Ravensdene Court Part 18

"Four thousand ounces of plate--some of it jewelled!" he soliloquised.

"Whew! And what do you make of it, Mr. Middlebrook? I mean--of all that I've told you?"

"Putting everything together that you've told me," I answered, with some confidence, "I make this of it. This plate, originally church property, came--we won't ask how--into the hands of the late Lord Forestburne, and may have been in possession of his family, hidden away, perhaps, for four centuries. But at any rate, it was in his possession, and he deposited it with his bankers across the way. He may, indeed, not have known what was in it--again, he may have known.

Now I take it that the dishonest temporary manager you told me of examined those chests, decided to appropriate their valuable contents, and enlisted the services of Netherfield Baxter in his nefarious labours. I think that these inventories were found in the chests--one, probably, in each--and that Baxter kept them out of sheer curiosity--you say he was a fellow of some education. As for the plate, I think he and his a.s.sociate hid it somewhere--and, if you want my honest opinion, it was for it that Salter Quick was looking."

Scarterfield clapped his hand on the table.

"That's it!" he exclaimed. "Hanged if I don't think that myself! It's my opinion that this Netherfield Baxter, when he hooked it out of here, got into far regions and strange company, came into touch with those Quicks and told 'em the secret of this stolen plate--he was, I'm sure, the Netherfield of that s.h.i.+p the Quicks were on. Yes, sir!--I think we may safely bet on it that Salter Quick, as you say, was looking for this plate!"

"And--so was somebody else," said I. "And it was that somebody else who murdered Salter Quick."

"Aye!" he a.s.sented. "Now--who? That's the question. And what's the next thing to do, Mr. Middlebrook?"

"It seems to me that the next thing to do is to find out all you can about this plate," I replied. "If I were you, I should take two people into your confidence--the head man, director, chairman, or whatever he is, at the bank--and the present Lord Forestburne."

"I will!" he agreed. "I'll see 'em both, first thing tomorrow morning.

Do you go with me, Mr. Middlebrook? You'll explain these old papers better than I should."

So Scarterfield and I spent that evening together in the little hotel, and after dinner I explained the inventories more particularly. I came to the conclusion that if the four thousand ounces of plate specified in them were in the chests which the dishonest temporary bank-manager had stolen, he had got a very fine haul: the value, of course, of the plate, was not so much intrinsic as extrinsic: there were collectors, English and American, who would cheerfully give vast sums for pre-Reformation sacramental vessels. Transactions of this kind, I fancied, must have been in the minds of the thieves. There were features of the whole affair which puzzled me--not the least important was my wonder that this plate, undeniably church property, should have remained so long in the Forestburne family without being brought into the light of day. I hoped that our inquiries next morning would bring some information on that point.

But we got no information--at least, none of any consequence. All that was known by the authorities at the bank was that the late Lord Forestburne had deposited two chests of plate with them years before, with instructions that they were to remain in the bank's custody until his son succeeded him--even then they were not to be opened unless the son had already come of age. The bank people had no knowledge of the precise contents of the chests--all they knew was that they contained plate. As for the present Lord Forestburne, a very young man, he knew nothing, except that his father's mysterious deposit had been burgled by a dishonest custodian. He expressed no opinion about anything, therefore. But the chief authority at the bank, a crusty and self-sufficient old gentleman, who seemed to consider Scarterfield and myself as busybodies, poohpoohed the notion that the inventories which we showed him had anything to do with the rifled Forestburne chests, and scorned the notion that the family had ever been in possession of goods obtained by sacrilege.

"Preposterous!" said he, with a sniff of contempt. "What the chests contained was, of course, superfluous family plate. As for these doc.u.ments, that fellow Baxter, in spite of his loose manner of living, was, I remember, a bit inclined to scholars.h.i.+p, and went in for old books and things--a strange mixture altogether. He probably picked up these parchments in some book-seller's shop in Durham or Newcastle. I don't believe they've anything to do with Lord Forestburne's stolen property, and I advise you both not to waste time in running after mare's nests."

