Crossword Mystery (32 page)

“Simple enough when you've been told,” Mitchell observed; “but I kicked myself pretty hard for not having thought of it before, especially when you remember about that launch coming from abroad, and the sack, made in Holland, used for wrapping Jennings's head in. I suppose,” he added to Bobby, “from the 'phone message you turned in after your visit to the Brilliant Hotel, you thought it might be something like that?”

“I just thought,” Bobby answered, “that a man with a name that might be German, who registered as coming from Dover, did rather suggest a foreigner.”

“It did,” agreed Mitchell, “and when we tumbled to your hint, and had inquiries made of every alien we could trace, if any of them knew anything of the Wintertons, or of anyone doing business with them, it wasn't long before we found Herr Nabersberg.”

“I landed at Dover in the afternoon,” Nabersberg remarked, “and by ten o'clock in the evening I was in your police bureau, answering your questions, and then, before sunlight this morning, you had me from my bed again. But for my illness I should have been here in your country before. As soon as I was released I procured a friend who was travelling to England to send a message for me, without mentioning my name, to Mr. Winterton, that I would be with him soon.”

“It was that precipitated the murder, I expect,” Mitchell observed. “I think the receipt of that message got known, and it was felt there was no time to lose – that the gold must be secured, and Winterton removed, before your arrival.”

“It is very likely,” Nabersberg agreed. “It is a pity I was delayed, but though I was well in prison, for, indeed, there I did not dare to be ill, as soon as I was released – as soon as I got to Paris and knew that there I was safe – then I was very ill indeed. I should be there still in my bed, but that I was anxious about the gold consignment, and how it was to be handled. For long years I have had business relations with the Wintertons; it is inexpressibly shock to know that such a fate has been theirs. In England, they should have been safe. One does not expect such things in England. Of course, in Germany to-day–” He broke off with a shrug. “That is,” he said, “provided you are not of those who are in power there. But our gold, the ten boxes, surely it should not be difficult to find them?”

“Looks to me,” observed Major Markham, “as if someone else had found them first.” He added: “I suppose it's this gold that was smuggled in by that motor-launch Jennings reported in the spring?”

“Was it smuggling?” Nabersberg asked. “I do not know the English law, but both Mr. George and Mr. Archibald Winterton told me it was not smuggling, and could not be, for you have here no duty on gold, no prohibition on its import. But that the affair should be kept secret was necessary for me, for if the German Government had heard of it, and known that I was implicated – well, I should not have found it so easy to get released from prison, or so comfortable while I was there.”

“Was it gold that was bought in Germany and smuggled out, do you mean?” Major Markham asked.

“It is what one might have been accused of,” Nabersberg replied. “Actually it was shipped from Holland. For me, it would have been very serious if our transaction had become known – there are so many of what used to be ordinary business deals that to-day one is subject to sharp punishment for attempting. The two Mr. Wintertons, too, they wished for absolute secrecy. Mr. George Winterton believed that in gold alone – in the possession of gold itself – is there safety to-day. Paper anyone can print, or forge, or copy, but God alone makes gold. And he had a fear that your Government – like the Bolshevik Government, or in America, too – would take away their gold from those known to possess it – impound it, confiscate it, take it over, buy it at a fixed price, the Governments use different names but at the end it is the Government that has the gold and not you. That, George Winterton thought, might happen here, too, and he did not mean that it should happen at his expense. For gold means power, safety, security: who has gold, has the mastery, but not if others know and can come and take it from him.”

“I don't know so much about power and safety,” Mitchell observed. “There's no safety anywhere in this world, so far as I've ever noticed. And power lies with circumstance.”

“Who has gold, has the mastery,” Nabersberg repeated obstinately. “So they believed, so I believe. If you have gold, you have all. But, apart from their own feelings, they promised me to take no action till I had been able to leave Germany. You see, gentlemen,” he explained with a slight hesitation, “my position there had grown serious. I knew I was in grave danger.”

