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Pearson's, July 1900, with "The Looting of the Specie-Room"
THERE was a thump at the door, which was ajar on the ventilating hook, and the voice of Clayton, who was the Birmingham's chief officer, called out: "You in there, Purser?"
"Come right in," said Mr. Horrocks, and, when Clayton had unhooked the door, he was invited to take the sofa and help himself to a drink. However, he said he hadn't come for whisky. He was looking tired and serious. For some time he grumbled on vaguely about the discomfort of the officers' quarters, the vileness of Atlantic weather, the slowness of promotion in the Town S.S. Co.'s boats, and the smallness of pay and the absence of pickings that a chief officer could lay his hands upon; and then, by an easy transition, he got to his own financial embarrassments.
Up till this the Purser had been putting in comments in his sharp, bright, jerky way, but when Clayton started hinting at the woes and needs of impecuniosity, his stout friend began to examine the roof of the cabin with interest, and refrained from further speech. Mr. Horrocks was a bachelor, and reputed wealthy. It was known for a fact that an uncle had bequeathed him a considerable sum, because three Liverpool papers had given extracts from the will and congratulated the legatee in print. (It was one of Mr. Horrocks' professional duties to keep on amiable terms with all journalists.) He was in receipt of good pay and a liberal allowance from the Company, and, moreover, he was known to be one of the artfullest pursers in all the Western Ocean passenger trade at making "bits for himself" by various well-recognised methods.
"I'm at my wit's end," said Clayton. "There was a bill of sale on the furniture when I left."
"Hard luck," said Horrocks.
"My wife, poor girl, was driving me pretty nearly wild by the way she kept asking me for money."
"Beastly it must be," said the Purser with feeling.
"If you could see your way to making me a bit of a loan," said Clayton, "I should never forget it."
"If you could see
your way to making me a bit of
a loan," said Clayton,
"I should never forget it."
"I'm sure you wouldn't. Nor would you ever forgive me. No, old chap, I like you too well to let you start hating me because you owe me money. Go and borrow from your enemies. Besides, come to that, I've empty pockets myself."
"Rats! You'd skin beautifully, and by gad I've three-quarters of a mind to do it. I tell you, Purser, I'm about desperate."
"Don't be absurd. Slow down the pace ashore to suit your income. And presently you'll get promotion, too."
"It doesn't look like it. I think the skippers of all our boats have got the secret of eternal life. There's not one of them resigned, or died, or been sacked these last twenty months, and there doesn't seem to be the smallest chance of a vacancy on ahead. It's simply cruel having to drag on all these years on a mate's screw. I haven't the heart to blame my wife for spending more than we have. She must keep up her position. With a captain's pay we could do it and save, but, as things are now, I feel like jumping overboard or robbing you of the ship's petty cash."
"Much better loot the specie-room," said Horrocks laughing. "We're on for a double advertisement this trip. We're trying to cut the time-record from New York to Liverpool, and we've got on board the biggest shipment of gold that's been made this year."
"How much?"
"More than $1,250,000. Now, there's your chance. Clayton. Only a Chubb lock between you and a fortune; and the key's on the bunch in my pocket."
The Chief Officer jumped up from the settee as though someone had pricked him, and stood facing the Purser with gripped hands and gritted teeth.
"What's wrong now?"
He pulled himself together a bit. "If you only realised how hard up I am, and how I'm begged and threatened for money by people ashore, you'd understand I'm about desperate, and not the man to be tempted with a big bait like that. A million and a quarter dollars! Good Lord! And we could do the thing comfortably, I know we could, on a steady $3,000 a year."
Clayton took himself off after that, and Mr. Horrocks was not sorry. He was tired, and wanted rest. He considered himself a prince amongst pursers, and to maintain that position did not spare himself work when at sea. He served both himself and his employers loyally, and if he did make more solid cash out of his opportunities than strict people might say was his exact due, he salved his conscience by remembering that he always rendered to the Town S.S. Company full service for the salary they paid him.
But though he lay down on his bedplace, sleep would not come to him, and in his mind he grumbled heavily over the load of responsibility that rested on his shoulders both afloat and elsewhere. "Outside people think that everything on these big boats rests on the skipper," he mused, "and if anything goes wrong they say: 'Poor chap, but what a heap of responsibility he has to carry.' No one looks at the Purser in that light. Passengers think the Purser is just the man to throw complaints at if they don't like the mashed potatoes, or to get yarns from if they're feeling dull. It never dawns upon them that a Purser's answerable for a sight more than any Captain that ever wore uniform, and when some day luck does get up and trip him, and the Company gives him the sack, passengers who know the boat say: 'Hallo, the old Purser gone?' and swallow some yarn about his having resigned to take up a baronetcy and £850,000 a year. And besides, I'm not like an ordinary Purser, with just a wife and family depending on him. There's always the Institution to be thought of."
