V
French Takes a Journey
Inspector French had not quite finished supper that evening when his telephone bell rang. He was wanted back at the Yard immediately. Some information about the case had come in.
Cheerful and hopeful, he set off and in a few minutes was once more seated in his office. There a note was awaiting him, which had been delivered by hand a short time previously. He eagerly tore it open, and read:
“City of London Banking Co.,
“Reading Branch, 11th December.“Sir—With reference to your inquiry re certain banknotes, I beg to inform you that Bank of England ten-pound notes numbers A/V 173258 W and N/L 386427 P were paid into this Branch just before closing time today. Our teller fortunately noticed the numbers almost immediately, and he thinks, though is not positive, they were paid in by a Colonel FitzGeorge of this town, whose address is Oaklands, Windsor Road.
“I am sending this note by one of our clerks, who is going to town this afternoon.
French received this information with a feeling of delight which speedily changed to misgiving. At first sight what could be more valuable to his quest than the discovery of some of the stolen notes? And yet when he considered that these had been passed in by an army man residing in Reading, the doubt immediately insinuated itself that here also might be a promising clue which would lead to nothing. Obviously, if this Colonel FitzGeorge had indeed paid in the notes, it did not at all follow that he was the thief, or even that he had obtained them from the thief. Before they reached the bank in Reading they might have passed through a dozen hands.
But, be this as it might, French’s procedure was at least clear. A visit to Colonel FitzGeorge was undoubtedly his next step.
He picked up a Bradshaw. Yes, there would be time to go that night. A train left Paddington at 8:10 which would bring him to Reading before 9:00.
He ran down through the great building, and hailing a taxi, was driven to the terminus. He caught the train with a minute to spare, and shortly before nine he was in conversation with a taxi driver outside the Great Western Station in Reading.
“Yessir,” the man assured him, “I know the ’ouse. Ten minutes drive out along the Windsor Road.”
The night was dark, and French could not take minute stock of his surroundings, but he presently learnt from the sounds of his car’s wheels that Oaklands was reached from the road by an appreciable drive coated with fine gravel, and the bulk of the house, looming large above him as he stood before the porch, indicated an owner well endowed with this world’s goods. The impression was confirmed when in answer to his inquiry a venerable butler conducted him through a hall of imposing dimensions to a luxurious sitting-room. There the man left him, returning in a few minutes to say his master was in the library and would see Mr. French.
Colonel FitzGeorge was a tall, white-haired man, with an erect carriage and excessively courteous manners. He bowed as French entered, and indicated a deep leather-lined armchair drawn up opposite his own before the blazing fire of pine logs.
“A chilly evening, Inspector,” he said pleasantly. “Won’t you sit down?”
French thanked him, and after apologising for the hour of his call, went on:
“My visit, sir, is in connection with certain banknotes which I am trying to trace. Some time ago there was a robbery in the City in which a number of Bank of England notes were stolen. The owner fortunately was able to find out their numbers from his bank. When the matter was reported to us, we naturally asked the banks generally to keep a lookout for them. Nothing was heard of them until today, but this afternoon, just before closing time, two of them were paid into the Reading Branch of the City of London Bank. The teller, though not certain, believed that you had paid them in. You can see, therefore, the object of my call. It is to ask you if you can possibly help me to trace the thief by telling me where you received the notes. There were two, both for ten pounds, and the numbers were A/V 173258 W and N/L 386427 P.”
Colonel FitzGeorge looked interested.
“I certainly called at the bank this afternoon and lodged some money,” he answered. “It was mostly in the form of dividend warrants, but there were a few notes. Now where did I get those? I should be able to tell you offhand, but I’m not at all sure that I can. Let me think, please.”
For some moments silence reigned in the luxuriously-furnished room. French, always suspicious, surreptitiously watched his new acquaintance, but he had to admit that he could discern none of the customary signs of guilt. But he reminded himself that you never knew, and determined that unless he was completely satisfied by the coming reply, he would make an investigation into Colonel FitzGeorge’s movements on the night of the murder.
“I believe,” said the Colonel suddenly, “I know where I got those notes. I am not by any means certain, but I think I can tell you. Unless I am very much mistaken, it was from the manager of the Hotel Beau-Sejour in Chamonix.”
“Chamonix?” French repeated in surprise. This was by no means what he had expected to hear.