“Working against the new Government?” Major Markham asked.

“Oh, no. I never interested myself in politics,” Nabersberg answered quickly. “I wished only from any Government that it should leave me alone. No, it was discovered” – he hesitated; he braced himself for a disclosure; it came out at last, with an obvious effort, with a certain dread of the effect – “it was discovered that my maternal grandmother was a Jewess.”

He paused. As there were no exclamations of horror; no outward manifestation of terror or abhorrence; as, indeed, his hearers only looked puzzled, he went on:

“I had no idea that was so. I had never dreamed of such a thing. If I had been asked, I should have said I was Nordic – Nordic of the purest type. But someone discovered the truth, and whether out of malice, or because they felt it their plain duty, I was denounced in a letter to the authorities.”

“What happened?” asked Major Markham.

“I was, of course, immediately arrested and interrogated,” Nabersberg answered simply; “but you can see how serious it would have been for me, if anything had become known of my gold purchasing transactions with the Wintertons. It is unfortunate that the Hitler Government does not feel it can fully depend on the zeal and the loyalty and devotion of Germans of Jewish descent. For me, of course, I denied that I was Jewish, but the truth was proved beyond doubt, and then it looked bad for me, because I had tried to claim I was pure Nordic. That was considered to make my case very grave, even though I pleaded that I had not known of my poor grandmother's unhappy birth – it seems even that her father was a Rabbi, though her family cast her off entirely after her marriage with a Christian. My business, of course, was ruined. My friends forgot even my existence. I do not blame them. If any had tried to communicate with me, they might easily have been thrashed to death by the Storm Troopers, or perhaps sent to a concentration camp. Fortunately there were extenuating circumstances I was able to bring forward. It was proved that when I saw a number of high-spirited young Storm Troopers kicking an aged Jew into a canal, and then pulling him out to kick him in again, I gave the Nazi salute as I passed. Also, when the son of a friend of mine was baptised, I had sent, as a christening gift for the baby, one of the new youth dagger-knives with ‘Blood and Honour' engraved on the blade; and to another child, for a present at Christmas, I had sent a box of tin soldiers, and two toy cannon. That weighed very much in my favour, and finally I was released on promising to hand over my business – I am an analytical chemist – to a real Nordic, a young Nazi who had distinguished himself greatly by his zeal against Jews, but who afterwards had the misfortune to blow up himself and my laboratory, through a misapprehension of chemical quantities – chemicals caring, apparently, very little whether you are Jew or Nordic, if you do not mix them in the right proportions. Another condition was that I should leave my country for its good, since only the pure Nordic may take part in the building up of the new pure Nordic State. I regretted it, for I should have liked to take my share in building up the magnificent new Germany, where all learning, all art, all science, will be purely Nordic, but I recognised that was impossible. It was the heavy strain of all these events that, when I reached Paris, made me collapse altogether. I had asked a man I met in prison – he had been arrested for having attended a Communist meeting some years before – to let the Wintertons know of my release, but without mentioning my name, for I was still nervous. There are some relatives of mine still in Germany – cousins on my father's side, so that they are free from the Jewish taint there is in my blood – and they would probably suffer severely if this transaction of mine became known. There was danger of that, for one of the men we engaged to help navigate the launch suspected the contents of the boxes we landed, and Mr. Winterton had information that he might attempt to get help, and perhaps raid Fairview and try to seize the gold. That was why it was decided to remove it to a safer place. And when Archibald Winterton was drowned, in a way hard to understand, his brother suspected that the first step had been taken. He was inclined to believe that an attempt had been made to kidnap Archibald. He thought some boat had been lying off the coast, waiting for a chance, but that it had miscarried so far as the kidnapping was concerned, though, perhaps in trying to escape, Archibald had been drowned. I did not think it very likely myself. I thought more probably it was an accident – the drowning, I mean – but he wrote to me in a very nervous strain; and he said, also, that he thought he would be wise to apply for police protection, though he promised that he would not say more than he could help, or betray my share in the business, or even let his possession of the gold be known. Indeed, I knew he was anxious himself to keep that a secret, if it was at all possible.”