It was not often that Mr. Horrocks let his mind go in this strain, but Clayton's look when he spoke to him about that specie had made him uncomfortable, and from that moment on, he began to have a foreboding that there would be trouble about it somehow.
However, he did not have much time for brooding on board, because a Purser is kept pretty well on the run at sea, but when they got rid of the passengers at Liverpool, and docked, and the bank messenger came on board, I am free to own he took a good, stiff, three-finger peg to get a brace on his nerves. In his own words he "could have prophesied trouble ahead like Job."
The bank messenger was an old fellow he had known for years, just as formal and precise and drily civil as they make them. He made Mr. Horrocks read through his authorisation note as if they met then for the first time, and then they went below with the messenger's two porters at their heels.
The specie-room was under the saloon, and badly ventilated, and what with the heat and his foreboding that something was wrong, the sweat stood on the Purser's forehead as he unlocked the door. There was no electric light inside, for some reason best known to the builders, and his fingers shook as he fumbled with a match to light the old-fashioned candle-lamp. The prim old bank messenger pulled a long upper lip as he watched him. He somewhat naturally put down Mr. Horrocks' trembling fingers to undue conviviality.
But when at last the match lit the wick, and the light flared up and showed the room, it was plain that the messenger promptly altered his mind, and put the Purser's shakiness down to sheer unadulterated guilt. He was hardly to be blamed. The forebodings had come off to a nicety. The place had been looted clearly enough, and the gold boxes lay brazenly open about the floor.
The place had been looted clearly enough.
"Looks as if somebody'd been hurried over this job, Mr. Horrocks," commented the old messenger nastily. "It's the general custom to fill up the boxes with an equal weight of lead and get the bank's receipt for them, so as to try and locate the robbery on shore."
"Then I wish to Heaven they'd done it here. We've cut the Western Ocean time-record this trip, and that's done the boat a lot of good; but if this affair comes up to light, it will do us a precious sight more harm. Look here; I shall go straight up to our office and report, and I suppose you will go and tell your bank people. Probably the police will be called in. But I don't suppose we either of us want the matter gabbled over in the papers."
"I know you don't," said the old fellow drily.
"Why should your bank? It won't improve their credit to let all the world know they've been robbed. And if there's no fuss made about it, the thief won't be scared, and there'll be all the more chance of catching him."
The messenger looked at the Purser coldly. "With the thief's feelings I have no concern, Mr. Horrocks. And as to what action my bank may take, I can give you no guarantee. Speaking without prejudice, I should say it will be a matter for our directors, and they will probably send your directors their decision in writing. And now, if you please, I will go back and make my report."
"Go ahead, you old fool," said Horrocks to himself, and moved towards the door. But in the dim light of the candle-lamp he did not see a box which lay in his way, and stumbled against it heavily. His figure was portly and not adapted to stumbling without doing himself personal damage. Probably he never felt pleasure over stubbing his toe before.
"Great Caesar!" he shouted, "they haven't looted the place clean after all. If there's one full box left, there may be others."
The messenger took the announcement stolidly. He was a most wooden messenger. All he said was: "Whatever you give over into my charge, I shall be pleased to give you an accurate receipt for."
Mr. Horrocks rapped out a few remarks that were intended to get through that messenger's skin somewhere, and then set to work to go through those boxes himself. He had neither patience nor trust to let anyone else do the job, and in the end, when it appeared that only about a third of the boxes had been looted, he could have sung for sheer joy. Perhaps there was not much to be pleased about; there was some $500,000 gone anyway; but for the moment he thought no more about it than if it had been a dollar, and snapped his fat fingers before old wooden-face's nose in sheer delight. Now where do we stand?" said he.
"Let my porters take the full boxes off the steamer and I'll give you a receipt for them." said the messenger, and so he did, carefully writing with his stylograph, after the word "boxes" in the printed form, the addition of "said to contain gold."
"You'll remember what I mentioned about the newspapers," the Purser said to him as he buttoned up his coat to go.
"And you, Mr. Horrocks, will equally remember my answer," he replied.
The afternoon was getting on for late, and by the time the Purser had walked out of the docks to the electric railway, and run up to the landing-stage station, and reached the office, the Firm's principals had gone away, and there was no getting hold of them for the night. There are strict orders that neither of the partners are to be rung up in the evening, but Mr. Horrocks thought the occasion sufficiently out of the ordinary to break the rule. So he went to the telephone, and presently got a snubbing for his pains.
