Colonel Thorndyke's Secret Part 33

"I don't think this is a foreign dagger," the Inspector said on examining it, "although it may be the one that was used, as you say, Mr. Thornd.y.k.e. It has evidently been made to carry about without being observed."

He threw back the dead man's coat.

"Ah, here is where it was kept. You see, the lining has been sewn to the cloth, so as to make a sheath down by the seam under the arm. I expect that, knowing what would happen if he were caught, he had made up his mind to do it all along. Well, I don't know that you are to be so much blamed, Chester, for, pa.s.sing your hand over his clothes, you might very well miss this, which is no thicker than a piece of whalebone. Well, well, he has saved us a good deal of trouble. You say you have got most of the booty he has collected?"

"I don't know that we have got all of it, sir, but we have made a very big haul, anyhow; it was a cunningly contrived place. There was a big corn bin in the stable, and when we had emptied out the corn it seemed empty. However, Mr. Thornd.y.k.e discovered that the bin was fixed. Then we found that the bottom was really a trap door, and under it was a sort of well in which were sacks and bags. One of the sacks was full of unbroken silver, two others contained silver ingots, things that he had melted down, and there was a large bag full of watches and jewels. In his pocket we found a hundred pounds in bank notes, about fifty guineas, and a couple of gold watches."

"That he must have got tonight from the Portsmouth coach; we heard half an hour ago that it had been stopped near Kingston, the coachman shot, and the pa.s.sengers robbed. It will be good news to some of them that we have got hold of their valuables. Well, Mr. Thornd.y.k.e, I have to congratulate you most heartily on the skill with which you have ferreted out a man who had baffled us for so long, and had become a perfect terror to the south of London. No doubt we shall be able to trace a great portion of the property in that sack. The capture has been splendidly effected."

"You will understand," Mark said, "that I do not wish my name to appear in the matter at all. I have, as you know, been actuated by private reasons only in my search, and I see no occasion why my name should be mentioned; the evidence of Chester and Malcolm will be ample. From information received, they went down to this place, searched it in his absence, discovered the stolen goods, and captured them. Having handcuffed and bound him, one drove him up to town, the other remaining to guard the treasure. On his way he got at this hidden dagger and stabbed himself. My evidence would not strengthen the case at all."

"No, I don't see that it will be necessary to call you, Mr. Thornd.y.k.e.

The discovery of this hidden booty and the proceeds of the coach robbery would be quite sufficient. Beyond the coroner's inquest there will be no inquiry. Had it been otherwise it might probably have been necessary to call you at the trial. However, as it is, it will save a lot of trouble; now we shall only need to find the owners of these bank notes. I will send off a cart for the things as early as I can get one, and will send a couple of constables round to the houses where burglaries have been committed to request the owners to come over and see if they can identify any of their property; and those who do so can attend the inquest tomorrow, though I don't suppose they will be called. The chief will be mightily pleased when he hears what has taken place, for he has been sadly worried by these constant complaints, and I fancy that the authorities have been rather down upon him on the subject. The announcement that the career of this famous robber has been brought to an end will cause quite a sensation, and people round the commons on the south side will sleep more quietly than they have done lately. I expect that if he had not put an end to himself we should have had to send him across to Newington today, for of course it is a Surrey business, though we have had the luck to take him. I suppose we shall not see much of you in the future, Mr. Thornd.y.k.e?"

"No indeed," Mark said. "My business is done, and I shall send in my resignation this morning. I don't regret the time that I have spent over it; I have learned a great deal, and have seen a lot of the shady side of life, and have picked up experience in a good many ways."

Mark, after requesting the Inspector to find a man to go over to Streatham and bring back his horse, and writing an order to the ostler to deliver it, walked across to his lodgings. Upon the whole, he was not sorry that Bastow had taken the matter into his own hands; he had, certainly, while engaged in the search, looked forward to seeing him in the dock and witnessing his execution, but he now felt that enough had been done for vengeance, and that it was as well that the matter had ended as it had. He was wearied out with the excitement of the last forty-eight hours. It was one o'clock when he awoke, and after dressing and going into Covent Garden to lunch at one of the coffee houses, he made his way up to Islington.

"Taking a day's holiday?" Millicent asked as he came in.

"Well, not exactly, Millicent; I have left school altogether."

"Left school, Mark? Do you mean that you have decided that it is of no use going on any longer?"

"I have given it up because I have finished it. Arthur Bastow was captured last night, and committed suicide as he was being taken to the station."

An exclamation of surprise broke from Mrs. Cunningham and Millicent.

"It seems horrid to be glad that anyone has taken his own life," the latter said; "but I cannot help feeling so, for as long as he lived I should never have considered that you were safe, and besides, I suppose there is no doubt that if he had not killed himself he would have been hung."

"There is not a shadow of doubt about that," Mark replied. "We found the proceeds of a vast number of robberies at his place, and also in his pockets the money he had taken from the pa.s.sengers of the Portsmouth coach an hour before we captured him. So that putting aside that Australian business altogether, his doom was sealed."

"Now, please, tell us all about it," Mrs. Cunningham said. "But first let us congratulate you most warmly not only on the success of your search, but that the work is at an end."

"Yes, I am glad it is over. At first I was very much interested; in fact, I was intensely interested all along, and should have been for however long it had continued. But, at the same time, I could do nothing else, and one does not want to spend one's whole life as a detective.

At last it came about almost by chance, and the only thing I have to congratulate myself upon is that my idea of the sort of place he would have taken was exactly borne out by fact."

And Mark then gave them a full account of the manner in which the discovery had been made and the capture effected.

"You see, Millicent, I followed your injunction, and was very careful.

Taking him by surprise as I did, I might have managed it single handed, but with the aid of two good men it made a certainty of it, and the whole thing was comfortably arranged."

