“I am sure Sir Ralph would answer in the affirmative,” replied Lord Flanborough.
“Ask him,” she challenged.
He passed out of the compartment scowling at the offending Fonso and made his way to Sir Ralph. He had not intended putting the question, but some chance remark of the baronet’s just before the train reached London gave him an opportunity of introducing the subject.
“Would you care to marry Moya without the settlement we agreed, Ralph?”
“What on earth do you mean?” asked Sir Ralph, astonished out of his sulks. Money was a subject which invariably aroused him from the deepest lethargy.
“I mean,” said his future father-in-law, “suppose I say ‘You love Moya and all that sort of thing. You are a very rich man, you can afford to keep her, take her without a settlement,’ what would you answer?”
“Certainly not!” said Sir Ralph furiously, “certainly not! I don’t understand this business at all, Flanborough, I really don’t understand it. We made an arrangement and now, it seems, you want to back out of it. What is the objection to the settlement?”
“I have no objection at all,” admitted Lord Flanborough uncomfortably, “but Moya thinks that money is a big factor in your choice of her.”
“Of course it is,” said Sir Ralph with brutal directness. “I was very fond of Moya, but the settlement was a big consideration.”
“I see,” said Lord Flanborough incoherently, “Moya’s idea of course. …”
Michael met them at the station and noticed the constraint of the party. He understood the reason when a bedraggled Moya and a young man, whose face was crisscrossed with scratches and whose clothes were in threads, made their appearance. There was no explanation possible and Michael wisely asked for none. He handed over Lord Flanborough and his friend to the care of the city detective officer in charge of the case and when they had gone he turned to Moya.
“Have you two people been fighting?” he asked.
“Father’s horribly angry with me,” she said, “because I am going to marry Fonso.”
He stared at her in amazement.
“Do you mean to tell me that you are not going to marry Ralph?”
“I am not,” she said resolutely.
“And this is Fonso?”
The girl nodded.
Michael threw back his head and filled the station with laughter.
“You don’t know Fonso, do you?” she said. “He’s horribly poor. Aren’t you, dear?”
“Horribly,” admitted the young man but did not seem unhappy.
“And you are going to marry him?” said Michael.
“Of course I am going to marry him,” said the girl wrathfully. “I didn’t expect that you would disapprove.”
“Disapprove?” he chuckled and catching her up in his strong arms he kissed her.
“We will all go along and have some grub,” he said; “dash home and make yourself respectable, Moya. I see your father has left his car for you. Meet me at Sebo’s in an hour’s time.”
XIII
The Chronology of a Great Theft
It is necessary to tell the story of what was undoubtedly one of the strangest and most audacious crimes recorded in the annals of crime with greater detail and at greater length than is ordinarily necessary. Le Flavier of the French police, who is surely the greatest living authority on the subject of modern crime, has likened Kate Westhanger’s masterpiece (he does not refer to her, by the way) to the first of the Napoleonic campaigns against Italy and has published an elaborate treatise showing the points of resemblance which are not so far fetched as some of the critics, in their hasty review of this work, are justified in saying.
Kirschner, a little quoted authority, but nevertheless a brilliant and talented philocriminologist, has said that it would be humanly possible to reduplicate such a crime and that at any rate it would be wholly impossible to excel the ingenuity which planned the strategics of the issue.
At 8:30 on the night of May 14th the Charter Queen, eight thousand tons, commander T. Brown, came to her moorings in E-basin, No. 3 Quay of the Seahampton Docks. She carried a hundred-and-twenty third class passengers, seventy-four second class and fifty-nine first class passengers, a general cargo and in her strongroom forty-four thousand, eight hundred pounds of bar gold. They were made up of four-hundred and forty-eight hundred-pound ingots, bearing the stamp of the Central Rand Gold Extraction Company.
The passengers were landed and despatched by special trains to London, preceded by another train carrying the mails. The mail train left at 9:27, the passenger at 9:42. By 10:17 the gold ingots had been landed, checked and conveyed to a waiting train where they were checked again under the superintendence of Inspector K. Morris of the Dock police. At 10:22 the engine backed into the train and was coupled up and the superintendent of the line being unavoidably absent (he was discovered locked in an empty house the next morning), the driver received his “right away” from Assistant-Inspector Thomas Massey, who had arrived that day from London and who spoke to the driver and fireman before the train pulled out.
“You know this road, I suppose?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” replied the driver. “I have been down here several times.”
The inspector was not wholly satisfied. In the first place, he resented seeing “foreign drivers” on his road, but the two men had arrived from London bearing a letter from Sir Ralph to the superintendent of the road, a letter which afterwards proved to be a forgery. The letter instructed the superintendent to give the men charge of the engine, offering, as a reason, their reliability and the fact that they were two of the best drivers at the North Central, which railway was under the control of Sir Ralph Sapson.
The train pulled out and from this onward its adventures began.
From the moment it left Seahampton Town station, the train was never out of sight for longer than ten minutes. Every signal box along the line had received special instructions to particularly note its
