A NIGHT'S ADVENTURE
"Now I must tell you," continued the man in the corner, "that after I
had read the account of the double robbery, which appeared in the early
afternoon papers, I set to work and had a good think--yes!" he added
with a smile, noting Polly's look at the bit of string, on which he was
still at work, "yes! aided by this small adjunct to continued thought--I
made notes as to how I should proceed to discover the clever thief, who
had carried off a small fortune in a single night. Of course, my methods
are not those of a London detective; he has his own way of going to
work. The one who was conducting this case questioned the unfortunate
jeweller very closely about his servants and his household generally.
"'I have three servants,' explained Mr. Shipman, two of whom have been
with me for many years; one, the housemaid, is a fairly new comer--she
has been here about six months. She came recommended by a friend, and
bore an excellent character. She and the parlourmaid room together. The
cook, who knew me when I was a schoolboy, sleeps alone; all three
servants sleep on the floor above. I locked the jewels up in the safe
which stands in the dressing-room. My keys and watch I placed, as usual,
beside my bed. As a rule, I am a fairly light sleeper.
"'I cannot understand how it could have happened--but--you had better
come up and have a look at the safe. The key must have been abstracted
from my bedside, the safe opened, and the keys replaced--all while I was
fast asleep. Though I had no occasion to look into the safe until just
now, I should have discovered my loss before going to business, for I
intended to take the diamonds away with me--'
"The detective and the inspector went up to have a look at the safe. The
lock had in no way been tampered with--it had been opened with its own
key. The detective spoke of chloroform, but Mr. Shipman declared that
when he woke in the morning at about half-past seven there was no smell
of chloroform in the room. However, the proceedings of the daring thief
certainly pointed to the use of an anaesthetic. An examination of the
premises brought to light the fact that the burglar had, as in Mr.
Knopf's house, used the glass-panelled door from the garden as a means
of entrance, but in this instance he had carefully cut out the pane of
glass with a diamond, slipped the bolts, turned the key, and walked in.
"'Which among your servants knew that you had the diamonds in your house
last night, Mr. Shipman?' asked the detective.
"'Not one, I should say,' replied the jeweller, 'though, perhaps, the
parlourmaid, whilst waiting at table, may have heard me and Mr. Knopf
discussing our bargain.'
"'Would you object to my searching all your servants' boxes?'
"'Certainly not. They would not object, either, I am sure. They are
perfectly honest.'
"The searching of servants' belongings is invariably a useless
proceeding," added the man in the corner, with a shrug of the shoulders.
"No one, not even a latter-day domestic, would be fool enough to keep
stolen property in the house. However, the usual farce was gone through,
with more or less protest on the part of Mr. Shipman's servants, and
with the usual result.
"The jeweller could give no further information; the detective and
inspector, to do them justice, did their work of investigation minutely
and, what is more, intelligently. It seemed evident, from their
deductions, that the burglar had commenced proceedings on No. 26,
Phillimore Terrace, and had then gone on, probably climbing over the
garden walls between the houses to No. 22, where he was almost caught in
the act by Robertson. The facts were simple enough, but the mystery
remained as to the individual who had managed to glean the information
of the presence of the diamonds in both the houses, and the means which
he had adopted to get that information. It was obvious that the thief or
thieves knew more about Mr. Knopf's affairs than Mr. Shipman's, since
they had known how to use Mr. Emile Knopf's name in order to get his
brother out of the way.
"It was now nearly ten o'clock, and the detectives, having taken leave
of Mr. Shipman, went back to No. 22, in order to ascertain whether Mr.
Knopf had come back; the door was opened by the old charwoman, who said
that her master had returned, and was having some breakfast in the
dining-room.
"Mr. Ferdinand Knopf was a middle-aged man, with sallow complexion,
black hair and beard, of obviously Hebrew extraction. He spoke with a
marked foreign accent, but very courteously, to the two officials, who,
he begged, would excuse him if he went on with his breakfast.
"'I was fully prepared to hear the bad news,' he explained, 'which my
man Robertson told me when I arrived. The letter I got last night was a
bogus one; there is no such person as J. Collins, M.D. My brother had
never felt better in his life. You will, I am sure, very soon trace the
cunning writer of that epistle--ah! but I was in a rage, I can tell
you, when I got to the Metropole at Brighton, and found that Emile, my
brother, had never heard of any Doctor Collins.
