The Second Victorian Mystery MEGAPACK ™ by Robert Barr & Rudyard Kipling & Mary Fortune & L.T. Meade & E.W. Hornung

Author:Robert Barr & Rudyard Kipling & Mary Fortune & L.T. Meade & E.W. Hornung [Barr, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: mystery, detective, murder, suspense, sleuth
ISBN: 9781479405022
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2015-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

“In his pocket, you mean?” I interrupted.

“He had it in his hand when I saw him. Then the man who afterwards jumped overboard approached him, took the case without a word, held up his hand for a cab, and when an open vehicle approached the curb he stepped in, saying, ‘The Madeleine.’ I hailed a closed cab, instructed the cabman to follow the first, disguising myself with whiskers as near like those the man in front wore as I had in my collection.”

“Why did you do that?”

“As a detective you should know why I did it. I wished as nearly as possible to resemble the man in front, so that if necessity arose I could pretend that I was the person commissioned to carry the jewel case. As a matter of fact, the crisis arose when we came to the end of our cab journey. The captain did not know which was his true passenger, and so let us both remain aboard the launch. And now you have the whole story.”

“An extremely improbable one, sir. Even by your own account you had no right to interfere in this business at all.”

“I quite agree with you there,” he replied, with great nonchalance, taking a card from his pocket-book, which he handed to me.

“That is my London address; you may make inquiries, and you will find I am exactly what I represent myself to be.”

The first train for Paris left Meulan at eleven minutes past four in the morning. It was now a quarter after two. I left the captain, crew, and launch in charge of two of my men, with orders to proceed to Paris as soon as it was daylight. I, supported by the third man, waited at the station with our English prisoner, and reached Paris at half-past five in the morning.

The English prisoner, though severely interrogated by the judge, stood by his story. Inquiry by the police in London proved that what he said of himself was true. His case, however, began to look very serious when two of the men from the launch asserted that they had seen him push the Frenchman overboard, and their statement could not be shaken. All our energies were bent for the next two weeks on trying to find something of the identity of the missing man, or to get any trace of the two Americans. If the tall American were alive, it seemed incredible that he should not have made application for the valuable property he had lost. All attempts to trace him by means of the cheque on the Crédit-Lyonnais proved futile. The bank pretended to give me every assistance, but I sometimes doubt if it actually did so. It had evidently been well paid for its services, and evinced no impetuous desire to betray so good a customer.

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