THE CHRONOLOGY OF A GREAT THEFT
It is necessary to tell the story of what was undoubtedly one of the
strangest and most audacious crimes recorded in the annals of crime
with greater detail and at greater length than is ordinarily
necessary. Le Flavier of the French police, who is surely the greatest
living authority on the subject of modern crime, has likened Kate
Westhanger’s masterpiece (he does not refer to her, by the way) to the
first of the Napoleonic campaigns against Italy and has published an
elaborate treatise showing the points of resemblance which are not so
far fetched as some of the critics, in their hasty review of this
work, are justified in saying.
Kirschner, a little quoted authority, but nevertheless a brilliant and
talented philocriminologist, has said that it would be humanly
possible to reduplicate such a crime and that at any rate it would be
wholly impossible to excel the ingenuity which planned the strategics
of the issue.
At 8:30 on the night of May 14th the _Charter Queen_, eight thousand
tons, commander T. Brown, came to her moorings in E-basin, No. 3 Quay
of the Seahampton Docks. She carried a hundred-and-twenty third class
passengers, seventy-four second class and fifty-nine first class
passengers, a general cargo and in her strong-room forty-four
thousand, eight hundred pounds of bar gold. They were made up of
four-hundred and forty-eight hundred-pound ingots, bearing the stamp
of the Central Rand Gold Extraction Company.
The passengers were landed and despatched by special trains to London,
preceded by another train carrying the mails. The mail train left at
9:27, the passenger at 9:42. By 10:17 the gold ingots had been landed,
checked and conveyed to a waiting train where they were checked again
under the superintendence of Inspector K. Morris of the Dock police.
At 10:22 the engine backed into the train and was coupled up and the
superintendent of the line being unavoidably absent (he was discovered
locked in an empty house the next morning), the driver received his
“right away” from Assistant-Inspector Thomas Massey, who had arrived
that day from London and who spoke to the driver and fireman before
the train pulled out.
“You know this road, I suppose?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” replied the driver. “I have been down here several times.”
The inspector was not wholly satisfied. In the first place, he
resented seeing “foreign drivers” on his road, but the two men had
arrived from London bearing a letter from Sir Ralph to the
superintendent of the road, a letter which afterwards proved to be a
forgery. The letter instructed the superintendent to give the men
charge of the engine, offering, as a reason, their reliability and the
fact that they were two of the best drivers at the North Central,
which railway was under the control of Sir Ralph Sapson.
The train pulled out and from this onward its adventures began.
From the moment it left Seahampton Town station, the train was never
out of sight for longer than ten minutes. Every signal box along the
line had received special instructions to particularly note its
passing and in addition to the conventional record which is kept of
every train, to notify specially not only to the next box, but to
London the hour of its dispatch. The road may be briefly described.
From Seahampton it ran straight to the market town of Sevilley and
then over the S-shape road across to Tolbridge. It may be remarked in
passing that between Sevilley and the Tolbridge was the level crossing
at which Moya had met with her accident. Between Tolbridge and Pinham
the road pushed straight through uneven ground passing successively
under Tolbridge Hill, Beckham Beacon and Pinham Heights, under each of
which it passed through tunnels, the tunnels being connected nearly
all the way by deep cuttings.
It was a rainy night for the drizzle, which set in at six in the
evening, had continued until there was a veritable deluge. Sevilley
(East) signalbox reported the gold train as having passed at 11:07,
and this fact was supported by the times given by six signalmen
between Tolbridge and Sevilley. The train slowed at Tolbridge and
entered Tolbridge tunnel. Between Beckham tunnel and Tolbridge tunnel
is a signalbox which reported the Special at 11:32. The signalbox was
situated close to the line and rather near the ground and the
signalman states that he not only saw the train pass him in the
pelting rain, but that he saw the tail lights disappear into Beckham
tunnel which is built on a curve.
The times are interesting. At 11:32 the train entered Beckham tunnel.
