The Loss of the Jane Vosper (31 page)

This was confirmed by another point. Not only from the point of transport was the cartage link the weak one, but geographically it was the only one possible. Redliff Lane, stretching between Great Prescott Street and Royal Mint Street, was actually on a direct line between the depot and the dock. Doubtless had the shed not been there, cartage would have kept to the wider street; but in point of distance via Redliff Lane was as short a route as any.

French seemed to see the lorries from Haydon Square turning into Rice Bros’ mysterious shed, stopping beneath the runway, changing their loads, and emerging again to complete the trip to the docks.

The electric runway! Here at last was the reason why so costly a piece of apparatus should have been installed, though the occupancy of the shed was temporary and short at that! It was necessary that the genuine cases should be removed from the lorries and be replaced by the dummies in as short a time as possible. The lorries must make a reasonable number of runs per day, or Waterer’s people might smell a rat. If hand loading were in force, this could not be done. Hence the runway.

The further French went in his surmisings, the further evidences of design he brought out. The purpose of the shed, its site and its fittings were now all accounted for. And the design was good. Grimly he thought it ought to have succeeded. He didn’t like to think how nearly it had succeeded.

Another point now seemed to him fairly clear: Sutton had obviously discovered the substitution, and had been unwise enough to mention his suspicions to someone in the conspiracy. He had penetrated to the shed, or been lured there, and had so fallen into the conspirators’ power.

If so, how sharp Sutton had been! How had he got on so quickly to the fraud, when he, French, with all the resources of the Yard behind him, was only now tumbling to it?

But all this, though he believed it to be the truth, still remained mere theory. Beyond the general probability, he had no proof for any of it. That must be his next care. Somehow, by hook or by crook, he must get his proof.

Where should he seek it? So far as he could see, there was only one place possible. He must go again to Waterer & Reade’s, the carriers. If he were right so far, their lorrymen must have been privy to the affair. He must get hold of the lorrymen.

Then he remembered a significant fact: both these men had left Waterer’s, and without giving an address. It might not be so easy to find them. Cruttenden & Co. would probably see to that.

Ringing up to make an appointment with the manager, Keene, French called Carter and went down to the Otwell Street firm.

Keene saw them at once. He seemed slightly bored by another call on an old subject, but was polite, if a trifle dry, as he asked what he could do for them.

French began by pledging the man to secrecy. ‘It’s about the carriage of those cases from the Haydon Square depot to the London Docks,’ he went on, and, as Keene nodded impatiently, added, ‘We think that during that journey the cases containing the Weaver Bannister sets were changed for others containing concrete. We want your help in getting to the bottom of the affair.’

Keene put down the papers he had been toying with and stared motionless. ‘What on earth are you talking about, chief-inspector?’ he said at last, evidently overcome by astonishment which rapidly changed to indignation. ‘Do you mean to suggest that my firm has been party to some crooked trick?’

French shook his head. ‘Of course not, sir,’ he answered easily. ‘But I’m afraid your firm has been the victim of a trick, as Messrs Weaver Bannister have been, though, fortunately for you, with much less serious consequences.’

Keene seemed considerably moved. ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed. ‘I hope you are wrong. I feel sure you are wrong. What are the details?’

‘We think–’ French shrugged. ‘Well, put it this way: we’re not satisfied about the cartage of the cases from station to docks. In a word, I want to find those two carters who did the work. You told me they had left you?’

‘That is so.’

‘And without leaving an address?’

‘That is so, too. I told you before. I don’t know where they have gone.’

‘You said they weren’t with you long, sir?’

‘No, they weren’t. Only a week or so before that job.’ Keene was looking more and more uneasy. ‘I’ll give you all the details.’ He sent for a file.

