difficulty, leaning on a stick and his daughter’s arm. He was practically confined to bed, and Miss da Silva was assiduous in her attention to him, reading to him and keeping him company when many another similarly placed daughter would have been on deck or in the saloon, amusing herself among the other passengers. The two had their meals together, and the lady, though friendly enough when she did go on deck or when occasionally she sat in the saloon, was but rarely seen. This was, thought French, a likely enough ruse for the fugitives to adopt, and his suspicions were strengthened by the fact that Miss da Silva’s general appearance was not unlike that of Mrs. Vane. But Mr. Jennings soon demolished his house of cards. The da Silvas were obviously Brazilian. They, or rather the girl, for the old man had been too feeble even to deal with the business of the tickets, spoke fluent Portuguese, the Portuguese of a native, and her English was not only broken, but was spoken as a Portuguese alone speaks it. Besides, she looked like a Portuguese. They lived at Rio, so Mr. Jennings had gathered, and had visited England to see Mr. da Silva’s brother, a London merchant. They had booked to Para, near where other relatives lived, and from where they would return to Rio. They had taken tickets and reserved their staterooms some time before the Vanes.
French was disappointed. He booked on to Lisbon on chance, then not wishing to be seen, he retired to his cabin, leaving Sergeant Carter to watch the ladder leading to the shore boats.
As he sat smoking beside the open porthole, he kept on racking his brains for some method of solving his problem, but at last it was a chance word of the purser’s that give him his idea. Mr. Jennings had dropped in just after the ship, pushing out between the two great stone moles of the harbour, had dipped her nose into the deep, slow-moving Atlantic swell, and he had said: “Talking of disguises, it’s a pity you couldn’t disguise yourself and come into the saloon tonight, Mr. French. We are having our first singsong, and you would have a good chance then of seeing the lady passengers.”
“That’s rather an idea,” French had replied. “Could you not hide me somewhere, say, near the door of the saloon through which those attending must enter, so that I could see each as she passed?”
Mr. Jennings had believed it might be possible, and had promised to see what could be done. And then as he was taking his leave, the idea flashed into French’s mind, and he had called him back.
“Don’t trouble about that business in the meantime, Mr. Jennings. Would it be convenient to you to call back again in half an hour? I shall have something to ask you then.”
Jennings glanced at him curiously, but all he said was “Right-o!” as he went on his business. After the allotted span he came back, and French spoke earnestly.
“Look here, Mr. Jennings, if you could do something for me you’d put me under a heavy debt of gratitude. I’ll tell you what it is. First I want you to smuggle me into the saloon before the concert begins, without anyone having seen me. I want to sit in some place where I can’t be seen by a person entering until he or she is right inside the room. Is that possible?”
“Why, yes, I think so. I’ll fix it for you somehow. I take it your notion is that if the lady sees you so suddenly and unexpectedly she will give herself away?”
“Quite, but there is something else, Mr. Jennings. That scheme would only work if she knows my appearance, but I don’t think she does. I want someone to read this out as an item. Will you do it?”
He handed over a sheet of paper which he had covered with writing during his half-hour’s wait. It read:
“Riddle.
“A prize of a 5-lb. box of chocolates is offered for the best answer to the following riddle:
“If she is Winter in Comedy,
Ward in Olympic,
Root in Savoy, and
Vane in Crewe,
What is she on the Enoch?”
Mr. Jennings looked somewhat mystified.
“I don’t quite get you?” he suggested.
“Woman’s aliases and the places where she used them.”
Something like admiration showed in the purser’s eyes.
“My word! Some notion, that! If the woman is there and hasn’t smelt a rat, she’ll give herself away when she hears that. But why don’t you read it yourself?”
“If she makes a move to leave I want to be out before her. If she leaves, it will mean that her husband is not present, and I want to get her before she can warn him. Carter’ll be on the same job.”
“Well, I’ll read it if you like, but frankly I’d rather you had someone else to do it.”
“What about Captain Davis?”
Jennings glanced round and sank his voice.
“If you take my advice, you’ll leave the old man out of it altogether. He just mightn’t approve. He treats the passengers as his guests, and bluffing them like that mightn’t appeal to him.”
“But I’m not bluffing them,” French retorted with a twinkle in his eye. He drew a pound note from his pocket and passed it over. “That’s for the chocolates, and whoever puts in the best answer gets it. It’s all perfectly straight and above board. Whether we get the woman over it or not no one need ever know.”
The purser smiled, but shook his head doubtfully.
“Well, it’s your funeral. Anyway, I’ve said I’ll go through with it, and I will.”
“Good!” French was once more his hearty, complacent self. “Now there is another matter if this one fails. Mrs. Vane may stay in her cabin. I want you to check the women present by your list, and give me a note of any absentees. Then I shall go round their cabins and make some excuse to see each.”
