THE BRASS-BOUND CHEST
The police-sergeant had got off his bicycle at the same time that I
jumped from mine, and he was close behind me when Maisie and I met, and I
heard him give a sharp whistle at her news. And as for me, I was
dumbfounded, for though I had seen well enough that Mr. Gilverthwaite was
very ill when I left him, I was certainly a long way from thinking him
like to die. Indeed, I was so astonished that all I could do was to stand
staring at Maisie in the grey light which was just coming between the
midnight and the morning. But the sergeant found his tongue more readily.
"I suppose he died in his bed, miss?" he asked softly. "Mr. Hugh here
said he was ill; it would be a turn for the worse, no doubt, after Mr.
Hugh left him?"
"He died suddenly just after eleven o'clock," answered Maisie; "and your
mother sought you at Mr. Lindsey's office, Hugh, and when she found you
weren't there, she came down to our house, and I had to tell her that
you'd come out this way on an errand for Mr. Gilverthwaite. And I told
her, too, what I wasn't so sure of myself, that there'd no harm come to
you of it, and that you'd be back soon after twelve, and I went down to
your house and waited with her; and when you didn't come, and didn't
come, why, I got Tom here to get our bicycles out and we came to seek
you. And let's be getting back, for your mother's anxious about you, and
the man's death has upset her--he went all at once, she said, while she
was with him."
We all got on our bicycles again and set off homewards, and Chisholm
wheeled alongside me and we dropped behind a little.
"This is a strange affair," said he, in a low voice; "and it's like to be
made stranger by this man's sudden death. I'd been looking to him to get
news of this other man. What do you know of Mr. Gilverthwaite, now?"
"Nothing!" said I.
"But he's lodged with you seven weeks?" said he.
"If you'd known him, sergeant," I answered, "you'd know that he was this
sort of man--you'd know no more of him at the end of seven months than
you would at the end of seven weeks, and no more at the end of seven
years than at the end of seven months. We knew nothing, my mother and I,
except that he was a decent, well-spoken man, free with his money and
having plenty of it, and that his name was what he called it, and that he
said he'd been a master mariner. But who he was, or where he came from, I
know no more than you do."
"Well, he'll have papers, letters, something or other that'll throw some
light on matters, no doubt?" he suggested. "Can you say as to that?"
"I can tell you that he's got a chest in his chamber that's nigh as heavy
as if it were made of solid lead," I answered. "And doubtless he'll have
a key on him or about him that'll unlock it. But what might be in it, I
can't say, never having seen him open it at any time."
"Well," he said, "I'll have to bring the superintendent down, and we must
trouble your mother to let us take a look at this Mr. Gilverthwaite's
effects. Had he a doctor to him since he was taken ill?"
"Dr. Watson--this--I mean yesterday--afternoon," I answered.
"Then there'll be no inquest in his case," said the sergeant, "for the
doctor'll be able to certify. But there'll be a searching inquiry in this
murder affair, and as Gilverthwaite sent you to meet the man that's been
murdered--"
"Wait a bit!" said I. "You don't know, and I don't, that the man who's
been murdered is the man I was sent to meet. The man I was to meet may
have been the murderer; you don't know who the murdered man is. So you'd
better put it this way: since Gilverthwaite sent me to meet some man at
the place where this murder's been committed--well?"
"That'll be one of your lawyer's quibbles," said he calmly. "My meaning's
plain enough--we'll want to find out, if we can, who it was that
Gilverthwaite sent you to meet. And--for what reason? And--where it was
that the man was to wait for him? And I'll get the superintendent to
come down presently."
"Make it in, say, half an hour," said I. "This is a queer business
altogether, sergeant, and I'm so much in it that I'm not going to do
things on my own responsibility. I'll call Mr. Lindsey up from his bed,
and get him to come down to talk over what's to be done."
"Aye, you're in the right of it there," he said. "Mr. Lindsey'll know all
the law on such matters. Half an hour or so, then."
He made off to the county police-station, and Maisie and Tom and I went
on to our house, and were presently inside. My mother was so relieved at
the sight of me that she forbore to scold me at that time for going off
on such an errand without telling her of my business; but she grew white
as her cap when I told her of what I had chanced on, and she glanced at
the stair and shook her head.
"And indeed I wish that poor man had never come here, if it's this sort
of dreadfulness follows him!" she said. "And though I was slow to say
it, Hugh, I always had a feeling of mystery about him. However, he's
gone now--and died that suddenly and quietly!--and we've laid him out in
his bed; and--and--what's to be done now?" she exclaimed. "We don't know
who he is!"
"Don't trouble yourself, mother," said I. "You've done your duty by him.
And now that you've seen I'm safe, I'm away to bring Mr. Lindsey down and
he'll tell us all that should be done."
