Blind Corner and Perishable Goods Page 2

  “My name is Mansel,” he said gravely. “I beg that you’ll drink with me.”

  I found it difficult to refuse, so I said I would take a cocktail, and we went and stood by the fire and I told him my name.

  When we had drunk, he turned.

  “I must make a confession,” he said. “I’m very interested in the date upon your dog-collar. Why did you put it there?”

  There were a thousand answers: but I had not one upon my tongue. Yet, if I had been ready, I do not think I should have lied again. Honestly, I was rather grateful that the blow had fallen so soon, for, at least, in this way I had the chance of telling my tale before the papers told theirs, and Mansel had the look of a capable friend.

  “I didn’t put it there,” said I.

  “Ah,” said he, and waited.

  “I can’t tell you now,” I went on, “because it’s too long a story, but if you’ll make an appointment . . .”

  “Any time after ten to-night,” he said, and, with that, he gave me his card.

  This bore the address of a flat in Cleveland Row.

  “Can I bring a friend?” I said suddenly.

  “Why certainly,” said he.

  We parted then, and I went to my dinner with George.

  To him I said nothing, except that I had an engagement that night for both of us. He looked at me rather hard, but asked no questions, and at a quarter to ten we set out for Cleveland Row.

  Looking back, it seems more than strange to me that upon such a little matter as a couple of similar overcoats, hung up upon neighbouring pegs, should have depended life and death and fortune. But so it fell out. For Jonathan Mansel was, I think, the only man in the World who could have captained our enterprise and brought it through such vicissitudes to a triumphant end.

  Mansel and George Hanbury listened to my tale without a word.

  When I had finished, Mansel sat back in his chair.

  “I can’t tell you much,” he said. “But the inscription on that collar is not a date. It’s a number. The man you saw murdered was in the secret service during the War. I knew him—as ‘Number 171016.’ He was known to be a crook but was a very good man. He’d a big future. Then Ellis cooked his goose—saddled him with four big robberies in open Court. They let him get out of the country, but of course he couldn’t come back. He was broken up, I heard, for his heart was right in the game. I suppose that’s why . . .”

  He broke off and nodded at the collar.

  For a while none of us spoke.

  Then I took out a knife and passed it to Mansel.

  “Will you open the collar?” I said.

  We were sitting about a table, with the collar before us and a light hung above.

  Mansel cut some stitches and, little by little, ripped the lining away. Almost at once some yellow material appeared, very stained and wrinkled and lying as flat against the collar as the lining itself. I made sure this was padding, but, when he had made the opening a little larger, Mansel got hold of the stuff and pulled it out.

  It was a piece of oiled silk and seemed to have been part of a tobacco pouch, for, when it was unfolded, it had the form of an envelope without its flap. Within this again was a piece of thin notepaper, of which when it was opened, we could see three sides had been covered with a clear, close-written hand.

  Mansel read it aloud, while Hanbury and I peered, one over either arm.

  Statement of Carl Ramek, well-digger, aged 92.

  My great-grandfather dug the great well of Wagensburg. He and his brother dug it with their father, the three working together in the great drought of 17—. The well is ninety feet deep. The first spring rises thirty feet down, so that normally there is sixty feet of water. There is no well like it hereabouts. They could not have got so deep but for the great drought. All the work in the well was done by my great-grandfather and his brother and their father alone. The masons cut the stones as they were told and brought them and the wood and the mortar to the top, but no one went down except the father and his two sons. That was by order of the Count. They used to sleep at the Castle, whilst they were doing this work. Out of the well there runs a shaft. The shaft leaves the well about eighty feet down. It runs up at an angle into a chamber. The chamber is just above the level of the first spring. No one knew of the shaft except my great-grandfather and his father and his brother and the Count. The shaft was very difficult to dig. The Count had an evil name and was very much feared. He would go down into the well to see the work. The rain came before the work was done, and the Count was beside himself for fear that they would not be able to finish it before the water came in. At the end they were working day and night. This was because the Count would let no one else go down the well. When the shaft and the chamber were done, the four of them went down one night when everyone else was asleep. The Count had two leather bags. These were very heavy. They got them down and up the shaft and into the chamber. It was raining hard, and the water was up to the shaft, and the next day it was above it. The three finished the masonry of the well, but the Count now allowed them helpers to keep the water down. On their last night at the Castle the Count killed two of the three with his own hands. My great-grandfather escaped, and though a long search was made for him, he was never found. He escaped into Italy and returned two years later, when the Count was dead. He always meant to go down and get the bags, but there was never another drought severe enough to empty the well. When he was dying he told my grandfather this and my grandfather told my father and he told me. I don’t know which way the shaft runs. There are steps in the shaft. The Count cannot have recovered the bags because the great drought was followed by three very rainy years, and, as the springs are normally abundant, he could not have emptied the well without employing a lot of labour. I am unmarried and I have never told this to anyone else.

  NOTE. The Count was clearly the notorious Axel the Red, who was nothing more or less than a common robber, and was reputed to have amassed a vast fortune. In 1760 Wagensburg was burnt and he perished in the flames. The castle passed to the Crown, and was sold twenty years later. It was then restored.