The purser agreed to this also. “I’ll send you some dinner here, and at once,” he added as he rose to take his leave, “then I’ll come for you while the passengers are dining, and get you fixed up in the saloon.”
“Better send Carter here, and he can dine with me while I explain the thing to him.”
When Mr. Jennings had gone, French stood in front of his porthole gazing out over the heaving waters. Daylight had completely gone, but there was a clear sky and a brilliant full moon. The sea looked like a ghostly plain of jet with, leading away across it, a huge road of light, its edges sparkling with myriad flashes of silver. His cabin was on the port side, and some three miles off he could dimly trace the white line of surf beating along the cliffs of the coast. The sea looked horribly cold, and he turned from it with a slight shudder as the door opened and Sergeant Carter entered.
“Ah, Carter, Mr. Jennings is sending us in some dinner. We’ll have it together. I have a job on for tonight,” and he explained his plan and the part his subordinate was to play therein. Carter said, “Yes, sir,” stolidly to everything, but French could see he was impressed.
Shortly before eight, Mr. Jennings appeared and beckoned his fellow-conspirators to follow him. They passed quickly across the deck and along some passages, and reached the saloon unobserved. There they found that the purser had placed two armchairs for their use close to the door, but hidden from outside it by screens. From French’s chair the face of each person who entered the room would be visible, while Carter’s was arranged so that he could see all those of the seated audience which were out of French’s immediate purview.
The concert was timed for half-past eight and before that hour little groups of people began to arrive. French, with a novel open on his knees, sat scrutinising unostentatiously each person as he or she entered. Once he stared with increased eagerness, as a dark, stoutish woman entered with two men. It seemed to him that she bore some resemblance to the photograph, but as he watched her foreign gestures and as he listened to her rapid conversation in some unknown language, he felt sure she could not be the woman he sought. He called a passing steward, and learned from him that she was the Miss da Silva whom he had already suspected and acquitted in his mind.
As the time drew on the saloon gradually filled, but nowhere did he see anyone whose appearance he thought suspicious. When the hour arrived, the proceedings were opened with a short recital by a well-known pianist who was making the voyage to Madeira for his health.
French was not musical, but even if he had been he would have paid but scant attention to the programme. He was too busily engaged in covertly scrutinising the faces of the men and women around him. He was dimly conscious that the well-known pianist brought his contribution to an end with a brilliant and highly dexterous feat of manual gymnastics, that two ladies—or was it three—sang, that a deep-toned basso growled out something that he took to be a Scotch song, and that a quiet, rather pretty girl played some pleasant-sounding melody on a violin, when his attention was suddenly galvanised into eager life and fixed with an expectant thrill on what was taking place. Mr. Jennings had ascended the platform.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the purser said in his pleasantly modulated voice, “while possibly it may be true that the days of riddles have passed, and while it certainly is true that the middle of a concert is not the happiest time for asking them, still perhaps you will allow me to put this one to you. It is a topical riddle concerning our voyage made up by one of our company, and he offers a prize of this large box of chocolates for the best solution. The riddle is this, and I can let anyone who cares to consider it have a copy: ‘If she is Winter in Comedy, Ward in Olympic, Root in Savoy, and Vane in Crewe, what is she aboard the Enoch?’ ”
The audience listened with good-humoured attention, and for a moment Mr. Jennings stood motionless, still smiling pleasantly. The little buzz of conversation which usually sprang up between the items had not yet begun, and save for the faint, all-pervading murmur of the engines, the gently swaying saloon was momentarily still. Then through the silence came a slight though unexpected sound. Miss da Silva’s handbag had slipped off her knee, and the metal hasp had struck the parquet floor with a sharp tap.
French glanced at her face with a sudden thrill. It had gone a queer shade of yellowish brown, and her hand, hanging down by her side, was clenched till the knuckles showed the same livid brownish hue. She evidently had not noticed her bag fall, and in her fixed and staring eyes there grew the shadow of a terrible fear. No one but French seemed to have noticed her emotion, and a man beside her stooped to pick up the bag. At the same time the silence was broken by a stout, military-looking old gentleman, who with some “Ha, ha’s!” and “Be Gad’s!” adjured the company to set about solving the puzzle, and conversation became general. Miss da Silva rose quietly and moved rather unsteadily towards the door.
For French to get up and open the door for her was an act of common politeness. With a slight bow he held it as she passed through, then following her immediately, he closed it behind him.
They were alone in the passage leading to the companionway, and as he glanced keenly at her face he felt no further doubt. Disguised by some adroit alterations to hair and eyebrows, and, he believed, with a differently-shaped set of false teeth, a darkened complexion and glasses, there stood before him the original of the photographs. He laid his hand on her arm.
“Miss Winter,” he said gravely, “I am Inspector French of Scotland Yard. I arrest you on a charge of being concerned in the murder of Charles Gething and the theft of precious stones and money from Messrs. Duke & Peabody’s on the 25th of November last.”
