/At/ the last moment the bank authorities had changed their mind, and
overnight had sent £53,000 worth of gold for conveyance to the ship.
They had borrowed for the purpose an army lorry from Woolwich, a
service which is sometimes claimed by the national banking
institution.
The lorry had been accompanied by eight detectives, the military
driver being also armed. Tilbury was reached at half-past eleven
o’clock at night, and the lorry, a high-powered Lassavar, had returned
to London at two o’clock in the morning and had been loaded in the
bank courtyard under the eyes of the officer, sergeant, and two men of
the guard which is on duty on the bank premises from sunset to
sunrise. A new detachment of picked men from Scotland Yard, each
carrying an automatic pistol, loaded the lorry for its second journey,
the amount of gold this time being £73,000 worth. After the boxes had
been put into the van, they had climbed up and the lorry had driven
away from the bank. Each of the eight men guarding this treasure was
passed under review by a high officer of Scotland Yard who knew every
one personally. The lorry was seen in Commercial Road by a
detective-inspector of the division, and its progress was also noted
by a police-cyclist patrol who was on duty at the junction of the
Ripple and Barking roads.
The main Tilbury road runs within a few hundred yards of the village
of Rainham, and it was at this point, only a few miles distant from
Tilbury, that the lorry disappeared. Two motor-cyclist policemen who
had gone out to meet the gold-convoy, and who had received a telephone
message from the Ripple road to say that it had passed, grew uneasy
and telephoned to Tilbury.
It was an airless morning, with occasional banks of mist lying in the
hollows, and part of the road, especially near the river, was patchily
covered with white fog, which dispersed about eight o’clock in the
morning under a southeasterly wind. The mist had almost disappeared
when the search party from Tilbury pursued their investigations and
came upon the one evidence of tragedy which the morning was to reveal.
This was an old Ford motor car that had evidently run from the road,
miraculously missed a telegraph pole, and ditched itself. The machine
had not overturned; there were no visible marks of injury; yet the man
who sat at the wheel was stone dead when he was found. An immediate
medical examination failed to discover an injury of any kind to the
man, who was a small farmer of Rainham, and on the face of it it
looked as though he had died of a heart attack whilst on his way to
town.
Just beyond the place where he was found the road dips steeply between
high banks. It is known as Coles Hollow, and at its deepest part the
cutting is crossed by a single-track bridge which connects two
portions of the farm through which the road runs. The dead farmer and
his machine had been removed when Reeder and the chief of Scotland
Yard arrived on the spot. No news of any kind had been received of the
lorry; but the local police, who had been following its tracks, had
made two discoveries. Apparently, going through the cutting, the front
wheels of the trolley had collided with the side, for there was a deep
scoop in the clayey soil which the impact had hollowed out.
“It almost appears,” said Simpson, who had been put in charge of the
case, “that the trolley swerved here to avoid the farmer’s car. There
are his wheel tracks, and you notice they were wobbling from side to
side. Probably the man was already dying.”
“Have you traced the trolley tracks from here?” asked Reeder.
Simpson nodded, and called a sergeant of the Essex Constabulary, who
had charted the tracks.
“They seem to have turned up north towards Becontree,” he said. “As a
matter of fact, a policeman at Becontree said he saw a large trolley
come out of the mist and pass him, but that had a tilt on it and was
going towards London. It was an army trolley, too, and was driven by a
soldier.”
Mr. Reeder had lit a cigarette and was holding the flaming match in
his hand, staring at it solemnly.
“Dear me!” he said, and dropped the match and watched it extinguish.
And then he began what seemed to be a foolish search of the ground,
striking match after match.
“Isn’t there light enough for you, Mr. Reeder?” asked Simpson
irritably.
The detective straightened his back and smiled. Only for a second was
he amused, and then his long face went longer than ever.
“Poor fellow!” he said softly. “Poor fellow!”
“Who are you talking about?” demanded Simpson, but Mr. Reeder did not
reply. Instead, he pointed up to the bridge, in the centre of which
was an old and rusted water-wagon, the type which certain English
municipalities still use. He climbed up to the bank and examined the
iron tank, opened the hatches and groped inside, lighting matches to
aid his examination.
“Is it empty?” asked Simpson.
“I am afraid it is,” said Mr. Reeder, and inspected the worn hose
leading from its iron spindles. He descended the cutting more
melancholy than ever.
