XIII
The Chronology of a Great Theft
It is necessary to tell the story of what was undoubtedly one of the strangest and most audacious crimes recorded in the annals of crime with greater detail and at greater length than is ordinarily necessary. Le Flavier of the French police, who is surely the greatest living authority on the subject of modern crime, has likened Kate Westhanger’s masterpiece (he does not refer to her, by the way) to the first of the Napoleonic campaigns against Italy and has published an elaborate treatise showing the points of resemblance which are not so far fetched as some of the critics, in their hasty review of this work, are justified in saying.
Kirschner, a little quoted authority, but nevertheless a brilliant and talented philocriminologist, has said that it would be humanly possible to reduplicate such a crime and that at any rate it would be wholly impossible to excel the ingenuity which planned the strategics of the issue.
At 8:30 on the night of May 14th the Charter Queen, eight thousand tons, commander T. Brown, came to her moorings in E-basin, No. 3 Quay of the Seahampton Docks. She carried a hundred-and-twenty third class passengers, seventy-four second class and fifty-nine first class passengers, a general cargo and in her strongroom forty-four thousand, eight hundred pounds of bar gold. They were made up of four-hundred and forty-eight hundred-pound ingots, bearing the stamp of the Central Rand Gold Extraction Company.
The passengers were landed and despatched by special trains to London, preceded by another train carrying the mails. The mail train left at 9:27, the passenger at 9:42. By 10:17 the gold ingots had been landed, checked and conveyed to a waiting train where they were checked again under the superintendence of Inspector K. Morris of the Dock police. At 10:22 the engine backed into the train and was coupled up and the superintendent of the line being unavoidably absent (he was discovered locked in an empty house the next morning), the driver received his “right away” from Assistant-Inspector Thomas Massey, who had arrived that day from London and who spoke to the driver and fireman before the train pulled out.
“You know this road, I suppose?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” replied the driver. “I have been down here several times.”
The inspector was not wholly satisfied. In the first place, he resented seeing “foreign drivers” on his road, but the two men had arrived from London bearing a letter from Sir Ralph to the superintendent of the road, a letter which afterwards proved to be a forgery. The letter instructed the superintendent to give the men charge of the engine, offering, as a reason, their reliability and the fact that they were two of the best drivers at the North Central, which railway was under the control of Sir Ralph Sapson.
The train pulled out and from this onward its adventures began.
From the moment it left Seahampton Town station, the train was never out of sight for longer than ten minutes. Every signal box along the line had received special instructions to particularly note its passing and in addition to the conventional record which is kept of every train, to notify specially not only to the next box, but to London the hour of its dispatch. The road may be briefly described.
From Seahampton it ran straight to the market town of Sevilley and then over the S-shape road across to Tolbridge. It may be remarked in passing that between Sevilley and the Tolbridge was the level crossing at which Moya had met with her accident. Between Tolbridge and Pinham the road pushed straight through uneven ground passing successively under Tolbridge Hill, Beckham Beacon and Pinham Heights, under each of which it passed through tunnels, the tunnels being connected nearly all the way by deep cuttings.
It was a rainy night for the drizzle, which set in at six in the evening, had continued until there was a veritable deluge. Sevilley (East) signalbox reported the gold train as having passed at 11:07, and this fact was supported by the times given by six signalmen between Tolbridge and Sevilley. The train slowed at Tolbridge and entered Tolbridge tunnel. Between Beckham tunnel and Tolbridge tunnel is a signalbox which reported the Special at 11:32. The signalbox was situated close to the line and rather near the ground and the signalman states that he not only saw the train pass him in the pelting rain, but that he saw the tail lights disappear into Beckham tunnel which is built on a curve.