"I think you have done splendidly, Mark," Mrs. Cunningham said. "It was certainly wonderful that you should have found him doing exactly what you had guessed, even down to the deaf servant. Well, now that is done and over, what do you think of doing next?"

"I have hardly thought about that," he replied; "but, at any rate, I shall take a few weeks' holiday, and I suppose after that I shall settle down to the search for my uncle's treasure. I am afraid that will be a much longer and a vastly more difficult business than this has been.

Here there were all sorts of clews to work upon. Bastow ought to have been captured months ago, but in this other affair, so far, there is next to nothing to follow up. We don't even know whether the things are in India or in England. I believe they will be found, but that it will be by an accident. Besides, I fancy that we shall hear about them when you come of age, Millicent. There was to have been no change till that time, and I cannot help thinking that Uncle George must have made some provisions by which we should get to know about them in the event of his death without his having an opportunity of telling anyone where they are.

"He might have been killed in battle; he might have been drowned on his way home. He had thought the whole matter over so thoroughly, I do think the possibilities of this could not have escaped him. As I told you, Mr. Prendergast made inquiries of all the princ.i.p.al bankers and Indian agents here, and altogether without success. After he had done that, I got a list of all the leading firms in Calcutta and Madras, and wrote to them, and all the replies were in the negative. It is true that does not prove anything absolutely. Eighteen years is a long time, and the chances are that during those years almost every head of a firm would have retired and come home. Such a matter would only be likely to be known to the heads; and if, as we thought likely, the box or chest was merely forwarded by a firm there to England, the transaction would not have attracted any special attention. If, upon the other hand, it remained out there it might have been put down in a cellar or store, and have been lying there ever since, altogether forgotten."

"I don't see myself why you should bother any more about it; perhaps, as you say, it will turn up of itself when I come of age. At any rate, I should say it is certainly as well to wait till then and see if it does, especially as you acknowledge that you have no clew whatever to work on. It is only three more years, for I am eighteen next week, and it certainly seems to me that it will be very foolish to spend the next three years in searching about for a thing that may come to you without any searching at all."

"Well, I will think it over."

"You see, you really don't want the money, Mark," she went on.

"No, I don't want it particularly, Millicent; but when one knows that there is something like 50,000 pounds waiting for one somewhere, one would like to get it. Your father worked for twenty years of his life acc.u.mulating it for us, and it seems to me a sort of sacred duty to see that his labor has not all been thrown away."

Millicent was silent.

"It is very tiresome," she said presently. "Of course my father intended, as you say, that his savings should come to us, but I am sure he never meant that they should be a bother and a trouble to us."

"I don't see why they should ever be that, Millicent. As it is we have both sufficient for anything any man or woman could reasonably want, and neither of us need fret over it if the treasure is never found. Still, he wished us to have it, and it is properly ours, and I don't want it to go to enrich someone who has not a shadow of a right to it."

On the following morning Mark went to attend the inquest on Bastow. He did not go into the court, however, but remained close at hand in the event of the coroner insisting upon his being called. However, the two men only spoke casually in their evidence of their comrade Roberts, who had been also engaged in the capture. One of the jurymen suggested that he should also be called, but the coroner said:

"I really cannot see any occasion for it; we are here to consider how the deceased came by his death, and I think it must be perfectly clear that he came by it by his own act. You have heard how he was captured, that the spoils of the coach that he had just rifled were found upon him, and that the booty he had been acquiring from his deeds for months past also was seized; therefore, as the man was desperate, and knew well enough that his life was forfeited, there was ample motive for his putting an end to his wretched existence. I really do not think, gentlemen, that it is worth while to waste your time and mine by going into further evidence."

Finally, a verdict of felo de se was returned, with a strong expression of the jury's admiration of the conduct of constables Malcolm, Chester, and Roberts, who had so cleverly effected the capture of the man who had so long set the law at defiance.

CHAPTER XVII.

Four days later Mark, on his return from dinner, found Philip Cotter sitting in his room waiting for him. They had met on the previous evening, and Cotter had expressed his intention of calling upon him the next day.

"I am here on a matter of business, Thornd.y.k.e," the latter said as they shook hands.

"Of business!" Mark repeated.

"Yes. You might guess for a year, and I don't suppose that you would hit it. It is rather a curious thing. Nearly twenty years ago--"

"I can guess it before you go any further," Mark exclaimed, leaping up from the seat that he had just taken. "Your people received a box from India."

"That is so Mark; although how you guessed it I don't know."

"We have been searching for it for years," Mark replied. "Our lawyer, Prendergast, wrote to you about that box; at least, he wrote to you asking if you had any property belonging to Colonel Thornd.y.k.e, and your people wrote to say they hadn't."

"Yes, I remember I wrote to him myself. Of course that was before you did me that great service, and I did not know your name, and we had not the name on our books. What is in the box?"

"Jewels worth something like fifty thousand pounds."

"By Jove, I congratulate you, old fellow; that is to say, if you have the handling of it. Well, this is what happened. The box was sent to us by a firm in Calcutta, together with bills for 50,000 pounds. The instructions were that the money was to be invested in stock, and that we were to manage it and to take 100 pounds a year for so doing. The rest of the interest of the money was to be invested. The box was a very ma.s.sive one, and was marked with the letters XYZ. It was very carefully sealed. Our instructions were that the owner of the box and the money might present himself at any time."

"And that the proof of his owners.h.i.+p was to be that he was to use the word 'Masulipatam,'" Mark broke in, "and produce a gold coin that would, probably--though of this I am not certain--correspond with the seals."

He got up and went to the cabinet which he had brought up with him from Crowswood, unlocked it, and produced the piece of paper and the coin.