The Torn Hotel Bill
On reaching the Yard next morning Inspector French began his day by
compiling a list of the various points on which obvious investigations
still remained to be made. He had already determined that these should
be carried through with the greatest possible dispatch, leaving a
general consideration of the case over until their results should be
available.
The immediate questions were, of course: Was Joan Merrill alive? And
if so, where was she? These must be solved as soon as possible. The
further matters relating to the hiding-place and aims of the gang
could wait. It was, however, likely enough that if French could find
Joan, he would have at least gone a long way towards solving her
captors’ secret.
Perhaps the most promising of all the lines of inquiry open to him
were the detailed searches of Blessington’s and Sime’s houses, and he
decided he would begin with these. Accordingly, having called Sergeant
Carter and a couple more men, he went out to Earlswood and set to
work.
French was extraordinarily thorough. Nothing in that house, from the
water cistern space in the roof to the floors of the pantries and the
tool shed in the yard—nothing escaped observation. The furniture was
examined, particularly the writing desk and the old escritoire, the
carpets were lifted and the floors tested, the walls were minutely
inspected for secret receptacles, the pages of the books were turned
over, the clothes—of which a respectable wardrobe remained—were gone
through, with special attention to the pockets. Nothing was taken for
granted: everything was examined. Even the outside of the house and
the soil of the garden were looked at, and at the end, some four hours
after they had begun, French had to admit that his gains were
practically nil.
The reservation was in respect of four objects, from one or more of
which he might conceivably extract some information, though he was far
from hopeful. The first was the top sheet of Blessington’s writing
pad. French, following his usual custom, had examined it through a
mirror, but so completely covered was it with inkstains that he was
unable to decipher even a single word. However, on chance he tore it
off and put it in his pocket, in the hope that a future more detailed
examination might reveal something of interest.
The second object was a scrap of crumpled paper which he found in the
right-hand upper pocket of one of Dangle’s waistcoats. It looked as if
it had been crushed to the bottom of the pocket by some other
article—such as an engagement book—being thrust down on the top of it.
When the pockets had been cleared—as all had been—this small piece of
paper had evidently been overlooked.
French straightened it out. It was the bottom portion of what was
clearly a bill, apparently a French hotel bill. On the back was a note
written in pencil, and as French read it, the thought passed through
his mind that he could not have imagined any more unexpected or
puzzling contents. It was in the form of a memorandum and read:
. . . . . . ins.
. . . . ators.
Peaches—3 doz. tins.
Safety Matches—6 doz. boxes.
Galsworthy—The Forsyte Saga.
Pencils and Fountain Pen Ink.
Sou’wester.
The paper was torn across the first two items, so that only part of
the words were legible. What so heterogeneous a collection could
possibly refer to French could not imagine, but he put the fragment in
his pocket with the blotting paper for future study.
The other two objects were photographs, and from the descriptions he
had received from Cheyne he felt satisfied that one was of Blessington
and the other of Dangle. These were of no help in themselves, but
might later prove useful for identification purposes.
The search of Earlswood complete, French gave his men an hour for
lunch, and then started a similar investigation of Sime’s house. He
was just as painstaking and thorough here, but this time he had no
luck at all. Though Sime had not so carefully destroyed papers and
correspondence, he could not find a single thing which seemed to offer
help.
Sime’s house being so much smaller than Blessington’s, the search was
finished in little over an hour. On its completion French sent two of
his men back to the Yard, while with Sergeant Carter he drove to Horne
Terrace. There he examined Joan Merrill’s rooms, again without result.
The work ended about four, and then he and Carter began another job,
quite as detailed and a good deal more wearisome than the others. He
had determined to question individually every other person living in
the house—that is, the inhabitants of no less than nine flats—in the
hope that some one of them might have seen or heard Joan returning to
her rooms on the night of her disappearance. In a way the point was
not of supreme importance, but experience had taught French the danger
of neglecting _any_ clue, no matter how unpromising, and he had long
since made it a principle to follow up every opening which offered.
For over two hours he worked, and at last, as he was beginning to
accept defeat, he obtained just the information he required.
