The Alcester Emeralds (A Jules Poiret Mystery Book 33) Read online

  The eyes of everyone in the room had been turned on them during their short conversation. The politician walked through the room slowly, then, with a bow and a gesture of the hand, he said, dramatically, “The necklace belongs to the gentleman.”

  The tall American and the man sitting next to him rose immediately. The taller, more refined looking one, held out his hand and the auctioneer handed him the case he had paid so dearly for. The American nonchalantly opened the box and for the first time the green radiance of the jewels lit up the room, causing audience members to crane their necks to see it better. It was a most reckless thing to do. He examined the necklace minutely for a few moments, then snapped the lid shut again, and calmly put the box in his outside coat pocket. Poiret later told me that he noticed that the light overcoat he wore possessed pockets made extraordinarily large, as if on purpose for this very case. He then walked calmly down the room, past some unhappy men, who without hesitation would have cut his throat for even the smallest emerald in the collection. He didn’t even take the trouble to put his hand on the pocket, which contained the case, or in any way attempted to protect it. All seemed dumbfounded by his audacity. His friend followed closely and more aggressively at his heels, then abruptly stopped and turned around as the man with the emeralds disappeared through the door. He took two guns out of his pockets, which he pointed at the astonished crowd. They had stood up, now that the auction had concluded, to leave the room, but the sight of these deadly weapons made them shrink back onto their seats again.

  The man with his back to the door spoke in a loud voice, “These here pistols are loaded and ready. They belong to my friend, who has just left. This room, here, contains half a dozen “crooks,” whom my friend wishes to see nowhere near him and the emeralds. Now, gentlemen, no honest man here will object to giving the buyer five minutes in which to get away, is that so?”

  “My name is Inspector Watkins,” said my friend, “I’m with Scotland Yard and together with Poiret, here, a private detective, I’m responsible for the safety of the buyer and the jewels. Now, my man, stand aside, and let the police protect your friend.”

  “Hold on, copper,” warned the man in an American accent, turning one weapon directly on him, while the other was moving constantly, pointing all over the room. “My friend is from New York and he distrusts the police as much as he does thieves. You may be twenty policemen, but even so I ask for these five minutes. If they are not given to me, I’m going to take them as a right. Any man, who goes near the door will get shot.”

  It is one thing to face death in war, but quite another to advance coldly toward the muzzle of a gun. The look of determination in the man’s eyes convinced all that he meant what he said. Not Inspector Watkins, not the other officers considered the next five minutes, precious as they were, worth paying with their life for. None in the room moved hand or foot, until the clock slowly struck three.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” said the American, as he calmly opened the door and quickly disappeared into the hallway. Watkins and Poiret rushed out almost on his heels, and hurriedly questioned the policemen in the hallway. They had all seen both Americans come out and one with the greatest leisure stroll out of the building into Kensington Road, and the second one leave the building quickly through a side door. As no one had asked them to look out for either they paid no further attention to them, something which made Poiret furious.

  He quickly walked into Kensington Road, his thoughts consumed with the whereabouts of the emeralds and their owner. He left Inspector Watkins to organize a search party for the scoundrel with the pistols. A short distance away from the auction house Poiret found me. I was standing, rather dazed I must admit, at the crossing of two roads. I was gazing alternately down a short street and towards a square. I’m afraid the very fact that I was there alone was proof enough that I had failed.

  “Haven,” asked Poiret, wiping the transpiration from his forehead with his handkerchief, “where is the American with the emeralds?”

  “He went down this street,” I answered truthfully.

  ”Then why is it you are here?” was his question.

  “Well, I followed him this far, when a man came up that short street, and without a word the American handed him the jewel-box. He then immediately continued walking in the direction the other man had come from. The new man jumped into a cab, and drove towards Hyde Park.”

  “And you, Haven, did not follow any one of them?”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, Poiret, it all happened so suddenly. They gave me no time to decide on my next course of action.”

  “Mon ami,” cried the little man, despairingly, “you should have followed the emeralds. That, it is clear.”

  “I didn’t know which to follow, the man or the jewels.”

  “So you followed rien de rien!” he said shaking his head furiously.

  He was right. I had failed in my mission.

  Poiret continued after a short pause, “The new man to whom he gave the box, was he an American also?”

  “Let me think. No! He was English.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Well, he looked English and he spoke English.”

  “He spoke?”

  “Not to the American, but to the cabman he said, “Drive to Leicester Square as quickly as you can.”

  “Please to describe the man, Haven.”

  “Well,” said I, “he was a head shorter than the American. He had a black beard and moustache, both rather neatly trimmed, and looked like a painter.”

  “Like the painter? Pourquoi?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Poiret shook his head and asked me to follow him back to the auction house. The auction room was by now nearly empty. Poiret told Inspector Watkins what I had seen and I was asked to repeat everything and most importantly the descriptions of both the new man and the cabdriver. The policemen, both in plain clothes and in uniform opened their notebooks and took down the particulars. After that Watkins scattered the men to the various taxi stands and underground and railway stations, with orders to make inquiries there, and to arrest any one of the three persons connected to the crime should they be so fortunate as to find any of them.

