TERROR KEEP CHAPTER XIII
At the last moment the bank authorities had changed their minds, and overnight had sent £53,000 worth of gold for conveyance to the ship. They had borrowed for the purpose an army lorry from Woolwich, a service which is sometimes claimed by the national banking institution.
The lorry had been accompanied by eight detectives, the military driver also being armed. Tilbury was reached at half-past eleven o'clock at night, and the lorry, a high-powered Lassavar, had returned to London at two o'clock in the morning. It had been again loaded in the bank courtyard under the eyes of the officer, sergeant, and two men of the guard that is on duty on the bank premises from sunset to sunrise. A new detachment of picked men from Scotland Yard, each carrying an automatic pistol, loaded the lorry for its second journey, the amount of gold this time being £73,000 worth. After the boxes had been put into the van, they had climbed up, and the lorry had driven away from the bank. Each of the eight men guarding this treasure was passed under review by a high officer of Scotland Yard who knew every one personally. The lorry was seen in Commercial Road by a detective-inspector of the division, and its progress was noted also by a police-cyclist patrol who was on duty at the junction of Ripple and Barking roads.
The main Tilbury road runs within a few hundred yards of the village of Rainham, and it was at this point, only a few miles distant from Tilbury, that the lorry disappeared. Two motor-cyclist policemen, who had gone out to meet the gold-convoy and who had received a telephone message from the Ripple road to say that it had passed, grew uneasy and telephoned to Tilbury.
It was an airless morning, with occasional banks of mist lying in the hollows, and part of the road, especially near the river, was covered with patches of white fog, which dispersed about eight o'clock in the morning under a southeasterly wind. The mist had almost disappeared when the search party from Tilbury pursued their investigations and came upon evidence of the tragedy which the morning was to reveal. This was an old Ford motor car that had evidently run from the road, miraculously missed a telegraph pole, and ditched itself. The machine had not overturned; there were no visible marks of injury; yet the man who sat at the wheel was stone dead when he was found. An immediate medical examination failed to discover an injury of any kind to the man, who was a small farmer of Rainham, and on the face of it it looked as though he had died of a heart attack whilst on his way to town.
Just beyond the place where he was found, the road dips steeply between high banks. It is known as Coles Hollow, and at its deepest part the cutting is crossed by a single-track bridge, which connects two portions of the farm through which the road runs. The dead farmer and his car had been removed when Reeder and Inspector Simpson of Scotland Yard, who had been put in charge of the case, arrived on the spot. No news of any kind had been received of the lorry; but the local police, who had been following its tracks, had made two discoveries. Apparently, going through the cutting, the front wheels of the trolley had collided with the side, for there was a deep scoop in the clayey soil which the impact had hollowed out.
"It almost appears," said Simpson, who had been put in charge of the case, "that the lorry swerved here to avoid the farmer's car. There are his wheel tracks, and you notice they were wobbling from side to side. Probably the man was already dying."
"Have you traced the trolley tracks from here?" asked Reeder.
Simpson nodded and called a sergeant of the Essex Constabulary, who had charted the tracks.
"They seem to have turned up north toward Becontree," he said. "As a matter of fact, a policeman at Becontree said he saw a large trolley come out of the mist and pass him, but that had a tilt on it and was going toward London. It was an army lorry, too, and was driven by a soldier."
Mr. Reeder had lit a cigarette and was holding the flaming match in his hand, staring at it solemnly.
"Dear me!" he said, and dropped the match and watched it extinguish.
And then he began what seemed to be a foolish search of the ground, striking match after match.
"Isn't there light enough for you, Mr. Reeder?" asked Simpson irritably.
The detective straightened his back and smiled. Only for a second was he amused, and then his long face went longer than ever.
"Poor fellow!" he said softly. "Poor fellow!"
"Whom are you talking about?" demanded Simpson, but Mr. Reeder did not reply. Instead, he pointed up to the bridge in the centre of which was an old and rusted water wagon, the type which certain English municipalities still use. He climbed up to the bank and examined the iron tank, opened the hatches and groped inside, lighting matches to aid his examination.
"Is it empty?" asked Simpson.