It appeared that about a quarter past eleven on the night in question,
the fifteen-year-old daughter of a widow living on the third floor was
returning home from some small jollification when she saw, just as she
approached the door, three persons come out. Two were men, one tall,
well built and clean-shaven, the other short and stout, with a fair
toothbrush mustache. The third person was Miss Merrill. A street lamp
had shone directly on their faces as they emerged, and the girl had
noticed that the men wore serious expressions and that Miss Merrill
looked pale and anxious, as if all three were sharers in some bad
news. They crossed the sidewalk to a waiting motor. Miss Merrill and
the taller man got inside, the second man driving. During the time the
girl saw them, none of them spoke. She remembered the car. It was a
yellow one with a coach body, and looked a private vehicle. Yes, she
recognized the photograph the Inspector showed her—Blessington’s. It
was that of the driver of the car.
It did not seem worth while to French to try to trace the car, as he
fancied he knew where it had gone. From Horne Terrace to Sime’s house
in Colton Street was about a ten minute run. Therefore if it left the
former about 11:15, it should reach the latter a minute or two before
the half-hour. This worked in with the time at which the invalid lady,
Mrs. Sproule, had heard the motor stop in the street, and to French it
seemed clear that Miss Merrill had been taken direct to Sime’s, and
kept there until 1:45 P.M. on the following day. What arguments or
threats the pair had used to get her to accompany them French could
not tell, but he shrewdly suspected that they had played the same
trick on her as on Cheyne. In all probability they had told her that
Cheyne had met with an accident and was conscious and asking for her.
Once in the cab it would have been child’s play for a powerful man
like Sime to have chloroformed her, and having got her to the house,
they could easily have kept her helpless and semi-conscious by means
of drugs.
French returned on foot to the Yard, thinking over the affair as he
walked. It certainly had a sinister look. These men were very much in
earnest. They had not hesitated to resort to murder in the case of
Cheyne—it was through, to them, an absolutely unforeseen accident that
he escaped—and French felt he would not give much for Joan Merrill’s
chances.
When he reached his office he found that a piece of news had just come
in. A constable who had been on point duty at the intersection of
South and Mitchem Streets, near Waterloo Station, had noticed about 2
P.M. on the day of the disappearance of the gang, a yellow motorcar
pass close beside him and turn into Hackworth’s garage, a small
establishment in the latter street. Though he had not observed the
vehicle with more than the ordinary attention such a man will give to
the passing traffic, his recollection both of the car and driver led
him to the belief that they were those referred to in the Yard
circular. The constable was waiting to see French, and made his report
with diffidence, saying that though he thought he was right, he might
easily be mistaken.
“Quite right to let me know anyhow, Wilson,” French said heartily. “If
you’ve seen Blessington’s car it may give us a valuable clue, and if
you’re mistaken, there’s no harm done. We’ve nothing to lose by
following it up.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s past my dinner hour,
but I’ll take a taxi and go round to this garage on my way home. You’d
better come along.”
Ten minutes later the two men reached Hackworth’s establishment, and
pushing open the door of the tiny office, asked if the manager was
about.
“I’m John Hackworth. Yes, sir?” said a stout man in shabby gray
tweeds. “Want a car?”
“I want a word with you, Mr. Hackworth,” said French pleasantly. “Just
a small matter of private business.”
Hackworth nodded, and indicated a farther door.
“In here,” he invited, and when French and the constable had taken the
two chairs the room contained, he briskly repeated: “Yes, sir?”
At this hint not to waste valuable time, French promptly introduced
himself and propounded his question. Mr. Hackworth looked impressed.
“You don’t tell me that gent was a wrong ’un?” he said anxiously, then
another idea seeming to strike him, he continued: “Of course it don’t
matter to me in a way, for I’ve got the car. I’ll tell you about it.”
French produced his photograph of Blessington.
“Tell me first if that’s the man,” he suggested.
Mr. Hackworth pushed the card up to the electric bulb. “It’s him,” he
declared. “It’s him and no mistake. He walked in here yesterday—no,
the day before—about eleven and asked to see the boss. ‘I’ve got a
car,’ he said when I went forward, ‘and there’s something wrong with
the engine. Sometimes it goes all right and sometimes it doesn’t.
Maybe,’ he said, ‘you’ll start it up and it’ll run a mile or two well
enough, then it begins to miss, and the speed drops perhaps to eight
or ten miles. I don’t know what’s wrong.’
