In that manner he hung suspended for several minutes while he twirled the padlock with a ring of picks, trying one betty after another and operating, as he later testified with considerable understatement, "with that degree of delicacy which circ.u.mstances permitted." Altogether, he tried more than a dozen keys, and he was beginning to despair that any would turn the trick when he heard the scream of the whistle.

Looking forward, he saw the Cuckseys tunnel, and an instant later he was plunged into blackness and churning sound. The tunnel was half a mile long; there was nothing to do but wait. When the train burst into sunlight again, he continued working with the keys, and was gratified when almost immediately one of the picks clicked smoothly in the mechanism. The padlock snapped open.

Now it was a simple matter to remove the lock, swing the crossbar free, and kick the door with his feet until Burgess slid it open. The morning train pa.s.sed the sleepy town of G.o.dstone, but no one noticed the man dangling on the rope, who now eased down into the interior of the luggage van and collapsed on the floor in absolute exhaustion.

Chapter 44.

A Problem of Dunnage

Agar testified that in the first moment that Pierce landed inside the luggage van, neither he nor Burgess recognized him: "I cool him first, and I swear I granny he's some muck Indian or n.i.g.g.e.r, so black he is, and his dunnage torn all about, like he'd gone a proper dewskitch"--- as if he'd had a thorough thrashing. "His min's a rag of tatters, and black as all the rest of him, and I says, the cracksman's hired a new bloke to do the lay. And then I see it's him himself, right enough."

Surely the three men must have presented a bizarre picture: Burgess, the guard, neat and tidy in his blue railway uniform; Agar, dressed splendidly in a formal suit, his face and hands a cadaverous bloated green; and Pierce, sagged to his hands and knees, his clothing shredded and sooty black from head to foot.

But they all recovered quickly, and worked with swift efficiency. Agar had completed the switch; the safes were locked up again, with their new treasure of lead shot; the five leather satchels stood by the van door in a neat row, each laden with gold bullion.

Pierce got to his feet and took his watch from his waistcoat, an incongruously clean gold object at the end of a soot black chain. He snapped it open: it was 8:37.

"Five minutes," he said.

Agar nodded. In five minutes, they would pa.s.s the most deserted stretch of track, where Pierce had arranged for Barlow to wait and pick up the flung satchels. Pierce sat down and stared through the open van door at the countryside rushing past.

"Are you well, then?" Agar asked.

"Well enough," Pierce said. "But I don't cherish going back."

"Aye, it's frazzled you proper," Agar said. "You're a sight and no mistake. Will you change when you're snug in the compartment again?"

Pierce, breathing heavily, was slow to comprehend the meaning of the words. "Change?"

"Aye, your dunnage." Agar grinned. "You step off at Folkestone as you stand now and you'll cause no end of stir."

Pierce watched the green, rolling hills flash past, and listened to the rumble of the carriage on the roadbed. Here was a problem he had never considered and had made no plans for. But Agar was right: he couldn't step out at Folkestone looking like a ragged chimney sweep, especially as Fowler was almost certain to seek him out to say goodbye. "I have no change," he said softly.

"What say?" Agar said, for the noise of the wind through the open van door was loud.

"I have no change of clothing," Pierce said. "I never expected..." His voice trailed off; he frowned. "I brought no other clothing."

Agar laughed heartily. "Then you'll play the proper ragam.u.f.fin, as you've made me play the stiff." Agar slapped his knee. "There's a daffy of justice, I say."

"It's nothing funny," Pierce snapped. "I have acquaintances on the train who will surely see me and mark the change."

Agar's merriment was quashed instantly. He scratched his head with a green hand. "And these same of your acquaintances, they'll miss you if you're not there at the station?"

Pierce nodded.

"It's the devil's own trap, then," Agar said. He looked around the van, at the various trunks and pieces of luggage. "Give me your ring of tickles, and I'll break a pit or two, and we'll find some square-rigged duns to fit you."

He held out his hand to Pierce for the ring of picklocks, but Pierce was looking at his watch. It was now two minutes to the drop-off point. Thirteen minutes after that, the train would stop in Ashford, and by then Pierce had to be out of the luggage van and back in his own compartment. "There's no time," he said.

"It's the only chance--- " Agar began, but broke off. Pierce was looking him up and down in a thoughtful way. "No," Agar said. "d.a.m.n you, no!"

"We're about the same size," Pierce said. "Now be quick."

He turned away and the screwsman undressed, muttering oaths of all sorts. Pierce watched the countryside. They were close now: he bent to position the satchels at the lip of the open van door.

Now he saw a tree by the roadside, one of the landmarks he'd long since set for himself. Soon there would be the stone fence.... There it was... and then the old abandoned rusty cart. He saw the cart.

