“It was rather smart of you to trace the cab,” Thorndyke remarked.
“You’ve got to keep your eyes skinned in our line of business,” said
Miller. “But now we come to the real twister. From the time those two
men went down Great Turnstile, nobody has set eyes on either of them.
They seem to have vanished into thin air.”
“You found out who the other man was, then?” said I.
“Yes. The restaurant manager knew him; an old chap named Luttrell. And
we knew him, too, because he has a thumping burglary insurance, and when
he goes out of town he notifies his company, and they make arrangements
with us to have the premises watched.”
“What is Luttrell?” I asked.
“Well, he is a bit of a mug, I should say, at least that’s his character
in the trade. Goes in for being a dealer in jewels and antiques, but
he’ll buy anything—furniture, pictures, plate, any blooming thing. Does
it for a hobby, the regular dealers say. Likes the sport of bidding at
the sales. But the knock-out men hate him; never know what he’s going to
do. Must have private means, for though he doesn’t often drop money, he
can’t make much. He’s no salesman. It is the buying that he seems to
like. But he is a regular character, full of cranks and oddities. His
rooms in Thavies Inn look like the British Museum gone mad. He has got
electric alarms from all the doors up to his bedroom and the strong-room
in his office is fitted with a puzzle lock instead of keys.”
“That doesn’t seem very safe,” I remarked.
“It is,” said Miller. “This one has fifteen alphabets. One of our men
has calculated that it has about forty billion changes. No one is going
to work that out, and there are no keys to get lost. But it is that
strong-room that is worrying us, as well as the old joker himself. The
Lord knows how much valuable stuff there is in it. What we are afraid of
is that Shemmonds may have made away with the old chap and be lying low,
waiting to swoop down on that strong-room.”
“But you said that Luttrell goes away sometimes,” said I.
“Yes; but then he always notifies his insurance company and he seals up
his strong-room with a tape round the door-handle and a great seal on
the door-post. This time he hasn’t notified the company and the door
isn’t sealed. There’s a seal on the door-post—left from last time, I
expect—but only the cut ends of tape. I got the caretaker to let me see
the place this morning; and, by the way, doctor, I have taken a leaf out
of your book. I always carry a bit of squeezing wax in my pocket now and
a little box of French chalk. Very handy they are, too. As I had ’em
with me this morning, I took a squeeze of the seal. May want it
presently for identification.”
He brought out of his pocket a small tin box from which he carefully
extracted an object wrapped in tissue paper. When the paper had been
tenderly removed there was revealed a lump of moulding wax, one side of
which was flattened and bore a sunk design.
“It’s quite a good squeeze,” said Miller, handing it to Thorndyke. “I
dusted the seal with French chalk so that the wax shouldn’t stick to
it.”
My colleague examined the “squeeze” through his lens, and passing it and
the lens to me, asked:
“Has this been photographed, Miller?”
“No,” was the reply, “but it ought to be before it gets damaged.”
“It ought, certainly,” said Thorndyke, “if you value it. Shall I get
Polton to do it now?”
The superintendent accepted the offer gratefully and Thorndyke
accordingly took the squeeze up to the laboratory, where he left it for
our assistant to deal with. When he returned, Miller remarked:
“It is a baffling case, this. Now that Shemmonds has dropped out of
sight, there is nothing to go on and nothing to do but wait for
something else to happen; another burglary or an attempt on the
strong-room.”
“Is it clear that the strong-room has not been opened?” asked Thorndyke.
“No, it isn’t,” replied Miller. “That’s part of the trouble. Luttrell
has disappeared and he may be dead. If he is, Shemmonds will probably
have been through his pockets. Of course there is no strong-room key.
That is one of the advantages of a puzzle lock. But it is quite possible
that Luttrell may have kept a note of the combination and carried it
about him. It would have been risky to trust entirely to memory. And he
would have had the keys of the office about him. Anyone who had those
could have slipped in during business hours without much difficulty.
Luttrell’s premises are empty, but there are people in and out all day
going to the other offices. Our man can’t follow them all in. I suppose
you can’t make any suggestion, doctor?”
“I am afraid I can’t,” answered Thorndyke. “The case is so very much in
the air. There is nothing against Shemmonds but bare suspicion. He has
disappeared only in the sense that you have lost sight of him, and the
same is true of Luttrell—though there is an abnormal element in his
case. Still, you could hardly get a search-warrant on the facts that are
known at present.”
“No,” Miller agreed, “they certainly would not authorise us to break
open the strong-room, and nothing short of that would be much use.”
Here Polton made his appearance with the wax squeeze in a neat little
box such as jewellers use.
“I’ve got two enlarged negatives,” said he; “nice clear ones. How many
prints shall I make for Mr. Miller?”
“Oh, one will do, Mr. Polton,” said the superintendent. “If I want any
more I’ll ask you.” He took up the little box, and, slipping it in his
pocket, rose to depart. “I’ll let you know, doctor, how the case goes
on, and perhaps you wouldn’t mind turning it over a bit in the interval.
Something might occur to you.”
Thorndyke promised to think over the case, and when we had seen the
superintendent launched down the stairs, we followed Polton up to the
laboratory, where we each picked up one of the negatives and examined it
against the light. I had already identified the seal by its shape—a
_vesica piscis_ or boat-shape—with the one that I had seen on Mr.
Luttrell’s finger. Now, in the photograph, enlarged three diameters, I
could clearly make out the details. The design was distinctive and
curious rather than elegant. The two triangular spaces at the ends were
occupied respectively by a _memento mori_ and a winged hour-glass and
the central portion was filled by a long inscription in Roman capitals,
of which I could at first make nothing.
“Do you suppose this is some kind of cryptogram?” I asked.
“No,” Thorndyke replied. “I imagine the words were run together merely
to economise space. This is what I make of it.”
He held the negative in his left hand, and with his right wrote down in
pencil on a slip of paper the following four lines of doggerel verse:
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