Mr. Jennings looked somewhat mystified.

“I don’t quite get you?” he suggested.

“Woman’s aliases and the places where she used them.”

Something like admiration showed in the purser’s eyes.

“My word! Some notion, that! If the woman is there and hasn’t smelt a rat, she’ll give herself away when she hears that. But why don’t you read it yourself?”

“If she makes a move to leave I want to be out before her. If she leaves, it will mean that her husband is not present, and I want to get her before she can warn him. Carter’ll be on the same job.”

“Well, I’ll read it if you like, but frankly I’d rather you had some one else to do it.”

“What about Captain Davis?”

Jennings glanced round and sank his voice.

“If you take my advice, you’ll leave the old man out of it altogether. He just mightn’t approve. He treats the passengers as his guests, and bluffing them like that mightn’t appeal to him.”

“But I’m not bluffing them,” French retorted with a twinkle in his eye. He drew a pound note from his pocket and passed it over. “That’s for the chocolates, and whoever puts in the best answer gets it. It’s all perfectly straight and above board. Whether we get the woman over it or not no one need ever know.”

The purser smiled, but shook his head doubtfully.

“Well, it’s your funeral. Anyway, I’ve said I’ll go through with it, and I will.”

“Good!” French was once more his hearty, complacent self. “Now there is another matter if this one fails. Mrs. Vane may stay in her cabin. I want you to check the women present by your list, and give me a note of any absentees. Then I shall go round their cabins and make some excuse to see each.”

The purser agreed to this also. “I’ll send you some dinner here, and at once,” he added as he rose to take his leave, “then I’ll come for you while the passengers are dining, and get you fixed up in the saloon.”

“Better send Carter here, and he can dine with me while I explain the thing to him.”

When Mr. Jennings had gone, French stood in front of his porthole gazing out over the heaving waters. Daylight had completely gone, but there was a clear sky and a brilliant full moon. The sea looked like a ghostly plain of jet with, leading away across it, a huge road of light, its edges sparkling with myriad flashes of silver. His cabin was on the port side, and some three miles off he could dimly trace the white line of surf beating along the cliffs of the coast. The sea looked horribly cold, and he turned from it with a slight shudder as the door opened and Sergeant Carter entered.

“Ah, Carter, Mr. Jennings is sending us in some dinner. We’ll have it together. I have a job on for to-night,” and he explained his plan and the part his subordinate was to play therein. Carter said, “Yes, sir,” stolidly to everything, but French could see he was impressed.

Shortly before eight, Mr. Jennings appeared and beckoned his fellow-conspirators to follow him. They passed quickly across the deck and along some passages, and reached the saloon unobserved. There they found that the purser had placed two arm-chairs for their use close to the door, but hidden from outside it by screens. From French’s chair the face of each person who entered the room would be visible, while Carter’s was arranged so that he could see all those of the seated audience which were out of French’s immediate purview.

The concert was timed for half-past eight and before that hour little groups of people began to arrive. French, with a novel open on his knees, sat scrutinising unostentatiously each person as he or she entered. Once he stared with increased eagerness, as a dark, stoutish woman entered with two men. It seemed to him that she bore some resemblance to the photograph, but as he watched her foreign gestures and as he listened to her rapid conversation in some unknown language, he felt sure she could not be the woman he sought. He called a passing steward, and learned from him that she was the Miss da Silva whom he had already suspected and acquitted in his mind.

As the time drew on the saloon gradually filled, but nowhere did he see any one whose appearance he thought suspicious. When the hour arrived, the proceedings were opened with a short recital by a well-known pianist who was making the voyage to Madeira for his health.