“Yes. I have been for the last six weeks in Switzerland and Savoy, and two days ago, on last Tuesday afternoon, to be exact, I left Chamonix. I caught the night train from Geneva, was in Paris next morning, and reached Charing Cross yesterday, Wednesday, afternoon. Today I went through my correspondence, and after lunch took in my dividends and some spare cash to lodge in the bank.”
“And the two ten-pound notes, sir?”
“The two ten-pound notes, as I say, I believe I received at the Chamonix hotel. I found I had to return home sooner than I had intended, and as I was leaving the country I wanted to change back all but a small amount of my foreign money. It was convenient to do it at the hotel, and besides, you can’t always be sure of getting enough change at Calais or on the boat. I asked the manager of the Beau-Sejour to give me English money for my francs, and he did so at once.”
“Why do you think these particular notes were handed over by him?”
“He paid me in ten-pound notes only. He gave me five of them—I changed fifty pounds’ worth of francs altogether. It is true that I had some other English notes, and there were some at home here, but so far as I can remember, there were no tens among them—only fives and Treasury notes.”
With this, French had to be content. Though he asked many other questions he could learn nothing further to help him. But on the pretext that the notes might have been received at some other place, he obtained a note of the Colonel’s itinerary while abroad. According to this, it appeared that on the night of Charles Gething’s murder, the traveller had slept in the Bellevue Hotel at Kandersteg, prior to walking over the Gemmi Pass on the following day. This French noted as a point capable of being checked, should checking become desirable.
He had kept his taxi, and after a little trouble he found the address of the teller of the City of London Bank, and paid him a late call. But from him he learnt nothing new, except that the man seemed much more certain that Colonel FitzGeorge had really handed in the notes than the letter of his manager had led French to believe. He admitted that he was relying on memory alone, but said he had checked over his money just before the Colonel’s visit, and he was positive the stolen notes were not then there.
Inspector French was in a distinctly pessimistic frame of mind as he sat in the corner of a smoking compartment of the last train from Reading to town, and next morning as he put the facts he had learnt before his chief, he was but slightly more sanguine. Two of the stolen notes had been discovered; that was really all that could be stated with certainty. That Colonel FitzGeorge had paid them into the bank was by no means sure, still less that he really had received them from a hotel manager in Chamonix. But even assuming the Colonel’s recollection was accurate, it did not greatly help. It was unlikely that the manager could state from whom he in his turn had received those particular notes. Indeed, even were he able to do so, and by some miracle were French able to trace the giver, in all probability the latter also would turn out to be innocent, and the goal would be no nearer. The whole episode seemed to French, as he expressed it to his chief, a washout.
But the great man took a different view. He replied in the same words which French himself had used in another connection.
“You never know,” he declared. “You miss this chance and you’re down and out, so far as I can see. But if you go over and see the manager you don’t know what you mayn’t light on. If the thief stayed in that hotel, he must have registered. You might get something from that. Mind you, I agree that it’s a thin chance, but a thin chance is better than none.”
“Then you think, sir, I ought to go to Chamonix?”
“Yes. It won’t cost a great deal, and you may get something. Have you ever been there?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you’ll enjoy it. I’d give a good deal to take your place.”
“Oh, I shall enjoy it right enough, sir. But I’m not hopeful of the result.”
The chief gave a dry but kindly smile.
“French, you’re not usually such a confounded pessimist. Get along, and hope for the best.”
French had looked up the positions of Chamonix and Kandersteg on the previous evening, and he had seen that by taking a comparatively slight detour it would be possible for him to visit the latter place on his way to the former. He decided, therefore, that he might as well set his mind at rest on the question of Colonel FitzGeorge’s whereabouts on the night of the murder. He did not suspect the man, but it would be better to be sure.
But to do this, some further information was necessary. He must, if possible, obtain a photograph of the Colonel and a sample of his signature. It was not yet ten o’clock, and he thought it would be possible to get these and catch the afternoon train for the Continent.
By half-past eleven he was back in Reading. There he handed a taxi man a note which he had written during the journey, telling him to take it to Colonel FitzGeorge’s, and to bring the answer back to him at the station. The note, he admitted to himself, was clumsy, but it was the best he could think of at the moment. In it he regretted troubling his new acquaintance so soon again, but he had most stupidly lost the memorandum he had taken of the name of the hotel in Chamonix at which the stolen notes were obtained, and would Colonel FitzGeorge be so kind as to let him have it again.
