The Cheyne Mystery

L’Escaut.”

“But how did Sime find your rooms?”

“Through Susan. Susan told me all about it afterwards. She went out after James and saw me climbing over the wall with the tracing. She followed me to my rooms and immediately telephoned to Sime. When Sime called she was with him, and while I changed my coat Sime let her into the studio and she hid behind an easel until we were gone. She searched till she found the tracing and then simply walked out. The gang had intended to go to Antwerp the following week in any case, but this business upset their plans and they decided to start immediately. Dangle went on and arranged for the L’Escaut to leave some days earlier. The rest of us put up at Ghent till she was ready to sail.” But little further remains to be told. The few bars of gold still left on the Silurian were soon raised and the two ships set sail, reaching Chatham some five days later. All the bullion theoretically belonged to the Crown, but under the special circumstances a generous division was made whereby twenty-five percent was returned to the finders. As Price refused to accept the whole amount an amicable agreement was come to, whereby Cheyne, Joan, and Price each received almost one-third, or £200,000 apiece. Of the balance of over £20,000, £10,000 was given to Susan Dangle by Joan’s imperative directions. She said that Susan was not a bad girl and had turned up trumps during the trouble on the L’Escaut. £1,000 went to Inspector French⁠—also Joan’s gift, and the remainder was divided among the officers and men of the Admiralty salvage boat.

A few days after landing Maxwell Cheyne and Joan Merrill had occasion to pay a short visit to the church of St. Margaret’s in the Fields, after which Cheyne whirled his wife away to Devonshire, so that she might make the acquaintance of his family and see the country where began that strange series of events which in the beginning of the story I alluded to as The Cheyne Mystery.

List of Illustrations

1. Two diagrams of a flask, divided down the middle and containing liquids in both parts. In the second diagram, the flask is tipped, and liquid pours from the right half only.

2. A torn scrap of paper, showing part of a bill for “1 chambre” and “1 petit déjeuner,” totaling to 28 50. The ends of a few other words are visible at the edges of the paper.

3. A full-page image of dozens of circles. Their arrangement appears to be random. Most circles contains either a letter or a number, with the numbers ranging from 1 to 36. Eight or nine circles instead contain a short, irregularly-shaped line. Words are placed in between the circles, arranged in a loop through the entire image, reading clockwise “England expects every man to do his duty.”

Colophon

The Cheyne Mystery
was published in 1926 by
Freeman Wills Crofts.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Robin Whittleton,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2024 by
Brian Raiter
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans from the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
The Cheyne Mystery,
a painting completed in 1926 by
Salomon van Abbé.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
February 21, 2026, 8:48 p.m.
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Uncopyright

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