The Cheyne mystery

by Freeman Wills Crofts

“Now, I don’t know if you’ll believe me, Mr. Cheyne, but though as a matter of fact, I overheard everything he said, I didn’t mean to listen. I was so tired and dreamy that I just didn’t think of telling him I was awake, and indeed if I had thought of it, I don’t believe I should have had the energy to move. You know how it is when you’re not well. Then when I did hear it was too late. I just couldn’t tell him that I had learned his secret.”

As Dangle spoke there was a knock at the door and a waiter arrived with coffee. Dangle paid him, and without further comment poured some out for Cheyne and handed it across. Cheyne was by this time so interested in the tale that his resentment was forgotten, and he took the cup with a word of thanks.

“Go on,” he added. “I’m interested in your story, as you said I should be.”

“I thought you would,” Dangle answered with his ready smile. “Well, Schulz began by telling Price that he knew he wasn’t going to live. Then he went on to say that he felt it cruelly hard luck, because he had accidentally come on a secret which would have brought him an immense fortune. Now he couldn’t use it. He had been going to let it die with him, but he remembered what he owed to Price and had decided to hand over the information to him. ‘But,’ he said, ‘there is one condition. You must first swear to me on your sacred honor that if you make anything out of it you will, after the war, try to find my wife and hand her one-eighth of what you get. I say one-eighth, because if you get any profits at all they will be so enormous that one-eighth will be riches to Magda.’

“I could see that Price thought he was delirious, but to quiet him he swore the oath and then Schulz told of his discovery. He said that before he had been given charge of the U-boat he had served for over six months in the Submarine Research Department, and that there, while carrying out certain experiments, he had had a lucky accident. Some substances which he had fused in an electric furnace had suddenly partially vaporized and, as it were, boiled over. The white-hot mass poured over the copper terminals of his furnace, with the result that the extremely high voltage current short-circuited with a corona of brilliant sparks. He described the affair in greater detail than this, but I am not an electrician and I didn’t follow the technicalities. But they don’t matter, it was the result that was important. When the current was cut off and the mass cooled he started in to clean up. He chipped the stuff off the terminals, and he found that the copper had fused and run. And then he made his great discovery: the copper had hardened. He tested it and found it was, roughly speaking, as hard as high carbon steel and with an even greater tensile strength! Unintentionally he had made a new and unknown alloy. Schulz knew that the ancients were able to harden copper and he supposed that he had found the lost art.

“At once he saw the extraordinary value of this discovery. If you could use copper instead of steel you would revolutionize the construction of electrical machinery; copper conduits could be lighter and be self-supporting—in scores of ways the new metal would be worth nearly its weight in gold. He could not work at the thing by himself, so he told his immediate superior, who happened also to be a close personal friend. The two tried some more experiments, and to make a long story short, they discovered that if certain percentages of certain minerals were added to the copper during smelting, it became hard. The minerals were cheap and plentiful, so that practically the new metal could be produced at the old price. This meant, for example, that they could make parts of machines of the new alloy, which would weigh—and therefore cost—only about one-quarter of those of ordinary copper. If they sold these at half or even three-quarters of the old price they would make an extremely handsome profit. But their idea was not to do this, but to sell their discovery to Krupps or some other great firm who, they believed, would pay a million sterling or more for it.

“But they knew that they could not do anything with it until after the war unless they were prepared to hand it over to the military authorities for whatever these chose to pay, which would probably be nothing. While they were still considering their course of action both were ordered back to sea. Schulz’s friend was killed almost immediately, Schulz being then the only living possessor of the secret. Panic-stricken lest he too should be killed, he prepared a cipher giving the whole process, and this he sealed in a watertight cover and wore it continuously beneath his clothes. He now proposed to give it to Price, partly in return for what Price had done, and partly in the hope of his wife eventually benefiting. I saw him hand over a small package, and then I got the disappointment of my life, and so, I’m sure, did Price. Schulz was obviously growing weaker and he now spoke with great difficulty. But he made a final effort to go on; ‘The key to the cipher—’ he began and just then the sister came back into the room. Schulz stopped, but before she left he got a weak turn and fell back unconscious. He never spoke again and next day he was dead.”

In his absorption Dangle had let his cigar go out, and now he paused to relight it. Cheyne sat, devouring the story with eager interest. He did not for a moment doubt it. It covered too accurately the facts which he already knew. He was keenly curious to hear its end: whether Dangle, having obtained the cipher, had read it, and what was the nature of the proposal the man was about to make.

“Next day I approached Price on the matter. I said I had involuntarily overheard what Schulz had told him, and as the affair was so huge, asked him to take me into it with him. As a matter of fact I thought then, and think now, that the job was too big for one person to handle. However, Price cut up rough about it: wouldn’t have me as a partner on any terms and accused me of eavesdropping. I told him to go to hell and we parted on bad terms. I found out—I may as well admit by looking through the letters in his cabin while he was on duty—that he had sent the packet to you, and when I had made inquiries about you I was able to guess his motive. You, humanly speaking, were a safe life; you were invalided out of the service. He would send the secret to you to keep for him till after the war or to use as you thought best if he were knocked out.

“You will understand, Mr. Cheyne, that though keenly interested in the whole affair, while I was in the service I couldn’t make any move in it. But directly I was demobbed I began to make inquiries. I found you were living at Dartmouth, and it was evident from your way of life that you hadn’t exploited the secret. Then I found out about Price, learned that he was on one of the Bombay-Basrah troopships and that though he had applied to be demobbed there were official delays. The next thing I heard about him was that he had disappeared. You knew that?” Dangle seemed to have been expecting the other to show surprise.