The times are interesting. At 11:32 the train entered Beckham tunnel. At 11:42 the signalman on the northern side of Pinham tunnel reported the train as having passed. It was raining but owing to the unusual character of this new service and his natural curiosity to see a £3,000,000 “special” he had his window open and saw the three green lights flash past and the red tail lights disappearing in the distance. Between Beckham signalbox and Pinham signalbox the distance is five miles, but the theory is that at this point the train slowed to thirty miles an hour, which accounted for the unusual length of time it took to traverse this short distance.
At Maidmore, Stanborn, Quexley Paddocks and Catford Bridge, on the outskirts of London, the train was reported and timed. The next station to Catford Bridge is Balham Hill and the signalman at Balham Hill stated at the subsequent enquiry that he was given and accepted the gold special at 11:53 and lowered the “distant off” and the “home” signals, at the same time warning the next northern station, which was Kennington Junction that he had accepted the “:46 up” which was the official designation of the special.
He waited for ten minutes and saw no sign of the train, whereupon he called Quexley Paddocks and asked if there had not been a mistake since the run was not more than seven minutes. Quexley Paddocks replied that the train had passed through, going at fifty miles an hour at the moment she had been signalled.
No further news was received and the Catford Bridge signalman, becoming alarmed, reported to the stationmaster on duty, who sent two platelayers along the line. They walked as far as Quexley Paddocks but saw no sign of a train. The gold special had disappeared as though the earth had opened and received it.
All these times had been verified. Every signalman and stationmaster was interrogated without in any way shaking the veracity of the witnesses. When the platelayers reached Quexley Paddocks and reported the disappearance of the train, London was informed. Between Quexley Paddocks and Catford Bridge the line runs through market gardens and what is very unusual so close to London, it passes over a level crossing, the gates of which are electrically controlled from Quexley Paddocks signalbox.
And here is the most remarkable of the statements that were made. The signalman, Henry George Wallis, states that after the gold special had passed and he had brought his signals back to danger, he had noticed a strange disturbance on the dial of the electrical apparatus by which the gates were opened or closed and it was discovered the next morning when he endeavoured to open the gates to allow an army traction engine to pass that the gates refused to work. That happening, however, was very thoroughly investigated on the following day.
Michael had dined and supped with Moya and Fonso Blaxton and they had had a riotous and wholly joyous evening. He had returned to his flat at half past eleven, calling en route at the Yard, for he was still very uneasy about Kate’s threat and he was anxious also to find out if there had been any discovery made in connection with the outrage of the morning. The case was not in his hands since the crime had been committed within the jurisdiction of the city police and the city Criminal Investigation Department had control of the investigations.
T. B. was at the office and had no news to give. Michael went home and to bed. He was aroused at half past twelve by telephone. It was the voice of T. B. Smith.
“They’ve done it, Mike. Come down at once.”
“What have they done?” asked Michael with a sinking heart.
“They’ve pinched the blooming train!” said T. B. vulgarly.
A special train had been made up for the police and Michael was on the platform of Catford Bridge station by half past one, and was reading the reports which had been transmitted by the various signalmen. To add to the mystery, a mineral train from Seahampton which had followed the gold special at half an hour’s interval, but at a slower pace, had come straight through without noticing anything unusual. It had crossed the down empty at Tolbridge and that was the only other train that was met until it reached the suburbs of London where the night traffic was more general. Sir Ralph was one of the party that went down to Catford Bridge and a very distressed and worried man he was.
“I asked that fellow Flanborough to come,” he wailed, “and what do you think the selfish beast said? He said it was my responsibility. Can you imagine anything more brutal?”
“Is the gold insured?”
Sir Ralph shook his head.
“Not wholly. It was fully insured as far as Seahampton,” he said grimly. “After that the responsibility is partly mine and partly Flanborough’s and partly the underwriters’. Isn’t it too awful for words?”
T. B. came into the waiting room at that moment, clad in oilskins and sou’wester.
“You had better take complete charge of this case, Mike,” he said. “Sir Ralph will give you any assistance, I’m sure.”
“Can I have a breakdown train?”
“I can bring one down here in twenty minutes,” said Sir Ralph.
“Is it equipped with searchlights?”