The woman did not reply, but like a flash her free arm went to her mouth. French grasped wildly and caught it. She gulped, and at the same moment reeled. French, himself trembling and with beads of perspiration on his forehead, laid her gently on the floor, where she lay unconscious. He hastily stepped back into the saloon, and moved quietly to where he had seen the ship’s doctor sitting, whispered in his ear. Sergeant Carter got up at the same moment, and a second later the two detectives stood looking down with troubled faces, while Dr. Sandiford knelt beside the motionless figure on the floor.
“Good God!” he cried at once, “she’s dead!” He put his nose to her lips. “Prussic acid!” He gazed up at his companions with a countenance of horrified surprise.
“Yes; suicide,” said French shortly. “Get her moved to my cabin before anyone comes.”
The doctor, ignorant of the circumstances, looked at the other with a sudden suspicion, but on French’s hurried explanation he nodded, and the three men bore the still form off and laid it reverently on the sofa in the Inspector’s stateroom.
“When you’ve examined her, tell the Captain,” French said. “Meantime Carter and I must go and arrest the poor creature’s husband. You might show me his cabin when you’re through.”
A few seconds sufficed the doctor for his examination, and then in silence he led the way to a cabin on the boat deck. French knocked, and instantly opening the door, passed inside, followed by the others.
It was a large, roomy stateroom, fitted up as a private sitting-room, an open door revealing a bedroom beyond. The room had a comfortable, used appearance. Books and papers lay about, a box of chessmen and a pack of cards were on a locker, while in a lounge chair lay a woman’s crochet work. On a table stood an empty coffee cup and the smell of a good cigar was heavy in the air.
In an armchair under the electric light, clad in a dressing-gown and slippers, sat an old gentleman, the cigar in one hand and a book in the other. He seemed a tall man, and his long hair was pure white. He wore a long white beard and moustache, and had bushy white eyebrows. He sat staring at the intruders with surprise and apparent annoyance.
But as his eyes settled on French’s face their expression changed. Amazement, incredulity, and a growing horror appeared in rapid succession. French advanced, but the other sat motionless, his eyes still fixed on his visitor’s with a dreadful intensity, like that of an animal fascinated by a snake. And then French began to stare in his turn. There was something familiar about those eyes. They were a peculiar shade of dark blue that he recalled very clearly. And there was a mole, a tiny brown mole beneath the corner of the left one, which he had certainly seen not long previously. So, for an appreciable time both remained motionless, staring at one another.
Suddenly French recalled where he had seen that shade of iris and that mole. With a murmur of amazement he stepped forward. “Mr. Duke!” he cried.
The other with a snarl of anger was fumbling desperately in his pocket. Like a flash, French and Carter threw themselves on him and caught his arm as it was halfway to his mouth. In the fingers was a tiny white pilule. In another second he was handcuffed, and French’s skilful fingers had passed over his clothes and abstracted from his pocket a tiny phial containing a few more of the little white messengers of death. At the same moment Captain Davis appeared at the door.
“Shut the door, if you please, Captain,” French begged. “The Yard was right after all. This is the man.”
A few sentences put the Captain in possession of the facts, and then French gently and with real kindness in his tones broke the news of Miss Winter’s death to his unhappy prisoner. But the man expressed only relief.
“Thank God!” he cried with evidently overwhelming emotion. “She was quicker than I. Thank God she was in time! I don’t care what happens to myself now that she’s out of it. If it wasn’t for my daughter”—his voice broke—“I’d be thankful it was over. I’ve lived in hell for the last few months. Wherever I turn I see Gething’s eyes looking at me. It’s been hell, just hell! I shouldn’t wish my worst enemy to go through what I have. I admit the whole business. All I ask is that you get on and make an end quickly.”
The whole scene had been enacted so quickly that French, after his first moment of overwhelming surprise, had not had time to think, but presently, after the immediate exigencies of the situation had been met, the mystery of this amazing dénouement struck him even more forcibly. He felt almost as if he had glimpsed the supernatural, as if he had been present and had seen one raised from the dead. Mr. Duke was dead, at least so until a few minutes earlier he had unquestioningly believed. The evidence of that death was overwhelming. And yet—it was false! What trick had the man played? How had he managed so completely to deceive all concerned as to the events of that mysterious crossing from Harwich to the Hook? French felt it would not be easy to control his impatience until he learned how the thing had been done, and the more he thought of the whole problem, the more eager he grew to be back at the Yard so that he might once again attack it, this time with the practical certainty of clearing up all the features of the case which still remained obscure.
The next afternoon they dropped anchor in the Tagus off Lisbon, and there French transferred with his prisoner to a homeward-bound liner. On the third morning after they were in Liverpool, and the same night reached London.