The Law of the Four Just Men · The Man Who Was Plucked (3/3)

“He hit him over the head with a money-rake. You came to Chaucer the next day and told him your croupier was dead, seeking to extract money from him. You soon found he was ruined. You found also he had a very beautiful daughter, and it occurred to you that she might be of use to you in your nefarious schemes, so you had a little talk with her and she agreed to enter your service in order to save her father from ruin and possibly imprisonment.”

“This is a fairy story you’re telling me, is it?” said Birn, but his face had gone a pasty white and the hand that took the cigar from his lips trembled.

“To bolster up your scheme,” Gonsalez went on, “you inserted an advertisement in the death column of The Times and also you sent to the local newspaper a very flowery account of Mr. Jinkins’ funeral, which was also intended for Chaucer and his daughter.”

“It’s Greek to me,” murmured Mr. Birn with a pathetic attempt at a smile.

“I interviewed Mr. Chaucer this morning and was able to assure him that Jinkins is very much alive and is living at Brighton, and is running a little gambling-house⁠—a branch of your many activities, and by the way, Mr. Birn, I don’t think you will see Elsie Chaucer again.”

Birn was breathing heavily.

“You know a hell of a lot,” he began, but something in Leon’s eyes stopped him.

“Birn,” said Gonsalez softly. “I am going to ruin you⁠—to take away every penny of the money you have stolen from the foolish men who patronise your establishments.”

“Try it on,” said Birn shakily. “There’s a law in this country! Go and rob the bank, and you’d have little to rob,” he added with a grin. “There’s two hundred thousand pounds’ worth of securities in my bank⁠—gilt-edged ones, Mr. Clever! Go and ask the bank manager to hand them over to you. They’re in Box 65,” he jeered. “That’s the only way you can ruin me, my son.”

Leon rose with a shrug.

“Perhaps I’m wrong,” he said. “Perhaps after all you will enjoy your ill-gotten gains.”

“You bet your life I will.” Mr. Birn relit his cigar.

He remembered the conversation that afternoon when he received an urgent telephone message from the bank. What the manager said took him there as fast as a taxi could carry him.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with your strong box,” said the bank manager, “but one of my clerks who had to go into the vault said there was an extraordinary smell, and when we looked at the box, we found a stream of smoke coming through the keyhole.”

“Why didn’t you open it?” screamed Birn, fumbling for his key.

“Partly because I haven’t a key, Mr. Birn,” said the bank manager intelligently.

With shaking hands the financier inserted the key and threw back the lid. A dense cloud of acrid yellow smoke came up and nearly stifled him⁠ ⁠… all that remained of his perfectly good securities was a black, sticky mess; a glass bottle, a few dull gems and nothing⁠ ⁠…

“It looks to me,” said the detective officer who investigated the circumstance, “as though you must have inadvertently put in a package containing a very strong acid. What the acid is our analysts are working on now. It must have either leaked out or burst.”

“The only package there,” wailed Mr. Birn, “was a package containing a diamond necklace.”

“The remnants of which are still there,” said the detective. “You are quite sure nobody could get at that package and substitute a destroying agent? It could easily be made. A bottle such as we found⁠—a stopper made of some easily consumed material and there you are! Could anybody have opened the package and slipped the bottle inside?”

“Impossible, impossible,” moaned the financier.

He was sitting with his face in his hands, weeping for his lost affluence, for though a few of the contents of that box could be replaced, there were certain American bonds which had gone forever and promissory notes by the thousand which would never be signed again.