  I now learned how the rogue with the guns had been able to use the side door to disappear so quickly as he did. After extensive interrogations, it became clear that to the left of the entrance of the auction room was a door that gave access to the rear of the building. Normally this door was locked, but that day the door was found to be open and the lock tampered with. This allowed the ruffian to quickly escape from the building.

  Seeing the futility of remaining at the auction house, Inspector Watkins invited Poiret and me to accompany him to his office at Scotland Yard. Soon the policemen he had sent to the cab stands began to report in. The examinations of these cabdrivers proved a very tedious business indeed, but whatever Poiret may think of the investigative methods of the police, they are patient. In their eyes, if a haystack is searched long enough, the needle will be found. They did not discover the needle they were looking for, but they did come upon a clue, which was quite as important, if not more so.

  It was nearly ten o’clock at night when a cabman answered a policeman’s oft-repeated question in the affirmative and was brought into Watkins’s office.

  The experienced inspector asked, “Did you pick up a passenger at three o’clock on Kensington Road near Barings bank? The passenger had a short black beard. He carried a small box in his hand and ordered you to drive to Leicester Square.”

  The cabman seemed puzzled.

  “I took up a passenger resembling the description, but he wore the black beard when he got out of the cab,’ he replied.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Very simple. When he got in he had no beard and no mustache, but at the end of the ride, when I turned to him to accept my fare he was wearing a short black beard.’

  “Was he an Englishman?’

  “Yes, sir,” said
the cabbie. “His accent was quite pronounced, maybe Manchester, maybe Liverpool.”

  “Was he carrying a box?”

  “Not at all. He was holding a small leather bag in his hands.”

  “I say!” said I surprised. “A bag?”

  “Monsieur, please to tell to us where to did he tell you to drive?” asked Poiret.

  “In fact, I had stopped alongside the curb, when I saw the man you described, with the black beard and box in his hands, hold up his hand for a cab, but another cab cut in ahead of me. I was about to get out and give my colleague hell, when my passenger stepped in and said, “Follow that cab in front of us wherever it goes.”

  Poiret turned with some indignation to me.

  “Haven, you told nothing of the second cab to Poiret,” he said angrily. “You said that the American, he had gone down the street. Yet this cabdriver, he explains to us that the man must have met another one, obtained from him the leather bag, turned around, and stepped into the cab directly next to you.”

  “I say!” I stammered. “I could hardly look in two directions at the same time. When the American went down the street, I concentrated all my attention on the cab, which was where the jewels were.”

  “And you saw nothing of the second cab right at your elbow?” asked Watkins dismissively.

  “Well the street is rather long and at that time of day it was full of cabs,” I retorted in my defense.

  “Haven, I’m beginning to think you’re blind,” said the inspector.

  “Non, Monsieur,” countered Poiret, “if anyone he is blind, it is not Haven, but Poiret. It is his fault that he sent one man outside instead of two, because he completely overlooked the possibility of the jewel-box and the owner being separated.”

  Watkins nodded haughtily and continued his interrogation of the cabman.

  “Where did you drop your passenger off?”

  “At Leicester Square the cab in front of me stopped, but only for a minute. It then drove quickly to Victoria Station, where it came to a standstill. My fare got out, and I saw he now wore a short black beard, which he had evidently put on during the ride. He gave me a nice tip. I have no complaints about that.”

  “That is good to hear,” said the inspector, with a biting voice. “And the man in the cab you were following? What did he do?”

  “He also stepped out, paid the cabman, and walked away.”

  “Monsieur, please to tell to Poiret, did he look around, or did he appear to know that he was being followed?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And the man in your cab, Monsieur?’

  “He ran after the first man down the street.’

  The plan of the tall American was now perfectly clear to me. It was evidently a huge conspiracy to defraud the English Government, probably by foreign secret agents. The handbag must have contained various items, which would enable him to disguise himself. He must have left it in some shop down the street, or else someone was waiting with it for him. The handing over the loot to another man was not so risky as it had at first appeared, because he immediately followed that man, who was probably a fellow spy. I surmised that they took the train to Dover, as from there they could escape to the Continent.

  Inspector Watkins was not impressed by my theory, however. According to him everything the buyer had done was perfectly justifiable and within the law, and seemed, in truth, merely a well-laid plan for escaping observation from any nefarious individual. He would have been left to leave except for one reason, the five minutes, which his friend with the guns had won for him.

  “If it had not been for those five minutes, I would not have the slightest excuse for arresting him,” Watkins explained. “But he is at least an accessory after the act in that piece of brutality. So now I can lawfully arrest him and every person with him, and if they are onboard a ship, I will demand its return to Dover, no matter where it is at sea.”