A moment later, he saw the crest of a hill and Barlow in profile beside the coach.

"Now!" he said and, with a grunt, flung one satchel after another out of the moving train. He watched them bounce on the ground, one by one. He saw Barlow hastening down the hill toward them. Then the train went around a curve.

He looked back at Agar, who had stripped to his underclothes, and held his fine duds out for Pierce. "Here you are, and d.a.m.n your eyes."

Pierce took the clothes, rolled them into as tight a ball as he could manage, wrapped the parcel with Agar's belt, and, without another word, swung out the open door and into the wind. Burgess closed the van door, and a few moments later the guard and Agar heard a clink as the bolt was thrown, and another clink as the padlock was locked once more. They heard the scratching of Pierces feet as he scrambled up to the roof; and then they saw the rope, which had been taut across the roof from slapper to slapper, suddenly go slack. The rope was pulled out. They heard Pierces footsteps on the roof a moment longer, and then nothing.

"d.a.m.n me, I'm cold," Agar said. "You'd best lock me back up," and he crawled into his coffin.

Pierce had not progressed far on his return journey before he realized he had made still another error in his planning: he had a.s.sumed it would take the same amount of time to go from the van to his compartment as it took to go from his compartment to the van. But almost immediately he recognized his mistake.

The return trip, against the blast of the wind, was much slower. And he was further burdened by the parcel of Agar's clothing, which he clutched to his chest, leaving only one hand free to grip the roofing as he crawled forward along the length of the train. His progress was agonizingly slow. Within minutes he realized that he was going to miss his intended schedule, and badly. He would still be crawling along the rooftops when the train reached Ashford Station; and then he would be spotted, and the jig would be up.

Pierce had a moment of profound rage that this final step in the plan should be, in the end, the only thing to go irretrievably wrong. The fact that the error was entirely his own doing merely increased his fury. He gripped the pitching, swaying carnage roof and swore into the wind, but the blast of air was so loud he did not hear his own voice.

He knew, of course, what he must do, but he did not think about it. He continued forward as best he could. He was midway along the fourth of the seven second-cla.s.s carriages when he felt the train begin to slow beneath him. The whistle screamed.

Squinting ahead, he saw Ashford Station, a tiny red rectangle with a gray roof in the far distance. He could not make out any details, but he knew that in less than a minute the train would be near enough that pa.s.sengers on the platform could see him on the roof. For a brief moment, he wondered what they would think if they did see him, and then he got up and ran, sprinting forward, leaping from one car to the next without hesitation, half blinded by the smoke that poured from the engine funnel back toward him.

Somehow he made it safely to the first-cla.s.s coach, swung down, opened the door, dropped into his compartment, and immediately pulled the blinds. The train was now chugging very slowly, and as Pierce collapsed into his seat he heard the hiss of the brakes and the porter's cry: "Ashford Station... Ashford... Ashford..."

Pierce sighed.

They had done it.

Chapter 45.

The End of the Line

Twenty-seven minutes later, the train arrived at Folkestone, the end of the South Eastern Railway line, and all the pa.s.sengers disembarked. Pierce emerged from his compartment, appearing, he said, "far better than I deserved, but far from sartorial correctness, to put it lightly."

Although he had hastily employed handkerchief and spittle to clean his face and hands, he had discovered the soot and grime on his flesh to be most recalcitrant. As he had no mirror, he could only guess at the condition of his face, but his hands were no cleaner than a kind of pale gray. Furthermore, he suspected that his sandy-colored hair was now a good deal darker than previously, and he was grateful that most of it would be covered by his top hat.

But except for the top hat, all his clothing fitted poorly. Even in an age when most people's clothing fitted poorly, Pierce felt himself especially noticeable. The trousers were almost two inches short of an acceptable length, and the cut of the coat, although elegant enough, was of the extreme and showy fashion that true gentlemen of breeding avoided as indecently nouveau riche. And, of course, he reeked of dead cat.

Thus Pierce stepped out onto the crowded Folkestone platform with an inner dread. He knew that most observers would put down his appearance as a sham: it was common enough for men who aspired to be gentlemen to obtain secondhand goods, which they wore proudly, oblivious to the ill fit of the garments. But Pierce was all too aware that Henry Fowler, whose entire conscious being was attuned to the nuances of social standing, would spot the peculiarity of Pierce's appearance in an instant, and would wonder what was amiss. He would almost certainly realize that Pierce had changed clothing for some reason during the ride, and he would wonder about that as well.