I left Maisie and Tom Dunlop keeping my mother company and made haste to
Mr. Lindsey's house, and after a little trouble roused him out of his bed
and got him down to me. It was nearly daylight by that time, and the grey
morning was breaking over the sea and the river as he and I walked back
through the empty streets--I telling him of all the events of the night,
and he listening with an occasional word of surprise. He was not a native
of our parts, but a Yorkshireman that had bought a practice in the town
some years before, and had gained a great character for shrewdness and
ability, and I knew that he was the very man to turn to in an affair of
this sort.
"There's a lot more in this than's on the surface, Hugh, my lad," he
remarked when I had made an end of my tale. "And it'll be a nice job
to find out all the meaning of it, and if the man that's been murdered
was the man Gilverthwaite sent you to meet, or if he's some other that
got there before you, and was got rid of for some extraordinary reason
that we know nothing about. But one thing's certain: we've got to get
some light on your late lodger. That's step number one--and a most
important one."
The superintendent of police, Mr. Murray, a big, bustling man, was
outside our house with Chisholm when we got there, and after a word or
two between us, we went in, and were presently upstairs in
Gilverthwaite's room. He lay there in his bed, the sheet drawn about him
and a napkin over his face; and though the police took a look at him, I
kept away, being too much upset by the doings of the night to stand any
more just then. What I was anxious about was to get some inkling of what
all this meant, and I waited impatiently to see what Mr. Lindsey would
do. He was looking about the room, and when the others turned away from
the dead man he pointed to Gilverthwaite's clothes, that were laid tidily
folded on a chair.
"The first thing to do is to search for his papers and his keys," he
said. "Go carefully through his pockets, sergeant, and let's see what
there is."
But there was as little in the way of papers there, as there had been in
the case of the murdered man. There were no letters. There was a map of
the district, and under the names of several of the villages and places
on either side of the Tweed, between Berwick and Kelso, heavy marks in
blue pencil had been made. I, who knew something of Gilverthwaite's
habits, took it that these were the places he had visited during his
seven weeks' stay with us. And folded in the map were scraps of newspaper
cuttings, every one of them about some antiquity or other in the
neighbourhood, as if such things had an interest for him. And in another
pocket was a guide-book, much thumbed, and between two of the leaves,
slipped as if to mark a place, was a registered envelope.
"That'll be what he got yesterday afternoon!" I exclaimed. "I'm certain
it was whatever there was in it that made him send me out last night, and
maybe the letter in it'll tell us something."
However, there was no letter in the envelope--there was nothing. But on
the envelope itself was a postmark, at which Chisholm instantly pointed.
"Peebles!" said he. "Yon man that you found murdered--his half-ticket's
for Peebles. There's something of a clue, anyway."
They went on searching the clothing, only to find money--plenty of it,
notes in an old pocket-book, and gold in a wash-leather bag--and the
man's watch and chain, and his pocket-knife and the like, and a bunch of
keys. And with the keys in his hand Mr. Lindsey turned to the chest.
"If we're going to find anything that'll throw any light on the question
of this man's identity, it'll be in this box," he said. "I'll take the
responsibility of opening it, in Mrs. Moneylaws' interest, anyway. Lift
it on to that table, and let's see if one of these keys'll fit the lock."
There was no difficulty about finding the key--there were but a few on
the bunch, and he hit on the right one straightaway, and we all crowded
round him as he threw back the heavy lid. There was a curious aromatic
smell came from within, a sort of mingling of cedar and camphor and
spices--a smell that made you think of foreign parts and queer, far-off
places. And it was indeed a strange collection of things and objects that
Mr. Lindsey took out of the chest and set down on the table. There was an
old cigar-box, tied about with twine, full to the brim with money--over
two thousand pounds in bank-notes and gold, as we found on counting it up
later on,--and there were others filled with cigars, and yet others in
which the man had packed all manner of curiosities such as three of us at
any rate had never seen in our lives before. But Mr. Lindsey, who was
something of a curiosity collector himself, nodded his head at the sight
of some of them.
"Wherever else this man may have been in his roving life," he said,
"here's one thing certain--he's spent a lot of time in Mexico and Central
America. And--what was the name he told you to use as a password once you
met his man, Hugh--wasn't it Panama?"
"Panama!" I answered. "Just that--Panama."
"Well, and he's picked up lots of these things in those parts--Panama,
Nicaragua, Mexico," he said. "And very interesting matters they are.
But--you see, superintendent?--there's not a paper nor anything in this
chest to tell us who this man is, nor where he came from when he came
here, nor where his relations are to be found, if he has any. There's
literally nothing whatever of that sort."
The police officials nodded in silence.
"And so--there's where things are," concluded Mr. Lindsey. "You've
two dead men on your hands, and you know nothing whatever about
either of them!"