“Yes, you’ve made a lucky shot, haven’t you?” the second man said to French. “I remember the trunks and the lady they belonged to, because I couldn’t understand why anyone should want to bring trunks of blankets across the Atlantic. I’ve never known anyone do it before.”
“You didn’t make any remark about them,” French asked.
“No, but she did. She said she reckoned I hadn’t often seen trunks of blankets brought over from America. You see, I was a bit suspicious at first, and was examining the things pretty carefully. I said that was so, and she said she was taking back a small but valuable collection of porcelain ornaments, which she would pack in the blankets, and that when she had to bring the trunks anyway, she thought she might as well bring the packing as well and so save buying new. I thought the whole business a bit off, but there was nothing dutiable in the case, and it wasn’t my job to interfere. Is there anything wrong about it?”
“I don’t know,” French told him. “I think the woman was a crook, but I’m not on to the blanket stunt yet. By the way, is she in one of those groups?”
The young man identified Mrs. Ward without hesitation, and French, finding he had learned all that the customs men could tell him, resumed his way to the police station.
He wondered what this blanket business really did mean. Then as he walked slowly along with head bent forward and eyes vacantly scanning the pavement, a possible explanation occurred to him. These trunks, apparently, were required solely as properties to assist in the fraud. Mrs. Root, the wife of a Pittsburg magnate, would scarcely arrive at the Savoy from America without American trunks. But when Mrs. Root came to disappear, the trunks would become an embarrassment. They would have to be got rid of, and, as a matter of fact, they were got rid of. They must therefore contain nothing of the lady’s, no personal possession which might act as a clue to its owner. But they must contain something. Empty trunks would be too light, and might be observed by the chambermaid, and comments might be occasioned among the hotel staff which might reach the management, and which would become important if Mr. Williams rang up to make his inquiries. But blankets would exactly fill the bill; indeed, French could think of nothing more suitable for the purpose. They would give the trunks a moderate weight, they would not supply a clue to Mrs. Ward, and they would be cheap, while their presence could be accounted for sufficiently reasonably to the customs officers. Yes, French thought, it was a probable enough explanation.
Arrived at the police station, he sent in his name with a request to see the officer in charge.
Superintendent Hayes had been stationed in London before he got his present appointment, and had come across French on more than one occasion. He therefore greeted the Inspector cordially, found him a comfortable chair, and supplied him with an excellent cigar.
“From Trinidad,” he explained. “I get them direct from a man I know out there. And what’s the best news of you?”
They discussed old times for some minutes, then French turned to the business in hand.
“It’s an interesting case,” he said as he gave the other the details, continuing, “The woman must be a pretty cool hand. She could easily invent that tale about losing her passport, for old Williams’s edification, but under the circumstances her coming to you about it was a bit class.”
“She had a nerve, yes,” the Superintendent admitted. “But, you see, it was necessary. She must have known that the absence of the passport would strike Williams as suspicious, and it was necessary for her to remove that suspicion. She couldn’t very well get a bag of that kind stolen without informing the police, so she had to inform them. She would see how easily Williams could check her statement, as indeed he did. No, I don’t see how she could have avoided coming to us. It was an obvious precaution.”
“I quite agree with all you say,” French returned, “but it argues a cool customer for all that; not only, so to speak, putting her head into the lion’s mouth, but at the same time calling his attention to its being there. Anyway, I’ve got to find her, and I wish you’d let me have details about her. I’ve got some from the Olympic people, but I want to pick up everything I can.”
The Superintendent telephoned to someone to “send up Sergeant McAfee,” and when a tall, cadaverous man entered, he introduced him as the man who had dealt with the business in question.
“Sergeant McAfee has just been transferred to us from Liverpool,” he explained. “Sit down, McAfee. Inspector French wants to know some details about that woman who lost her handbag coming off the Olympic some seven weeks ago. I think you handled the thing. Do you remember a Mrs. Root of Pittsburg?”
“I mind her rightly, sir,” the man answered in what French believed was a Belfast accent. “But it wasn’t coming off the Olympic she lost it. It was later on that same day, though it was on the quays right enough.”
“Tell us all you can about it.”
The Sergeant pulled out his notebook. “I have it in me other book,” he announced. “If ye’ll excuse me, I’ll get it.”
In a moment he returned, sat down, and turning over the dog’s-eared pages of a well-worn book, began as if reciting evidence in court:
“On the 24th November last at about 3:00 p.m., I was passing through the crowd on the outer quays when I heard a woman cry out. ‘Thief, thief,’ she shouted, and she ran up and caught me by the arm. She was middling tall and thinnish,