There was nothing for it but to write out a report for them to see to-morrow morning, and in the meanwhile try if the police could do anything to find the thief.
The Purser was more at home there. Officers in the Western Ocean passenger trade are so constantly carrying shady customers back and across the Atlantic, that the police find it suits their purpose to be very civil to them, and keep as close in touch as circumstances will permit. They see the great liners off, and they see them in; they very often do the trip across; and ashore, both in Liverpool and New York, it was: "Any little service we can do for you, Mr. Horrocks, only too delighted if you'll name it."
So the Purser had only to find out who were on duty in the police station, and in two minutes he was sitting in a room with two smart detectives who had a personal acquaintanceship with half the rogues in creation.
They heard his story, and Trent, the senior of the two, jerked in questions as he went along. When Mr. Horrocks had finished, Trent asked for the Birmingham's passenger list.
"First thing I thought of," said the Purser, and laid it on the table.
"Now, if you had asked me, I should have said the crew list would have come sooner into your thoughts."
"I've got that, too. But you must remember that I've got no evidence against anyone."
"Meaning Clayton? Well, I must confess, he seems the likeliest bird so far. But let's look and see if there are any of our friends amongst the passengers. Ah, there's this Devine. His real name's Scott. New York wired us to say he was coming. But Devine-Scott's line is high-class forgery, and like a sensible man he sticks to it and does a sound conservative business. No, Scott-Devine's not stolen your gold, Mr. Horrocks. Wouldn't know what to do with it if it had been given him. Paper's the only thing he can handle.
"This fellow Schneider here in the second-class, real name Plunket, is another shady one. I saw him off from the landing-stage in '91, and he nodded to me as he went aboard the tender. I was there on the stage as usual to-day, and he nodded to me as he came ashore. Seemed to expect me, like. Arson and insurance frauds are his specialities, and he's not at all likely to try anything fresh. Your criminal of to-day knows his limitations, or thinks he knows them, very nicely, and never dares to out-step his bounds. For instance, either of these two men would take an impression in wax of your specie-room key if they saw it lying about, because such a thing might have its eventual uses, but neither of them could make a duplicate key, and neither of them, as I say, would have tackled the game of getting all that big weight of gold out of the ship and through the customs."
"You seem to take it for granted that I leave my keys perpetually lying about for anyone to get at. I'm not quite new to shipboard pilfering, Mr. Trent."
"My dear sir, I know you and your methods with an accuracy that would surprise you. It's my trade to know everybody and everything. For instance, I know exactly the construction of the Birmingham's specie-room under the saloon. Walls, floor, and roof are all made of chilled steel plates that would turn any drill in creation. The lock's a Chubb and unpickable, and, in fact, nothing short of dynamite would open that specie-room to a man who hadn't a key. The thing's been done with quiet and caution, so dynamite and those high explosives are out of the question, and if you've any theory, Mr. Horrocks, as to how the place could possibly have been looted without the help of a key, I'd like to hear it."
"If I'd a notion of how the robbery was worked, I should have told you at once. I'll not swear that my keys were never out of my pocket. As they were in use twenty times a day, that would be impossible. But as for their being habitually left lying about, that's all twaddle. I can tell you I look after that bunch very shrewdly."
"Quite so," said Trent, "but as a man with a lump of wax in the palm of his hand could take an accurate cast of the one he wanted in an instant, and file another to match it in a matter of a couple of hours, you must see the force of my point. Now you've done all you can for us, Mr. Horrocks, and my humble advice is, go home and have a good dinner, and forget your worries for the time being. We'll work through these passenger and crew lists more carefully for likely operators, and meanwhile we'll set all our machinery going to keep the gold from being carried further away. It's the weight of it that will handicap the thief more than anything else. You might call in, or ring us up at midnight, if you're still in Liverpool."
So Mr. Horrocks with a sigh left the office, and went out into the lamplit street.
He did not allow himself the luxury of a home. In his official capacity he was one of the best known of men, and cultivated notoriety as a professional asset. At sea, and ashore in New York, he was always the Purser, but ashore at the Liverpool end, where for a short period his duties closed between voyages, he became a personage wrapped in some mystery. He was occasionally reported as prowling in Liverpool slums. But for the most part he disappeared entirely from the ken of his associates. When he was asked in chaff where he bestowed himself at these intervals, he would reply that he had a quiet business as a burglar. When he was asked seriously, he would answer with equal seriousness that he was away enjoying himself.
He denied himself even a bedroom ashore, making his shipboard cabin his headquarters when he was in Liverpool, and taking nomadic meals in restaurants of the cheaper sort.
