As it happened, Fowler came charging through the crowd before Pierce could spot him. Fowler had the woman beside him, and he did not look happy.
“Now, Edward,” Fowler began crisply, “I should be forever in your debt if you would—” He broke off, and his mouth fell open.
Dear God, Pierce thought. It’s finished.
“Edward,” Fowler said, staring at his friend in astonishment.
Pierce’s mind was working fast, trying to anticipate questions, trying to come up with answers; he felt himself break into a sweat.
“Edward, my dear fellow, you look terrible.”
“I know,” Pierce began, “you see—”
“You look ghastly near to death itself. Why, you are positively gray as a corpse. When you told me you suffered from trains, I hardly imagined… Are you all right?”
“I believe so,” Pierce said, with a heartfelt sigh. “I expect I shall be much improved after I dine.”
“Dine? Yes, of course, you must dine at once, and take a draught of brandy, too. Your circulation is sluggish, from the look of you. I should join you myself, but— ah, I see they are now unloading the gold which is my deep responsibility. Edward, can you excuse me? Are you truly well?”
“I appreciate your concern,” Pierce began, “and—”
“Perhaps I can help him,” the girl said.
“Oh, capital idea,” Fowler said. “Most splendid. Splendid. She’s a charmer, Edward, and I leave her to you.” Fowler gave him a queer look at this last comment, and then he hurried off down the platform toward the luggage van, turning back once to call, “Remember, a good strong draught of brandy’s the thing.” And then he was gone.
Pierce gave an enormous sigh, and turned to the girl “How could he miss my clothes?”
“You should see your countenance,” she said. “You look horrible.” She glanced at his clothes. “And I see you’ve a dead man’s dunnage.”
“Mine were torn by the wind.”
“Then you have done the pull?”
Pierce only grinned.
__________
Pierce left the station shortly before noon. The girl, Brigid Lawson, remained behind to supervise the loading of her brother’s coffin onto a cab. Much to the irritation of the porters, she turned down several waiting cabs at the station, claiming she had made arrangements in advance for a particular one.
The cab did not arrive until after one o’clock. The driver, an ugly massive brute with a scar across his forehead, helped with the loading, then whipped up the horses and galloped away. No one noticed when, at the end of the street, the cab halted to pick up another passenger, an ashen-colored gentleman in ill-fitting clothes. Then the cab rattled off, and disappeared from sight.
__________
By noon, the strongboxes of the Huddleston & Bradford Bank had been transferred, under armed guard, from the Folkestone railway station to the Channel steamer, which made the crossing to Ostend in four hours. Allowing for the Continental time change, it was 5 pm. when French customs officials signed the requisite forms and took possession of the strongboxes. These were then transported, under armed guard, to the Ostend railway terminus for shipment to Paris by train the following morning.
On the morning of May 23rd, French representatives of the bank of Louis Bonnard et Fils arrived at Ostend to open the strongboxes and verify their contents, prior to placing them aboard the nine o’clock train to Paris.
Thus, at about 8:15 a.m. on May 23rd, it was discovered that the strongboxes contained a large quantity of lead shot, sewn into individual cloth packets, and no gold at all.
This astounding development was immediately reported to London by telegraph, and the message reached Huddleston & Bradford’s Westminster offices shortly after 10 a.m. Immediately, it provoked the most profound consternation in that firm’s brief but respectable history, and the furor did not abate for months to come.
Chapter 46.
A Brief History of the Inquiry
Predictably, the initial reaction of Huddleston & Bradford was sheer disbelief that anything was amiss. The French cable had been composed in English and read: GOLD MISSED NOW WHERE IS, and was signed VERNIER, OSTEND.
Confronted by this ambiguous message, Mr. Huddleston announced that there had been, no doubt, some silly delay with the French customs authorities and he predicted the whole business would be unraveled before teatime. Mr. Bradford, who had never the slightest attempt to conceal his intense and lifelong loathing for all things French, assumed that the filthy Frogs had misplaced the bullion, and were now trying to fix the blame for their own stupidity on the English. Mr. Henry Fowler, who had accompanied the gold shipment to Folkestone and seen it safely onto the Channel steamer, observed that the signature “Vernier” was an unfamiliar name, and speculated that the cable might be some sort of practical joke. This was, after all, a time of increasingly strained relations between the English and their French allies.