The Case Against Moses Moss
Cunningham grinned. He had given Shelley a full account of his investigations in the wild hinterlands of Streatham and Pinner, and Shelley had expressed his very real pleasure and satisfaction that the sergeant had been enabled to get so far in such short time.
“Mind you, Cunningham,” he added in warning tones, “I don’t say that we’ve really got anywhere yet; it’s much too soon to start theorising. Still, I think that we can congratulate ourselves on having got past a very tasty red herring without wasting much time.”
“Red herring?” Cunningham was not always able to follow the workings of his chief’s somewhat nimbler mind, and on these occasions he was compelled simply to wait for the explanation which he knew would shortly be forthcoming from Shelley.
“Yes,” smiled his chief. “Red herring, I said, and red herring I meant—i.e., namely, and to wit, Mr. Baker.”
“Baker’s innocent, of course.”
“Of course. As pretty a piece of framing-up as I’ve ever encountered. And, by Jove,” added Shelley, “we very nearly fell for it.”
He rang the bell on his desk, and the waiting constable from outside the door came in.
“Message for all stations,” said Shelley, and the constable’s note-book and pencil were produced as if by magic.
“Pull in at once, man with black beard and black greasy hair,” Shelley dictated. “He is in a racing car, believed to be making north, and is accompanied by a young lady…” And he went on to give a detailed description of Violet Arnell. “Add that photograph of the young lady will be following,” he said, “and add that the man may be armed and is certainly a dangerous character—probably a murderer. He has killed twice and may kill again.”
“That all, sir?” murmured the constable in almost bored tones, treating this sensational matter as merely part of the everyday routine—as indeed it was to him, being nothing more unusual than a business letter to a typist in an office.
“Ye-es,” said Shelley thoughtfully. “I don’t think I’ve missed anything essential—or how does it strike you, Sergeant?”
“Strikes me as being perfectly all right, sir,” said Cunningham.
“Good. Then get that on the wires to all stations,” snapped Shelley briskly. “And tell them to send first to all stations north of London—up as far as Manchester and Sheffield, say. I shouldn’t think they could have got much further than that, although they have managed to get several hours’ lead on us.”
The constable left, and Shelley smiled grimly. “Well, we now sit and wait for news, Cunningham,” he said. “If I were you I should go home and try to snatch a few hours’ sleep. We may well have an exciting piece of chasing ahead of us tomorrow.”
“You think so, sir?”
“I hope so.”
“Hope?”
“Well.” Shelley looked serious. “If we don’t get some news within a few hours, I’m afraid we shan’t get any,” he said.
“Whatever do you mean, sir?”
“Don’t forget that Moss is a murderer.”
“And you think he’ll murder Miss Arnell?”
“I don’t think he’d hesitate for a moment. I can’t understand why he didn’t kill her in London as soon as he had managed to get her into that car of his—he may even have done so, though somehow I think not.”
“But what do you think has happened, sir?”
“You really mean that you’d like to hear me talking about this confounded case, O my Cunningham?”
Cunningham grinned. “Yes,” he said.
“Then it shall be on your own head,” said Shelley. “I will tell you what I think has happened. You know my weakness for arguing the whole thing out like this, and, anyhow, I want you to have all the facts before you. You don’t know what I’ve been doing in the time while you were dashing about the respectable suburbs.”
“Carry on, sir,” said Cunningham, and Shelley willingly complied.
“I think that the will was a forgery. Moss was in a desperate position—for a reason which I will tell you presently and which I have only discovered quite recently—and he saw that the only way of putting things right was to get old Professor Arnell’s money left to him. But he scarcely knew Professor Arnell—he had merely heard him referred to as his rich uncle. How was he to ensure it?”
“How?” murmured Cunningham.
“He could forge a will. But a will needed to have two witnesses. Then there came the chance of Dr. Wilkinson’s death at the British Museum. Moss had seen Wilkinson as one of Arnell’s friends, and there was one witness ready made.”
“It doesn’t matter, then,” said Cunningham, “if a witness to a will dies before the testator.”
“Not a bit,” said Shelley. “If that made a will invalid half the wills in the country would be wrong.”
“I see.”
“Well,” said Shelley, “that disposes of one witness. The other witness—Crocker—very nearly muddled the whole affair for Moss. I looked through the files of The Times today, and I found that Crocker’s death was wrongly reported a few weeks ago. There was an error. Another man of the same name, also living in Oxford, had died, and it was reported as being the man whose murder we so nearly witnessed.”
“I suppose Moss found out his mistake only just in time?” Cunningham suggested.
“Yes. So Crocker had to die. But Moss had already tried to inveigle Miss Arnell’s young man in the case, and he saw in Crocker’s death the ideal opportunity of killing two birds with one stone. So he wrote that note, bringing young Baker up to town, and made sure that he would be in the vicinity of the murder. I have no doubt that he inveigled his victim to the neighbourhood of the British Museum by some similar means. It all sounds very complicated when I describe it to you like this, but it’s quite simple really.”
“And why make the will to benefit Miss Arnell and himself after her death?” asked Cunningham.
