Philip MacDonald - The Rynox Mystery

‘Heavy, sir,’ said George, ‘it is!’

Again the President stooped to the label. Yes, it bore his name; also, in red ink and capital letters—staring capitals—the words:

‘EXTREMELY PRIVATE AND

CONFIDENTIAL

PERSONAL FOR MR SALISBURY ONLY.’

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ said the President. ‘Better get a couple of men and have it brought up to my office.’

2

The President, with fat white forefinger, pressed the third of the bell pushes upon his desk.

‘Miss Winter,’ he said, to the bell’s genie, ‘have they brought up those sacks?’

‘The sacks have just come, Mr Salisbury.’

‘Right! Just give the fellows a bob each out of the Petty Cash and then I’ll come out. Most extraordinary-looking thing, isn’t it, Miss Winter?’

‘Yes, Mr Salisbury.’

Miss Winter, very severe, very neat, most efficient, went back to the outer office. The President, walking slowly after her, saw her distribution of largesse; saw the porters touching clean hats with dirty forefingers; saw the door close behind them; went out into Miss Winter’s room.

Very untidily heaped in its very tidy centre were the sacks. Miss Winter was bending down, reading the label.

‘Got a knife?’ said the President.

Miss Winter had a knife. Miss Winter always had everything.

‘Just see,’ said the President, ‘whether you can cut the string.’

Miss Winter could cut the string and did. The sacks fell apart. The President stirred one with his toe. The contents were hard, yet yielding.

‘I can’t make it out!’ said the President.

‘Shall I open a sack?’ said Miss Winter. A very practical woman.

‘Yes, yes. Let’s have a look.’

Once more Miss Winter stooped; once more the penknife came into play as it ripped the stout thread which kept the mouth of the sack closed. Miss Winter inserted a hand …

‘Good God!’ said the President.

He took two short steps and stood at Miss Winter’s shoulder. Upright again, she was holding between her hands a thick elastic-bound wad of one-pound Bank of England notes.

‘Good God!’ said the President again.

He bent himself over the mouth of the open sack and thrust in his own arm. His hand came away with yet another package …

He let the sack lie flat upon the floor, bent over it, caught it a little way down from its top and shook. Other packets fell from it upon the floor …

He looked into the sack …

There could be no doubt! The sack—it looked like a hundredweight-and-a-half corn sack—was filled, crammed, with bundles of one-pound Bank of England notes. They were not new, these notes. The bundles did not bear that solid, block-like appearance of unused paper money, but, although neat, were creased, and numbered—as Miss Winter at once was to find—in anything but series.

‘Good God! ’ said the President. Himself, with Miss Winter’s knife, he cut the threads which bound the mouth of the other sack. And this second sack was as its brother. If, indeed, there was any difference, it was that this second sack held still more bundles than the first. The President stood in the middle of the floor. Round his feet there lay, grotesque and untidy, little disordered heaps of money.

The President looked at Miss Winter. Miss Winter looked at the President.

‘I suppose,’ said the President, ‘that I am at the office, Miss Winter? I’m not by any chance at home, in bed and fast asleep?’

Miss Winter did not smile. ‘You certainly are at the office, Mr Salisbury.’

‘And would you mind telling me, Miss Winter, what these things are that I’m treading on?’

‘Certainly, Mr Salisbury. Bundles of one-pound notes, not very clean, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m going back to my room to sit down,’ said the President. ‘If you wouldn’t mind coming in again in a few minutes, Miss Winter, and telling me all over again what there is in those sacks, I should be very much obliged. Also you might empty the sacks and find out if there is anything else in them except … except … well, except bundles of one-pound notes!’

‘Very well, Mr Salisbury. And would it not be as well, perhaps, if I also ring up Crickford’s and see whether I can ascertain who is the sender of this, er … of this, er …’ Even Miss Winter for once was at a loss for words.

‘Do! Do!’ said the President. ‘And don’t forget: come in and tell me all about it all over again!’

‘Very well, Mr Salisbury.’

3

‘If,’ said F. MacDowell Salisbury to his friend Thurston Mitchell, who was Vice-President of the Naval, Military and Cosmopolitan Assurance Corporation, ‘you can beat that, I shall be much surprised.’

Mr Mitchell could not beat it. He said so. ‘If I hadn’t,’ said Mr Mitchell, ‘seen the damn’ stuff with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe you now, Salisbury … What did Crickford’s say when Winter got on to them?’

‘Crickford’s,’ said Mr Salisbury, ‘agreed to make inquiries of their branches. They did. This package was delivered yesterday evening at their Balham Receiving Office. The customer, who did not give his name, paid the proper rate for delivery, asked when that delivery would be made, and …’ Mr Salisbury shrugged his plump shoulders despairingly, ‘… just went.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘According to what Crickford’s managing director told me on the phone, the clerk said that the sender was a “tall, foreign-looking gentleman.” Little beard, broken English, rather exaggerated clothes—that sort of thing. Came in a car.’

‘Car, did he?’ said Mr Mitchell. ‘Now did they …’

Mr Salisbury shook his head sadly. ‘Mitchell, they did not. They couldn’t tell me whether that car was blue or green, open or closed, English or American. They couldn’t tell anything. After all, poor devils, why should they?’

Mr Thurston Mitchell paced the Presidential room with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders hunched, and a frown drawing his eyebrows together into a rigid bar across his high-bridged nose. He said:

‘And there wasn’t anything, Salisbury? Nothing in those sacks except money?’

‘Nothing,’ said the President. ‘Nothing, Mitchell, of any description—except one grain of corn which I have here upon my desk. I thought I’d better keep it as a souvenir.’

‘Well, I’m damned!’ said the Vice-President.

‘Quite,’ said the President, ‘probably … Yes, Miss Winter, what is it?’

Miss Winter came to the Presidential desk. There was about her a certain excitement, intensely restrained, but discernible nevertheless. She bore, rather in the manner of an inexperienced but imaginative recruit carrying a bomb, a small, oblong brown-paper parcel. She placed it upon the Presidential table. She said:

‘This has just come, Mr Salisbury. By registered post. I thought I’d better let you have it at once because … well, because I fancy that the printing on it is the same as the printing on the sack label.’

The President stared. The Vice-President came to his shoulder and did the same thing.

‘By Jove!’ said the President. ‘It is! Here, Mitchell, you open it. You haven’t had a thrill today.’

The Vice-President, having borrowed Miss Winter’s penknife, cut the parcel string, unwrapped three separate coverings of brown paper and found at last a stout, small, deal box. It had a sliding lid like a child’s pencil-box. The Vice-President slid away the lid. He looked, and put the box down before the President. He said:

‘Look here, Salisbury, if any more of this goes on, I shall go and see a doctor. Look at that!’

Mr Salisbury looked at that. What he saw was a sheet of white paper, and in the centre of the sheet of white paper a new halfpenny …