Inspector French's Greatest Case (10 page)

French nodded. Certainly, if guilty, this man was a consummate actor. There was at least the chance that he might be innocent, and he answered accordingly.

“I don't accuse you of anything, Mr. Vanderkemp. But there are certain suspicious circumstances which require an explanation. You may be able to account for all of them—I hope you will. At the same time it is fair to warn you that, failing an explanation, your arrest is not impossible, and in that case anything that you may say now may be used against you in evidence.”

Vanderkemp was by this time extremely ill at ease. His face had paled and had already taken on a somewhat drawn and haggard expression. For a while he remained silent, buried in thought, then with a sudden gesture as of throwing further caution to the winds, he began to speak.

“I'll tell you what I know, Inspector,” he said earnestly. “Whether, if you are going to arrest me, I am wise or foolish, I don't know. But I can at least assure you that it is the literal truth.”

He looked at the Inspector, who nodded approval.

“Of course I can't advise you, Mr. Vanderkemp,” he remarked, “but all the same I believe you are doing the wise thing.”

“I am in a difficulty,” Vanderkemp went on, “as I don't know how much of the circumstances you are familiar with. It would therefore be better if you would ask me questions.”

“I shall do so, but first I should like your own statement. I am aware of your name and position in the firm. Also that Mr. Schoofs received a letter on the 21st of last month, asking him to send you to London to undertake an important commission in Sweden. Also that you left your lodgings in the Kinkerstraat at 8.30 on the evening of the 24th. I have since learned certain other facts as to your subsequent movements, which I need not mention at the moment. What I want you now to do is to let me have a detailed account of your experiences from the moment of your leaving your lodgings until the present time.”

“I will do so.” Vanderkemp spoke eagerly, as if now anxious to get through with the matter. “But there is one thing which comes earlier in point of time which I must mention. You have probably heard of it from Mr. Duke, but I shall tell you anyway. I mean about my further instructions as to my London visit—the private instructions. You have seen a copy of them?”

French, always cautious, was not giving away information. He wondered to what the other was referring, but merely said: “Assume I have not, Mr. Vanderkemp. It is obvious that I must check your statement by the information in my possession.”

“Well, then, though you probably know it already, I may tell you I received additional instructions about my visit. Mr. Duke wrote me a private letter, addressed to my lodgings, in which he told me—but I have it here, and you can see it for yourself.”

He took an envelope from his pocket-book and passed it across. It contained a note almost identical in appearance with the forged one which Mr. Schoofs had received. It was typewritten on a sheet of the firm's cheaper memorandum paper, with the same kind of type and the same coloured ribbon. Examination with the lens showed the same defects in the “n” and the “g,” the signature was obviously forged, and the back of the sheet was marked from a heavy touch. Evidently both letters had been written by the same person, and on the Hatton Garden machine. The note read:

“DEAR VANDERKEMP,—Further to my note to Mr. Schoofs re your call here on Wednesday morning, 26th inst., the business on which I wish to see you has turned out to be more urgent than I at first believed; and I shall therefore have to ask you to advance the hour of your interview, and also to leave London for Paris—not Stockholm—immediately after it. I shall return to the office after dinner on Tuesday evening, 25th inst., and shall be glad if you will call there at 8.30 p.m., when I shall give you your instructions. This will enable you to catch the 9.30 p.m. for Paris, via Southampton and Havre.

“I wish to impress on you that as the business in question is exceptionally confidential, you will oblige me by keeping your change of plans to yourself.—Yours truly,

“R. A. DUKE.”

Inspector French was keenly interested, but he recognised with exasperation how inconclusive the letter was as evidence. Either it had been sent to Vanderkemp as he stated, in which case he might be innocent, or the man had written it himself, in which case he certainly was guilty. It was true that in this instance an envelope was forthcoming which bore a London E.C. postmark and the correct date, but here again there was no proof that this was really the covering in which the letter had come. These points passed through the Inspector's mind, but he banished them as matters to be thought out later, and turned once more to his companion.

