THE CLUE OF MONDAY’S SETTLING

THE CLUE OF MONDAY’S SETTLING

By Edgar Wallace

It did not seem possible to May Antrim that such things could happen in an ordered world. She paced the terrace of the big house overlooking the most beautiful vale in Somerset, her hands clasped behind her, her pretty head bent, a frown of perplexity upon her pretty face.

Everything must go… Sommercourt… the home farms… the house in Curzon Street… her horses… she checked a sob and was angry with herself that it needed the check.

And why?

Because John Antrim had signed a paper—she thought such things only happened in romances. Her father’s stability she had never questioned. She knew, as all the county knew, that he was a wealthy man beyond fear of disaster. And out of the blue had come this shattering bolt. It was incredible. Then she caught a glimpse of him. He was sitting in his favorite seat at the far end of the terrace, and at the sight of that dejected figure, she quickened her pace.

He looked up with a faint smile as she came up to him, dropping her hand on his shoulder.

“Well, May? Thinking things out, too!”

“I’m trying to,” she said, “but I find it difficult to make a start. You see, dear, I don’t understand business…”

“Sit down.”

He made a place for her by his side.

“I’m going to tell you a story. Sounds formidable, eh? It begins on the 18th of March when the steamship Phoenician Prince left New York for Southampton. She is a vessel of 18,000 tons, one of two, the property of the Balte Brothers, Septimus Balte and Francis Balte being the partners who control the stock.”

“Our Francis?” asked the girl in surprise.

“Our Francis,” repeated John Antrim grimly.

He went on:

“On board were five million in British, French, and Italian notes, which had been redeemed from the American money market, and were being consigned to the Anglo-American Bank of London. These were packed in six tin cases, soldered air and water tight, and enclosed in stout wooden boxes. They were deposited in the strong-room, which is on the port side of G Deck. Its door opens into a cabin which is occupied in extraordinary circumstances by a quartermaster.

“On this occasion one of the owners was on board, Mr. Francis Balte, and because of the importance of the consignment he had the quartermaster ‘s cabin fitted up for his own use. During the day, and when Mr. Balte was absent from the cabin, it was occupied by his personal steward, Deverly.

“Francis kept the key of the strong-room in his possession. It never left him day or night. On the night of the 26th, the purser went to Francis with certain documents relating to the money. Francis opened the doors of the strongroom and the purser checked the packages; the door was closed and locked. There was no bathroom attached to the cabin, and Balte used an ordinary sponge bath which was brought in by the steward, together with a dozen small towels. These were used to lay on the floor, with the idea of saving the carpet, which had been newly laid—in fact, especially for Mr. Balte’s comfort. The steward went in later, took away the bath and six towels, the other six being unused.”

May frowned again. What had the towels to do with the narrative?

He must have interpreted her thoughts.

“I have interviewed the steward,” he said, “and the loss of the towels seemed to him to be the queerest part of the whole proceedings. The next morning, as the ship approached the Needles, the purser came down, accompanied by half a dozen seamen. Balte was asleep, but he got up and handed the key of the strong- room to the purser, who opened the doors, to find—nothing.”

He groaned.

“I should never have underwritten such a vast amount.”

“You underwrite!” she gasped. “Is that why… you are responsible for the money?”

He nodded.

“It was stark madness,” he said bitterly. “Ordinarily I should only have been saddled with a small proportion of the loss. But in a moment of insanity I accepted the whole risk. That is the story.

“The ship was searched from end to end—every inch of it. The steward was on duty in the alleyway outside—he sat with his back to the door, dozing he admits. It was impossible for anybody to get through the porthole, supposing, as was the first theory of the police, that a man let himself down over the side and scrambled through the port. The steward was full of the mystery of the towels—six towels and six boxes of notes! But in one respect he was very informative. He distinctly heard in the middle of the night a sound like that of a watch or clock being wound up. ‘Creak, creak, creak’—he gave me a wonderful imitation.”

“What on earth was it?”