Pierce's only hope lay in keeping his distance from Fowler. He planned, if he could, to make off with a distant wave of goodbye, and an air of pressing business that precluded social amenities. Fowler would certainly understand a man who looked after business first. And , from a distance, with the intervening throng of people, Pierce's bizarre dress might possibly escape his eye.

As it happened, Fowler came charging through the crowd before Pierce could spot him. Fowler had the woman beside him, and he did not look happy.

"Now, Edward," Fowler began crisply, "I should be forever in your debt if you would---" He broke off, and his mouth fell open.

Dear G.o.d, Pierce thought. It's finished.

"Edward," Fowler said, staring at his friend in astonishment.

Pierce's mind was working fast, trying to antic.i.p.ate questions, trying to come up with answers; he felt himself break into a sweat.

"Edward, my dear fellow, you look terrible."

"I know," Pierce began, "you see---"

"You look ghastly near to death itself. Why, you are positively gray as a corpse. When you told me you suffered from trains, I hardly imagined... Are you all right?"

"I believe so," Pierce said, with a heartfelt sigh. "I expect I shall be much improved after I dine."

"Dine? Yes, of course, you must dine at once, and take a draught of brandy, too. Your circulation is sluggish, from the look of you. I should join you myself, but--- ah, I see they are now unloading the gold which is my deep responsibility. Edward, can you excuse me? Are you truly well?"

"I appreciate your concern," Pierce began, "and---"

"Perhaps I can help him," the girl said.

"Oh, capital idea," Fowler said. "Most splendid. Splendid. She's a charmer, Edward, and I leave her to you." Fowler gave him a queer look at this last comment, and then he hurried off down the platform toward the luggage van, turning back once to call, "Remember, a good strong draught of brandy's the thing." And then he was gone.

Pierce gave an enormous sigh, and turned to the girl "How could he miss my clothes?"

"You should see your countenance," she said. "You look horrible." She glanced at his clothes. "And I see you've a dead man's dunnage."

"Mine were torn by the wind."

"Then you have done the pull?"

Pierce only grinned.

Pierce left the station shortly before noon. The girl, Brigid Lawson, remained behind to supervise the loading of her brother's coffin onto a cab. Much to the irritation of the porters, she turned down several waiting cabs at the station, claiming she had made arrangements in advance for a particular one.

The cab did not arrive until after one o'clock. The driver, an ugly ma.s.sive brute with a scar across his forehead, helped with the loading, then whipped up the horses and galloped away. No one noticed when, at the end of the street, the cab halted to pick up another pa.s.senger, an ashen-colored gentleman in ill-fitting clothes. Then the cab rattled off, and disappeared from sight.

By noon, the strongboxes of the Huddleston & Bradford Bank had been transferred, under armed guard, from the Folkestone railway station to the Channel steamer, which made the crossing to Ostend in four hours. Allowing for the Continental time change, it was 5 pm. when French customs officials signed the requisite forms and took possession of the strongboxes. These were then transported, under armed guard, to the Ostend railway terminus for shipment to Paris by train the following morning.

On the morning of May 23rd, French representatives of the bank of Louis Bonnard et Fils arrived at Ostend to open the strongboxes and verify their contents, prior to placing them aboard the nine o'clock train to Paris.

Thus, at about 8:15 a.m. on May 23rd, it was discovered that the strongboxes contained a large quant.i.ty of lead shot, sewn into individual cloth packets, and no gold at all.

This astounding development was immediately reported to London by telegraph, and the message reached Huddleston & Bradford's Westminster offices shortly after 10 a.m. Immediately, it provoked the most profound consternation in that firm's brief but respectable history, and the furor did not abate for months to come.

Chapter 46.

A Brief History of the Inquiry

Predictably, the initial reaction of Huddleston & Bradford was sheer disbelief that anything was amiss. The French cable had been composed in English and read: GOLD MISSED NOW WHERE IS, and was signed VERNIER, OSTEND.

Confronted by this ambiguous message, Mr. Huddleston announced that there had been, no doubt, some silly delay with the French customs authorities and he predicted the whole business would be unraveled before teatime. Mr. Bradford, who had never the slightest attempt to conceal his intense and lifelong loathing for all things French, a.s.sumed that the filthy Frogs had misplaced the bullion, and were now trying to fix the blame for their own stupidity on the English. Mr. Henry Fowler, who had accompanied the gold shipment to Folkestone and seen it safely onto the Channel steamer, observed that the signature "Vernier" was an unfamiliar name, and speculated that the cable might be some sort of practical joke. This was, after all, a time of increasingly strained relations between the English and their French allies.