“It does seem rather curious, I must admit,” said Shelley. “Still, the main point would be to distract the immediate suspicions as to himself, which would naturally arise if the Professor had left the money to an almost unknown cousin, and had disinherited his only daughter.”
“H’m.” Cunningham did not seem to be altogether convinced by this explanation.
“And I have a vague suspicion that Moss hoped to marry the young lady himself, when her fiancé had been hanged for the murder of her father.” Shelley paused to see what would be the effect of this revelation upon his colleague.
Cunningham seemed to take this as probable, and agreed that it appeared to be quite a likely attitude for the murderer to take up.
“I think, though,” he added, “that you said something about new facts.”
“Oh, yes.” Shelley recalled himself to the present. “This evening, while you were getting hold of those useful facts about the kidnapping of Miss Arnell, I made some enquiries as to Moss’s financial status.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. And he was practically bankrupt. Up to the eyes in debt, didn’t know where to turn for cash. So that explains a whole lot more, gives him an adequate motive, and shows that he wanted to get out of the hands of the money-lenders who had a pretty tight grip on him.”
“Money-lenders?”
“Yes. Remember Victor Isaacs, the moneylender of Ludgate Hill?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Maybe you haven’t met him professionally. Nasty piece of work. Greasy little fellow, who will do anything for a few pounds. He’s one of those unpleasant people whom the Fascists are so fond of portraying as the typical Jew. Nothing of the sort really, of course, and to call him such is a libel on the Jewish race.”
“And Moss owed him money?”
“Yes; to the tune of several thousands. I went around to Isaacs’s office, and, though Isaacs himself wasn’t on duty—only turns up for an hour or two a day, I imagine—I managed to scare his assistant into giving me full details of the transactions in which Mr. Moss was concerned. They didn’t have any indication of the security offered, which is itself pretty suspicious. But there was no doubt at all that Moss owed him a pile—and he was pressing for, at any rate, a partial settlement. And there’s the motive!”
“But who do you think actually did the kidnapping?” Cunningham objected.
“Moss himself,” answered Shelley promptly.
“In disguise?”
“Naturally.”
“That’s possible, but we shall have the very devil of a job to prove it,” said Cunningham.
“Think so? Why?”
“Well,” said Cunningham with a sheepish grin, “you can’t say that those busmen were precisely ideal witnesses to identify Moss, can you?”
“No. But identification should be easy enough when we get him with Miss Arnell a prisoner in the north of England somewhere—for I imagine that’s where they’re making for. A criminal always makes for the part of the country that he knows best. When he’s on the run he thinks that he has a better chance of avoiding the police there.”
“Moss knows the north of England?”
“Yes. He lived in Leeds for several years, and I think that it’s in Leeds that we shall catch him.”
“Well, I hope so,” said Cunningham, and then another thought struck him.
“Wilkinson was not murdered at all, then?” he asked.
“Oh, no. I should have mentioned that. The autopsy on Wilkinson, as you know, showed that no poison was present. He died of heart failure, and had suffered from valvular disease of the heart for many years. It was merely coincidence that he had died at the British Museum. It is possible, indeed, that this was what gave Moss the idea of his plot.”
“I see,” said Cunningham. “And what do we do next?”
“As I said, wait for the results to come in. There’s nothing else that we can do, really. Every policeman in Great Britain will be looking for them by now, and within the next few hours we shall know something about it.”
The telephone rang, and Shelley eagerly grasped the receiver.
“What’s that?” he said excitedly. “Put them through to here at once. This sounds important.”
He waited for a moment and then spoke again. “Where?” Cunningham heard him ask. “Outskirts of Sheffield? Yes. On the main Manchester road? Yes. What time? Right. Your men chasing them? Right. We’ll follow straight away.”
“Found them, sir?” asked Cunningham.
“Yes,” said Shelley. “They were seen half an hour ago by a man on point duty in Sheffield. Apparently they were making for Manchester—out on the main Manchester road from Sheffield, anyway. Look up trains for Sheffield, Cunningham. It looks to me as if we are soon to be in at the death.”
Feverishly Cunningham took up a time-table and began searching it.
“Mr. Moss, we have you!” Shelley exclaimed, giving way to the somewhat melodramatic vein which was occasionally to be detected in him.
Then a constable entered. “A gentleman to see you, sir,” he announced. “He wants to speak to you about the Arnell case—or so he says.”
“Who is he?” asked Shelley.
“Won’t give a name, sir.”
“Train in forty minutes from St. Pancras, sir!” said Cunningham.
“I can give the gentleman ten minutes,” snapped Shelley. “I only hope it isn’t that little fathead Henry Fairhurst again.”
The constable retired, then came back and threw open the door. Shelley and Cunningham gazed at each other as if they doubted their sanity. Shelley’s case had been so carefully constructed that neither of them doubted that it was accurate in every detail. The kidnapper of Miss Violet Arnell was now somewhere outside Sheffield, speeding along in a fast car, and closely pursued by the Yorkshire police. Yet…yet…their visitor was none other than Mr. Moses Moss!