Major Markham had been listening to all this with close attention, and with great excitement. Now he burst out:

“Can that be the truth of what happened to the elder Winterton?”

But Mitchell was turning over and over in his hands the book of Coleridge's poems, and now he said:

“What's become of the gold? We must find that out – ten boxes, iron bound, are not so easily hid.” He paused and looked at Bobby: “I don't know if I'm dreaming, but I should have thought this book made it plain enough. Don't you think so, Owen?”

Bobby could only look puzzled. For the life of him he could not see how Coleridge's “Ancient Mariner”, even when marked with a blue pencil, gave any clue to the hiding-place of the vanished gold. He held his tongue, therefore, and Herr Nabersberg broke out excitedly:

“You know where it is? You know where it is hidden? Ah, that is a relief. For one-eighth is mine,” he explained. “One-half belonged to George Winterton, and three-eighths was his brother's; but the one-eighth is mine – and all I have in the world now I am no longer true German, true Nordic.”

The poor little, round little, flat-faced, dark-skinned man sighed heavily as he said this. It was evident that even the prospect of recovering his money hardly cheered a spirit so depressed by the loss of its proud claim to be a “true Nordic of the purest type,” torn from him by the discovery of his Hebraic maternal grandmother. Probably he would willingly have given up the whole of his share of the gold to have the right to call himself once again “pure Nordic.” But none of the others quite understood his grief, or even took much interest in it. Major Markham had the volume of Coleridge in his hand, and was vaguely turning over the leaves.

“You mean there's some message, plan – something here that shows where the gold is hidden?” he asked. “I don't see anything.”

“Well, I may be wrong,” Mitchell admitted, “only I don't think that box was put there just for fun. I don't suppose, either, that the book was put inside it for no reason, any more than the gas was.” He turned sharply upon Nabersberg. “You say you are a chemist. Did you provide the gas?” he demanded.

“It was my suggestion,” the German admitted. “The box itself could be opened safely, but it was divided into two chambers, and, if you removed the partition between, the gas was released. It was not dangerous,” he added, “except to the stomach and the eyes – no one should have died of it, though consciousness might be lost. You would be very sick, very dizzy for a very long time. But you should not die.”

Mitchell looked at him a little oddly.

“We have a law in this country,” he remarked, “forbidding the use of man-traps. But I take it, then, there were two compartments – one holding gas, and an upper one in which was this book? I take it there was a reason for that book being there. The crossword was headed ‘Key word: Gold.' But there's nothing about gold in the puzzle itself, so I take it, again, what that means is that gold is somehow the reason for the puzzle's existing at all. The message the crossword hid tells how to find the box. But there's no gold in it, only gas, and a book of poems. The gas is for protective purposes. The book is there – why? I take it, because it tells where the gold is really hidden. At least, that's how it strikes me.”

“Yes, but” – said Markham, still feverishly turning the pages – “I don't see anything. You mean, hidden writing?” he asked. “Invisible ink, letters pricked out – what do you suggest looking for?”

Mitchell glanced at Bobby, as if inviting him to reply. But Bobby could only continue to look puzzled, and Nabersberg, with growing excitement, took the book from Markham.

“There is something here,” he cried, “you have seen. What have you seen?”

“Only what you've all seen,” Mitchell answered. “A very well-known quotation, marked with blue pencil, altered so as to read: ‘Water, water everywhere, nor any to drink.' Looks to me like a pretty broad hint, quite in line of the man who made up that crossword, with its meaning hidden with such careful carelessness you would never guess there was any meaning there at all.”

“‘Water, water everywhere,'” Bobby burst out. “Why, that might mean the big tank overhead.” He added: “Ross said something, just before he died, about water. I thought he wanted to drink, but he didn't.”