“He heard it six times faintly but distinctly. He says so now, but he also says that he thought it might have been the creaking of gear—one hears strange noises on board ship. And we come again to the fact that six towels were missing. To my mind that is significant. The boxes were very heavy, by the way, many of the notes were of small denomination and had been subjected to hydraulic pressure in the packing to get them into as small a compass as possible. Roughly each box weighed 140 pounds with its iron clamps and bands.”

May was interested.

“I never realized that paper money had weight,” she said. “How many five pound notes could an ordinary man carry?”

“A strong man could carry £100,000 worth,” replied Antrim,” but he would not care to carry that amount very far. So there it is, my dear. Somewhere in the world is a clever thief in the possession of nearly a third of a ton of negotiable paper. And I am responsible.”

They sat in silence until

“Daddy… why don’t you see Bennett Audain?”

“Bennett?” he was startled, and then a smile played at the corner of his lips. “Bennett came to me just before I left town. He had heard from somebody that I was involved and, like the good fellow that he is, offered to help with… with money. I had an idea that I would see Francis.”

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. Francis Balte she knew and did not dislike. She had met him at the house in town—a vague, cheery man, full of commonplace phrases.

“You mean that I should let Bennett take the case in hand!” asked John Antrim, with a little grimace. “I mistrust amateur detectives, and although I admit your cousin is clever—he is also the veriest amateur. Curiously enough the loss of the towels interested him more than the loss of the money.”

Her mind was made up.

“You are to telephone Bennett that we are dining with him tonight,” she said determinedly.

“My dear—”

“Daddy, you must do it—I feel that Bennett is the one man who can help.”

* * * * *

The real seven ages of man’s conscious existence may be divided into the periods when he wishes to drive a locomotive, when he wants to be a detective, an Adonis, a soldier (or sailor), a millionaire, a prime minister, and a boy.

Bennett Audain never got beyond the second period, but he realized some of the others, for he had been a soldier, he was undoubtedly good-looking, and as unquestionably rich.

The right kind of obsession is an invaluable asset for a young man of great possessions, and to current crime he devoted the passionate interest of the enthusiast. He was both student and worker; he had as great a knowledge of the science which is loosely described as “criminology” as men who had gained fame in its exposition; he certainly understood the psychology of the criminal mind better than any police officer that ever came from Scotland Yard—an institution which has produced a thousand capable men, but never a genius. Indefatigable, patient, scientific in the sense that science is the fanaticism for veracity,” which is the scientist’s basic quality.

“It is queer that a fellow like you should take up psycho-analysis. I should have thought it was just a little off your beat.” John Antrim looked critically through his glass of port.

“There are queerer things,” said Bennett, with an amused glance at the girl. “It is queer, for example, that having taken a hundred-mile journey to consult me about the strong-room robbery, you haven’t yet mentioned it.”

The girl smiled, but the frown on her father’s face deepened.

“Don’t sneer at psycho-analysis, Daddy,” she warned him. “Bennett will give us a demonstration—won’t you, Bennett?”

They were dining together at Bennett Audain’s house in Park Lane. The big room was dark save for the shaded lamps on the table and the soft glow that flushed the Persian rug before a dying fire.

Bennett had a nervous smile, charming in its diffidence.

“That is a popular label for a queer new system of mind-probing,” he said. “I am not accepting or rejecting the Freudian philosophy, and I’m not enough of a doctor to understand his theory of neuroses. I merely say that those responsible for the detection and prevention of crime might, with profit, employ the theory of idea-association.”

A gust of wind blew a pattering of rain against the curtained window.

“Humph!” said John Antrim, and looked at his watch.

Bennett laughed softly.

“I knew you would look at your watch when you heard the rain,” he said, and the other stared. “Why?”

“Association of ideas,” said the other calmly. “You told me when you came that you thought of leaving May in London and driving back alone to Sommercourt. Uncle John,” he leant across, coming from the dusk of shadow into the yellow light, “if I could get the right man to question I would save you exactly a million!”

Antrim frowned horribly.