"'The last train to town had gone, although I raced back to the station
as hard as I could. Poor old Robertson, he has a terrible cold. Ah yes!
my loss! it is for me a very serious one; if I had not made that lucky
bargain with Mr. Shipman last night I should, perhaps, at this moment be
a ruined man.
"'The stones I had yesterday were, firstly, some magnificent Brazilians;
these I sold to Mr. Shipman mostly. Then I had some very good Cape
diamonds--all gone; and some quite special Parisians, of wonderful work
and finish, entrusted to me for sale by a great French house. I tell
you, sir, my loss will be nearly £10,000 altogether. I sell on
commission, and, of course, have to make good the loss.'
"He was evidently trying to bear up manfully, and as a business man
should, under his sad fate. He refused in any way to attach the
slightest blame to his old and faithful servant Robertson, who had
caught, perhaps, his death of cold in his zeal for his absent master. As
for any hint of suspicion falling even remotely upon the man, the very
idea appeared to Mr. Knopf absolutely preposterous.
"With regard to the old charwoman, Mr. Knopf certainly knew nothing
about her, beyond the fact that she had been recommended to him by one
of the tradespeople in the neighbourhood, and seemed perfectly honest,
respectable, and sober.
"About the tramp Mr. Knopf knew still less, nor could he imagine how he,
or in fact anybody else, could possibly know that he happened to have
diamonds in his house that night.
"This certainly seemed the great hitch in the case.
"Mr. Ferdinand Knopf, at the instance of the police, later on went to
the station and had a look at the suspected tramp. He declared that he
had never set eyes on him before.
"Mr. Shipman, on his way home from business in the afternoon, had done
likewise, and made a similar statement.
"Brought before the magistrate, the tramp gave but a poor account of
himself. He gave a name and address, which latter, of course, proved to
be false. After that he absolutely refused to speak. He seemed not to
care whether he was kept in custody or not. Very soon even the police
realized that, for the present, at any rate, nothing could be got out of
the suspected tramp.
"Mr. Francis Howard, the detective, who had charge of the case, though
he would not admit it even to himself, was at his wits' ends. You must
remember that the burglary, through its very simplicity, was an
exceedingly mysterious affair. The constable, D 21, who had stood in
Adam and Eve Mews, presumably while Mr. Knopf's house was being robbed,
had seen no one turn out from the _cul-de-sac_ into the main passage of
the mews.
"The stables, which immediately faced the back entrance of the
Phillimore Terrace houses, were all private ones belonging to residents
in the neighbourhood. The coachmen, their families, and all the grooms
who slept in the stablings were rigidly watched and questioned. One and
all had seen nothing, heard nothing, until Robertson's shrieks had
roused them from their sleep.
"As for the letter from Brighton, it was absolutely commonplace, and
written upon note-paper which the detective, with Machiavellian cunning,
traced to a stationer's shop in West Street. But the trade at that
particular shop was a very brisk one; scores of people had bought
note-paper there, similar to that on which the supposed doctor had
written his tricky letter. The handwriting was cramped, perhaps a
disguised one; in any case, except under very exceptional circumstances,
it could afford no clue to the identity of the thief. Needless to say,
the tramp, when told to write his name, wrote a totally different and
absolutely uneducated hand.
"Matters stood, however, in the same persistently mysterious state when
a small discovery was made, which suggested to Mr. Francis Howard an
idea, which, if properly carried out, would, he hoped, inevitably bring
the cunning burglar safely within the grasp of the police.
"That was the discovery of a few of Mr. Knopf's diamonds," continued the
man in the corner after a slight pause, "evidently trampled into the
ground by the thief whilst making his hurried exit through the garden of
No. 22, Phillimore Terrace.
"At the end of this garden there is a small studio which had been built
by a former owner of the house, and behind it a small piece of waste
ground about seven feet square which had once been a rockery, and is
still filled with large loose stones, in the shadow of which earwigs and
woodlice innumerable have made a happy hunting ground.
"It was Robertson who, two days after the robbery, having need of a
large stone, for some household purpose or other, dislodged one from
that piece of waste ground, and found a few shining pebbles beneath it.
Mr. Knopf took them round to the police-station himself immediately, and
identified the stones as some of his Parisian ones.
"Later on the detective went to view the place where the find had been
made, and there conceived the plan upon which he built big cherished
hopes.