"I am afraid it is," said Mr. Reeder, and inspected the worn hose leading from its iron spindles. He descended the cutting more melancholy than ever.
"Have you thought how easy it is to disguise an ordinary army lorry?" he asked. "A tilt, I think the sergeant said, and on its way to London."
"Do you think that was the gold-van?"
Mr. Reeder nodded.
"I'm certain," he said.
"Where was it attacked?"
Mr. Reeder pointed to the mark of the wheels on the side of the road.
"There," he said simply, and Simpson growled impatiently.
"Stuff! Nobody heard a shot fired, and you don't think our people would go down without a fight, do you? They could have held their own against five times their number, and no crowd has been seen on this road!"
Mr. Reeder nodded.
"Nevertheless, this is where the convoy was attacked and overcome," he said. "I think you ought to look for the trolley with the tilt, and get on to your Becontree man and get a closer description of the machine he saw."
In a quarter of an hour the police car brought them to the little Essex village, and the policeman who had seen the wagon was interviewed. It happened a few minutes before he went off duty, he said. There was a thick mist at the time, and he heard the rumble of the lorry wheels before it came into sight. He described it as a typical army wagon. So far as he could tell it was grey, and had a black tilt with "W.D." and a broad-arrow painted on the side, "W.D." standing for War Department, the broad-arrow being the sign of the Government. He saw one soldier driving and another sitting by his side. The back of the tilt was laced up and he could not see into the interior. The soldier, as he passed, had waved his hand in greeting, and the policeman had thought no more about the matter, until the robbery of the gold convoy was reported.
"Yes, sir," he said, in answer to Reeder's inquiry, "I think it was loaded. It went very heavily on the road. We often get these lorries coming up from Shoeburyness."
Simpson had put through a telephone inquiry to the Barking police, who had seen the military wagon. But army convoys were no unusual sight in the region of the docks. Either that or one similar was seen entering the Blackwall Tunnel, but the Greenwich police, on the south side of the river, had failed to identify it, and from there on all trace of the lorry was lost.
"We're probably chasing a shadow anyway," said Simpson. "If your theory is right, Reeder—but it can't be right! They couldn't have caught these men of ours so unprepared that somebody didn't shoot, and there's no sign of shooting."
"There was no shooting," said Mr. Reeder, shaking his head.
"Then where are the men?" asked Simpson.
"Dead," said Mr. Reeder quietly.
It was Scotland Yard, in the presence of an incredulous and horrified commissioner, that Mr. J.G. Reeder reconstructed the crime.
"Flack is a chemist; I think I impressed it upon you. Did you notice, Simpson, on the bridge across the cutting an old water-cart? I think you have since learned that it does not belong to the farmer who owns the land, and that he has never seen it before. It may be possible to discover where that was purchased. In all probability you will find that it was bought a few days ago at the sale of some municipal stores. I noticed in The Times there was an advertisement of such a sale. Do you realise how easy it would be not only to store under pressure, but to make, in that tank, large quantities of a deadly gas, one important element of which is carbon monoxide? Suppose this, or, as it may prove, a more deadly gas, has been so stored, do you realise how simple a matter it would be on a still, breathless morning to throw a big hose over the bridge and fill the hollow with the gas? That is, I am sure, what happened. Whatever else was used, there is still carbon monoxide in the cutting, for when I dropped a match it was immediately extinguished, and every match I struck near the ground went out. If the car had run right through and climbed the other slope of the cutting, the driver and the men inside the trolley might have escaped death. As it was, rendered momentarily unconscious, the driver turned his wheel and ran into the bank, stopping the trolley. They were probably dead before Flack and his associate, whoever it was, jumped down, wearing gas masks, lifted the driver back into the trolley and drove on."
"And the farmer" began the commissioner.
"His death probably occurred some time after the trolley had passed. He also descended into that death hollow, but the speed at which his car was going carried him up nearer the cutting, though he must have been dead by the time he got out."
He rose and stretched himself wearily.
"Now I think I will go and interview Miss Belman and set her mind at rest," he said. "Did you send her to the hotel, as I asked you, Mr. Simpson?"
Simpson stared at him in blank astonishment.
"Miss Belman?" he said. "I haven't seen Miss Belman!"