“I doubt it,” he said, in his gruffest tone. “I have been caught. But I was a fool to underwrite the whole consignment—a mad fool. You can do nothing; the best and cleverest police officers are working on the case. “What could you do—by psycho-analysis?”

He leant back with a sigh.

“Who is the right man?” asked May eagerly.

Bennett, his eyes fixed on vacancy, did not answer at once.

“Where is Francis?”

The girl started, as well she might, for the question was shot at him with unexpected violence.

“I’m sorry—-only I had an idea”—Bennett Audain was apologetic to a point of panic. “I—I get a little explosive at times, which is terribly unscientific “

“But is human,” smiled the other.

John Antrim got up.

“I wonder if he is at the Elysium Club?”

“There is a ‘phone over there.” Bennett pointed to the shadows. “It is rather late, but perhaps he’ll come round.”

Antrim hesitated. Before he could make up his mind what to do, May was ‘phoning.

Apparently Balte was at the club.

“He’s on his way,” she smiled; “poor soul, he was most embarrassed to hear my voice.”

May returned to the table.

“Heavens, what a night! You can’t return to Sommercourt, Daddy.”

The rain was swishing savagely at the windows, the ceaseless broom-like sweep of it across the panes, the faint tick of the enamel clock on the high mantelpiece, and the wheezy breathing of Bennett’s old terrier, stretched before the fire, were the only sounds in the room until Balte came with a clatter.

He was a stout man of thirty-five, fair and ruddy of face, and he brought into the shadowy room something of his own inexhaustible vitality.

“Glad to come, Miss Antrim.” He stopped dead at the sight of John Antrim. “Pretty wild night, eh—I’m blessed if it has stopped blowing since I arrived. Old Sep writes that he was in Torquay yesterday, and the sea was absolutely breaking over the front—tramcars drenched and wrecked. Funny, being wrecked in a tramcar.”

He put his red hands to the blaze and rattled on.

“Dreadful thing, eh, Miss Antrim! “What’s the use of the police—eh? What’s the use of ‘em? Want men like Audain, full of up-to-date ideas. Wish it had been anybody but you, Antrim.” He shook his head mournfully.

“Ever heard of Freud?” asked Bennett, his chin on his clasped hands, his absent gaze on the fire.

“Freud—no. German, isn’t he? Nothing to do with the Germans, old boy, after that beastly war. They sunk three of our ships, by gad! Who is he, anyway?”

“A professor,” said Bennett lazily, “and an authority on the mind. Why don’t you sit down, Balte?”

“Prefer standing, old boy. Stand and grow better—eh, Miss Antrim? What about this Hun?”

“He interprets dreams “

“Ought to be in the Police, that’s where he ought to be—interpreting some of those pipe-dreams they have,” he chuckled.

“I will tell you what I am getting at,” said Bennett and explained.

May held her breath, sensing the deadliness of the play.

Mr. Balte was amused.

“You say one word and I’ll tell you a word it suggests?” he said. “That’s a kid’s game—used to play it when I was so high. You say ‘sugar,’ I say ‘sweet’; next fellow says ‘orange,’ and so forth.”

“You see, Mr. Balte,” interrupted May, “Bennett thinks he can get at your sub- conscious mind. He believes that he can even tell what happened when you were asleep.”

Mr. Balte pulled at his nose and looked down. He was thinking. He wondered if Bennett Audain could get at his mind about May Antrim, and could put into words all that he had dreamed yet had not dared to say, all that he had schemed for. The thought caught his breath. He loved her so, this girl whose beautiful face had never left his vision; he had dared so much for her and she never knew. To her he was one of the thousands who served as a background of life.

“Try, old boy,” he said huskily; “I don’t believe in it, but if you can get hold of any information that will help Mr. Antrim—you don’t know how I feel about that—go ahead.”

“Sit down.”

Mr. Balte obeyed. His china-blue eyes were fixed on his interrogator.

“Ground,” said Bennett unexpectedly.

“Eh—er—er—-earth,” responded the other.

“Dig.”

“Garden.”

“Hole.”

