The Surakarta/Chapter 8
VIII
MR. McADAMS CONVERSES WITH TWO STRANGERS
Detective McAdams remained at the Tonty to carry on his investigation, after Hereford had left him.
As at six o'clock that night eighteen hours would have passed since the disappearance of the Surakarta, the six o'clock editions of the evening papers—which appeared on the street between two and three in the afternoon—made mention of this fact significantly. Those papers which boasted a socialistic tendency hinted already that the failure of the police was due to the wealth of the persons concerned; otherwise, in their opinion, the authorities would at least have removed the plaster from the walls and ceiling of the room and taken up enough of the flooring to have established the impossibility of a concealed outlet. The more sensational journals, which as an excuse for printing many columns about crimes of all sorts assumed toward all crimes an analytical attitude, gave elaborate descriptions of the room in which they enumerated even the baggage and articles of clothing of the Javanese. Papers of a conservative sort contented themselves with remarking that a room which after eighteen hours of study had failed to reveal to the police any means of outlet would not be likely to show one at all.
Detective McAdams bought all of these papers as soon as they appeared on the streets. As McAdams had already determined to his full satisfaction which was the easiest of the chairs in the lobby, and as he already had twice had his shoes shined, with that enjoyment in the process which is felt only by the man with an expense account who is well paid by the day, the detective, after glancing at the headlines, carried the papers into the bar for a more deliberate perusal. He had read carefully through them all and had again taken up the first one to re-read, when the two remaining seats at his small table were taken by two men. McAdams, while pretending to continue his reading, attentively inspected these new neighbors over the top of his paper.
The larger of the two men he placed without difficulty. The bar of the Tonty all day had been crowded with reporters, plain-clothes men, curiosity seekers and rounders, and plainly this man belonged to the latter class. Among the many florid gentlemen of his kind who were present, he was remarkable only as being more florid, more smiling, larger and giving even more plainly than the rest the impression that he was well acquainted with the downtown district between the hours of midnight and four in the morning. But the smaller of the two McAdams could not place. Of compact and muscular build, he had the dress, the bearing and the ease that the detective associated only with city breeding.
"I tell you, Lund," this man remarked as soon as they were seated, "They're on the wrong track in that investigation upstairs."
McAdams, with his eyes upon his paper, noted that the name of the larger man was Lund.
"Something," this smaller man asserted, "has been overlooked."
"Not if you mean in the room," said McAdams, laying down his paper.
Both turned and stared at McAdams appraisingly, as though resenting his intrusion.
"Then you have seen the room?" the first speaker demanded, satisfied by his inspection.
"I am sufficiently acquainted with the room," said McAdams guardedly, "to be certain that the newspaper accounts are correct and that there was no means of exit."
"However, I was not referring just now to the room but to the persons implicated."
"What persons?" McAdams asked.
"Whom do the police now suspect?"
"They find it impossible, I believe, to suspect any one," McAdams replied. "Because there are only two persons who could have had any possible information as to how to open the box and the police are obliged to admit that neither of these could have taken the emerald."
The detective's interlocutor smiled appreciatively and slapped his hand lightly on the table.
"Among the persons implicated in this affair," he said impressively, "there must necessarily be some one for whom that admission of innocence need not be made. The necessity is to locate that person. My own interest in the matter, of course you understand, is purely mental. My name is Du Brock—my friend's name Lund. I am one of those people who cannot bear to see a matter which offers an intricate and fascinating intellectual problem ignorantly bungled. You, no doubt, share my conviction that the police have courted failure through confining their examinations too narrowly to the room itself; for I see that you have taken some pains to become conversant with the case."
He pointed to the newspaper on the table.
"Probably," he then went on, "you are much better informed as to the particulars than I am. So if you will enumerate to me the persons whom the police might possibly suspect, perhaps between us we can shed some light upon the problem."
McAdams hesitated and looked searchingly at his companions. Then he reflected that he was not known to them and was under no necessity of giving them his name.
"I believe," he said, with deep interest, "the suspicions of the police first fell on Baraka. It was believed, because of the complete impossibility of the robbery as he told it, that Baraka himself might have made way with the jewel. That was at once investigated and disproved."
"By evidence of Baraka's devotion to the Soesoehoenan?"
"By that, and by the immense personal misfortunes likely to be suffered by Baraka through the disappearance of the stone. Baraka has twice needed a physician today and the doctor says that his prostration cannot be assumed."
"We will grant, then, that Baraka has been faithful to the Soesoehoenan and that he has not been tempted by its value to make away with the jewel," Du Brock admitted after reflection. "However, we must still inquire whether he cannot have made away with it for some other reason."
"It is hard to imagine any other reason."
"Very, for in fact I can think of only one. Baraka may have suspected that an attempt to steal the stone was planned by one of his attendants. He would very likely, in that case, take summary vengeance upon the unfaithful one after the oriental custom. He would, I feel sure, at once shoot the man he had reason to suspect. Let us imagine, in that case, Baraka's position. He is in a strange land and unacquainted with its laws. At the same time he cannot help but know that an execution of that sort would not pass unchallenged in this country. He must have known that he himself would be arrested and obliged to account for his act. Necessarily his arrest would separate him from the emerald which was in his charge. The hotel already has been aroused by his shots. Under such circumstances Baraka in an agony of anxiety may have hastily concealed the body of his attendant, taken the jewel from the box and concealed it on his person until he should have an opportunity to give it to Miss Regan, and accounted for the disturbance he had made and the condition of his room by claiming to have been robbed by a thief."