“‘What about your petrol feed?’ I said. ‘Sounds like your carburetor,
or maybe your strainer or one of your pipes choked.’
“‘I thought it might be that,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t find anything
wrong. However, I want you to look over it, that is, if you can lend
me a car while you’re doing it.’
“Well, sir, I needn’t go into all the details, and to make a long
story short, I agreed to overhaul the car and to lend him an old
Napier while I was at it. He went away, and same day about two or
before it he came back with his car, a yellow Armstrong Siddeley. It
seemed to be all right then, but he said that that was just the
trouble—it might be all right now and it would be all wrong within a
minute’s time. So I gave him the Napier—it was a done machine, worth
very little, but would go all right, you understand. He asked me how
long I would take, and I said I’d have it for him next day, that was
yesterday. He had three or four suitcases with him and he transferred
these across. Then he got into the Napier and drove away, and that was
the last I saw of him.”
“And what was wrong with his own car?”
“There, sir, you have me beat. Nothing! Or nothing anyhow that I could
find.”
“Was the Napier a four-seater?”
“Five. Three behind and two in front.”
“A coach body?”
“No, but with a good canvas cover, and he put it up, too, before
starting.”
“Raining?”
“Neither raining nor like rain: nor no wind neither.”
“How long was he here altogether?”
“Not more than five or six minutes. He left just as soon as he could
change the cars.”
French, having put a few more questions, got the proprietor to write
out a detailed description of the Napier. Next, he begged the use of
the garage telephone and repeated the description to the Yard, asking
that it should be circulated among the force without delay. Finally he
thanked the stout Mr. Hackworth for his help, and with Constable
Wilson left the establishment.
“Now, Wilson,” he said, “you’ve done a good day’s work. I’m pleased
with you. You may get along home, and if I want anything more I’ll let
you know in the morning.”
But though it was so late, French did not follow his subordinate’s
example. Instead he stood on the sidewalk outside the garage, thinking
hard.
As to the nature of the defect in the engine of the yellow car he had
no doubt. What was wrong with it was just what Hackworth had said was
wrong with it—nothing whatever. French could see that the whole
episode was simply a plan on Blessington’s part to change the car and
thus cover up his traces. The yellow Armstrong-Siddeley was known to
be his by many persons, and Blessington wanted one which, as he would
believe, could not be traced. He would have seen from the papers that
Cheyne had escaped the fate prepared for him, and he would certainly
suspect that the outraged young man would put his knowledge at the
disposal of the police. Therefore the yellow car was a danger and
another must be procured in its place. The trick was obvious, and
French had heard of something like it before.
But though the main part of the scheme was clear to French, the
details were not. From the statement of Mrs. Sproule, the invalid of
Colton Street, the yellow car had left Sime’s house at about 1:45.
According to this Hackworth it had reached the garage at a minute or
so before two. Now, from Colton Street to the garage was a ten or
twelve minutes’ drive, therefore Blessington must have gone
practically direct. Moreover, when he left Colton Street Joan Merrill
and the other members of the gang were in the car, but when he reached
the garage he was alone. Where had the others dismounted?
Another question suggested itself to French, and he thought that if he
could answer it he would probably be able to answer the first as well.
Why did Blessington select this particular garage? He did not know
this Hackworth—the man had said he had never seen Blessington before.
Why then this particular establishment rather than one of the scores
nearer Sime’s dwelling?
For some minutes French puzzled over this point, and then a probable
explanation struck him. There, just a hundred yards or more away, was
a place admirably suited for dropping his passengers and picking them
up again—Waterloo Station. What more natural for Blessington than to
pull up at the departure side with the yellow Armstrong-Siddeley and
set them down? What more commonplace for him than to pick them up at
the arrival side with the black Napier? While he was changing the
cars, they could enter, mingle with the crowds of passengers, work
their way across the station and be waiting for him as if they had
just arrived by train.
Late as it was, French returned to the Yard and put a good man on to
make inquiries at Waterloo in the hope of proving his theory. Then,
tired and very hungry, he went home.
But when he had finished supper and, ensconced in his armchair with a
cigar, had looked through the evening paper, interest in the case
reasserted itself, and he determined that he would have a look at the
scrap of paper which he had found in the pocket of one of Dangle’s
waistcoats.
