The Mystery of the Sevenoaks Tunnel by Max Rittenberg
“What does it matter whether it were accident or suicide?” said Magnum into the telephone with decided irritation, because he was being interrupted in the midst of a highly complex calculation of a formula based on crystallographic angles and axes, requiring quaternions and perfect quiet.
“It matters fifty thousand pounds,” replied the legal voice at the other end of the wire. “That’s the value of his insurance policy. The company contend it was a case of suicide, and therefore the policy is null and void.”
“At the present moment,” snapped Magnum, “I don’t care if he were insured for the National Debt! Find a detective, and don’t bother
Leaving the receiver off the hook, so that he could not be rung up further, Magnum plunged again into the world of sin ? and cos ?.
The interrupter was the junior partner in East, East, and Stacey, a young man of some pertinacity as well as legal ability. He happened to have a very special interest in the case of the deceased, because the next-of-kin was a particularly charming young lady; at least, particularly charming to himself. So he jumped into a taxi and drove from Clifford’s Inn to Upper Thames Street, where the scientific consultant had his office and laboratories.
“The deuce!” was Magnum’s welcome for him.
“Awfully sorry to interrupt. How long will you take to finish?” was the soft answer designed to turn away wrath.
“Till midnight!” snapped Magnum, hunching his bushy reddish eyebrows, and thrusting out his straggly reddish beard belligerently.
“I’ll wait,” decided Stacey. “I’ll go and talk scandal with Meredith.”
Ivor Meredith was a young Welshman, an analytical genius and Magnum’s right-hand man. He was the very essence of shyness and modesty. Stacey went into the laboratories and began to chaff him in order to kill time.
“What’s this I hear about you and a certain fascinating widow?” was his opening gambit.
Young Meredith, blushing furiously, protested that he didn’t know any fascinating widow. Which was perfectly true, as he was mortally afraid of all the feminine sex.
In an hour’s time Magnum appeared from his office. His crystallographic analysis had borne out his personal guess exactly, and the thundercloud temper had vanished from his skies. He found that his young Welsh protege had scored off Stacey by challenging him to blow a glass bulb, which looks delightfully simple and in reality requires months of practice. Stacey, perspiring over the blow-lamp, was surrounded by a score of horrible bulbous monstrosities.
“Better stick to the law,” smiled Magnum. “You can make a successful lawyer even if you have ten thumbs to your hands. Now what’s this trouble about the insurance policy?”
Stacey answered him seriously with a resume of the case. Abel Jonasson, a somewhat eccentric recluse, a man of fifty-four and a bachelor, had insured his life for fifty thousand pounds with the Empire Assurance Company six months previously. On a railway journey through the Sevenoaks tunnel he had been alone in a second-class compartment. In some way he had fallen out of the moving train; had been killed possibly by the fall; and had certainly been run over by a train passing on the other line of metals. A coroner’s jury had returned an open verdict. On the advice of their doctors and counsel, the Empire Company, a firm of first-class reputation, had decided to fight the claim up to the House of Lords if necessary.
They contended that, for a man of his limited income, a fifty thousand pound policy was far too heavy, unless he deliberately intended to take his life in order to secure a large sum of money for his relatives. Such cases had cropped up before.
“Then they shouldn’t have insured for such a heavy amount,” interrupted Magnum.
“Well, they did,” answered Stacey. “They took his premium, and now they fight the claim. Miss Gerard, his niece and next-of-kin, has very slender means, and so-”
Something in Stacey’s tone gave Magnum the clue to this unusual interest in a client of slender means.
“Another wedding present to buy!” he interjected cynically.
Stacey took the remark on the half-volley, and flicked it neatly over the net:
“Help us, and we’ll consider it as the wedding-present.”
“I don’t see that the case lies in my province. Try Scotland Yard.”
“I have. No satisfaction. A scientist is wanted. Scotland Yard can’t tell me why the dead man carried in his pocket a phial of atoxyl.”
“Specific against sleeping sickness.”
“A Central African disease. It’s unknown in England. Why should he carry the antidote about with him?”
“Have his serum examined.”
“That’s been done. No trace of the disease has been found. But the Empire doctor claims that Jonasson must have
Magnum pulled out a disgracefully malodorous pipe from his baggy, shapeless working-jacket, and proceeded to stuff it with a smoking mixture of his own blending, strong to the point of rankness.
Meredith hastened to their library above the office, and returned with one of the twenty bulky volumes of Watts’s Dictionary of Chemistry. His chief took it, and turned thoughtfully to the half-column description of the chemical properties of the drug, one of the arsenic derivatives. Presently he remarked:
“Have you considered the possibility of foul play?”
“That was one of our first thoughts,” returned Stacey. “But Jonasson was seen alone in the compartment at Tonbridge Junction, only five miles from the tunnel, and there were no traces on the footboard of anyone clambering along from one compartment to another.”
“Windows?”
“All shut.”
“A man under the seat?”
“No traces.”
“When was the discovery made?”