“Er—I nearly said ‘devil,’ “ chuckled Mr. Balte. “This is funny—like a game”

But it was an earnest game with Bennett Audain. Presently:

“Shares,” he said.

“Slump,” it came promptly, one word suggested by the other. Balte added: “Everything is slumping just now, you know…”

They went on quickly. Bennett recited the days of the week.

“Monday?”

A grimace—the faintest—from Balte.

“Er-unpleasant—starting the week, y’know.”

Bennett shot out the days.

“Friday!”

“Calendar—thinking of a calendar, y’know.”

“Key?”

“In door.”

He got up.

“A silly game, Audain.” He shook his head reproachfully. “Admit it. I can’t play games—too worried. Poor old Sep is half off his head, too.”

“Where is Septimus?” asked Bennett.

“At Slapton—pike-fishing. Hmm, how people can sit in a punt all day… fishing. Well, what are you going to do, Audain? Can you help us? The police—pshaw!”

“Will you tell me this?” asked Bennett. “Are you a heavy sleeper?”

The stout man shook his head.

“Do you sleep late in the mornings?”

“No; up at six, bright and jolly.” He paused. “Now I come to think of it, I was very sleepy that morning. Drugs, eh… do you think I was drugged—chloroform and that sort of thing?”

“No,” said Bennett, and let him go.

“Well?” asked the girl when the door had closed upon the visitor.

“Stay in town for a day or two,” said Bennett Audain.

At seven o’clock the next morning he called a justly annoyed police inspector from his bed. Fortunately Bennett knew him very well.

“Yes, Mr. Audain; his trunks were searched. Mr. Balte insisted.”

“How many trunks had he in the cabin?”

The inspector, cursing such matutinal inquisitiveness, answered:

“Four.”

“Four? Big ones?” ”Yes, sir; pretty big and half empty.”

“Did you smell anything peculiar about them?”

The inspector wagged his head impatiently. His legs were getting cold and the bed he had left was entrancingly warm.

“No, sir, I did not smell them.”

“Good,” said Bennett’s cheerful voice.

“The worst of these amateur detectives is that they jump all ways at once,” said the inspector as he shuddered back to bed.

“M’m,” said his wife, on the border-line of wakefulness.

Bennett, at his end of the wire, looked out of the window into the gray moist morning on to the stark, uneasy branches of park trees.

The hour was 7.5. Essential people had not yet turned in their beds; even the serving-maids and men-servants had scarcely blinked at the toilsome day. Bennett Audain went back to the remains of his breakfast and wished, when he had had Francis Balte under examination, he had said, “Paint.” Mr. Balte would surely have responded “See.”

Mr. Balte had a large house at Wimbledon. He was a bachelor, as was his brother. He was a simple man, as also was his brother. They had inherited considerable property at a time—the last year of the war—when property had a fictitious value. The cream of their father’s estate had been swallowed by the Treasury in the shape of death duties. Their skimmed milk was very thin and blue in the days of the great slump. Stockholders in Balte Brothers Incorporated Shippers—and they were many—watched the shrinking of profits indignantly. The last general meeting of the Company had been a noisy one. There was one fellow in particular, a bald man with spectacles, Francis had noted miserably from his place on the platform—a violent, intemperate man, who had talked of a change of directors, and he had received more “hear-hears” than had Francis when he had expressed the pious hope that trade would improve and shipping return to its old prosperity.

It was Sunday morning, and Francis sat in his library. It was a room containing many shelves of books which he had never read, but the bindings of which were in the best taste. His elbows were on the table, his fingers in his untidy hair, and he was reading. Not the Sunday newspapers, his usual Sunday’s occupation.

These were stacked, unopened, on the little table by the easy-chair. It was a book, commonly and commercially bound, and the more he read the more bewildered he grew. A little shocked also, for this volume was embarrassingly intimate.

Thus his brother found him. Septimus, lank and bent and short-sighted, glared through his powerful glasses at the studious figure and sniffed.

“Got it?” he asked.

Francis closed the book with a bang.