French was not musical, but even if he had been he would have paid but scant attention to the programme. He was too busily engaged in covertly scrutinising the faces of the men and women around him. He was dimly conscious that the well-known pianist brought his contribution to an end with a brilliant and highly dexterous feat of manual gymnastics, that two ladies—or was it three—sang, that a deep-toned basso growled out something that he took to be a Scotch song, and that a quiet, rather pretty girl played some pleasant-sounding melody on a violin, when his attention was suddenly galvanised into eager life and fixed with an expectant thrill on what was taking place. Mr. Jennings had ascended the platform.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the purser said in his pleasantly modulated voice, “while possibly it may be true that the days of riddles have passed, and while it certainly is true that the middle of a concert is not the happiest time for asking them, still perhaps you will allow me to put this one to you. It is a topical riddle concerning our voyage made up by one of our company, and he offers a prize of this large box of chocolates for the best solution. The riddle is this, and I can let any one who cares to consider it have a copy: ‘If she is Winter in Comedy, Ward in Olympic, Root in Savoy, and Vane in Crewe, what is she aboard the Enoch?’ ”

The audience listened with good-humoured attention, and for a moment Mr. Jennings stood motionless, still smiling pleasantly. The little buzz of conversation which usually sprang up between the items had not yet begun, and save for the faint, all-pervading murmur of the engines, the gently swaying saloon was momentarily still. Then through the silence came a slight though unexpected sound. Miss da Silva’s handbag had slipped off her knee, and the metal hasp had struck the parquet floor with a sharp tap.

French glanced at her face with a sudden thrill. It had gone a queer shade of yellowish brown, and her hand, hanging down by her side, was clenched till the knuckles showed the same livid brownish hue. She evidently had not noticed her bag fall, and in her fixed and staring eyes there grew the shadow of a terrible fear. No one but French seemed to have noticed her emotion, and a man beside her stooped to pick up the bag. At the same time the silence was broken by a stout, military-looking old gentleman, who with some “Ha, ha’s!” and “Be Gad’s!” adjured the company to set about solving the puzzle, and conversation became general. Miss da Silva rose quietly and moved rather unsteadily towards the door.

For French to get up and open the door for her was an act of common politeness. With a slight bow he held it as she passed through, then following her immediately, he closed it behind him.

They were alone in the passage leading to the companion-way, and as he glanced keenly at her face he felt no further doubt. Disguised by some adroit alterations to hair and eyebrows, and, he believed, with a differently-shaped set of false teeth, a darkened complexion and glasses, there stood before him the original of the photographs. He laid his hand on her arm.

“Miss Winter,” he said gravely, “I am Inspector French of Scotland Yard. I arrest you on a charge of being concerned in the murder of Charles Gething and the theft of precious stones and money from Messrs. Duke & Peabody’s on the 25th of November last.”

The woman did not reply, but like a flash her free arm went to her mouth. French grasped wildly and caught it. She gulped, and at the same moment reeled. French, himself trembling and with beads of perspiration on his forehead, laid her gently on the floor, where she lay unconscious. He hastily stepped back into the saloon, and moved quietly to where he had seen the ship’s doctor sitting, whispered in his ear. Sergeant Carter got up at the same moment, and a second later the two detectives stood looking down with troubled faces, while Dr. Sandiford knelt beside the motionless figure on the floor.

“Good God!” he cried at once, “she’s dead!” He put his nose to her lips. “Prussic acid!” He gazed up at his companions with a countenance of horrified surprise.

“Yes; suicide,” said French shortly. “Get her moved to my cabin before any one comes.”

The doctor, ignorant of the circumstances, looked at the other with a sudden suspicion, but on French’s hurried explanation he nodded, and the three men bore the still form off and laid it reverently on the sofa in the Inspector’s stateroom.

“When you’ve examined her, tell the Captain,” French said. “Meantime Carter and I must go and arrest the poor creature’s husband. You might show me his cabin when you’re through.”

A few seconds sufficed the doctor for his examination, and then in silence he led the way to a cabin on the boat deck. French knocked, and instantly opening the door, passed inside, followed by the others.

It was a large, roomy stateroom, fitted up as a private sitting-room, an open door revealing a bedroom beyond. The room had a comfortable, used appearance. Books and papers lay about, a box of chessmen and a pack of cards were on a locker, while in a lounge chair lay a woman’s crochet work. On a table stood an empty coffee cup and the smell of a good cigar was heavy in the air.

