The Pit-Prop Syndicate - Freeman Wills Crofts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📗

On the next day he boarded the London train which reaches Hull at 3:09. At Paragon Station he soon singled out Beamish from Merriman’s description.

“Sorry for asking you to come in, Captain Beamish,” he apologised, “but I was anxious if possible to get back to London tonight. I heard of you from Miss Coburn and Mr. Merriman, both of whom read of the tragedy in the papers, and severally came to make inquiries at the Yard. Lloyd’s Register told me your ship came in here, so I came along to see you in the hope that you might be able to give me some information about the dead man which might suggest a line of inquiry as to his murderer.”

Beamish replied politely and with a show of readiness and candor.

“No trouble to meet you, inspector. I had to come up to Hull in any case, and I shall be glad to tell you anything I can about poor Coburn. Unfortunately I am afraid it won’t be much. When our syndicate was starting we wanted a manager for the export end. Coburn applied, there was a personal interview, he seemed suitable and he was appointed on trial. I know nothing whatever about him otherwise, except that he made good, and I may say that in the two years of our acquaintance I always found him not only pleasant and agreeable to deal with, but also exceedingly efficient in his work.”

Willis asked a number of other questions⁠—harmless questions, easily answered about the syndicate and Coburn’s work, ending up with an expression of thanks for the other’s trouble and an invitation to adjourn for a drink.

Beamish accepting, the inspector led the way to the first-class refreshment room and approached the counter opposite the barmaid whose acquaintance he had made the previous day.

“Two small whiskies, please,” he ordered, having asked his companion’s choice.

The girl placed the two small tumblers of yellow liquid before her customers and Willis added a little water to each.

“Well, here’s yours,” he said, and raising his glass to his lips, drained the contents at a draught. Captain Beamish did the same.

The inspector’s offer of a second drink having been declined, the two men left the refreshment room, still chatting about the murdered man. Ten minutes later Captain Beamish saw the inspector off in the London train. But he did not know that in the van of that train there was a parcel, labelled to “Inspector Willis, passenger to Doncaster by 4:00 p.m.,” which contained a small tumbler, smelling of whisky, and carefully packed up so as to prevent the sides from being rubbed.

The inspector was the next thing to excited when, some time later, he locked the door of his bedroom in the Stag’s Head Hotel at Doncaster and, carefully unpacking the tumbler, he took out his powdering apparatus and examined it for prints. With satisfaction he found his little ruse had succeeded. The glass bore clearly defined marks of a right thumb and two fingers.

Eagerly he compared the prints with those he had found on the taxi call-tube. And then he suffered disappointment keen and deep. The two sets were dissimilar.

So his theory had been wrong, and Captain Beamish was not the murderer after all! He realised now that he had been much more convinced of its truth than he had had any right to be, and his chagrin was correspondingly greater. He had indeed been so sure that Beamish was his man that he had failed sufficiently to consider other possibilities, and now he found himself without any alternative theory to fall back on.

But he remained none the less certain that Coburn’s death was due to his effort to break with the syndicate, and that it was to the syndicate that he must look for light on the matter. There were other members of it⁠—he knew of two, Archer and Morton, and there might be more⁠—one of whom might be the man he sought. It seemed to him that his next business must be to find those other members, ascertain if any of them were tall men, and if so, obtain a copy of their fingerprints.

But how was this to be done? Obviously from the shadowing of the members whom he knew, that was, Captain Beamish, Bulla, and Benson, the Ferriby manager. Of these, Beamish and Bulla were for the most part at sea; therefore, he thought, his efforts should be concentrated on Benson.

It was with a view to some such contingency that he had alighted at Doncaster instead of returning to London, and he now made up his mind to return on the following day to Hull and, the Girondin having by that time left, to see what he could learn at the Ferriby depot.

He spent three days shadowing Benson, without coming on anything in the slightest degree suspicious. The manager spent each of the days at the wharf until about six o’clock. Then he walked to Ferriby Station and took the train to Hull, where he dined, spent the evening at some place of amusement, and returned to the depot by a late train.

On the fourth day, as the same program seemed to be in progress, Willis came to the conclusion that he was losing time and must take some more energetic step. He determined that if Benson left the depot in the evening as before, he would try to effect an entrance to his office and have a look through his papers.

Shortly after six, from the hedge behind which he had concealed himself, he saw Benson appear at the door in the corrugated iron fence, and depart in the direction of Ferriby. The five employees had left about an hour earlier, and the inspector believed the works were entirely deserted.

After giving Benson time to get clear away, he crept from his hiding place, and approaching the depot, tried the gate in the fence. It was locked, but few locks were proof against the inspector’s prowess, and with the help of a bent wire he was