But just now he felt it was no time for the mortification of the palate. By nature he was something of a gourmand and a judge of vintages, though it was rarely that he allowed himself to launch into these ashore. This night, however, seemed sufficiently momentous for exceptional treatment, and instead of the cheap and nasty eating-house of his more ordinary wont, he betook himself to the Adelphi, and spread a napkin across his knees to face the table d'hôte.
Little enough satisfaction did he get out of it. A noisy party at the next table took all his mind. There, at the head, sat Clayton, evidently the giver of the feast. There were two other men the Purser did not know, and three women in extravagant evening dress. Mrs. Clayton decorated the end of the table with a presence that was florid and bejewelled. They were drinking their champagne by the magnum, and making a good deal of clatter.
The scale of the entertainment should have been well above the purse of a mere chief officer of an Atlantic passenger boat at the best of times, but when Mr. Horrocks thought of Clayton's confession at sea, and of the bill of sale on his furniture, he was filled with a discomfort he could not get over. Where had the money come from for this spread? Yes, where? Where?
Course after course came and left him untempted. The wine soured in his throat. The maddening facts danced before him: Clayton had been in desperate straits; the specie-room had been looted; Clayton was now possessed of ready cash.
But at last the noisy party got up to go, and Clayton came across with an affable greeting. "Hullo, Horrocks, letting yourself go and having a decent meal for once in a way? Tired of your usual slums?"
"Hullo, Horrocks,
letting yourself go and
having a decent meal for once
in a way?
"I thought you'd a bill of sale on your furniture?" said the Purser bluntly.
"So thought I. But it appears I haven't. In fact I gather that my rich uncle has died, and so we've been having a bit of a jamboree to wish him a pleasant journey. The Missis fixed it all up as a surprise. We're going to finish up at the theatre. We've got a box. Will you come?"
"Thanks, but I've got to finish up at the police-station. We're trying pretty hard to find who looted the specie-room, and by all appearances I expect we shall succeed."
"Hullo, has somebody been getting at your gold boxes? Well, I wish the criminal luck, anyway. A poor man could find a lot more amusement out of that money than any bank would—especially if the poor man was married. Well, good-night, Purser, unless I see you again. But come along and join us in the box if you change your mind. You needn't waste time hunting for the gold. You'll never see that any more. But I shouldn't leave the specie-room keys loose in your jacket pocket again after this, if I were you. It's so easy for anyone to borrow them for half a minute and take a squeeze of them in wax. Well, good-bye. I mustn't keep the ladies waiting any longer."
"Well," thought Mr. Horrocks, as he watched him go away, "I've no exact proof that you did the actual stealing yourself, but you've not got the knack of advertising your innocence. Under the circumstances, this spread to-night strikes one as distinctly bad taste."
Few men in Liverpool spent a more uncomfortable time than Mr. Horrocks did that night. As he viewed the affair, whether the thief or the gold ever turned up again did not seem to matter much to the case. Whatever happened, the Firm would say the initial fault was his for leaving the keys about, and though, as a point of fact, he had stuck to the bunch as closely as any Purser could, if directors once get a notion that one of their officers is "careless," they have their knife into him at once. And so that night as he walked about the streets to pass the time, he pictured himself dismissed from the company and blacklisted so that he should never get further employment anywhere else.
It was not for himself as Mr. Horrocks, the Purser, that he feared. As that official, his wants were small, and his private income covered them easily. But he was a man with an alias; a man who led a double existence. Throughout all his life he had carried an infinite tenderness for those wretched children of the slums, in which Liverpool is so prolific, and of late he had contrived to found an Institution in a village near Chester for their maintenance and relief. It pleased him to pose as a portly local philanthropist. Down there he was Mr. Rocks, of Rocks' Orphanage, a somewhat pompous personage, who was very different from the affable Purser in the Town S.S. Co.'s employ.
It was lest the power to continue being Mr. Rocks should be taken away from him, that he was so full of dread.
However, next morning, when he went to the office, the directors were not so severe as they might have been. Nothing about the trouble had got into the papers; but, on the contrary, there were flattering paragraphs about the Birmingham's cutting the record, her luxurious accommodation, and the celebrities she had carried during her race across, just as Mr. Horrocks arranged it. A wonderful thing, the power of the press, if it is used the right way. So the directors told Mr. Horrocks to turn the boat over to the shore Purser in the usual routine, and get on with his ordinary work.