“Have you thought how easy it is to disguise an ordinary army lorry?”
he asked. “A tilt, I think the sergeant said, and on its way to
London.”
“Do you think that was the gold-van?”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“I’m certain,” he said.
“Where was it attacked?”
Mr. Reeder pointed to the mark of the wheels on the side of the road.
“There,” he said simply, and Simpson growled impatiently.
“Stuff! Nobody heard a shot fired, and you don’t think our people
would go down without a fight, do you? They could have held their own
against five times their number, and no crowd has been seen on this
road!”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“Nevertheless, this is where the convoy was attacked and overcome,” he
said. “I think you ought to look for the trolley with the tilt, and
get on to your Becontree man and get a closer description of the
machine he saw.”
In a quarter of an hour the police car brought them to the little
Essex village, and the policeman who had seen the wagon was
interviewed. It was a few minutes before he went off duty, he said.
There was a thick mist at the time, and he heard the rumble of the
lorry wheels before it came into sight. He described it as a typical
army wagon. So far as he could tell, it was grey, and had a black tilt
with “W.D.” and a broad-arrow painted on the side, “W.D.” standing for
War Department, the broad-arrow being the sign of Government. He saw
one soldier driving and another sitting by his side. The back of the
tilt was laced up and he could not see into the interior. The soldier
as he passed had waved his hand in greeting, and the policeman had
thought no more about the matter until the robbery of the gold convoy
was reported.
“Yes, sir,” he said, in answer to Reeder’s inquiry, “I think it was
loaded. It went very heavily on the road. We often get these trolleys
coming up from Shoeburyness.”
Simpson had put through a telephone inquiry to the Barking police, who
had seen the military wagon. But army convoys were no unusual sight in
the region of the docks. Either that or one similar was seen entering
the Blackwall Tunnel, but the Greenwich police, on the south side of
the river, had failed to identify it, and from there on all trace of
the lorry was lost.
“We’re probably chasing a shadow anyway,” said Simpson. “If your
theory is right, Reeder--it can’t be right! They couldn’t have caught
these men of ours so unprepared that somebody didn’t shoot, and
there’s no sign of shooting.”
“There was no shooting,” said Mr. Reeder, shaking his head.
“Then where are the men?” asked Simpson.
“Dead,” said Mr. Reeder quietly.
It was at Scotland Yard, in the presence of an incredulous and
horrified Commissioner, that Mr. J. G. Reeder reconstructed the crime.
“Flack is a chemist: I think I impressed it upon you. Did you notice,
Simpson, on the bridge, across the cutting, was an old water-cart? I
think you have since learnt that it does not belong to the farmer who
owns the land, and that he has never seen it before. It may be
possible to discover where that was purchased. In all probability you
will find that it was bought a few days ago at the sale of some
municipal stores. I noticed in _The Times_ there was an advertisement
of such a sale. Do you realise how easy it would be not only to store
under pressure, but to make, in that tank, large quantities of a
deadly gas, one important element of which is carbon monoxide? Suppose
this, or, as it may prove, a more deadly gas, has been so stored, do
you realise how simple a matter it would be on a still, breathless
morning to throw a big hose over the bridge and fill the hollow with
the gas? That is, I am sure, what happened. Whatever else was used,
there is still carbon monoxide in the cutting, for when I dropped a
match it was immediately extinguished, and every match I burnt near
the ground went out. If the car had run right through and climbed the
other slope of the cutting, the driver and the men inside the trolley
might have escaped death. As it was, rendered momentarily unconscious,
the driver turned his wheel and ran into the bank, stopping the
trolley. They were probably dead before Flack and his associate,
whoever it was, jumped down, wearing gas masks, lifted the driver back
into the trolley and drove on.”
“And the farmer----” began the Commissioner.
“His death probably occurred some time after the trolley had passed.
He also descended into that death hollow, but the speed at which his
car was going carried him up nearer the cutting, though he must have
been dead by the time he got out.”
He rose and stretched himself wearily.
“Now I think I will go and interview Miss Belman and set her mind at
rest,” he said. “Did you send her to the hotel, as I asked you, Mr.
Simpson?”
Simpson stared at him in blank astonishment.
“Miss Belman?” he said. “I haven’t seen Miss Belman!”