‘It happened that we got rather a rush of work just about the time this job came on. We had plenty of lorries, but our staff of drivers had been rather heavily reduced during the bad time. I decided to take on a couple of temporary men to get us through the rush, which I couldn’t believe was more than temporary. We had a number of applications, and I looked through these and selected what seemed to me from the testimonials to be the two best men. They started with us, and it happened that these were the men who were put on to the job in question. They did it, as well as all their other work, very satisfactorily, as I thought. Then they left. They were not dismissed, but left at their own request. They both gave as their reason that they had got a permanent job.’

‘I don’t think when I was here before that I got a description of them. One I saw, a man called’ – French glanced at his book – ‘William Henty. The other had left. What was he like, if you please?’

‘I did see him on different occasions,’ Keene replied, ‘but I don’t know that I looked at him very carefully. Probably you could get a better description from the foreman. According to my recollection, he was a big man with a heavy face and a little moustache. Rather untidy looking, but a good lorryman.’

It was now French’s turn to stare in amazement. Slowly he put his hands into his pocket and drew out his collection of photographs. ‘He’s not among those, by any chance?’ he asked, handing them over.

Keene sat slowly turning them over. When he came to Cruttenden’s he stopped. He looked at it more closely, his head bent, while French sat thrilling with the excitement of a fisherman whose float has suddenly bobbed. But Keene presently passed on the next. He went through the whole collection, then he turned back to Cruttenden’s. At it he stared for a few moments longer. Then he handed it over.

‘I believe that’s the man,’ he declared, ‘though I’m not absolutely sure. He was unshaven, our man, and much less tidy. But it’s certainly like him.’

‘You wouldn’t be prepared to swear to him?’

Again Keene hesitated. ‘No, but I suggest you show this to the foreman,’ he said. ‘He could probably give you definite information.’

French nodded. Here was a tremendously valuable piece of information. If Cruttenden had got a job as lorryman, it explained how the exchange of the crates had been kept secret. Cruttenden! Of course! Here was the same excellence of design as he had found elsewhere in the affair.

Then French got a further idea, and for a moment he sat in silence, oblivious of his surroundings, as he turned it over in his mind.

If one of those two lorrymen were Cruttenden, what about the other? The other he had seen himself. Hastily he turned up Mr Armstrong’s description of the second lorryman who had called for the timber from his firm. Why, of course! What a fool he, French, had been! The second lorryman was undoubtedly Henty. There could be no doubt that these two beauties had somehow got billets with Waterer & Reade to enable them to carry out their evil plans. How had they done it?

‘You spoke of testimonials, sir. Have you still got them?’

The manager shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. The men asked for and were given them before they left. That’s usual, you know.’

‘Of course, sir. You haven’t a note of who gave them?’

‘Yes, we have, I think.’ Keene looked up his file. ‘Yes, here are the names. You see, they’re good people.’

On the staff card for Joseph Grey was written in the ‘Reference’ space, Sibley Greer & Co., and on that of William Henty, Harrison Bros. These were both carriers of excellent reputation.

‘Did you take up the references?’ French asked.

‘No, I didn’t. They were written on their respective firms’ paper and I knew the signatures. Both are firms with which we do business. No. I sent the men out with a lorry and an observer. He reported both were good drivers, and I let it go at that.’

‘Well,’ said French, ‘we can soon settle the point. Perhaps, sir, you would ring up those firms and ask if the references are OK?’

Keene did so at once. The replies distressed him and delighted French. Neither of the men had ever been heard of and no testimonials had been given.

‘Just one other point, sir,’ French went on, striving to hide his deep satisfaction. ‘How did it come that these two men were chosen for that particular job?’

Keene shrugged. ‘That was a matter for our shed foreman,’ he declared. ‘But what doubtless weighed with him was that these two men were taken on to deal with special jobs outside our usual contracts. We have a large number of what I may call standard jobs, which go on regularly from week to week. For instance, we do all the carting for Lambson’s Brewery, and the same for other firms. But the carrying of these cases was a special job, one of the very jobs to cope with which we had taken on the men. It would be natural to send our own men to the jobs they knew and the new men to the special non-recurring job.’