“I shall keep this, if you don't mind,” he declared. “Please proceed.”

“I carried out the instructions in the letter,” Vanderkemp resumed. “The change of hours necessitated my leaving Amsterdam by the night train on the 24th, and I spent the following day at my hotel in London, and in doing a matinee. At 8.30, with my luggage, I reached Hatton Garden. I found the outer office was in darkness, but a light shone out of the doorway of the inner office. Mr. Gething was there alone. He told me to come in and shut the door, and I did so, and sat down in the clients' arm-chair. Mr. Gething was seated at Mr. Duke's desk, which was open.”

“Was the safe open?”

“No, nor was it opened while I was there. Mr. Gething told me that Mr. Duke had intended to be present to give me my instructions in person, but at the last moment he had been prevented coming down, and that he had asked him, Mr. Gething, to do it instead. It seemed that Mr. Duke had got information from a confidential agent at Constantinople that a member of the old Russian aristocracy had escaped with his family jewels from the clutches of the Bolsheviks, and that he now wished to dispose of the whole collection for what it would bring. He was at one time Duke Sergius of one of the Ural provinces—I have the name in my book upstairs—but was now passing himself off as a Pole under the name Francisko Loth. The collection was one of extraordinary excellence, and Mr. Duke believed it could be purchased for a third, or even less, of its real value. He had approached the duke through the agent, and had offered to deal. The trouble, however, was that the Soviet Government had learned of the duke's escape, and were displaying immense energy in the hope of recapturing him. Their agents were scouring the whole of Europe, and Loth was in mortal terror, for discovery meant certain death. Mr. Gething told me straight also, that should I succeed in purchasing, my life would not be worth a tinker's curse until I had handed over the stuff. He said that, recognising this, Mr. Duke considered that my commission should be substantially increased, and he asked me was I willing to take on the job.”

“And you agreed?”

“Well, what do you think? Of course I agreed. I asked for further details, and he let me have them. For both my own safety and Loth's, I was to take extraordinary precautions. My name is pretty well known in dealers' circles over Europe, and therefore would be known to the Soviet emissaries, so I was to take another. I was to become John Harrison, of Huddersfield, a tinplate manufacturer. I was not to write to the office direct, but to send my reports, if any were necessary, to Mr. Herbert Lyons, a friend of Mr. Duke's, who lived not far from him at Hampstead. If I had to write, I was to be most careful to phrase my letter so that were I suspected and my correspondence tampered with, it would not give the affair away. Instructions to me would be sent to Harrison and written on plain notepaper, and would be worded in a similar careful way. Mr. Gething gave me a code by which I could wire the amount agreed on, when the money would be sent me by special messenger; that is, if we could come to terms.”

Vanderkemp paused and glanced at the Inspector, but the latter not speaking, he continued:

“Loth was hidden in Constantinople, but was trying to come west. He was not sure whether he could do so best by land or sea. If he could get out of Turkey by land, he would work his way up the Danube to Austria and Switzerland, and would stop eventually at the Beau-Sejour Hotel in Chamonix. If that proved impossible, he would try to leave by sea, and would travel by one of the Navigazione Generale Italiana boats to Genoa, and thence to Barcelona, where he would put up at the Gomez Hotel, that is, this one. He had let Mr. Duke know through his Constantinople friend that if he didn't turn up at Chamonix by the 4th, it would mean either that the Bolsheviks had caught him, or that he was making for Barcelona. My instructions, therefore, were to go to Chamonix, put up at the Beau-Sejour, and look out until the 4th for a tall, white-complexioned, dark-haired man named Francisko Loth. If by that time he had not turned up, I was to move on here. I was to wait here for a fortnight, at the end of which time, if I had still heard nothing of him, I was to go on to Constantinople, look up Mr. Duke's agent, and try for news of Loth's fate.”

“And you carried out the instructions?”

“Yes. I went to Chamonix, and stayed there for a week. Seeing no one who could possibly be the man, I came on here, and have been waiting here ever since. To-morrow I proposed to leave for Constantinople.”

French threw away the butt of his cigar and selected another.