As has been said, it was a list or memorandum of certain articles,
written on the back of part of an old hotel bill. French reread the
items with something as nearly approaching bewilderment as a staid
inspector of the Yard can properly admit. Peaches, safety matches, the
Forsyte Saga, pencil, fountain pen ink, and a sou’wester! What in the
name of goodness could anyone want with such a heterogeneous
collection? And the quantities! Three dozen tins of peaches, and six
dozen boxes of matches! Enough to do a small expeditionary force,
French thought whimsically, though he did not see an expeditionary
force requiring the works of John Galsworthy, ink, and pencils.
And yet was this idea so absurd? Did not these articles, in point of
fact, suggest an expedition? Peaches, matches, pencils, and ink—all
these articles were commonplace and universally obtainable. Did the
fact that a quantity were required not mean that Dangle or his friends
were to be cut off for some considerable time from the ordinary
sources of supply? It certainly looked like it. And as he thought over
the other articles, he saw that they too were not inconsistent with
the same idea. The Forsyte Saga was distinguished from most novels in
a peculiar and indeed a suggestive manner. It consisted of a number of
novels, each full length or more than full length, but the point of
interest was that the entire collection was published on thin paper in
this one volume. Where could one get a greater mass of reading matter
in a smaller bulk: in other words, where could one find a more
suitable work of fiction to carry with one on an expedition?
The sou’wester also fitted from this point of view into the scheme of
things, but it added a distinctive suggestion all its own: that of the
sea. French’s thoughts turned towards a voyage. But it could not be an
ordinary voyage in a well-appointed liner, where peaches and matches
and novels would be as plentiful as in the heart of London. Nor did it
seem likely that it could be a trip in the _Enid_. Such a craft could
not remain out of touch with land for so long a period as these stores
seemed to postulate. French could not think of anything that seemed
exactly to meet the case, though he registered the idea of an
expedition as one to be kept in view.
Leaving the point for the time being, he turned over the paper and
began to examine its other side.
It formed the middle portion of an old hotel bill, the top and bottom
having been torn off. The items indicated a stay of one night only
being merely for bed and breakfast. The name of the hotel had been
torn off with the bill head, and also all but a few letters of the
green rubber receipt stamp at the bottom. French felt that if he could
only ascertain the identity of the hotel it might afford him a
valuable clue, and he settled down to study it in as close detail as
possible.
[Illustration: A torn scrap of paper, showing part of a bill for
“1 chambre” and “1 petit déjeuner”, totaling to 28 50. The ends of a
few other words are visible at the edges of the paper.]
He recalled two statements that Speedwell had made about Dangle.
First, the melancholy detective had said that commencing about a
fortnight after the acquisition by the gang of Price’s letter and the
tracing, Dangle had begun paying frequent visits to the Continent or
Ireland, and secondly, that in a tube lift he had overheard Dangle say
that he was crossing on a given night, but would be back the next.
French thought he might take it for granted that this bill had been
incurred on one of these trips. He wondered if Dangle had always
visited the same place, as, if so, the bill would refer to an hotel
near enough to England to be visited in one day. Of none of this was
there any evidence, but French believed that it was sufficiently
probable to be taken as a working hypothesis. If it led nowhere, he
could try something else.
Assuming then that one could cross to the place in one night and
return the next, it was obvious that it must be comparatively close to
England, and, the language on the bill being French, it must be in
France or Belgium. He took an atlas and a Continental Bradshaw, and
began to look out the area over which this condition obtained. Soon he
saw that while the whole of Belgium and the northwest of France,
bounded by a rough line drawn through Chalons, Nancy, Dijon,
Angoulême, Chartres, and Brest, were within the _possible_ limit,
giving a reasonable time in which to transact business, it was more
than likely the place did not lie east of Brussels and Paris.
He turned back to the torn bill. Could he learn nothing from it?
First, as to the charges. With the franc standing at eighty, twenty
four francs seemed plenty for a single room, though it was by no means
exorbitant. It and the 4.50 fr. for _petit déjeuner_ suggested a
fairly good hotel—probably what might be termed good second-class—not
one of the great hotels de luxe like the Savoy in London or the
Crillon or Claridge’s in Paris, but one that ordinary people
patronized, and which would be well known in its own town.