Scarterfield and I got ourselves out of this starchy person's presence and confided to each other our private opinions of him and his intelligence. For to us the theory which we had set up was una.s.sailable: we tried to reduce it to strict and formal precision as we ate our lunch in a quiet corner of the hotel coffee-room, previous to parting.

"More than one of us, Scarterfield, who have taken part in this discussion, have said that if we are going to get at the truth of things we shall have to go back," I observed. "Well, what you have found out here takes us back some way. Let us suppose--we can't do anything without a certain amount of supposition--let us, I say, for the sake of argument, suppose that the man Netherfield of Blyth, who was with Noah and Salter Quick on the s.h.i.+p _Elizabeth Robinson_, bound from Hong-Kong to Chemulpo is the same person as Netherfield Baxter, who certainly lived in this town a few years ago. Very well--now then, what do we know of Baxter? We know this--that a dishonest bank-manager stole certain valuables from the bank, died suddenly just afterwards, and that Baxter disappeared just as suddenly. The supposition is that Baxter was concerned in that theft. We'll suppose more--that Baxter knew where the stolen goods were; had, in fact, helped to secrete them. Well, the next we hear of him is--supposing him to be Netherfield--on this s.h.i.+p, which, according to the reports you got at Lloyds, was lost with all hands in the Yellow Sea. But--a big but!--we know now that whatever happened to the rest of those on board her, three men at any rate saved their lives--Noah Quick, Salter Quick and the Chinese cook, whose exact name we've forgotten, but one of whose patronymics was Chuh. Chuh turns up at Lloyds, in London, and asks a question about the s.h.i.+p. Noah Quick materialises at Devonport, and runs a public-house. Salter joins him there. And presently Salter is up on the Northumbrian coast, professing great anxiety to find a churchyard, or churchyards wherein are graves with the name Netherfield on them--he makes the excuse that that is the family name of his mother's people. Now we know what happened to Salter Quick, and we also know what happened to Noah Quick. But now I'm wondering if something else had happened before that?"

"Aye, Mr. Middlebrook?" said Scarterfield. "And what, now?"

"I'm wondering," I answered, leaning nearer to him across the little table at which we sat, "if Noah and Salter, severally, or conjointly, had murdered this Netherfield Baxter before they themselves were murdered? They--or somebody who was in with them, who afterwards murdered them? Do you understand?"

"I'm afraid I don't," he said. "No--I don't quite see things."

"Look you here, Scarterfield," said I. "Supposing a gang of men--men of no conscience, desperate, adventurous men--gets together, as men were together on that s.h.i.+p, the doings and fate of which seem to be pretty mysterious. They're all out for what they can get. One of them is in possession of a valuable secret, and he imparts it to the others, or to some of them--a chosen lot. There have been known such cases--where a secret is shared by say five or six men--in which murder after murder occurs until the secret is only held by one or two. A half-share in a thing is worth more than one-sixth, Scarterfield--and a secret of one is far more valuable than a secret shared with three. Do you understand now?"

"I see!" he answered slowly. "You mean that Salter and Noah may have got rid of Netherfield Baxter and that somebody has got rid of them?"

"Precisely!" said I. "You put it very clearly."

"Well," he said, "if that's so, there are--as has been plain all along--two men concerned in putting the Quicks out of the way. For Noah was finished off on the same night that saw Salter finished--and there was four hundred miles distance between the scenes of their respective murders. The man who killed Noah was not the man who killed Salter, to be sure."

"Of course!" I agreed. "We've always known there were two. There may be more--a gang of them, and remarkably clever fellows. But I'm getting sure that the desire to recover some hidden treasure, valuables, something of that sort, was at the bottom of it, and now I'm all the surer because of what we've found out about this monastic spoil. But there are things that puzzle me."

"Such as what?" he asked.

"Well, that eagerness of Salter Quick's to find a churchyard with the name Netherfield on the stones," I replied. "And his coming to that part of the Northumbrian coast expecting to find it. Because, so far as the experts know, there is no such name on any stone, nor in any parish register, in all that district. Who, then, told him of the name? You see, if my theory is correct, and Baxter told him and Noah, he'd tell them the exact locality."