The note despatched, he turned to the second portion of his business. With his usual detailed observation, he had seen on the chimneypiece of the Colonel’s library a photograph of the gentleman himself, and noted that it was the work of Messrs. Gale & Hardwood, of Reading. An inquiry from the taxi driver had given him the address of the studio, and he now set off there in the hope of obtaining a copy.
In this he was unexpectedly successful. Messrs. Gale & Hardwood had a print in one of their showcases, which in five minutes was transferred to the Inspector’s pocket, and he was back at the station before his taxi man turned up with the reply to his note.
In this also his luck was in. The man had found Colonel FitzGeorge just about to start for Reading. He handed French back his own note, across which was written in a firm, masculine hand: “Beau-Sejour. B. L. FitzGeorge.”
Stowing the photograph and the note away in his pocketbook, French returned to town, and the same afternoon at 2:00 he left Victoria on his second trip to the Continent. He had been to France and Germany on a previous occasion, but never to Switzerland, and he was looking forward to getting a glimpse of some of the wonderful mountain scenery of that country.
He disembarked at Calais, passed through the customs, and took his seat in the Lötschberg-Simplon express with true British disapproval of all that he saw. But later the excellent dinner served while the train ran through the pleasant country between Abbeville and Amiens brought him to a more acquiescent mood, and over a good cigar and a cup of such coffee as he had seldom before tasted, he complacently watched day fade into night. About half-past six o’clock next morning he followed the example of his countless British predecessors, and climbed down on the long platform at Bale to drink his morning coffee. Then again on through scenery of growing interest, past Bern to Spiez, where he found the Lake of Thun really had the incredible colouring he had so often scoffed at, but secretly admired, in the Swiss posters he had seen in London. Finally, after crawling round the loops on the side of the Frütigen valley, the train stopped at Kandesteg, and bag in hand he descended to the platform. A porter with the name “Bellevue” on his cap caught his eye, and a short drive brought him to the hotel.
After déjeuner he sought the manager, a suave functionary whose English accent was a trifle suggestive of New York. No, it was not the matter of his room. French regretted that on that occasion he could not remain overnight in the hotel—he hoped he would soon be free to return and to do so—but for the moment he was on business. He would take the manager into his confidence. He was a detective … in short, could the manager help him? That was the gentleman’s photograph.
“But, of course! Yes,” the manager answered promptly on glancing at the portrait. “It is the Colonel FitzGeorge, the English gentleman from London. He was here, let me see, two—three weeks ago. I will look up the register.”
Further inquiries elicited the information that the Colonel had stayed for three nights at the hotel, and had left early on the day after the murder with the intention of walking to Leukerbad over the Gemmi Pass.
His business at Kandersteg completed, French conscientiously looked up the next train to Chamonix. But he found he could not get through that day, and being tired from his journey, he decided to remain where he was until the next morning. He spent the afternoon lost in admiration of the charming valley, and that night slept to the murmur of a mountain stream which flowed beneath his window.
Next morning he took the southbound train, and having passed through the nine miles of the Loetschberg tunnel, he gazed with veritable awe into the dreary waste of the Loetschenthal and the great gulf of the Rhone Valley, marvelling as the train raced along the side of the stupendous cliff. He changed at Brigue, passed down the Rhone Valley, and changing again at Martigny, spent another four hours on what a fellow-traveller with a nasal drawl described as “the most elegant ride he’d struck,” through Vallorcine and Argentiere to Chamonix. On crossing the divide, the panorama which suddenly burst on his view of the vast mass of the Mont Blanc massif hanging in the sky above the valley, literally took away his breath, and he swore that his next holidays would certainly be spent in the overwhelming scenery of these tremendous mountains.
At Chamonix history tended to repeat itself. He reached his hotel, dined excellently, and then sought the manager. M. Marcel, like his confrère in Kandersteg, was courtesy personified, and listened carefully to French’s statement. But when he realised the nature of the problem he was called upon to solve, he could but shake his head and shrug his shoulders.
“Alas, monsieur,” he wailed, “but with the best will in the world, how can I? I change so many English notes. … I recall giving those ten-pound notes to a gentleman from England, because it is comparatively seldom that I am asked to change French money into English, but I am constantly receiving English notes. No, I am sorry, but I could not tell you where those came from.”
Though French had scarcely hoped for any other reply, he was nevertheless disappointed. He showed Colonel FitzGeorge’s photograph to the manager, who instantly recognised it as that of the Englishman for whom he had exchanged the notes. But he could give no further help.