The time the ship was in the shore gang's hands, working cargo and getting ready for the next trip, passed miserably enough. Mr. Horrocks was at the office every day, and he saw the police every day, but nothing turned up. He quite believed they would have dismissed him out of the Birmingham, or, at any rate, suspended him, if the Line had not just then happened to be short of pursers. But the Leeds man was down with typhoid, and they had to discharge the Purser from the Stockport as he had too short a way with passengers. And so it was, Mr. Horrocks went to sea again in his old berth. But he had a near shave of it. The police got something against Clayton the very day they sailed, and locked him up as being the thief, and the wretched affair bubbled over into the papers at once. They were full of it. "Robbery of £100,000" makes a good scare-heading for the contents bills, and because they had not been given the story at once when it was fresh, the newspaper men were naturally a bit vicious, and gave the boat and the Company an unpleasant time of it.
As Mr. Horrocks expressed it afterwards: "Our Mr. William Arthur, who came to see us off, was in a proper fury about it, and he as good as said that if he'd anyone else to take my place, he'd have sent me ashore then and there. 'They've made our boats fairly stink up and down England,' said the old fellow. 'They've as good as said, if we had can't transport bullion safely, we aren't fit to carry even a down-at-the-heel Polish emigrant. There's a nice advertisement for you! And I gave all those pressmen a spread that cost me $2,000 not three weeks ago, and this is the way they pay me back.'"
But he had another tongue-hammering before they sailed, that was worse even than their Mr. William Arthur's. Mrs. Clayton came off in the London train-tender, desolated, so she said, with grief and horror. As Mr. Horrocks put it: "You wouldn't have thought it to look at her. She'd a wonderful array of clothes on view, with the latest thing in hats on top, and jewellery of sorts wherever it would stick. I don't know whether she thought she was dressing the part, but to my mind she overdid it. However, when it came to talking, she was sound there, all along. She got me down to my room, and ranted a bit about her poor dear boy, and the disgrace that it would bring on him, and her, and their eminent lines of ancestors. But she had a note from Clayton which she'd managed somehow to smuggle out that was very much to the point."
"Dear Horrocks," the letter ran. "It seems you've let me in for this by repeating that silly talk we had that afternoon in your room. Now, I no more stole the money than the Emperor of China did, and you know that perfectly well. But at the same time, from what the police said to-day before the magistrate, they seem sure they've got evidence that can convict me. So what you've just got to do, is either to find the right man, or anyway clear me. If you don't, and if I get sent to jail, I give you my solemn word of honor I'll kill you when I get out." After which followed the statement that the writer was Mr. Horrocks' very truly, Godfrey Clayton.
"You have read what my poor darling says?" asked the lady. The Purser told her that he had, and that he would make a note of it.
"You have read what my poor darling says?" asked the lady.
"You'd better," said she, "and you'd better get him clear, or you'll have me and my two sisters pretty sharply at your heels. I can tell you. Mr. Horrocks, we aren't going to have our bread-winner taken away from us for nothing."
"Right," said Mr. Horrocks, "you may depend upon me to do my best, Mrs. Clayton, and now, if you don't want to come with us to New York, you'd better get on board the tender." So he got rid of her. "And now," thought he, "it's just my day. If anybody else wants to take it out of me, let them come. Yes, let them all come. I'm made to be trampled on."
Come they did, too. He never saw such a lot of hard-to-please passengers in all his life. It was no use saying "See your bedroom steward," or "Won't you see the head steward about that?" They knew Mr. Horrocks was in authority, and they came to the fountain head, and (as he put it) "they said straight what they wanted, and saw that they got the exact article, and no inferior substitute." He could have read the burial service smilingly over several of them.
One portly old lady wanted him to change her room. "My dear madam," said the worried man, "I'm afraid you're too late."
"This is pleasant sort of treatment! Surely you must remember me?"
"We had the honor of bringing you out from New York in this very boat some ten days ago."
"Well, and aren't I entitled to some particle of consideration, then? All I'm asking for is the room I came over in. It isn't occupied."
"You should have told the agent ashore when you bought your ticket. You see, madam, the stewards are very pressed just now. That the room is unoccupied is nothing to do with the case. It is not prepared. And, besides, you're in an outside room now, which is in every respect better than the one you came out in, which happens to be one of our worst."
"Look here, Mr. Purser, am I going to have that room or am I not?"
"Madam, I can only repeat my former decision."
"Very well, Mr. Purser, if you choose to be awkward, we'll see if your superiors can't teach you civility."
With that she took herself off, as Mr. Horrocks thought, to have a try at the skipper, and he wished her joy of her attempt. The Captain of the Birmingham was not the sort of man who stood much interference from passengers, and he knew well how to back up his officers. But it seems she was clever enough to go direct to Mr. William Arthur, and let him have such a taste of her tongue, that presently that great man came fuming down to the saloon in a fine state.