"Ah, but would he?" said Scarterfield. "He mightn't. He might only give them a general notion. Still--Netherfield it was that Salter asked for."

"That's certain," said I. "And--I'm puzzled why. But I'm puzzled still more about another thing. If the men who murdered Noah and Salter Quick were in possession of the secret as well, why did they rip their clothes to pieces, searching for--something? Why, later, did somebody steal that tobacco-box from under the very noses of the police?"

Scarterfield shook his head: the shake meant a great deal.

"That fairly settles me!" he remarked. "Why, the murderer must have been actually present at the inquest."

But at that I shook my head.

"Oh, dear me, no!" said I. "Not at all! But--some agent of his was certainly there. My own impression is that Mr. Cazalette's eagerness about that box gave the whole show away. Shall I tell you how I figure things out? Well, I think there were men--we don't know who!--that either knew, with absolute certainty, or were pretty sure that Noah Quick, and Salter Quick were in possession of a secret and that one or the other--and perhaps both--carried it on him, in the shape of papers. Each was killed for that secret. The murderers found nothing, in either case. But Mr. Cazalette's remarks, made before a lot of men, drew attention to the tobacco-box, and the murderer determined to get it. And--what was easier than to abstract it, at the inquest, where it was exhibited in company with several other things of Salter's?"

"I can't say if it was easy or not, Mr. Middlebrook," observed Scarterfield. "Were you there--present?"

"I was there," said I. "So were most people of the neighbourhood--as many as could get into the room, anyway. A biggish room--there'd be a couple of hundred people in it. And many of them were strangers. When the proceedings were over, men were crowding about the table on which Quick's things had been laid out, for exhibition to the coroner and the jury--what easier than for someone to pick up that box? The place was so crowded that such an action would pa.s.s unnoticed."

"Very evident it did!" observed Scarterfield.

"But I've heard of such things being taken out of sheer curiosity--morbid desire to get hold of something that had to do with a murder. However, if this particular thing was abstracted by the murderer, or by somebody acting on his behalf it looks as if he, or they, were on the spot. And then--that affair of Mr. Cazalette's pocket-book!"

"Well, Scarterfield," said I. "There's another way of regarding both these thefts. Supposing tobacco-box and pocket-book were stolen, not as means of revealing a secret, but so that no one else--Cazalette or anybody--should get at it! Eh?"

"There's something in that," he admitted thoughtfully. "You mean that the murderers had already got rid of the Quicks so that there should be two less in the secret, and these things stolen lest outsiders should get any inkling of it?"

"Precisely!" I answered. "Closeness and secrecy--that's been at the back of everything so far. I tell you--you're dealing with unusually crafty brains!"

"I wish I could get the faintest idea of whose brains they were!" he sighed. "A direct clue, now--"

Before he could say any more one of the hotel servants came into the coffee-room and made for our table.

"There's a man in the hall asking for Mr. Scarterfield," he announced.

"Looks like a seafaring man, sir. He says Mrs. Ormthwaite told him he'd find you here."

"Woman with whom Baxter used to lodge," muttered Scarterfield, in an aside to me. "Come along, Mr. Middlebrook--you never know what you mayn't hear."

We went out into the hall. There, twisting his cap in his hands, stood a big, brown-bearded man.

CHAPTER XIV

SOLOMON FISH

It needed but one glance at Scarterfield's visitor to a.s.sure me that he was a person who had used the sea. There was the suggestion of salt water and strong winds all over him, from his grizzled hair and beard to his big, brawny hands and square set build; he looked the sort of man who all his life had been looking out across wide stretches of ocean and battling with the forces of Nature in her roughest moods.

Just then there was questioning in his keen blue eyes--he was obviously wondering, with all the native suspicion of a simple soul, what Scarterfield might be after.

"You're asking for me?" said the detective.

The man glanced from one to the other of us; then jerked a big thumb in the direction of some region beyond the open door behind his burly figure.