“It is all medical stuff,” he said. “Audain is a bit cranky. Going?”

The question was unnecessary. Septimus was muffled to the chin, his fur gloves were under his arm, and his big racing car was visible from the library window.

“If there is anything in this Audain stuff, let me know. I’ve read something about psychoanalysis—I thought it was for shell-shocked people. So long.”

“When will you be back?”

“Tuesday night. I’ve written the letter.”

“Oh.”

Francis stirred the fire thoughtfully.

“Create a bit of a stir your resigning from the Board,” he said; “wish…”

“Yes?”

“No, I don’t. I was going to say that I wished it was me. Better you. Everybody knows you’re in bad health…. Warm enough?”

“Ay,” said his brother, and went out pulling on his gloves.

Francis did not go to the window to see him off. He bent over the fire uncomfortably, jabbing it unreasonably.

It occurred to him after a long time that his brother had not gone. He put down the poker and shuffled across to the window—he was wearing slippers. There were two cars in the road, bonnet to bonnet, and a man was standing by the seated Septimus. They were talking.

“Audain,” said Francis, and meditated, biting his lip. Presently Septimus went off and Bennett Audain came briskly up the path. Francis admitted him.

“Energetic fellow!” he cried. His voice was an octave higher than it had been when he spoke to his brother, his manner more virile and masterful. He was good cheer and complacency personified. “Come in, come in. You saw old Sep? Poor old chap!”

“He tells me that he is resigning from the shipping business.” Bennett was warming his hands.

“Yes; he’s going to the south of France, old Sep. Going to buy property. Queer bird, Sep. But he was always a land man—farms, houses… anything to do with land… very shrewd.”

Bennett glanced at the table, and the other anticipated.

“Interpretation of Dreams—eh?” he chuckled. “You’ve got me going on Freud.

Don’t understand it. Of course I understand what he says about dreaming and all that… but that game of yours… eh?”

Bennett changed the subject, Francis wondering.

“Yes, it is not a bad house,” he agreed amiably. “A bit bourgeoise, but we’re that kind. Quaintly constructed—would you like to see over it?”

A home and its attractions can be a man’s weakness. In a woman, its appointments are the dominating values , architecture means no more than convenience. And Bradderly Manor was a source of satisfaction to Francis. They reached the wind- swept grounds in time, because there was a workshop in which old Sep labored. It was to him what laboratory, studio, music-room, model dairy, and incubatory are to other men. It was a workshop, its walls lined with tool cabinets. There was a bench, an electric lathe, vices, drills… an oak panel with its unfinished cupids and foliage testified to the artistry and workmanship of Septimus Balte.

“Always was a wonderful workman, old Sep,” said Francis in admiration. “Do you know, he was the inventor of a new depth charge that would have made his name if the war hadn’t finished “

“That’s it, is it?”

Francis looked round.

Bennett had taken from a shelf a large paint can. It had not been opened. The manufacturer’s red label pasted on the top of the sunken lid was unbroken.

“That’s what?”

Bennett held the can for a second and replaced it.

“Luminous paint,” he said. “Lefvre’s—he’s the best maker, isn’t he?”

Francis Balte said nothing. All the way back to the house he said nothing. Bennett followed him into the library and watched him as he filled a pipe from a jar which he took from the mantelpiece.

“Well?” he said miserably. Bennett saw tears in his eyes.

“The two things I am not sure about are,” Bennett ticked them off on his fingers: “One, was John Steele the cause? Two, why the towels?”

The stout man puffed furiously and all the time his eyes went blink, blink, blink.

“Friday—Calendar; that’s how you knew. You wouldn’t think I’d fall so easily. But you must have known all about it or why should you know I meant the Racing Calendar?”

“I guessed. I did not know that you and your brother had a stud of horses and raced them in the name of John Steele. That was easy to discover. When I decided that it was the Racing Calendar you meant, the official journal of the Jockey Club, I went to the publishers and got the register of assumed names.”