Cables requesting--- and later demanding--- clarification flashed back and forth across the Channel. By noon, it appeared that the steamship crossing from Dover to Ostend had been sunk, and the bullion lost in the mishap. However, by early afternoon it was clear the steamer had had an uneventful pa.s.sage, but almost everything else was vastly more confused.

Cables were now being fired off to all conceivable parties by the Paris bank, the French railway, the English steamship line, the British railway, and the British bank, in dizzying profusion. As the day wore on, the tone of the messages became more acrimonious and their content more ludicrous. The whole thing reached a sort of pinnacle when the manager of the South Eastern Railway in Folkestone telegraphed the manager of the Britannic Steam Packet Company, also in Folkestone: QUI EST M. VERNIER. To this, the steamship manager shot back YOUR SCURRILOUS ALLEGATIONS SHALL NOT GO UNCHALLENGED.

By teatime in London, the desks of the chief officers of Huddleston & Bradford were heaped with telegrams and cables, and office boys were being dispatched to gentlemen's homes to inform wives that their husbands would not be home for dinner, owing to urgent matters of business. The earlier atmosphere of unruffled calm and disdain for French inefficiency was now fading, replaced by a growing suspicion that something might actually have happened to the gold. And it was increasingly clear that the French were as worried as the English--- M. Bonnard himself had taken the afternoon train to the coast, to investigate the situation in Ostend at first hand. M. Bonnard was a notorious recluse, and his decision to travel was viewed as a most significant event.

By seven o'clock in London, when most of the bank's derks went home for the day, the mood of the officers was openly pessimistic. Mr. Huddleston was snappish; Mr. Bradford had the smell of gin on his breath; Mr. Fowler was pale as a ghost; and Mr. Trent's hands trembled. There was a brief moment of elation around 7:30 pm., when the customs papers from Ostend, signed by the French the previous day, arrived at the bank. They indicated that at 5 pm. on May 22nd the designated representative of Bonnard et Fils, one Raymond Vernier, had signed for nineteen sealed strongboxes from Huddlestdn & Bradford containing, according to the declaration, twelve thousand pounds sterling in bullion.

"Here is their b.l.o.o.d.y death warrant," Mr. Huddleston said, waving the paper in the air, "and if there's been any irregularity, it is wholly upon French heads." But this was an exaggeration of the legal situation, and he himself knew it.

Soon after, Mr. Huddleston received a long cable from Ostend: YOUR CONSIGNMENT NINETEEN (19) STRONG BOXES ARRIVED OSTEND YESTERDAY 22 MAY AT 1700 HOURS ABOARD SHIP "ARLINGTON" SAID CONSIGNMENT ACCEPTED BY OUR REPRESENTATIVE WITHOUT BREAKING SEALS WHICH APPEARED INTACT CONSIGNMENT PLACED IN OSTEND STRONG SAFE WITH GUARD NIGHT 22 MAY FOLLOWING OUR CUSTOM NO EVIDENCE TAMPERING SAFE GUARD CHARACTER RELIABLE MORNING 23 MAY OUR REPRESENTATIVE BROKE SEALS YOUR CONSIGNMENT FOUND CONSISTING QUANt.i.tY LEAD PELLETS FOR GUN BUT NO GOLD PRELIMINARY INQUIRY REGARDING ORIGIN PELLETS SUGGESTS ENGLISH MANUFACTURE REVIEW OF BROKEN SEALS SUGGESTS PREVIOUS BREAK AND SECONDARY SEALING SKILLFUL NATURE NOT AROUSING SUSPICION AT ORDINARY INSPECTION IMMEDIATELY NOTIFYING POLICE OFFICIALS ALSO GOVERNMENT IN PARIS REMINDING ALL OF BRITISH ORIGIN BRITISH RAILWAY BRITISH STEAMERSFIIP BRITISH SUBJECTS GUARDING THROUGHOUT REQUEST YOU INFORM BRITISH AUTHORITIES I AWAIT YOUR SOLUTION TO THIS TRUE PUZZLE.

LOUIS BONNARD, PRESIDENT.

BONNARD ET FIL3, PARIS.

ORIGINEE: OSTEND.

Mr. Huddleston's first reaction to the cable was reported to be "a heated and forceful expletive, provoked by the stresses of the moment and the lateness of the hour." He is also said to have commented extensively on the French nation, the French culture, and the personal and hygienic habits of the French populace. Mr. Bradford, even more vociferous, expressed his belief in the unnatural French fondness for intimacy with barnyard creatures. Mr. Fowler was obviously intoxicated and Mr. Trent was suffering pains in the chest.

It was nearly ten o'clock at night when the bankers were finally calm enough for Mr. Huddleston to say to Mr. Bradford: "I shall notify the Minister. You notify Scotland Yard."