‘Scarcely sufficiently sure for my men to bank on,’ French answered. ‘Because if they hadn’t been put on that job, their whole scheme was lost.’

Keene shrugged again and a thin smile curved his lips. ‘I expect you know as much about that as I, chief-inspector,’ he said.

His suggestion was obvious. The foreman had been squared. But, if so, there would be little use in asking him the question, as he would undoubtedly deny it.

However, the point was not of immediate importance; other matters were more urgent. It could, and of course would, be gone into later. The main outlines of the fraud were becoming clearer and clearer with every question French asked, and he was content, though keener than ever to reach the end of the enquiry and get his men.

He wished he could obtain definite proof that the Weaver Bannister cases had been taken into the shed. It was progress to be certain that they had. But to be certain was not enough: he must prove it. Was there no way in which he could do so?

The only possibility seemed to be to go over once again that journey between the rail depot and the dock. It was true that he had already done it thoroughly, but as there was no other way in which he could hope to get his information, it would be worth repeating. If no one at either end could help, someone surely must have noticed one of the Waterer lorries entering or leaving the shed. They must have entered and left not far short of a hundred times; and it would indeed be strange if not one of all those movements had been observed.

He therefore left the carriers, and, returning with Carter to the Haydon Square depot, began a second enquiry over the same ground as the first. But this time he was even more thorough. Also he made it a point to see everyone in the place, instead of only those who had actually been concerned with the cases.

It proved a wearisome and thankless job. Those whom he had questioned before took up the line that they had already told all they knew, and they didn’t see why they should have to repeat the same thing all over again. The others said, ‘What cases?’ and then declared they had never heard of the affair at all.

But these attitudes were natural, and French expected to encounter them. He did not allow them to damp his ardour. In spite of veiled opposition and open sarcasm, he persevered. What did it matter if his job were unpleasant? It was all in the day’s work.

His only fear, indeed his expectation, was that all this unpleasant work would go for nothing. It was unlikely that he could have missed anything really important on his first visit.

He was therefore the more delighted when a chance question to one of the goods porters whom he had not previously interrogated brought him a wholly magnificent and disproportionate return.

Shown Sutton’s photograph, this man at once recognized the deceased as a detective who had questioned him about the cases. He had not himself been engaged with them, but he had been working at the next crane and he had seen them being taken out of the wagons and loaded up on the lorries.

It happened that at the dinner hour the porter had left the depot in advance of one of the lorries. He lived in Redliff Lane, and he had hurried there in order to have as much time at home as possible. On his way the lorry had passed him, but it had been held up in a traffic block and had not gone out of sight. He had been surprised to notice it turning into Redliff Lane. He had therefore watched it, and he had seen it enter Rice Bros’ shed.

‘Did you tell that to Mr Sutton?’ French asked, feeling that if the answer were yes, the mystery of Sutton’s fate was solved.

The answer was yes. Sutton had appeared very much interested, but so far as the porter saw he had not gone to the shed. He had had its gate pointed out to him, but had then walked off in the direction of Mark Lane Station.

Here at last was the solution of one problem which had worried French almost from the beginning of the case. At last he knew how Sutton had come to meet his end. He had found the shed before the conspirators had given it up, and he was therefore a danger to them. Knowledge is not always power. Sometimes it is weakness and death. It was so with Sutton. He knew too much; therefore he died.

Asked why he had not come forward with his information, the porter became much aggrieved. How, he demanded, could he have known it had any value? He wasn’t aware that the detective who had interrogated him was the Sutton of whose disappearance he had read. Nor that the cases were labelled for the docks, or that there was any reason why they should not have been taken into the shed. If French considered him a blooming thought reader, then, he pointed out, French had made a serious mistake.

The good fortune of discovering this porter had answered the first of French’s two fundamental questions. How had the substitution of the dummy for the genuine cases been made? There still remained the second: What had been done with the genuine cases? To this problem French decided now to turn his attention.