XV
Sir Clinton’s Solution
“It’s a pleasure to meet Sir Clinton again,” Joan observed when they had finished their coffee. “For the last ten days or so, I’ve been dealing with a man they call the Chief Constable. I don’t much care for him. These beetle-browed officials are not my sort. Too stiff and overbearing for me, altogether.”
Sir Clinton laughed at the hit.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ve invited one of your aversions to join us. In fact, I think I hear him at the door now.”
“Inspector Armadale?” Joan demanded. “Well, I’ve nothing against him. You never let him get a word in edgeways at our interviews. Grasping, I call it.”
The door opened and the Inspector was ushered in. As he entered, a glance passed between him and Sir Clinton. In reply, Armadale made a furtive gesture which escaped the rest of the company.
“Passed in his checks,” Sir Clinton interpreted it to himself. “That clears the road.”
Joan poured out coffee for the Inspector and then turned to the Chief Constable.
“Cecil promised that you’d tell us all about everything. Don’t linger over it. We’re all in quite good listening form and we look to you not to be boring. Proceed.”
Sir Clinton refused to be disconcerted.
“Inspector Armadale’s the last authority on the subject,” he remarked. “He’s got the confession of the master mind in his pocket. I haven’t seen it yet. Suppose I give you my account of things, and the Inspector will check it for us where necessary? That seems a fair division of labour.”
“Very fair,” Una Rainhill put in. “Now, Joan, be quiet and let’s get on with the tale.”
“Before the curtain goes up,” Sir Clinton suggested, “you’d better read your programmes. First of all you find the name of Thomas Pailton, alias Cocoa Tom, alias, J. B. Foss, alias The Wizard of Woz: a retired conjurer, gaolbird, confidence-trick sharp, etc. As I read his psychology, he was rather a weak character and not over straight even in dealing with his equals. In the present play, he was acting under the orders of a gentleman of much tougher fibre.
“The next name on the programme is Thomas Marden. The police have no records of his early doings, but I suspect that Mr. Marden had cause to bless his luck in this respect, rather than his honesty. I’m sure he wasn’t a prentice hand. As to his character, I believe he was rather a violent person when roused, and he had a deplorable lack of control over a rather bad temper.
“The third name is … ?”
“Stephen Racks,” the Inspector supplied in answer to Sir Clinton’s glance of inquiry.
“Alias Joe Brackley,” Sir Clinton continued. “I think we’ll call him Brackley, since that was the name you knew him by, if you knew him at all. He was nominally Foss’s chauffeur. Actually, I think, he was the brain of the gang and did the planning for them.”
“That’s correct,” the Inspector interpolated.
“Mr. Brackley, I think, was the most deliberately unscrupulous of them all,” Sir Clinton continued. “A really dangerous person who would stick at nothing to get what he wanted or to cover his tracks.
“Then, last of all, there’s a Mr. Blank, whose name I do not know, but who at present is under arrest in America for forging the name of Mr. Kessock the millionaire. He was employed by Mr. Kessock in some capacity or other which gave him access to Mr. Kessock’s correspondence. I’ve no details on that point as yet.”
“This is the kind of stuff I always skip when I’m reading a detective story,” complained Joan. “Can’t you get along to something interesting soon?”
“You’re like the Bellman in the ‘Hunting of the Snark,’ Joan. ‘Oh, skip your dear uncle!’ Well, I skip, as you desire it. I’ll merely mention in passing that an American tourist came here a while ago and asked to see the Leonardo medallions, because he was writing a book on Leonardo. He, I believe, was Mr. Blank from America; and his job was to see the safe in the museum and note its pattern.
“I must skip again; and now we reach the night of the robbery in the museum. You know what happened then. Mr. Foss came to me with his tale about overhearing some of you planning a practical joke. His story was true enough, I’ve no doubt; but it set me thinking at once. I may not have shown it, Joan, but I quite agreed with you about his methods. It seemed a funny business to come straight to the police over a thing of that sort. Of course he had his reason ready; but it didn’t ring quite true, somehow. I might have put it down to tactlessness, if it hadn’t suggested something else to my mind.
“That pistol-shot which smashed the lamp was too neatly timed for my taste. It was fired by someone who knew precisely when the keeper was going to be gripped, and it was fired just in time to get ahead of Foxton Polegate in the raid on the showcase. That meant, if it meant anything, that the man who fired the shot was a person who knew of the practical joke. But on the face of it, Foss was the only person who knew about the joke, bar the jokers themselves. So naturally I began to suspect Foss of having a hand in the business. It was the usual mistake of the criminal—trying to be too clever and throw suspicion on to someone else.
“Now Foss wasn’t the man in white, obviously; for he came to see me while the manhunt was still in full cry. So at that stage in the business I was fairly certain that at least two people were in the game: Foss and someone else, who was the man in white. That looked like either the valet or the chauffeur, since they were the only people I knew about who were directly associated with Foss while he was here. But this