In an arm-chair under the electric light, clad in a dressing-gown and slippers, sat an old gentleman, the cigar in one hand and a book in the other. He seemed a tall man, and his long hair was pure white. He wore a long white beard and moustache, and had bushy white eyebrows. He sat staring at the intruders with surprise and apparent annoyance.

But as his eyes settled on French’s face their expression changed. Amazement, incredulity, and a growing horror appeared in rapid succession. French advanced, but the other sat motionless, his eyes still fixed on his visitor’s with a dreadful intensity, like that of an animal fascinated by a snake. And then French began to stare in his turn. There was something familiar about those eyes. They were a peculiar shade of dark blue that he recalled very clearly. And there was a mole, a tiny brown mole beneath the corner of the left one, which he had certainly seen not long previously. So, for an appreciable time both remained motionless, staring at one another.

Suddenly French recalled where he had seen that shade of iris and that mole. With a murmur of amazement he stepped forward. “Mr. Duke!” he cried.

The other with a snarl of anger was fumbling desperately in his pocket. Like a flash, French and Carter threw themselves on him and caught his arm as it was half-way to his mouth. In the fingers was a tiny white pilule. In another second he was handcuffed, and French’s skilful fingers had passed over his clothes and abstracted from his pocket a tiny phial containing a few more of the little white messengers of death. At the same moment Captain Davis appeared at the door.

“Shut the door, if you please, Captain,” French begged. “The Yard was right after all. This is the man.”

A few sentences put the Captain in possession of the facts, and then French gently and with real kindness in his tones broke the news of Miss Winter’s death to his unhappy prisoner. But the man expressed only relief.

“Thank God!” he cried with evidently overwhelming emotion. “She was quicker than I. Thank God she was in time! I don’t care what happens to myself now that she’s out of it. If it wasn’t for my daughter”—his voice broke—“I’d be thankful it was over. I’ve lived in hell for the last few months. Wherever I turn I see Gething’s eyes looking at me. It’s been hell, just hell! I shouldn’t wish my worst enemy to go through what I have. I admit the whole business. All I ask is that you get on and make an end quickly.”

The whole scene had been enacted so quickly that French, after his first moment of overwhelming surprise, had not had time to think, but presently, after the immediate exigencies of the situation had been met, the mystery of this amazing dénouement struck him even more forcibly. He felt almost as if he had glimpsed the supernatural, as if he had been present and had seen one raised from the dead. Mr. Duke was dead, at least so until a few minutes earlier he had unquestioningly believed. The evidence of that death was overwhelming. And yet—it was false! What trick had the man played? How had he managed so completely to deceive all concerned as to the events of that mysterious crossing from Harwich to the Hook? French felt it would not be easy to control his impatience until he learned how the thing had been done, and the more he thought of the whole problem, the more eager he grew to be back at the Yard so that he might once again attack it, this time with the practical certainty of clearing up all the features of the case which still remained obscure.

The next afternoon they dropped anchor in the Tagus off Lisbon, and there French transferred with his prisoner to a homeward-bound liner. On the third morning after they were in Liverpool, and the same night reached London.

Given the key of the identity of the murderer, it was not long before Inspector French had unearthed all the details of the murder of Charles Gething and the theft of the diamonds, and had arranged them with a due regard to their proper bearing and sequence. And he found, as he had so often found before, that what had seemed a complicated and insoluble mystery was really a very simple happening after all. Briefly the facts which came out, partly as the result of a renewed investigation, and partly from Mr. Duke’s confession, were as follows:

Reginald Ainsley Duke had lived a happy and contented life until a terrible calamity befell him—his wife’s brain gave way, and with splendid physical health she had to be removed to an asylum, a dangerous and incurable lunatic. Though he had never been passionately in love with her, they had been sincerely attached, and for some time he was crushed beneath the blow. But in his case, as in others, time softened the sharpness of his grief, and this terrible period of his life gradually became a hideous though fading nightmare. Then he saw Miss Cissie Winter act at the Comedy, and feeling attracted to her, he arranged a meeting. The attraction proved to be mutual, and other meetings followed, as a result of which he fell violently, overwhelmingly in love with her. To his unbounded and ecstatic delight, he found his passion was returned.