"Why the dickens am I pestered like this, Horrocks? Don't you know the most elementary duties of a purser, or have you completely taken leave of your senses? Kindly attend to the passengers' wants instead of gossiping with questionable females from the shore in your own room. This lady is, of course, to have the stateroom she wants. It can be got ready in five minutes."
Mr. Horrocks felt that it was little trifles like these which make one enjoy life.
However even passengers can grumble themselves dry, if one only gives them time, and the great steamer got off at last, and things soon shook into place once she began dropping down the river. Mr. Horrocks had a lot of handshaking and talk to do with passengers who crossed regularly, and he made the most of these. Getting the likings of constant passengers—business men, many of them, who cross as many as five or six times a year—are counted by pursers as a regular asset, as if they leave one ship and go to another, they can often take these passengers with them, and the companies know it. And just then Mr. Horrocks was feeling that the more weight of this kind he could carry, the better it would be for a certain institution in which he was so deeply interested. There had been a look in Mr. William Arthur's eye that he did not like.
"Funny old geezer, that one you had the fuss with over her room," said the chief steward to the Purser that night before dinner, as they were going over some accounts. "Vanrenen's her name. She's got hands like a washerwoman, and yet she seems well off. Drinks champagne every meal. She came back with us last time, if you'll remember, and she brought on board enough weight of baggage in New York to sink a lifeboat. I saw the fellows staggering below with it, and told them to carry some of it off lo the baggage room. She was down on me like a fury. 'Can't you see it is marked with your Company's label, "Wanted on Voyage?"' 'I was only thinking of your own convenience,' I told her. 'If we have a rough passage, that heavy stuff will probably take charge, and you may have a serious accident with it.' 'You mind your own business and leave me to mine,' says she. 'I'm not going to have that baggage out of my sight, and I've taken the room to myself so that I can have plenty of space for it.'"
"What was in her baggage?"
"Lead ballast I should think by the weight of it, but I don't know for certain, and as a point of fact I asked Taylor, her bedroom steward, and he didn't know either. However, she got rid of it in England, whatever it was, and she's come back flying light."
"Well," Mr. Horrocks said, "passengers were sent into this world to annoy those who are appointed to shepherd them. And now let's get to business."
There is a saying in the Navy that if your ship is in action, and a shot strikes her, and you want to be safe, your best plan is to stick your head in that first shot-hole, as it is a sure thing that a ship never gets hit again in the same place. On this principle the Purser tried to prove to himself that because the Birmingham had been looted during her last trip, she was safe this.
Last trip the specie-room was full of big, heavy boxes which were awkward to handle, and yet thieves had managed to take their toll. This time the only thing it contained was a small sealed parcel, smaller than an ordinary cigar-box. But that small parcel held a consignment of diamonds which were being taken across to a New York gem merchant, and it had an intrinsic value of something very near to that of the previous cargo of gold.
Now when they left Liverpool, Mr. Horrocks never gave these diamonds a thought; but as they cleared from Queenstown he was beginning to get anxious about them; and by the time they had got half-way across, he had worked himself to such a pitch of nervousness that he could neither eat, sleep, nor even drink as a Purser ought if he wants to be popular. A new lock had been fitted to the door of the specie-room, and he kept the key in his pocket all day long, usually with his hand on it to make sure it was there; and at night he put it into the breast pocket of his pyjamas, and fastened it with a safety-pin.
Then suddenly like a shot came to him a horrible thought suggested by some detective novel he had once read. Supposing, in spite of all his care, he was hypnotised or chloroformed, or by some other means rendered temporarily unconscious, and a wax impression squeezed from this new key just as before? Of course the idea was absurd, and at any other time he would have scouted it utterly. But just now his nerves were in rags, and the notion rode him like an incubus.
He bore it for a day. He bore it for a second day till the smoke room rallied him on his absentmindedness and haggard looks, and said his waistcoat was beginning to hang in loose folds. And then he gave in. He sent for the chief steward to come with him as witness, and they went down to the specie-room, and he unlocked the door with the new key, and the chief steward lit the candle-lamp.
"They should be on the shelf at the far side," said the Purser.
"Well, they're not," said the chief steward.
"My God! They've been stolen too. This means ruin for me."
"Wait a bit, Mr. Horrocks, and let's look about the floor. There was a big sea running yesterday, and she's so light she rolled a good deal, and may have shot them off."
So they set to work and hunted. But the place was as bare as Mother Hubbard's bone cupboard, and the Purser felt like going up on deck and jumping over the side.
"It's no use being too down about it," said the chief steward. "You've done your best, and I guess that is all you were paid for. But I'd like to know if there's no other way out of this coffin. That duplicate key tale is a bit too simple for my taste."