At 11:42 the signalman on the northern side of Pinham tunnel reported
the train as having passed. It was raining but owing to the unusual
character of this new service and his natural curiosity to see a
£3,000,000 “special” he had his window open and saw the three green
lights flash past and the red tail lights disappearing in the
distance. Between Beckham signalbox and Pinham signalbox the distance
is five miles, but the theory is that at this point the train slowed
to thirty miles an hour, which accounted for the unusual length of
time it took to traverse this short distance.
At Maidmore, Stanborn, Quexley Paddocks and Catford Bridge, on the
outskirts of London, the train was reported and timed. The next
station to Catford Bridge is Balham Hill and the signalman at Balham
Hill stated at the subsequent enquiry that he was given and accepted
the gold special at 11:53 and lowered the “distant off” and the “home”
signals, at the same time warning the next northern station, which was
Kennington Junction that he had accepted the “:46 up” which was the
official designation of the special.
He waited for ten minutes and saw no sign of the train, whereupon he
called Quexley Paddocks and asked if there had not been a mistake
since the run was not more than seven minutes. Quexley Paddocks
replied that the train had passed through, going at fifty miles an
hour at the moment she had been signalled.
No further news was received and the Catford Bridge signalman,
becoming alarmed, reported to the station-master on duty, who sent two
plate-layers along the line. They walked as far as Quexley Paddocks
but saw no sign of a train. The gold special had disappeared as though
the earth had opened and received it.
All these times had been verified. Every signalman and station-master
was interrogated without in any way shaking the veracity of the
witnesses. When the plate-layers reached Quexley Paddocks and reported
the disappearance of the train, London was informed. Between Quexley
Paddocks and Catford Bridge the line runs through market gardens and
what is very unusual so close to London, it passes over a level
crossing, the gates of which are electrically controlled from Quexley
Paddocks signalbox.
And here is the most remarkable of the statements that were made. The
signalman, Henry George Wallis, states that after the gold special had
passed and he had brought his signals back to danger, he had noticed a
strange disturbance on the dial of the electrical apparatus by which
the gates were opened or closed and it was discovered the next morning
when he endeavoured to open the gates to allow an army traction engine
to pass that the gates refused to work. That happening, however, was
very thoroughly investigated on the following day.
Michael had dined and supped with Moya and Fonso Blaxton and they had
had a riotous and wholly joyous evening. He had returned to his flat
at half past eleven, calling en route at the Yard, for he was still
very uneasy about Kate’s threat and he was anxious also to find out if
there had been any discovery made in connection with the outrage of
the morning. The case was not in his hands since the crime had been
committed within the jurisdiction of the city police and the city
Criminal Investigation Department had control of the investigations.
T.B. was at the office and had no news to give. Michael went home and
to bed. He was aroused at half past twelve by telephone. It was the
voice of T.B. Smith.
“They’ve done it, Mike. Come down at once.”
“What have they done?” asked Michael with a sinking heart.
“They’ve pinched the blooming train!” said T.B. vulgarly.
A special train had been made up for the police and Michael was on the
platform of Catford Bridge station by half past one, and was reading
the reports which had been transmitted by the various signalmen. To
add to the mystery, a mineral train from Seahampton which had followed
the gold special at half an hour’s interval, but at a slower pace, had
come straight through without noticing anything unusual. It had
crossed the down empty at Tolbridge and that was the only other train
that was met until it reached the suburbs of London where the night
traffic was more general. Sir Ralph was one of the party that went
down to Catford Bridge and a very distressed and worried man he was.
“I asked that fellow Flanborough to come,” he wailed, “and what do you
think the selfish beast said? He said it was my responsibility. Can
you imagine anything more brutal?”
“Is the gold insured?”
Sir Ralph shook his head.
“Not wholly. It was fully insured as far as Seahampton,” he said
grimly. “After that the responsibility is partly mine and partly
Flanborough’s and partly the underwriters’. Isn’t it too awful for
words?”
T.B. came into the waiting room at that moment, clad in oilskins and
sou’wester.
“You had better take complete charge of this case, Mike,” he said.
“Sir Ralph will give you any assistance, I’m sure.”
“Can I have a break-down train?”
“I can bring one down here in twenty minutes,” said Sir Ralph.