Of all the information available, the most promising line of research
seemed that of the rubber stamp, and to that French now turned his
attention. The three lines read:
. . . uit
. . . lon,
. . . S.
French thought he had something that might help here. He rose, crossed
the room, and after searching in his letter file, produced three or
four papers. These were hotel bills he had incurred in France and
Switzerland when he visited those countries in search of the murderer
of Charles Gething of the firm of Duke & Peabody, and he had brought
them home with him in the hope that some day he might return as a
holiday-maker to these same hotels. Now perhaps they would be of use
in another way.
He spread them out and examined their receipt stamps. From their
analogy the . . . uit on his fragment obviously stood for the words
“Pour acquit,” anglice: “paid.” The middle line ending in . . . lon
was unquestionably the name of the hotel, and the third, ending in S,
that of its town. And here again was a suggestion as to the size of
the establishment. A street was not included in the address. It must
therefore be well known in its town.
It seemed to him moreover that this fact also conveyed a suggestion as
to the size of the town. If the latter were Paris or Brussels—as he
had thought not unlikely as both these names ended in s—a street
address would almost certainly have been given. The names of the hotel
and town alone pointed to a town of the same standing as the hotel
itself—a large town to have so important an hotel, but not a capital
city. In other words, there was a certain probability the hotel was
situated in a large town comparatively near the English Channel, Paris
and Brussels being excepted.
As French sat pondering over the affair, he saw suddenly that further
information was obtainable from the fact that the lettering on a
rubber stamp is always done symmetrically. Once more rising, he found
a small piece of tracing paper, and placing this over the mutilated
receipt stamp, he began to print in the missing letters of the first
line. His printing was not very good, but he did not mind that. All he
wanted was to get the spacing of the letters correct, and to this end
he took a lot of trouble. He searched through the advertisements in
several papers until he found some type of the same kind as that of
the . . . uit, and by carefully measuring the other letters he at last
satisfied himself as to just where the P of Pour acquit would stand.
This, he hoped, would give him the number of letters in the names of
both the hotel and the town. Drawing a line down at right angles to
the t of acquit, he found that the n of . . . lon projected slightly
over a quarter inch farther along, while the S of the town was almost
directly beneath. By drawing another line down from the P of Pour, and
measuring these same distances from it, he found the lengths of the
names of hotel and town, and by further careful examination and
spacing of type, he reached definite conclusions. The name of the
hotel, including the word hotel, contained from eighteen to twenty
letters and that of the town six, more or less according to whether
letters like I or W predominated.
He was pleased with his progress. Starting from nothing he had evolved
the conception of an important hotel—the something-lon, in a large
town situated in France or Belgium, and comparatively near the English
Channel, the name of the town consisting of five, six, or seven
letters of which the last one was S. Surely, he thought, such an hotel
would not be hard to find.
If he was correct as to the size of the town, it was one which would
be marked on a fairly small scale map, and taking his atlas, he began
to make a list of all those which seemed to meet the case. He soon saw
there were a number—Calais, Amiens, Beauvais, Étaples, Arras,
Soissons, Troyes, Ypres, Bruges, Roulers, and Malines.
He had by this time become so excited over his quest that in spite of
the hour—it was long past his bedtime—he telephoned to the Yard to
send him Baedeker’s Guides to Northern France and Belgium, and when
these came he began eagerly looking up the hotels in each of the towns
on his list. For a considerable time he worked on without result, then
suddenly he laughed from sheer delight.
He had reached Bruges, and there, third on the list, was “Grand Hôtel
du Sablon!” Moreover, this name exactly filled the required space.
“Got it in one,” he chuckled, feeling immensely pleased with himself.
But French, if sometimes an enthusiastic optimist and again a down and
out pessimist, was at all times thorough. He did not stop at Bruges.
He worked all the way through the list, and it was not until he had
satisfied himself that no other hotel fulfilling the conditions
existed in any of the other towns, that he felt himself satisfied. It
was true there was an Hotel du Carillon in Malines, but this name was
obviously too short for the space.
As he went jubilantly to bed, the vision of a trip to the historic
city of Bruges bulked large in his imagination.