The Cheyne Mystery

to have started up. But this is my story for what it’s worth. Before the war I was on one of the Hudson and Spence boats and I had the luck to get into the R.N.R. when hostilities broke out. I stayed on in my old ship till she was torpedoed a couple of years later, then I was appointed third officer on the Maurania. We were on a trip from South Africa to Brest with army stores, when one day, just as we came into the English Channel, we were attacked by a U-boat. We had an 18-pounder forward, and by a stroke of luck we gave old Fritz one on the knob that did him in. The boat went down and a dozen of the crew were left swimming. We put out a boat and picked one or two of them up. The skipper was clinging on to a lifebelt, but just as we came up he let go and began to sink. I was in charge of the boat, and some fool notion came over me⁠—I think in the hurry I forgot he was a U-boat skipper⁠—but anyhow like a fool I got overboard and got hold of him. It was nothing like a dramatic rescue⁠—there was no danger to me⁠—and we were back on board inside fifteen minutes.”

French and Cheyne were listening intently to this familiar story. So far it was almost word for word that told by Dangle. Apparently, then, there was at least one point on which the latter had told the truth.

“We weren’t out of trouble,” Price resumed, “and next day we came up against another submarine. We exchanged a few shots and then a British destroyer came up and drove him off. But I had the luck to stop a splinter of shell, and when we got to Brest I was sent to hospital. The U-boat skipper had got a crack on the head when his boat went down, and he was sent in too. By a chance we got side by side beds in the same ward, and used to talk a bit, though he was a rotter, even for a Boche.”

Price paused to draw on his cutty pipe, expelling great clouds of smoke of a peculiarly acrid and penetrating quality. Then, the others not speaking, he went on:

“It turned out that the wound on Schulz’s head⁠—his name was Schulz⁠—was serious, and he grew steadily worse. Then one night when the ward was quiet, he woke me and said he knew his number was up and that he had a secret to tell me. We listened, but all the other fellows seemed asleep, and then he told me he could put me in the way of a fortune⁠—that he had hoped to get it himself after the war, but now that it would be a job for someone else. He said he would tell me the whole thing, and that I might make what I could out of it, if only I would pledge myself to give one-eighth of what I got to his wife. He gave me the address⁠—somewhere in Breslau. He asked me to swear this and I did, and then he took a packet from under his pillow and handed it to me. ‘There,’ he said, ‘the whole thing’s there. I put it in cipher for safety, but I’ll tell you how to read it.’ Well, he began to do so, but just then a sister came in, and he shut up till she would leave. But the excitement of talking about the thing must have been too much for him. He got a weak turn and never spoke again.”

“But,” Cheyne interposed, “what about the hard copper? Dangle told us about Schulz’s discovery.”

Price gazed at him vacantly for some moments and then suddenly smote the table.

“I’ve got it!” he cried with an oath. “Dangle! I remember that chap now! He was in the next bed on the other side of Schulz. That’s right! I couldn’t call him to mind when you mentioned him before. Of course! He heard the whole tale, and that’s what started him on this do.”

“I know,” Cheyne returned. “He admitted that all right. But he told us about the hard copper. You haven’t mentioned that.”

Price shook his head.

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he declared. “What do you mean by hard copper?”

“Dangle mentioned it. He was listening to the conversation. He told us all that about Schulz’s story of the fortune, and about his wife and all that, just as you have, but he said Schulz went on to explain what the fortune was: that he had hit on a way of treating copper that made it as hard as steel. The cipher contained the formula.”

Again Price shook his head.

“All spoof,” he observed. “Not a word of truth in it. Schulz never mentioned copper or said anything more than I’ve told you.”

French spoke for the first time.

“We found this Dangle a man of imagination, all through, and it is easy to see why he invented that particular yarn. By that time he had undoubtedly read the cipher, and he wanted something to mislead Mr. Cheyne as to its contents. The story of the hard copper would start a bias in Mr. Cheyne’s mind which would tend to keep him off the real scent.” He paused, but his companions not speaking, continued: “Now we have that bias cleared away, at least one interesting fact emerges. The whole business starts with the sea⁠—the U-boat commander, Schulz, and it looks as if it was going to end up with the sea, the tramp, the L’Escaut.”

As French said these words an idea flashed into his mind, and he went on deliberately, but with growing excitement:

“And when we connect the idea of a U-boat commander giving a message which ends with a sea expedition, with the fact, which I have just discovered, that the essence of his cipher is the position of the markings