Their problem then was a common one. Obviously they could not marry, so after much thought they did what a good many other people would have done in their place—set up an unconventional household. Their difficulty was Duke’s daughter. Had it not been for her, they would have taken no trouble to hide their predicament. But Duke did not want any stigma to rest on her, and with Miss Winter’s approval he decided to live a double life and keep two establishments. A simple disguise being necessary, he took for his model Vanderkemp, partly because the traveller was somewhat of his own height and build, and partly in the hope that were he at any time followed from the office to his second dwelling, he might be mistaken for Vanderkemp. With the help of the actress, he evolved a make-up, consisting of a wig, a false moustache and glasses, and exchanged his own upright carriage for Vanderkemp’s stoop. As Duke he retained his own personality, as Vane he wore the makeup. Their plan had met with such success that no suspicions were aroused. To his daughter he explained his frequent absences by saying he had to keep in constant touch with the Amsterdam branch, and the servants at Pennington, the forerunner of Crewe Lodge, were given to understand he was a traveller for a firm of engineers.

The arrangement worked successfully until the war began to interfere with the profits of his business, and then the keeping up of his two homes became a burden greater than he could bear. For a time he struggled on, but an insidious temptation had begun to haunt him, and the greater his difficulties grew the stronger it became. Here was he virtually in control of the business. His partners gave it but little attention. Peabody was old and doddering, and Sinnamond was well-off and spent most of his time travelling. A little juggling with figures, a few slight alterations to the books, and he would have all the money he wanted. He resisted with all his strength, but even in doing so he saw fresh ways in which the thing could be carried out—with absolute safety, as he believed—and eventually he fell. His plans worked as he had expected, his financial difficulties were met, and he congratulated himself that all would be well.

But there was one thing on which he had not reckoned. He forgot that a man cannot start a deceit or a swindle and stop when he likes. He soon discovered that each falsified entry required some further manipulation to buttress it up, and in spite of all his efforts he found himself becoming more and more deeply involved. And then came the inevitable unforeseen catastrophe. His head clerk, Charles Gething, began to suspect. He made an investigation, confirmed his suspicions, and with characteristic straightforwardness showed his discoveries to his employer, declaring that his duty required him to call in the other partners.

Duke, seeing he was up against it, played for time by stoutly swearing that Gething had made a mistake and promising him a complete explanation and proof that all the books were in order, if the clerk would only wait until he got some balancing figures from the Amsterdam office. He left that evening for Crewe Lodge, and there he told Miss Winter the whole story. That astute lady saw that though through the simple expedient of wearing a wedding ring she had covered up their first departure from orthodoxy, this was a different matter. Here discovery would mean prison for her lover and destitution for herself. It did not take her long to make up her mind that there should be no discovery.

Exercising all her arts, she succeeded after a struggle in bringing Duke round to her way of thinking, and the two set their wits to work to devise a scheme by which to safeguard themselves. Miss Winter supplied the main idea of the plan; Duke, who was thorough rather than brilliant, worked out the details. In short, the scheme was to stage a robbery at the office, murder Gething, get hold of as many stones as possible, and then make a leisurely departure for distant and more healthy spheres.

Miss Winter had a complete and first-hand knowledge both of Brazil and the United States. Her father was English, but having as a young man been sent to Rio as representative of his firm, he had settled down there, married a Portuguese wife, and made his home in the Brazilian capital. His daughter had a genius for acting, and on her parents’ death while she was yet in her teens, she succeeded in getting a start on the Rio stage. After five years, she accepted an engagement with an enterprising New York manager who had seen her act during a visit to Brazil. Two years later she came to London, and had there met Mr. Duke as already stated.