Sir Ralph consulted an official.
“We’ve naphtha flares. Will they do?”
“They will do,” said Michael; “put a truck in front of the engine and arrange the flares so that they light up the line.”
He spent the night in an open truck, slowly passing down the line searching for some clue which would afford a solution to the mystery. Particularly thorough was his search of the three tunnels, but they yielded nothing, and he reached Seahampton as the dawn was breaking without having made any discovery which would help him.
He went back to town by the breakdown train, sleeping in the guard’s caboose, and reached Quexley in time to receive from the retiring signalman the story of his eccentric gates.
Michael was interested and with the man for a guide he followed the course of the controlling wire which passed through a length of iron piping from the signal box to the gate.
“The electrician tells me that the wire has been cut somewhere,” said the man. “He has tried his instrument on it.”
“The wire cannot be cut if it is inside the iron casing,” said Michael.
“It is either cut or fused,” said the man.
The detective walked very slowly, pausing now and again to examine the black painted pipe. Presently he stopped. He had detected something and stooped to examine the pipe more closely. It was clear that it had been freshly painted. He passed his hand round it slowly and suddenly he felt an unexpected softness.
“This isn’t iron,” he said.
He took out his pocketknife and scraped. A little hole had been burnt into the steel by a portable blowpipe and the wires inside had been fused together by the heat.
“That explains it,” said Michael. “What effect would this have on the gates?” he asked.
“Well, you couldn’t open them from the box,” said the man.
“Could you open them by hand?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve got a chap on duty now who does nothing but open and shut them,” said the man. “While the current is on, they are locked. They work like ordinary gates, except you have to be very careful when you lock them.”
Michael waited until a train had passed and then experimented.
The gates opened and closed easily enough.
“What do you mean when you tell me that you have to be careful with the catch?”
“Well, ordinarily, when you use it without the current,” said the man, “the catch falls and cannot be lifted except by electric control.”
Michael made an inspection of the “catch.” It was a steel block working on a pivot and obviously operated magnetically.
“It doesn’t go up or down, now,” said Michael after testing it.
“It looks to me,” said the man, “as though it has been forced up.”
There was no doubt that what he said was true for the detective saw the unmistakable mark of a jemmy on the wooden casing about the lock.
But why on earth did they want to open the gate? If the train had been rifled on this stretch of line the need for an open gate would have been easy to explain. The train would have been stopped here and, supposing they could force the locks of the safe, the thieves could have loaded their gold and got away—but no train had been found.
Michael passed through the turnstile and examined the road for something to guide him to a solution.
It had been raining throughout the night and more than one traction engine had passed, as was evident from the wheel marks. He explored the road for a hundred yards and found nothing. Then he tried the other gate and found that there the catch had also been forced. The first twenty yards of the road was soft and the wheel tracks were indistinguishable. At the end of this patch, however, the going was harder, the crown of the road had drained off the rain and even the traction engine had left no great impression.
Michael walked a pace or two, then stopped and whistled, and well might he whistle, for there plain to be seen and not to be confused with any other track was the deep and narrow furrow and the broad impression which could have only been made by railway wheels!
He followed the track for another hundred yards where it struck the main road and a tram line and from there every trace disappeared.
Very weary and dishevelled he presented himself to T. B. Smith and made his report.
“You don’t seriously suggest that they took a railway train off the line and put it on the road, do you?” asked T. B. in wonder. “It’s impossible!”
“Of course it’s impossible,” said Michael irritably; “the whole thing is impossible. You can’t steal a railway train—but they’ve done it!”
He found with the assistant commissioner Sir Ralph whose agitation was pathetic.
“It’s pretty rough on me, old man,” said the baronet with that friendliness which the superior person invariably adopts in a moment of his misfortune. “I have lost a wife and a railway train in twenty-four hours. What the dickens are you laughing at?”
“Nothing,” said Michael recovering his gravity. “It was almost worth everything to see your face!”