  With a map of the southern part of England before us we proceeded to make some calculations. It was now almost eleven o’clock at night. The thieves had had seven hours in which to travel. This would place them in Dover. The navigation of the harbor was difficult at all times, and almost impossible after dark. There were chances of the ship running aground, and then there was the inevitable delay at the pier. So we estimated that the buyer and his emeralds were still in Dover, though not for long. Looking up the timetable we found out that there were still two trains to Dover, the next at eleven twenty-five, which reached Dover at about three in the morning. We therefore quickly left for Waterloo Station, after Watkins ordered his sergeant to call Dover police and have them block the exit of all passenger ships out of Dover till daylight.

  With Poiret and Watkins, I got into a cab and drove to the station. On arrival Watkins went into the station master’s office, and got into communication with Scotland Yard. There he heard that not far away from London the owner of a small yacht had reported his vessel stolen to local police. The description of the man, who had pointed his gun at the captain of the yacht, was the same as the man we were after. Watkins immediately called the river master, but he replied that no yacht had left the River Thames and entered the North Sea within the past several hours. The inspector then instructed him to hold the vessel, if he saw it, until he had arrived. He also ordered the local police to send enough men to the river delta to enforce this command.

  So we drove along the Thames, binoculars in hand. Our journey was slow, because of the darkness. It did however enable Watkins to receive and to send telephone messages as we drove down the river. I was quite well aware that the yacht could have put about before it had sailed a mile, and returned back to London. Also, it might have landed its passengers anywhere along the river. We, however, found no abandoned yachts, at least not the sea-worthy one we were looking for.

  But a trap most carefully set can be prematurely sprung by inexperience, or more often by the eagerness of a local functionary, who fails to understand his instructions. We received a most annoying message. A police station fifty miles from London reported that one of its policemen had found the yacht. The man shouted to the captain to halt, threatening him with all the pains and penalties of the law if he refused. The captain did refuse, went full speed ahead, and disappeared in the darkness. Watkins was beside himself with anger.

  “Through this blunder those on board the yacht have received warning that we’re on their track,” he thundered.

  The only positive news we surmised from this was that the men were still on the yacht and they were still on their way to the North Sea. This gave direction to our investigation and from experience I knew how important that was.

  It was well after midnight when we reached the river master’s headquarters. As was to be expected, nothing had been seen or heard of the yacht. It gave Watkins some satisfaction to order the local policemen to sail along the river in the direction of London, and report if they learnt the yacht’s whereabouts. We sat down in the river master’s office and waited. There was little sense in sending men in cars to scour the river banks at this time of night, for the river delta was wide and without a boat to reach the yacht, their presence on the banks was futile. On the other hand, there was every chance that the captain would refuse to land, because he did not know his vessel was in a trap from which it could not escape. The men on the boat knew that if they were arrested that their punishment would be severe.

  Towards two o’clock the river master came in and said the green and red lights of an approaching craft were visible, and as he spoke the yacht whistled. It was immediately surrounded by police boats. The yacht was forced to shore, which it did. Watkins went onboard and arrested the captain. The captain furiously protested that he was innocent and a victim of police brutality. Watkins took him into the river master’s station and closed the door. It was only when Poiret offered him a cup of coffee that he calmed down.

  “Monsieur,” said my friend, softly, “please to tell to Poiret where did you come from?”

  “L
ondon.”

  “Who engaged you to make this voyage, Monsieur?”

  “No one! The yacht was hired by an American.”

  “They paid you well, I suppose?” came in Watkins.

  “Enough!”

  “I ask you to be careful of your answers. You were ordered by a policeman earlier tonight to halt. Why did you not do so?”

  “He had no right to order me, so I went on.”

  “You knew very well it was the police who ordered you, and you ignored the command. Again I ask you why you did so.”

  “Monsieur,” interrupted Poiret, “you had how many passengers on board?’

  “Two, sir.”

  “Did you put them ashore between here and London?”

  “No, sir! All I know is that in the dark one of them went overboard, and we couldn’t find him again.”

  “Overboard?” I asked. “But which one?’

  “The short man.”

  “Then the tall man, the American is still aboard!” said Watkins. “Officer…”

  “What tall American, sir?”

  “Captain,” said Watkins brusquely, “you must not trifle with me. The American, who engaged you where are you hiding him?”

  “Oh, no, sir! He has never been aboard.”

  This news flabbergasted all of us. It took some time before Watkins was able to continue, “Do you mean to tell me that the second man, who came on your yacht in London is not the American who paid you?”

  “Again, sir, no. And again, sir, the American was a smooth-faced man. This man wears a black beard.”

  “Yes, a false beard.” Watkins sighed deeply. “Look, the way I see it is this. Your master wasn’t using the yacht, so you thought you might as well accept the offer of the American to help him. If it had not been for your master unexpectedly arriving at the yacht yesterday, we would have never known how these thieves had gotten away.”

  “Thieves?” asked the captain with a worried voice. “I did not know that, sir. I understood from the American that I was to take on one passenger a few miles down the river. But at about three o’clock two men showed up. One came aboard with a small box in his hand, the other with a small bag. Each said he was the passenger in question. I did not know what to do, so I left London with both of them on board. Sir, I just wanted my money and to then bring the yacht safely back to its dock.”