"Acting upon the advice of Mr. Francis Howard, the police decided to let
the anonymous tramp out of his safe retreat within the station, and to
allow him to wander whithersoever he chose. A good idea, perhaps--the
presumption being that, sooner or later, if the man was in any way mixed
up with the cunning thieves, he would either rejoin his comrades or even
lead the police to where the remnant of his hoard lay hidden; needless
to say, his footsteps were to be literally dogged.
"The wretched tramp, on his discharge, wandered out of the yard,
wrapping his thin coat round his shoulders, for it was a bitterly cold
afternoon. He began operations by turning into the Town Hall Tavern for
a good feed and a copious drink. Mr. Francis Howard noted that he seemed
to eye every passer-by with suspicion, but he seemed to enjoy his
dinner, and sat some time over his bottle of wine.
"It was close upon four o'clock when he left the tavern, and then began
for the indefatigable Mr. Howard one of the most wearisome and
uninteresting chases, through the mazes of the London streets, he ever
remembers to have made. Up Notting Hill, down the slums of Notting
Dale, along the High Street, beyond Hammersmith, and through Shepherd's
Bush did that anonymous tramp lead the unfortunate detective, never
hurrying himself, stopping every now and then at a public-house to get a
drink, whither Mr. Howard did not always care to follow him.
"In spite of his fatigue, Mr. Francis Howard's hopes rose with every
half-hour of this weary tramp. The man was obviously striving to kill
time; he seemed to feel no weariness, but walked on and on, perhaps
suspecting that he was being followed.
"At last, with a beating heart, though half perished with cold, and with
terribly sore feet, the detective began to realize that the tramp was
gradually working his way back towards Kensington. It was then close
upon eleven o'clock at night; once or twice the man had walked up and
down the High Street, from St. Paul's School to Derry and Toms' shops
and back again, he had looked down one or two of the side streets
and--at last--he turned into Phillimore Terrace. He seemed in no hurry,
he oven stopped once in the middle of the road, trying to light a pipe,
which, as there was a high east wind, took him some considerable time.
Then he leisurely sauntered down the street, and turned into Adam and
Eve Mews, with Mr. Francis Howard now close at his heels.
"Acting upon the detective's instructions, there were several men in
plain clothes ready to his call in the immediate neighbourhood. Two
stood within the shadow of the steps of the Congregational Church at the
corner of the mews, others were stationed well within a soft call.
"Hardly, therefore, had the hare turned into the _cul-de-sac_ at the
back of Phillimore Terrace than, at a slight sound from Mr. Francis
Howard, every egress was barred to him, and he was caught like a rat in
a trap.
"As soon as the tramp had advanced some thirty yards or so (the whole
length of this part of the mews is about one hundred yards) and was lost
in the shadow, Mr. Francis Howard directed four or five of his men to
proceed cautiously up the mews, whilst the same number were to form a
line all along the front of Phillimore Terrace between the mews and the
High Street.
"Remember, the back-garden walls threw long and dense shadows, but the
silhouette of the man would be clearly outlined if he made any attempt
at climbing over them. Mr. Howard felt quite sure that the thief was
bent on recovering the stolen goods, which, no doubt, he had hidden in
the rear of one of the houses. He would be caught _in flagrante
delicto_, and, with a heavy sentence hovering over him, he would
probably be induced to name his accomplice. Mr. Francis Howard was
thoroughly enjoying himself.
"The minutes sped on; absolute silence, in spite of the presence of so
many men, reigned in the dark and deserted mews.
"Of course, this night's adventure was never allowed to get into the
papers," added the man in the corner with his mild smile. "Had the plan
been successful, we should have heard all about it, with a long
eulogistic article as to the astuteness of our police; but as it
was--well, the tramp sauntered up the mews--and--there he remained for
aught Mr. Francis Howard or the other constables could ever explain. The
earth or the shadows swallowed him up. No one saw him climb one of the
garden walls, no one heard him break open a door; he had retreated
within the shadow of the garden walls, and was seen or heard of no
more."
"One of the servants in the Phillimore Terrace houses must have belonged
to the gang," said Polly with quick decision.
"Ah, yes! but which?" said the man in the corner, making a beautiful
knot in his bit of string. "I can assure you that the police left not a
stone unturned once more to catch sight of that tramp whom they had had
in custody for two days, but not a trace of him could they find, nor of
the diamonds, from that day to this."