The Cheyne mystery

by Freeman Wills Crofts

Cook was an elderly woman, small and plain and stout. She had been with them since they had bought the house, and though he had not seen much of her, she had always seemed good-tempered and obliging. He had heard his mother speak well of her and he was sorry she should have had so distressing an experience. But he didn’t fancy she would be one to give burglars much trouble.

Susan, the parlormaid, was of a different quality. She was tall with rather heavy features, and good looking after a somewhat coarse type. If a trifle sullen in manner, she was competent and by no means a fool, and he felt that nefarious marauders would find her a force to be reckoned with.

By dint of patient questioning he presently knew all they had to tell. It appeared that shortly after the ladies had left a ring had come at the door. Susan had opened it to find two men standing outside. One was tall and powerfully built, with dark hair and clean shaven, the other small and pale—pale face, pale hair, and tiny pale mustache. They had inquired for Mr. Maxwell Cheyne, and when she had said he was out the small man had asked if he could write a note. She had brought them into the hall and was turning to go for some paper when the big man had sprung on her and before she could cry out had pressed a handkerchief over her mouth. The small man had shut the door and begun to tie her wrists and ankles. Susan had struggled and in spite of them had succeeded in getting her mouth free and shouting a warning to cook, but she had been immediately overpowered and securely gagged. The men had laid her on the floor of the hall and had seemed about to go upstairs when cook, attracted by Susan’s cry, had appeared at the door leading to the back premises. The two men had instantly rushed over, and in a few seconds cook also lay bound and gagged on the floor. They had then disappeared, apparently to search the house, for in a few minutes they had come back and carried first Susan and then cook to the latter’s room at the far end of the back part of the house. The intruders had then withdrawn, closing the door, and the two women had neither heard nor seen anything further of them.

The whole episode had a curious effect on Cheyne. It seemed, as he considered it, to lose its character of an ordinary breach of the law, punishable by the authorized forces of the Crown, and to take on instead that of a personal struggle between himself and these unknown men. The more he thought of it the more inclined he became to accept the challenge and to pit his own brain and powers against theirs. The mysterious nature of the affair appealed to his sporting instincts, and by the time he rejoined the sergeant in the study, he had made up his mind to keep his own counsel as to the Plymouth incident. He would call up the manager of the Edgecombe, tell him to carry on with his private detective, and have the latter down to Warren Lodge to go into the matter of the burglary.

He found the sergeant attempting ineffectively to discover finger-prints on the smooth walls of the safe, sympathized with him in the difficulty of his task, and asked a number of deliberately futile questions. On the ground that nothing had been stolen he minimized the gravity of the affair, questioned his power to prosecute should the offenders be forthcoming, and instilled doubts into the other’s mind as to the need for special efforts to run them to earth. Finally, the man explaining that he had finished for the time being, he bade him good night, locked up the house and went to bed. There he lay for several hours tossing and turning as he puzzled over the affair, before sleep descended to blot out his worries and soothe his eager desire to be on the track of his enemies.

Chapter III.
The Launch “Enid”

For several days after the attempted burglary events in the Cheyne household pursued the even tenor of their way. Cheyne went back to Plymouth on the following morning and interviewed the manager of the Edgecombe, and the day after a quiet, despondent-looking man with the air of a small shopkeeper arrived at Warren Lodge and was closeted with Cheyne for a couple of hours. Mr. Speedwell, of Horton and Lavender’s Private Detective Agency, listened with attention to the tales of the drugging and the burglary, thenceforward appearing at intervals and making mysterious inquiries on his own account.

On one of these visits he brought with him the report of the analyst relative to the dishes of which Cheyne had partaken at lunch, but this document only increased the mystification the affair had caused. No trace of drugs was discernible in any of the food or drink in question, and as the soiled plates or glasses or cups of all the courses were available for examination, the question of how the drug had been administered—or alternatively whether it really had been administered—began to seem almost insoluble. The cocktail taken with Parkes before lunch was the only item of which a portion could not be analyzed, but the evidence of the barmaid proved conclusively that Parkes could not have tampered with it.

But in spite of the analysis, the coffee still seemed the doubtful item. Cheyne’s sleepy feeling had come on very rapidly immediately after drinking the coffee, before which he had not felt the slightest abnormal symptoms. Mr. Speedwell laid stress on this point, though he was pessimistic about the whole affair.

“They know what they’re about, does this gang,” he admitted ruefully as he and Cheyne were discussing matters. “That man in the hotel that called himself Parkes—if we found him tomorrow we should have precious little against him. However he managed it, we can’t prove he drugged you. In fact it’s the other way round. He can prove on our evidence that he didn’t.”