He went outside, and presently came back with a big incandescent lamp and a coil of wire which he had coupled on to the terminals of one of the electrics in the gangway.
"Now." he said, "we can see what we are doing."
The specie-room was an oblong box of steel, some ten feet by eight, fitted with wooden shelves. There was a steel deck overhead and a steel deck underfoot, and there was no gap or hole anywhere. There was not even a ventilator, and the air inside was close and hot. The plates that made the walls were flush-jointed everywhere except in one place, and there there was a plate about two feet by three, lap-jointed on to the rest. It was at the side opposite to the door, and underneath a shelf which kept it well in shadow, and Mr. Horrocks remembered noticing it when he came in with that dry old bank messenger, and got his first shock.
But even now, when he was hunting the place over inch by inch, panting and blowing as he crawled about the floor in his search, it did not give him much concern at first. The ways of shipbuilders and safe-makers are too mysterious for any layman to follow. But when for the third time he crawled round to that part of the specie-room on his new inspection, holding the incandescent lamp, and dragging the loose wire behind him, he noticed that the paint at the edge of that plate did not seem to have quite run up to the paint on the walls where they joined. There was barely enough gap to swear to, only the faintest crack, as it were. But it gave him the idea that this overlapping plate had been added after all the rest of the room was built and painted. Still there were rivet-heads in it all complete, and at any other time these would have satisfied him.
Just now, however, he was brimful of suspicion, or, if you like, of desperation; it was all creation to a tin-tack that he got professionally ruined unless he caught this second thief; and a tight place like that sharpens a man's wits.
"What's the other side of this plate?" he asked the chief steward.
"One of those mid-ship $50 rooms."
"Yes—but whose?"
"That fat Mrs. Vanrenen's, who came back with us last trip."
"Is she in her room now?"
"I'll find her bedroom steward."
"No, don't. If the game I think of is on, he'll have a finger in it. I wonder if there's a stewardess in it too?"
"No, I'm sure there. She isn't, anyway. Mrs. V. had quarrelled with the stewardess last back trip before we dropped the pilot, and had forbidden her the room. She came blustering to me about it. Either the bedroom steward, Taylor, should look after her entirely, or she'd have no attendance at all. So as they all three seemed agreed over the matter, I let it stand at that. You know what passengers are. Well, I'll slip round myself and see if she is in."
She came blustering to me.
She was not, so the Purser went round too, and examined the room with care. The electric light was on, and he could see it thoroughly. It was eminently unsuspicious. But then, of course, it would be—especially if anything was wrong. However, he had got an idea in his head that was too good to be thrown away in a moment. So he fetched a long tape measure, and reckoned up accurately round the blocks of cabins till he found to an inch where that lap-jointed plate would back on Mrs. Vanrenen's room.
He decided it was at the other side of the panelling which formed the side of her bed. Was there another paint crack here? No such thing. He rapped it with his knuckles; nothing wrong still. It was as ordinary a bedside panelling as there was in the ship.
"Get a hammer and chisel from the carpenter, and we'll see what there is at the other side," he said doggedly.
"Ay, ay, sir," said the chief steward, and presently brought the tools.
It was kill or cure now, and the Purser did not mince matters. The chisel ripped out great splinters of the wood, and, when it got thin enough, he beat in the rest with the hammer.
"My Great Washington! look here!" said the Purser. "Look what there is behind this woodwork!"
"Phew! It's a back door into the specie-room right enough, but how the mischief did they make it? People say these steel plates are too hard to be touched by a drill. Besides, that doesn't look like drill work."
"There's been no drill at this. This hole in the plate has been just melted out, and I'm mechanic enough to know how it's done, and that's by an oxy-hydrogen flame."
"Beyond me."
"It's what they use in magic-lanterns. But how they got their gas I don't know."
The chief steward snapped his fingers. "Then I do. It's all as clear as daylight. They have magic-lantern gas now in steel cylinders, and that's what'll have made the excellent Mrs. V.'s cabin baggage so infernally heavy."
"Yes, by Jove, and I suppose she could have taken a good lump of gold ashore inside the empty cylinders, though not all. But that can wait for the present. What I want just now is that parcel of diamonds. Has she got them on her? Are they hidden in this room? Or has somebody else got them?"
"Somebody else is likeliest. Takes away evidence in case anything goes wrong."
"I think so, too. Now, who's the assistant? Mrs. Vanrenen may have melted out the manhole in the side of the specie-room, and even have slipped this false plate inside, with its sham rivets and clever paint, and clamped it on this side here with these thumb-screws. Look, aren't they beautifully made? But that's all shore work. That was brought on board in New York, finished and ready.