“Is it equipped with searchlights?”
Sir Ralph consulted an official.
“We’ve naphtha flares. Will they do?”
“They will do,” said Michael; “put a truck in front of the engine and
arrange the flares so that they light up the line.”
He spent the night in an open truck, slowly passing down the line
searching for some clue which would afford a solution to the mystery.
Particularly thorough was his search of the three tunnels, but they
yielded nothing, and he reached Seahampton as the dawn was breaking
without having made any discovery which would help him.
He went back to town by the break-down train, sleeping in the guard’s
caboose, and reached Quexley in time to receive from the retiring
signalman the story of his eccentric gates.
Michael was interested and with the man for a guide he followed the
course of the controlling wire which passed through a length of iron
piping from the signal box to the gate.
“The electrician tells me that the wire has been cut somewhere,” said
the man. “He has tried his instrument on it.”
“The wire cannot be cut if it is inside the iron casing,” said
Michael.
“It is either cut or fused,” said the man.
The detective walked very slowly, pausing now and again to examine the
black painted pipe. Presently he stopped. He had detected something
and stooped to examine the pipe more closely. It was clear that it had
been freshly painted. He passed his hand round it slowly and suddenly
he felt an unexpected softness.
“This isn’t iron,” he said.
He took out his pocket-knife and scraped. A little hole had been burnt
into the steel by a portable blow-pipe and the wires inside had been
fused together by the heat.
“That explains it,” said Michael. “What effect would this have on the
gates?” he asked.
“Well, you couldn’t open them from the box,” said the man.
“Could you open them by hand?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve got a chap on duty now who does nothing but open and
shut them,” said the man. “While the current is on, they are locked.
They work like ordinary gates, except you have to be very careful when
you lock them.”
Michael waited until a train had passed and then experimented.
The gates opened and closed easily enough.
“What do you mean when you tell me that you have to be careful with
the catch?”
“Well, ordinarily, when you use it without the current,” said the man,
“the catch falls and cannot be lifted except by electric control.”
Michael made an inspection of the “catch.” It was a steel block
working on a pivot and obviously operated magnetically.
“It doesn’t go up or down, now,” said Michael after testing it.
“It looks to me,” said the man, “as though it has been forced up.”
There was no doubt that what he said was true for the detective saw
the unmistakable mark of a jemmy on the wooden casing about the lock.
But why on earth did they want to open the gate? If the train had been
rifled on this stretch of line the need for an open gate would have
been easy to explain. The train would have been stopped here and,
supposing they could force the locks of the safe, the thieves could
have loaded their gold and got away--but no train had been found.
Michael passed through the turnstile and examined the road for
something to guide him to a solution.
It had been raining throughout the night and more than one traction
engine had passed, as was evident from the wheel marks. He explored
the road for a hundred yards and found nothing. Then he tried the
other gate and found that there the catch had also been forced. The
first twenty yards of the road was soft and the wheel tracks were
indistinguishable. At the end of this patch, however, the going was
harder, the crown of the road had drained off the rain and even the
traction engine had left no great impression.
Michael walked a pace or two, then stopped and whistled, and well
might he whistle, for there plain to be seen and not to be confused
with any other track was the deep and narrow furrow and the broad
impression which could have only been made by railway wheels!
He followed the track for another hundred yards where it struck the
main road and a tram line and from there every trace disappeared.
Very weary and dishevelled he presented himself to T.B. Smith and made
his report.
“You don’t seriously suggest that they took a railway train off the
line and put it on the road, do you?” asked T.B. in wonder. “It’s
impossible!”
“Of course it’s impossible,” said Michael irritably; “the whole thing
is impossible. You can’t steal a railway train--but they’ve done it!”
He found with the assistant commissioner Sir Ralph whose agitation was
pathetic.
“It’s pretty rough on me, old man,” said the baronet with that
friendliness which the superior person invariably adopts in a moment
of his misfortune. “I have lost a wife and a railway train in
twenty-four hours. What the dickens are you laughing at?”
“Nothing,” said Michael recovering his gravity. “It was almost worth
everything to see your face!”