This knowledge of Brazil and America supplied the foundation of her scheme. Brazil represented an ideal country to which to retire after the crime, and their first care was to arrange a line of retreat thereto. They were well known in the neighbourhood as Mr. and Mrs. Vane and had no difficulty in getting the certificates and letters of recommendation necessary to obtain their Brazilian passports. Having received the passports, Duke forged similar certificates and letters in the names of da Silva, and having with the aid of Miss Winter’s theatrical knowledge made themselves up in character, they applied at the same office a second time, obtaining two more passports in the assumed names. Thus they had two sets of Brazilian passports in the names of Vane and da Silva respectively.

The next point was to procure some ready money immediately after the crime, to enable the fugitives to purchase the necessary tickets to Brazil, and for the host of other expenses which were certain to arise. With this object, the visit of Mrs. Vane to New York was arranged. She was to travel there by one line and immediately return by another. During the voyage home she was carefully to observe the passengers, and select the most suitable person she could find to impersonate. She was to make friends with this woman, find out all she could about her, and observe her carefully so as to obtain as much data as possible to help on the fraud. On arrival at Southampton she was to see her prototype off at the station, ascertaining her destination, then going to some hotel, she was to make the necessary changes in her appearance, proceed to London in her new character, and put up where she was unlikely to meet the other. On the next day she was to interview Williams, and if all had gone well up to this point she was to telephone to Duke from a public call office, so that he could proceed with his part of the affair. Finally she was to meet him at 9.45 on the next evening on the emergency staircase of the Holborn Tube station to obtain from him the portion of the spoils destined for Williams.

In the meantime, Duke was to pacify Gething by promising him a full explanation of the apparent discrepancies, together with a sight of the actual cash needed to put matters right, on the receipt of certain letters from America. He was also to get together as large a collection of stones as he possibly could. He was then to ask Gething to meet him at the office on the evening in question—the evening of the day of Miss Winter’s first interview with Williams—to go into the whole matter and see the proofs that all was right. Having thus got Gething into his power, he was to murder him, take out the diamonds and some money that was also in the safe, and having handed over to Miss Winter the few stones for Williams, go home as quickly as possible with the remainder.

Though this scheme seemed to them good, the conspirators were not satisfied with it, and they added on three additional features to safeguard themselves still further in the event of suspicion being aroused.

The first of these was an alibi for Mr. Duke. He arranged that he would dine and spend the evening at his club with his solicitor, leaving at a certain definite prearranged hour. By suitable remarks to the solicitor and the club porters, he would fix this hour, and by similar remarks to his servants he would establish the time at which he reached his house. The interval between would be sufficient to enable him to walk home, and he would take care to inform the police that he had so occupied it. But in reality he would taxi from near the club to near the office, commit the murder, and return to Hampstead by tube.

The second safeguard took the form of an attempt to throw suspicion on to Vanderkemp. In carrying this out, Duke himself typed the secret instructions which brought the traveller to London, and he gave Gething orders to see Vanderkemp on his arrival, send him on his wild goose chase to the Continent, and hand him some of the notes of which he had reason to believe the bank had the numbers, and which he afterwards swore were stolen from the safe.

Events after the crime moved so well from the conspirators’ point of view that they did not at first put their third safeguard into action. Indeed they began to think that even retirement to Brazil would be unnecessary, and that they could continue their life in London as formerly. But the chance remark of Inspector French to Duke that he had discovered that the elusive Mrs. X was Miss Cissie Winter showed that their house of cards was falling to the ground, and immediate flight became imperative. Duke, afraid to visit Crewe Lodge, wrote the warning in a cipher on which they had previously agreed. But by one of those strange chances which interfere to upset the lives and plans of mortals, just after he had posted it the guilty pair met in a tube train. Loitering in a passage till they were alone, Duke gave his news by word of mouth. Then Miss Winter made the slip which compassed their downfall—she forgot about the cipher letter which Duke had said he had sent, and fled, leaving the letter to fall into the hands of the police.

