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 to-night, Mr.
French. We are having our first sing-song, 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 any
one 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
some one 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 some one
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 to-night,” 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 arm-chairs 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
any one 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
any one 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 companion-way, 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
any one 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 arm-chair 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 half-way 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.