This clue having petered out, French determined to call for the register and make a search therein in the hope of recognising the handwriting of some entry. But before he did so he asked about Vanderkemp. Had anyone of that name been a recent visitor?
The manager could not recall the name, but he had a thorough search made of the records. This also drew blank. French then handed him the photograph of Vanderkemp which he had obtained in Amsterdam, asking if he had even seen the original.
With that the luck turned. M. Marcel beamed. “But yes, monsieur,” he exclaimed, with a succession of nods, “your friend was here for several days. He left about a fortnight ago. M. Harrison from one of your great Midland towns, is it not? He told me which, but I have forgotten.”
“That’s the man,” cried French heartily, delighted beyond words at this new development. “I have been following him round. Might I see his entry in the register?”
Again the records were brought into requisition, and as he looked French felt wholly triumphant. On comparing the “J. Harrison, Huddersfield, England,” to which the manger pointed, with the samples of Vanderkemp’s handwriting which he had obtained from Mr. Schoofs, he saw that unquestionably they were written by the same hand. So Vanderkemp was his man! After this there could be no further doubt of his guilt.
For a moment he remained silent, considering what this discovery meant. It was now evident that Vanderkemp, under the alias Harrison, had arrived at the Beau-Sejour Hotel about midday on the second day after the crime, and after staying a week, had departed for an unknown destination. But the matter did not end there. With a sudden, theatrical gesture the manager indicated that he had more to say.
“You have recalled something to my mind, monsieur,” he announced. “That M. Harrison asked me to change notes for him. In fact, I remember the whole thing clearly. His bill came to between four and five hundred francs, and he paid with an English ten-pound note. With the exchange as it is at present, he should have had about 300 francs change. But I now remember he asked me at the same time to change a second ten-pound note. I did so, and gave him about 1,000 francs. So it is possible, I do not say certain, but it is possible. …” He shrugged his shoulders and threw out his hands, as if to indicate that Fate and not he was responsible for the possibility, and looked inquiringly at his visitor.
Inspector French was exultant. This news seemed to him to complete his case. When in Amsterdam he had found cause to suspect Vanderkemp of the crime, and now here was corroborative evidence of the most convincing character. Rapidly he ran over in his mind the salient points of the case against the traveller.
Vanderkemp possessed all the special knowledge necessary to commit the crime. He knew of the collection of diamonds, and was familiar with the London office and the characters and habits of the workers there. As he was by no means well-off, this knowledge would have constituted a very real temptation. So much on general grounds.
Then as to details. A forged letter calling the man to London, or some similar device, would be a necessary feature of the case. But this letter existed; moreover Vanderkemp had access to the machine on which it had been typed. While telling Mr. Schoofs that he was crossing by a certain train, which arrived in town after the murder had been committed, he had in reality gone by an earlier service, which would have brought him there in time to carry out the crime. Such evidence, though circumstantial, was pretty strong. But when was added to it the facts that Vanderkemp had disappeared without explanation from his firm, had arrived in Chamonix on the second day after the murder, had registered under a false name and address, and most important of all, had paid out two of the notes stolen from Mr. Duke’s safe, the case became overwhelming. It was impossible not to believe in his guilt; in fact, seldom had the Inspector known so clear a case. When he had found and arrested Vanderkemp his work would be done.
But just in the flush of victory, his luck again turned. The man had left the Beau-Sejour a week previously, and the manager had no idea what direction he had taken. In vain French asked questions and made suggestions, hoping to say something which might recall the information to the other’s mind. But the manager readily gave his help in interviewing the whole of the staff who had in any way come in contact with the wanted man. And here, thanks again to his persistent thoroughness, he obtained just the hint that was needed.
He had worked through the whole staff without result, and he was about to give up, when it occurred to him that none of those to whom he had spoken had admitted having brought down Vanderkemp’s luggage from his room on the day of his departure. French then asked directly who had done this, and further inquiries revealed the fact that in the absence of the usual man, an under porter, usually employed about the kitchen, had been called upon. This man stated he had noticed the label on Vanderkemp’s suitcase. It was to a hotel in Barcelona. He could not recall the name of the hotel, but he was sure of the city.
When French had thanked the manager, distributed backsheesh among the staff, and with the help of the head porter worked out his journey from Chamonix to Barcelona, he felt his work in Savoy was done. He went exultantly to bed, and next morning left by an early train on his way to Spain.