Duke then proceeded to carry out his third safeguard—to fake a suicide in order to account for his disappearance. This he did by means of a trick which they had carefully worked out beforehand, and which they also intended to employ on the Booth liner to put the detectives off in case suspicion should be aroused. In his personality of Duke, he bought at Cook’s office a return ticket from London to Amsterdam via Harwich, engaging his berth for that night and impressing his identity on the clerk. He then went on to Liverpool Street and in his personality of Vane he took a return ticket from London to Brussels by the same route. As Duke he had the passport he used on his occasional visits to Amsterdam. As Vane he had obtained a passport for Holland and Belgium some eighteen months earlier, when he and Miss Winter had gone there for a short holiday.

As Duke he travelled down on the boat train to Harwich, choosing his carriage so that he would be among the first on board. He gave up his ticket at the office, received his landing ticket, and was shown to his cabin. There he arranged his things and left the note for his daughter. Then he put on his Vane make-up, slipped out of the cabin unobserved, and joining the last stragglers from the train, presented his second ticket and was shown to the cabin he had reserved as Vane. As Vane next day he went ashore, leaving behind him incontrovertible evidence of the death of Duke.

At Rotterdam he took tickets for return via Hull, and travelling to Leeds, put up at the Victory Hotel until the date of the sailing of the Enoch. He and Miss Winter joined forces in the train between Leeds and Liverpool, and on going on board the liner they attempted to throw any pursuing detective off the scent by carrying out the same ruse by which Duke had faked his suicide. They had taken two sets of tickets—one set at Cook’s to Manáos in the name of Vane, and the other at the Booth Line offices to Para in the name of da Silva, and had engaged staterooms and tried to impress their personalities on the clerks on each occasion. They had further provided themselves with sets of large and small suitcases. The small ones, in which they packed their clothes and the diamonds, they labelled “da Silva,” the large ones they labelled “Vane.” They then put the “da Silva” suitcases inside the “Vane,” went on board as Vane, and were shown to their cabin. As Vane, they went back to purser and said they were going ashore. They went out on deck in the direction of the gangway, but instead of crossing it they regained their cabin, made up as the da Silvas, took out their small da Silva suitcases, and slipping unseen from the cabin, returned to the Purser as having just come on board.

The scheme as a whole worked out according to plan—save for Miss Winter’s lapse in omitting to wait for and destroy the cipher letter—but though the principals did not know it, a coincidence took place which came within an ace of wrecking it. When Sylvia and Harrington were driving home from the East End on the night of the crime they saw Mr. Duke turn out of Hatton Garden into Holborn. He was hurrying anxiously along the pavement with very different mien to his usual upright, leisurely bearing. There was something furtive about his appearance, and his face, revealed by a bright shaft of light streaming from a confectioner’s shop, was drawn and haggard. Fearing some ill news, Sylvia had stopped the taxi and hurried after him, but before she had reached the pavement he had disappeared. She did not, however, take the matter seriously until at breakfast the next morning he told her of the crime. Even then it never occurred to her to suspect him; in fact, she had forgotten the incident, but when he went on to state, as it were casually, that he had been at his club all evening and had walked directly home from there, she remembered. She realised that he was lying, and suspicion was inevitable. In desperation lest Harrington should unwittingly give away information which might put the police on her father’s track, she rang him up and arranged an immediate meeting at which she warned him of the possibilities. That afternoon Harrington called to tell her how things had gone at the office, and then she had overwhelmed him by insisting on the postponement of the wedding until the affair should be cleared up. When, however, she learned that French suspected Harrington and herself of knowing the criminal, she thought the postponed marriage might give direction to his investigations, and to avoid this she gave out that the ceremony had once again been arranged. The poor girl’s mind was nearly unhinged thinking of what she should do in the event of the police making an arrest, but fortunately for her she was not called upon to make the decision.

It remains merely to say that some weeks later Reginald Ainsley Duke paid the supreme penalty for his crimes, and his daughter, hating London and England for the terrible memories they held, allowed herself to be persuaded for the third time to fix the date of the wedding with Charles Harrington, and to seek happiness with him on his brother’s ranch in Southern California. The firm of Duke & Peabody weathered the storm, and the surviving partners did not forget the Gething sisters when balancing their accounts.

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.