The main Tilbury road runs within a few hundred yards of the village of Rainham, and it was at this point, only a few miles distant from Tilbury, that the lorry disappeared. Two motorcyclist policemen, who had gone out to meet the gold convoy and who had received a telephone message from the Ripple road to say that it had passed, grew uneasy and telephoned to Tilbury.
It was an airless morning, with occasional banks of mist lying in the hollows, and part of the road, especially near the river, was covered with patches of white fog, which dispersed about eight o’clock in the morning under a southeasterly wind. The mist had almost disappeared when the search party from Tilbury pursued their investigations and came upon evidence of the tragedy which the morning was to reveal. This was an old Ford motor car that had evidently run from the read, miraculously missed a telegraph pole, and ditched itself. The machine had not overturned; there were no visible marks of injury; yet the man who sat at the wheel was stone dead when he was found. An immediate medical examination failed to discover an injury of any kind to the man, who was a small farmer of Rainham, and on the face of it it looked as though he had died of a heart attack whilst on his way to town.
Just beyond the place where he was found, the road dips steeply between high banks. It is known as Coles Hollow, and at its deepest part the cutting is crossed by a single-track bridge, which connects two portions of the farm through which the road runs. The dead farmer and his car had been removed when Reeder and Inspector Simpson of Scotland Yard, who had been put in charge of the case, arrived on the spot. No news of any kind had been received of the lorry; but the local police, who had been following its tracks, had made two discoveries. Apparently, in going through the cutting, the lorry had run almost head-on into the wall of the bank on the right, for there was a deep scoop in the clayey soil which the impact had hollowed out.
“It almost appears,” said Simpson, “that the lorry swerved here to avoid the farmer’s car. There are his wheel tracks, and you notice they were wobbling from side to side. Probably the man was already dying.”
“Have you traced the lorry tracks from here?” asked Reeder.
Simpson nodded and called a sergeant of the Essex Constabulary, who had charted the tracks.
“They seem to have turned up north toward Becontree,” he said. “As a matter of fact, a policeman at Becontree said he saw a large lorry come out of the mist and pass him, but that had a tilt on it and was going toward London. It was an army lorry, too, and was driven by a soldier.”
Mr. Reeder had lit a cigarette and was holding the flaming match in his hand, staring at it solemnly.
“Dear me!” he said, and dropped the match and noticed that its flame was soon extinguished.
And then he began what seemed to be a foolish search of the ground, striking match after match.
“Isn’t there light enough for you, Mr. Reeder?” asked Simpson irritably.
The detective straightened his back and smiled. Only for a second was he amused, and then his long face went longer than ever.
“Poor fellow!” he said softly. “Poor fellow!”
“Whom are you talking about?” demanded Simpson, but Mr. Reeder did not reply. Instead, he pointed up to the bridge in the centre of which was an old and rusted water wagon, the type which certain English municipalities still use. He climbed up to the bank and examined the iron tank, opened the hatches and groped inside, lighting matches to aid his examination.
“Is it empty?” asked Simpson.
“I am afraid it is,” said Mr. Reeder, and inspected the worn hose leading from its iron spindles. He descended the cutting more melancholy than ever.
“Have you thought how easy it is to disguise an ordinary army lorry?” he asked. “A tilt, I think the sergeant said, and on its way to London.”
“Do you think that was the gold van?”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“I’m certain,” he said.
“Where was it attacked?”
Mr. Reeder pointed to the mark of the wheels on the side of the road.
“There,” he said simply, and Simpson growled impatiently.
“Stuff! Nobody heard a shot fired, and you don’t think our people would go down without a fight, do you? They could have held their own against five times their number, and no crowd has been seen on this road!”
Mr. Reeder nodded.
“Nevertheless, this is where the convoy was attacked and overcome,” he said. “I think you ought to look for the lorry with the tilt, and get on to your Becontree man and get a closer description of the machine he saw.”
In a quarter of an hour the police car brought them to the little Essex village, and the policeman who had seen the wagon was interviewed. It happened a few minutes before he went off duty, he said. There was a thick mist at the time, and he heard the rumble of the lorry wheels before it came into sight. He described it as a typical army wagon. So far as he could tell it was gray, and had a black tilt with “W.D.” and a broad arrow painted on the side, “W.D.” standing for War Department, the broad arrow being the sign of the Government. He saw one soldier
