Max Pemberton - Murder Mysteries Boxed-Set - 40+ Books in One Edition

"That's nat'ral," interrupted the American; "but who's going to say that they have heard of it? I've got a head pretty full of items, but this is a cablegram to me. You don't suppose the dude's people are going round to all the newspaper men with the tale: 'Here's five hundred thousand off to St. Petersburg again; come and have a straight talk about it.' They keep it under lock and key; that's their chart of safety, as any mule could see."

"I quite follow you," said Messenger, whose hair was streaming back from his forehead in the fresh breeze, and whose eyes shone queerly, as if reflecting the ardent thought of the keen mind behind them; "yet, when I really think of the matter, I can remember that I have heard the tale before. All these financial houses send bullion in big sums to the Continent at one time or other, and it's rare that they've any other guard than a couple of trusted clerks."

"And why should they?" asked Kenner, to whom reflection brought some disappointment; "why should they? Who could interfere with them? You've got to leave sticking up trains to our boys; it's played out in your country, I reckon. Even Red Rube himself wouldn't have taken it on, passage paid!"

"All that's very true," said Messenger, "but it's premature. At the present moment I am putting a very simple question to myself. Let's suppose that a man of some intelligence came to hear that Capel, Martingale & Co. were sending half-a-million to Russia say in three months' time. We'll presume he's got money behind him, and is a man of big ventures. Naturally it would strike him that there's a weak spot in the arrangement somewhere, and that a clever hand, with time before him, should be able to lay it bare. I'd like to bet a hundred that I'd find it with five minutes' thought."

"Maybe," said Kenner, shaking his head as one who has no belief, "maybe; but I'd like to wager on the other thing. Not that you ain't smart, Prince—I don't know your fellow in the States—but it's just this: I don't believe there is any weak spot. Why, figure it out! They mail the money by a special car, by a special steam-boat, and another special car. Where are you to scoop the jack-pot if—you've got a whole bank behind you?"

"The weak spot," said Messenger with great deliberation, "is the tug. If the man that I have spoken of had the work in hand, he would make it his first business to square the skipper of the tug. After that his course would be easy."

"How do you make that out? What could they do with a tug full of money between Harwich and the Scheldt? By gosh! you've the quickest head for bad conclusions that I've tapped yet! Don't you see that the packet would be cabled as missing to every port in the Channel, and stopped away this side of Ushant light? It's as plain to me as the hilltop yonder."

"Because you haven't brought any grip on it. The further I go into it the easier it seems. Let me give you the whole business in a few words. The man I have mentioned would, to begin with, leave this place to-night, and follow this Sydney Capel to London. There he would associate with him closely (taking rooms in his house, if possible) for the next three months. He would use what mind he had to the making of a friendship; and the leisure from this occupation would be given to the promotion of a good understanding (bought at any price) with the skipper of the tug who generally crosses with the money. It is no great strain to imagine that this man might find important business in St. Petersburg at the very moment when Sydney Capel next left with the bullion. For him to get a permit to go through by the special and the tug would be no unreasonable thing. I can imagine, too, that if he had a friend with a fast steam yacht, and if this friend met the tug by agreement in the North Sea, the way would be clearer. Do you follow me thus far?"

"In a bee-line!" replied the American, who smoked with a fury begotten of excitement.

"Well, we can see all the rest without a long bill on thought. The skipper of the tug has men to depend on aboard with him; the clerks, if they are not bought, get a couple of raps from a revolver-butt; the tug is scuttled, the money is shipped upon the yacht, and she steams north to reach the Atlantic. After that it's a mere pleasure trip."

He ceased to speak, the quick glow of interest passing from the face it had lighted as the sun passes from a cloud. But Kenner rose quickly from the grass bank, and with blanched face and dancing eyes cried—

"Prince, you're a genius, by thunder!"

"Do you think so?" asked Messenger. "But I was only giving a suppositional case. You'd want a cast-iron man to take the business on, and money behind him."

Kenner answered the suggestion with his customary and simple exclamation: "Let's get!"

The afternoon was passing, the west being already touched with that arc of deeper crimson which is the herald of twilight, and there were few wayfarers upon the road to Monaco. For some part of the way the men walked, as they had come, in a meditative silence, but upon the threshold of the town the American stopped of a sudden, and asked his companion the abrupt question—

"Can you leave here to-night?"

Messenger displayed no shadow of surprise that it was put to him. He had been waiting for it since they had left the alcove of the orchids; and he answered it with another interrogation—

"If I could get five hundred and the promise of a couple of thousand in a month, I'd see my way."

"It's a big sum, Prince," urged Kenner laconically.

"And a big thing. I don't know that the figure isn't below the mark. Of course it would be share and share whatever's got as between man and man, and this money I want can go against the account when the time comes. You would bring the Semiramis to London directly I wire for you."

"That's fair-sounding," replied Kenner, "and I don't know that I've got any thing against it. I'll chew it in my mind for half-an-hour, any way."

"Take all the time you like," said the Prince; "to-morrow will do as well as to-day, though something might be got if a man followed this youngster to London to-night. By the way, if I go, you'll have Fisher with you for a couple of months' cruise—that's understood?"

"Why, certainly; but he'll be ashore later on?"

"Ashore—I fancy not! Would you be having him shout my history in the streets when my back's turned? If we go, he goes; that's as certain as the sun is sinking."

They entered the garden as they spoke, and went to Kenner's room. Two hours later Sydney Capel left for London; and Arnold Messenger, commonly known as "The Prince," went with him.

Table of Contents

At one bell in the first dog—the day being Wednesday, and the month July—the steam yacht Semiramis rounded the South Foreland, and dropped anchor among a fleet of wind-bound vessels which lay off the white town of Deal. She had taken a pilot from the Solent, for her skipper, Roger Burke, a huge man from San Francisco, knew nothing of English waters, and the main part of the crew was made up of niggers and of lascars. She had for mate a slim, quiet man, named Parker; and her chief engineer was a Frenchman, whom she had picked up during a long cruise in the Pacific. Yet she had been built in the Thames for the American, Jake Kenner; and in the matter of speed, or, indeed, of design, she had few equals among pleasure boats. I have heard it said that she was one of the first yachts to be equipped with a tubular boiler and with twin screws; but her owner had gone to Thorneycroft's to buy one of the fastest vessels floating, and the firm had built for him a craft with all the rakish beauty of a cruiser combined with the speed and hull of a torpedo-catcher.

Not that she was by any means an enormous yacht, judging her by later-day standards. Her comparatively large engines allowed but restricted accommodation aft; and while her whole length was nearly two hundred feet, much of it was given to boilers and bunkers, and little to solid comfort. Yet she was a ship-shape-looking craft, with a crew of twenty men; and those on board had the satisfaction of knowing that she could hold her own with most things afloat if the need were that she should show her heels. Unhappily, I have nothing but a photograph of her to use in this account, for she was a wreck within a few weeks of the date when I first see her in my mind in the Downs; and of her idle, easygoing crew but few lived to carry the remembrance of her.