"What I want to know is, who fitted fresh panelling and repainted it so perfectly? That's been done by a clever carpenter, and he's on this ship."
"Taylor, the bedroom steward of this block of cabins, is the handiest man on my staff."
"Then we'll have Mr. Taylor in irons within the next five minutes," said Horrocks; and that is exactly what they did. Taylor seemed surprised, and he looked very ugly, but the Purser who, in spite of his bulk, was powerful and active, slipped the bracelets on his wrists before he could hit, and the man contented himself with saving nothing. Mr. Horrocks took the liberty of going down to the glory hole and searching his effects. A more innocent and blameless kit never existed. But borrowing a hint from his past cleverness, the Purser got his hammer and chisel again, and set to work smashing up the woodwork of the man's bunk, and there, in a series of little slots in the wood, magnificently hidden, was a collection of diamonds that made one's mouth water. The Purser counted them: the number tallied with the invoice. And then he slipped them into his pocket in an ecstasy.
Of course Mr. Horrocks could not arrest a passenger on his own responsibility, but the Captain soon gave him power when he had heard the story, and then they invited Mrs. Vanrenen into an empty room and told her she would have to stay there under lock and key till the police took her over in New York. She was game to the end.
But if Mrs. Vanrenen intended to fight to a finish, Taylor, the bedroom steward, knew when he was beaten. He owned up to the whole tale from start to end. Mrs. Vanrenen came on board at New York with all her apparatus made and ready. It was she who had fused the hole with the oxy-hydrogen flame jet. and fitted the plate, and in fact done all the metal work. Taylor, who was an ex-cabinet maker, concealed the traces of her handiwork after it was finished.
The gold had gone ashore through the Customs under cover of compressed gas cylinders, as Mr. Horrocks had guessed. But not in the original filled cylinders which came on board openly with Mrs. Vanrenen's baggage. They were too heavy, and needlessly strong. So some other lighter cylinders, in fact mere shells of iron, were smuggled on board by Taylor, also in New York, and the gold was stowed in these, and the heavier cylinders were quietly slipped overboard. And out of a hundred guesses, how was the gold prevented from jingling? The clever Mr. Taylor stole jellies from the pantry, and they melted these and poured them in to fill up the crevices between the coins and the cylinders.
Now if Mr. Horrocks had been content with getting hold of this tale, and writing a simple report to the company, all would have been well. But as part had been in the papers already, he thought there would be no harm in writing out an "Interview with Mr. Horrocks, by our representative," and it was that which tripped him. Indeed, Mr. Wilfred told him that if Mr. William Arthur had got his own way entirely at the board meeting, he would have been dismissed from the Company's service. But as it was he was sent down the list to the Ambleside, which was the smallest ship the Line has on the New York run.
Many of his acquaintances thought he was a fool to take it. But Mr. Horrocks was a shrewd man and knew what he was doing.
Whatever happened, Rocks' Orphanage must not have its supplies cut off. With Mr. Horrocks out of employment afloat, Mr. Rocks could not pursue his philanthropic courses in the Cheshire village, and would be a man entirely miserable.
Of course, on the Ambleside his salary would be reduced. "But," as he put it to me in confidence, "a Purser can find pickings."
But Clayton was the man who scored principally out of the affair. Clayton had been hustled by the Company into jail, and they were forced to make the insult of that up to him somehow. It seems they had known all along that he was heavily dipped financially, and when he suddenly splashed out into extravagant dinners at the Adelphi, and proceeded in other ways to have a good feverish time of it, they naturally made a theory that he was doing it on plundered capital. Once, of course, one has an idea like that in one's head, it is easy enough to make proofs, and so the police soon found suspicious things against the poor fellow, and arrested him before, as they said, he could have a chance of bolting.
His own explanation of affluence was that his wife had raised ready money from a Jew, being so certain that he soon must be promoted and get Captain's pay. Of course such a tale was far too thin to be believed, and into jail he went. But as it happened to be exactly true, the Town S.S. Co. felt that they owed him something by way of reparation, and their apology took a form that suited Clayton down to the ground. They brought their senior captain ashore as superintendent, made a move up all through the fleet, and appointed Clayton to the command of the Ambleside.
Mr. Horrocks was the first to congratulate him, and to compliment him delicately on having the best Purser in the Western Ocean passenger trade to make the ship popular for him. But it would have eased Mr. Horrocks' mind much if he could have known that Captain Clayton would take a lenient view on the subject of Pursers' perquisites. He had a very keen anxiety for the future welfare of Rocks' Orphanage.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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