  Wagensburg lies in Carinthia twenty-nine miles from Villach and four from Lerai.

  September, 1904.

  NOTE. W. came into the market in 1904.

  Failed. Ellis knows.

  June, 1910.

  I stood and looked at George.

  “Well,” I said, “when do we start?”

  George Hanbury shrugged his shoulders.

  “Your time’s mine,” he said.

  “And my time’s Mansel’s,” said I.

  I have often wondered how I came to say such a thing to a man upon whom, three hours before, I had never set eyes. Yet I meant what I said: and I think the truth is that the royalty of Mansel’s nature had already subjected me, for I know that, if he had said at once that he could not join us, I should have been unreasonably dismayed.

  Mansel rose from his chair and knocked out his pipe at the grate. Then he stood up quite straight and folded his hands.

  “This may be a school-treat,” he said, “and it may not. Treasure and trouble frequently go together. I haven’t been Villach way since the year before the War, but unless things are very different to what they were—well, if you fought a duel with a couple of Lewis guns, nobody’d take the trouble to come and see what it was. As like as not they wouldn’t hear you. It’s not at all crowded. Well, that’s all right for a school-treat.” He stopped there for a moment. Then he proceeded thoughtfully. “Life’s full of twists and turns, but to take on a job like this is to tackle Blind Corner itself; and it’s never policed. Whether you two are free to go is your affair. I will go—upon one condition, which I see slight reason why you should accept. The condition is that from first to last in this venture you two will do what I say. You see, I’m older.”

  I thought the condition a very mild one and said as much; so did Hanbury. But it has occurred to me since that I should have found it presumptuous in anyone else.
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  Be that as it may, we gave our words to obey him in every particular, and then we sat down at his feet while he rough-hewed our campaign.

  Of this, he showed that there would be three phases. First, the acquisition of Wagensburg; then, the lifting of the treasure; and, lastly, the disposal of it. And, since all he said was very much to the point, I will use, so far as I can recall them, his very words.

  “The first thing to do is to buy the property. Until we’re the landlords, the treasure is not ours to lift. To rent the place may be simpler and, so, tempting; but I don’t see the force of finding a King’s ransom for somebody else. If Wagensburg’s in the market, well and good. I’ll find the money; I don’t think the price will be high. If it’s not in the market, we shall have to pay more than it’s worth; but in these days you can usually buy a place even if it’s not for sale.

  “To get to the treasure shouldn’t be difficult, but, unless the well’s dry, I’m sure we can’t do it alone. To keep pace with springs that give freely is very hard work; it’s a very deep well; all wells are dangerous. We may even find that we can’t use the well at all, but must drive a new shaft from above. Above all, it’s most important that we should not be disturbed. We should only have to be seen at work to be suspected. To my way of thinking, it’s at least a six-man job. If we each take a servant who’s honest and fit and game, we shall get there quicker and better and much more comfortably.

  “How we shall dispose of the treasure is a matter we can only decide when we see what shape it takes.

  “So much for the plan of action.

  “What turns the whole thing from an exercise into a venture is the fact that Ellis knows. Whether we shall clash with him or not, we can’t possibly tell. I hardly think it’s likely myself. Sooner or later, of course, Wagensburg will draw Ellis as a magnet draws steel. ‘Where your treasure is,’ you know. But, when a man’s just done a murder, he usually lies pretty low; and, when he knows that somebody saw him do it, he lies lower still. For all that, what Ellis will not understand is why you haven’t gone to the police. That will make him think very hard. And, knowing that you overheard what the dead man said, he may attribute your silence to a wish to hide something which reference to the police would disclose. In which case we should clash . . . Because of this possibility we’ve got to move on our toes, always go the long way round and watch with both eyes. Remember this. Whether he knows it or not, we’re going to get in Ellis’s way. He may never know it. But if he does know it, well, you’ve seen what he does with people who get in his way—provided they give him the chance.”

  That was as much as he said at that time; while I saw the force of most of it, I did not agree that there was anything to fear from Ellis, for, though, as I had reason to know, he was a desperate man, I could not believe that he would challenge six men at once and I was quite certain that if and when he did he would lose his match.

  Then we found pencil and paper and, taking the well-digger’s statement, made a plan of the well and did what we could to “place” the chamber.

  We were all agreed that it would be pleasanter to reach the chamber by digging than by way of the well. The shaft had been mostly full of water for some hundred and sixty years: the chamber had been sealed for the same period: and, if you must visit places so long abandoned to Nature, it is very much more agreeable to have the daylight at your back. But, though the prospect of inspecting them by lantern was not inviting, it was, I think, the unmistakable likeness which the plan bore to a trap that made us strive so hard to find out another way.

  But we could not.