The pipe puffed agitatedly. No… we lost money on racing, but that wasn’t it; bad business… over-valuation of assets. I wonder what she will think about me…”

He sank down in a chair, the pipe dropped from his mouth, and he wept into his big red hands.

“I have no interest in punishment,” said Bennett Audain, and May Antrim, watching the pain in his delicate face, nodded. She was beginning to understand Bennett Audain.

“In solutions of curious human puzzles, yes,” said Bennett, as he sipped his tea and noted joyously the first splashes of green that had come to the park trees in one night, “but not in punishment. If you like to put it that way, I am unmoral. Your father received his money?”

“Of course he did, Bennett—the six boxes arrived at his office yesterday morning.”

Bennett laughed very softly. “It is good to be alive when the buds are breaking, May. I feel a very happy man. Suppose you wanted a clockwork contrivance made, where would you go to get the work done? Look up the Classified Directory. No mention of clockwork- makers or makers of mechanical toys. Yet there are ten people in London who do nothing else. There is a man named Collett in Highbury who made a sort of time- bomb during the war. I went to him after I had learnt that Septimus Balte was working on war inventions. I found that by patient inquiry. It is queer how soon people have forgotten all things pertaining to the war.”

“But why did you inquire about clockwork at all?” asked the girl.

“Creak!” mocked Bennett. “Did your father tell you how the steward had heard a noise, six noises, as of a watch being wound? Well, I found Mr. Collett a secretive, furtive man, but reasonable. He had made a simple water-tight machine. It operated a large spool which was held in position by a catch and released three hours after it had been set. Is that clear?”

May nodded.

“Why water-tight?” asked Bennett. “The spool itself was outside, and presumably was designed to work in the water. Attached to the steel box containing the mechanism were two iron bolts, one at the top above the spool, one at the bottom. Now what was attached to the spool? Nothing but ten fathoms of stout light, cord, a double length of it. Now do you see?”

“No,” admitted the puzzled girl.

“Then I will explain further. At the end of the cord was a small cork buoy, probably covered with canvas and certainly treated with luminous paint. The towels—” he laughed,

“I ought to have thought of the use to which they would be put, but I had not seen the cabin. And the strange thing is that when I put myself in the place of Francis, it never occurred to me that if boxes weighing 140 pounds and clamped with iron were pushed through a porthole, the brass casings of the port would be scratched—unless the boxes were wrapped in cloth of some kind.”

“Then he threw the boxes into the sea!” gasped May, sitting back.

Bennett nodded.

“First he took the buoys and attachments from his trunks, then he wound up the mechanism, threw that and the buoy out of the porthole—the buoy being attached by a short length of chain to the under-bolt of the clock-work case —then he heaved up the money-box and pushed that after. They sank immediately. No belated passenger leaning over the rail would see a luminous buoy floating back. Nobody saw those buoys but Septimus, waiting in his motor- boat twelve miles south of Slapton Sands. And he did not see them until the three hours passed and, the spools releasing the buoys, they came to the surface. Then he fastened a stouter rope to one of the double cords and rove it through the bolt…. He salvaged all six boxes in an hour, which isn’t bad for a sick man.”

She shook her head helplessly.

“How… why… did you guess?”

“Guess?” Bennett’s eyebrows rose. “It wasn’t a guess. Who else would have stolen the boxes? In fiction the thief is the last man you suspect. In fact, the thief is the last man you’d acquit. The police always suspect the man who was last seen near the scene of the crime, and the police are generally right. I knew half the Balte secret when the word ‘key’ suggested ‘wind’ and ‘Monday’—the day racing men settle their bets—suggested ‘unpleasant’.”

He looked at his watch.

“Francis and ‘poor old Sep’ should at this moment be boarding the Rotterdam at Plymouth,” he said.

“But why… he had heavy losses, but he would not have been ruined. Did he want the money so badly “

“There is a woman in the case,” said Bennett gravely. “Somebody he dreamt about and planned for.”

“Poor man!” said May softly. There were tears in her eyes, he noticed, and remembered Francis Balte’s words: “I wonder what she will think about me?”