“Such a trip could not be accomplished without money,” he said slowly. “How were you equipped in that way?”

“Mr. Gething handed me a hundred pounds in ten-pound notes. I changed two in Chamonix and I have the remaining eight in my pocket.”

“You might let me see them.”

Vanderkemp readily complied, and the Inspector found, as he expected, that the eight notes were among those stolen from the safe. He resumed his interrogation.

“You say you reached the office in Hatton Garden about half-past eight?”

“Yes, and left about nine. My business occupied only half an hour.”

“And you saw no one except Mr. Gething?”

“No one.”

French, having offered his possible future prisoner another cigar, sat silent, thinking deeply. He had no doubt that the story of the escaped Russian was a fabrication from beginning to end. Besides being an unlikely tale in itself, it broke down on the point of its authorship. Vanderkemp's statement was that Gething had been told the story by Mr. Duke, and that Mr. Duke would have been present to tell it to him, Vanderkemp, in person, were he not prevented by some unexpected cause. This also was an obvious fabrication, but the reason of its insertion into the tale was clear enough. Without it, the story would have no authority. The use of Mr. Duke's name was an essential part of any such scheme, just as the forging of Mr. Duke's signature had been necessary for the letters of instruction to Schoofs and Vanderkemp.

But though French felt sure enough of his ground so far, on trying to take a further step he was held up by the same difficulty with which he had been faced in considering the forged letters. Was Gething guilty, and had he invented this elaborate plan to throw suspicion on to Vanderkemp, or was Vanderkemp the criminal, and the story his scheme for accounting for his actions since the murder? That was a real difficulty, and French sat wondering if there was no test he could apply, no way in which he could reach certainty, no trap which the victim would be unable to avoid?

For some time he could think of none, but presently an idea occurred to him which he thought might be worth while following up. Some information might be gained through the typewriting of the two forged letters. Could Vanderkemp type, and if so, was his work done with a light or heavy touch? He turned to his companion.

“I wish you would write me a short statement of your movements in London on the night of the crime, stating the times at which you arrived at and left the various places you visited. I should prefer it typed—that is, if you can type. Can you?”

Vanderkemp smiled wanly.

“I think so,” he answered. “I type and write shorthand in four languages. But I've no machine here.”

“Borrow one from the office,” French suggested, as he expressed his admiration of the other's prowess.

It took a personal visit to the office, but Vanderkemp, anxious to defer to the Inspector's whims, managed to overcome the scruples of the languorous, dark-eyed beauty who reigned therein, and returned triumphant with the machine. Ten minutes later French had his time-table.

Instantly he saw that Vanderkemp typed as an expert—with a light, sure touch that produced a perfect impression, but did not dint the paper. It was a point in the man's favour. By no means conclusive, it was still by no means negligible.

Inspector French was puzzled. His experience told him that in this world the ordinary, natural and obvious thing happened. A man who secretly visited the scene of a crime at about the hour at which the crime was known to be committed, and who then left the country on a mysterious and improbable mission, the reality of which was denied by its alleged author, a man, further, who had in his pocket banknotes stolen from the scene of the crime, such a man in ordinary, prosaic, everyday life was the criminal. Such, French thought, was common sense, and common sense, he considered, was right ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

But there was always the hundredth chance. Improbabilities and coincidences
did
occasionally happen. He would have given a good deal at that moment to know if this case was the exception that proves the rule.

He saw clearly that his second explanation, if somewhat more far-fetched, was still quite possibly true. It certainly might be that Vanderkemp had been duped, that he had been sent on this wild-goose chase by the murderer, with the object of drawing on himself just that suspicion which he had attracted, and thus allowing the real scent to cool. A good many of the facts tended in that direction, the forged letters, the keeping of the alleged deal with Schoofs, the fact that no Russian nobleman had turned up at either of the rendezvous named, the travelling under a false name, the warning against communications with the office, and last, but not least, Vanderkemp's manner during the interview, all these undoubtedly supported the view that the traveller had been used to lay a gigantic false clue.