McAdams considered this. "In that case," he remarked, "the number of persons in the Javanese suite would today be reduced by one."
"Yes. Is that the case?"
"No; for all those who arrived last night—and these were the only ones—have been examined today by the police."
Du Brock and Lund looked at one another and nodded as though satisfied.
"We must take up, then, the next who might be suspected," Du Brock observed.
"You have already mentioned them," McAdams replied. "The suspicions of the police fell next—or at least their investigations next concerned—Baraka's attendants individually, in spite of Baraka's protestations that all seven of them are almost fanatically devoted to himself and chosen by him for that reason."
"Baraka's word is not sufficient for that; for he may be mistaken."
"He is absolutely certain also that none of them knew how to open the box."
"Again, his certainty, even on that subject, is not sufficient."
"Also, none of them could have been in the room, or he would have been found there when the door was broken open."
"A third time still, that is not sufficient; for that must have been equally true of whoever took the stone—yet the stone, as we know, was taken and no one was found there."
McAdams thought for several moments. "Certainly," he said at last, "among seven men all selected for their fidelity you will not claim that a universal conspiracy could be possible. Whatever the reason or the inducement, some—if only one—of those seven would have remained faithful; and the whereabouts of all seven at the time this robbery occurred is accounted for by all the others. For they all give evidence that, at the time of the robbery, they were all in the outer rooms of the Javanese suite and the doors between these outer rooms were open so that they could not be mistaken. The evidence of the presence of each one is exact, circumstantial and corroborated by all the others, which it could not be unless all were telling the truth or all had conspired together."
"I am satisfied it is true then," Du Brock agreed. Lund also gave his concurrence and asked: "Who is the next one implicated?"
"The others whose names have been connected with the case," McAdams answered, "are, first, the Soesoehoenan who would certainly have done nothing to interfere with a bargain he had been to so much trouble to carry out, and, even if he did, would have been under no necessity to arrange for the stealing of his own emerald; Miss Regan, who was equally under no necessity for stealing it, since she had only to wait a few hours for it to be presented to her; and Mr. Hereford, who could not have stolen it if he had wished. With so capricious a young lady as Miss Regan, whom we may imagine to be somewhat more in love with the emerald than with the Soesoehoenan, no doubt some very ingenious theories may be manufactured to show that she had a hand in the disappearance of the stone; but none of those theories are even possible in the circumstances of the case."
"I am quite content to admit that neither Miss Regan nor the Soesoehoenan can have anything to do with it," Du Brock conceded. "And there is no one else whom it is possible to suspect in the case?"
"No one," McAdams admitted; "and at the same time the complete innocence of all these may be said to be proved."
Du Brock stretched himself in his chair and appeared to be thoughtfully inspecting the ceiling. Lund looked intently into his glass.
"Is Mr. Hereford in love with Miss Regan?" Du Brock demanded abruptly.
"No; he is concerned in this matter only as her trustee."
"Mr. Hereford is a very clever man, I understand."
"Mr. Hereford is a very brilliant man," McAdams corroborated; "but even if he had been clever and brilliant enough to devise some scheme by which he was able to enter and leave the room under the circumstances in this case, he would not have been able to open the box. Those who have seen the box—except Miss Regan and Baraka—have seen at once that it could not be opened by anyone who had received no instruction beyond watching it opened once by someone else, which was all Hereford had done."
"I will admit that," Du Brock agreed, "provided there had been no previous opportunity for preparation. Otherwise I would prefer not to forget that we are dealing in this case with a highly educated and able man brought in contact with a mechanism, complicated enough no doubt, but devised in an age of slower and less definite thinking. There are, if newspaper accounts have stated it right, some millions of different ways in which the levers of the box can be manipulated; at the same time, there are—again if the newspaper reports are correct—only four figures each with a head and two hands. Do you hold the opinion that, provided Mr. Hereford had been able to obtain some previous knowledge of the arrangement of the box, it would have been impossible for him to provide himself with some memory system, or key, in letters or in figures, which would have enabled him to memorize the eighteen necessary manipulations?"
Du Brock and Lund waited inquiringly for McAdams to reply, but the detective only glared at them angrily.
"Also," Du Brock continued, when it became evident McAdams was not going to speak, "I personally would prefer not to forget that Mr. Hereford has at his command all the engines of modern business. There is, if I am not misinformed, cable communication with Java. Do you think it impossible for Mr. Hereford, if he doubted his ability to get all the information needed in his one visit, to have supplemented the information to be gained in that way by convincing the Soesoehoenan, through misuse of Baraka's name, that Baraka was having trouble in opening the box and needed further instructions by cable?"
McAdams continued to glare at them with a resentfulness which showed the professional impossibility of his suspecting Hereford so long as he was in Hereford's pay.
"You gentlemen are acquainted with Mr. Hereford—either of you?" he demanded belligerently.
"We have not that pleasure," Du Brock answered.
"Then perhaps you will tell me what your interest may be in making such ridiculous suppositions to get Mr. Hereford suspected?"
"You mistake," said Du Brock serenely, "We have no animus against Mr. Hereford, and our interest in the case is only that which we have stated."
McAdams fiercely swept up his newspapers and left them. His first impulse was to report at once to Hereford the two busybodies who were apparently spreading the impression that he must have taken the emerald. His second thought prompted him that it might not be well for himself to have Hereford know that he had engaged freely in conversation about the case with casual strangers.
He finally called Hereford up and made an appointment with him at his rooms for that evening.