  Without knowing the angle at which the shaft had been driven and the direction in which it left the well, we could make out no more than that the roof of the chamber must lie about twenty-five feet below the ground and would most likely be encountered not more than twenty and not less than ten paces from the side of the well. This did not sound so formidable to Mansel and me, but, after a great deal of labour, George, who alone of us laid any claim to mathematical powers, demonstrated to our amazement that even that would leave some eight hundred square yards to be searched, and we gave up the attempt.

  We studied the statement and the plan we had made until we knew them by heart, and we raked the former for inferences, until we had almost deduced the proportions of the Count; but it was not an unprofitable enterprise, for, by the time we had done, it was plain that, when we went abroad, statement and plan could both be left with some Bank, because, short of loss of reason, nothing could ever erase their particulars from our minds.

  Then we discussed preparations and how soon we could start, and the getting of the servants, and what my uncle would say when told I was going to travel during the summer months. But we always came back to the treasure and the chamber and the great well.

  It was two o’clock in the morning before Mansel sent us away, bidding us do nothing but get some serviceable clothes and hold our tongues.

  Unless he summoned us, we were not to see him for a week, but then we were to dine with him in Cleveland Row. If all had gone well, he said, he saw no reason why we should not start a week from that day.

  “One thing more,” he added, as we stood in his hall “The dog or the collar may link you up with the crime. I think it unlikely. But at the first breath of trouble come straight to me.”

  I need no such instruction. Mansel had become the pillar of my state.

  Indeed I had made up my mind to seek him the moment I found anywhere a report of the murder. But, though each day I searched the papers faithfully, there was no mention made of it.

  Nor was there at any time, so far as I saw. I never read the French papers, but I often doubt that the murder was reported at all. The venue was lonely; the victim was foreign and had probably few friends; and, if no great search was made, the body may well have escaped notice, until there was little for an unpractised eye to find irregular.

  The next day I visited the dog and found her in good hands. The home to which she had been taken was a famous establishment, with special quarters for dogs in quarantine, and from the condition and spirits of the many dogs I saw it was plain that everything possible was done to lighten their confinement.

  The poor animal was delighted to see me, and, observing her pleasure, the kennel-man was quick to bring her some fresh food in the hope that she would now break the fast she had stubbornly maintained. To our relief she did so and soon left her plate clean, and though, when I went away, she made frantic endeavours to follow, the man insisted that she would pine no longer and that, when next I came, I should find her a different dog.

  I am glad to say this came true: and, by the time I left England, she was eating regularly and seemed contented with her lot.

  To my surprise, the interview I had with my uncle passed off smoothly enough. He certainly gave me no blessing, but, beyond remarking that six months in the City of London were of more value than twice that time spent “knocking about” Europe, he made little protest against the postponement of my apprenticeship. He then sat down and wrote me out a cheque for three hundred pounds, and, when I stammered my thanks, he said very gravely that that was a present for “singeing the King of Spain’s beard.” At first I could not think of what he meant, but I afterwards realized that I owed money and favour to my discomfiture of the communists, whose doctrines and practices he held in great abhorrence.

  The week of inaction to which Mansel had committed Hanbury and myself passed very slowly, and there were moments when we felt almost mutinous. But, when we began to discuss the preparations which we should have been making, if Mansel had not told us to hold our hands, the wisdom of his order became immediately plain, for we were soon out of our depth and invariably quarrelled over the very vulnerable plans we laid, till the only matter upon which we were entirely agreed was the vanity of each other’s proposals.

  On the last day but one, however, a note from Mansel came to salve my impatience. In this he said that he had found a man whom he thought I mig
ht like to be my servant, that the latter would call upon me at ten on the following day and that I was to examine him thoroughly from every point of view for, the letter concluded, although I will answer for his past, he is particularly to serve you and you will be responsible for his engagement.

  I soon found that Hanbury had received a similar note, and this real evidence of progress excited us out of all reason. At the same time we were both a little uneasy at the thought of taking a decision which, if it proved mistaken, might be the undoing of us all. Of any man who was admitted to our secret would be required a discretion and loyalty which were today uncommon and might easily be called upon to bear an extraordinary strain. To recognize these qualities in repose demanded an insight which we knew very well indeed we did not possess. To add to our concern, we did not know what Mansel had told the candidates and whether we ought to disclose that the service they were ready to enter was no ordinary one. In the end we sent him a note, asking for directions, but, though he received it, he sent no answer at all, but only, as he afterwards told us, pitched it into the fire.

  We had, therefore, to use our own judgement as best we could, but that we engaged Bell and Rowley and that they turned out so well cannot be counted to our credit, for I think an idiot could have seen the stuff of which they were made.

  Bell was my servant. He was a quiet, little man, very sturdily built. He was serious and well-spoken, but, though he was respectful, he had none of the manner of a servant and looked like a countryman turned clerk, which I afterwards found he was. He seemed to notice nothing, yet was exceptionally observant, and he always wore the same agreeable, but something resigned expression, as though his face were a mask. I never knew him volunteer a statement unless he thought it might be of service: he never once complained: he was most faithful, and I think he thought Mansel was a god. In this tenet he was not peculiar. Rowley and Carson, Mansel’s servant, held the same view.