“It’s imagination you lack, guv’nor.” Mr. Campion regarded his friend regretfully. “Think of the fellow. See him in your mind’s eye. What is his one inescapable and most damning characteristic? His height. There’s six foot four of the wretched chap. Think of it! What was he to do?”
“Good lord!” The superintendent sat up. “You’re right,” he said slowly. “Of course. It didn’t occur to me at once. The uniform disguised him when he was young, it didn’t make him conspicuous. Everyone expected to see a tall soldier in a scarlet tunic. A shorter man would have looked peculiar. When he came back and started up again, he had to think of something else, I suppose, so he counterfeited a stoop for the actual job, only straightening up when he made a dash for it. Wait a minute, though; he was seen running. The witness didn’t mention his height.”
“Because she didn’t see it,” Campion protested. “She only saw him from above. It was that that strengthened my first suspicion. By the way, there’ll be no need to interview Sir Matthew now, I take it?”
“No, it’s a fair cop.” Oates spoke with satisfaction. “We caught him with the stuff. That’s good enough. You’re saved again, Campion, or your girl friend is. Give her my regards and tell her she doesn’t know how lucky she is to have a lucky pal.”
Mr. Campion opened his mouth to protest but thought better of it. In his experience it was far more comfortable to be considered lucky than clever by any policeman. He was silent for some time and sat looking out of the window, a faint smile playing round his lips.
The superintendent glanced at him.
“What are you thinking of now?” he enquired suspiciously.
“I was wondering,” said Mr. Campion truthfully, “I was just wondering who young Gracie is going to get engaged to next.”
The Cablegram
by T. S. Stribling
When is a smuggler not a smuggler? Psychologist Poggioli gets a lesson in psychology.
In the course of his evasions over the telephone, Mr. Henry Poggioli, investigator in criminal psychology, said apologetically—
“Mr. Slidenberry, my work here in Miami is purely theoretic, and if I devote any time to practical crimes... ”
“But this is theoretic,” pressed the voice in the receiver earnestly. “The Stanhope is due in today and we want you to go aboard with us and—”
“If the trouble is aboard a ship it must be smuggling,” surmised the scientist. “I am really no expert as a baggage searcher.”
“Oh, it isn’t that at all. It’s an A. J. P. A. cablegram.”
“Let’s see — that’s the American Jewelers’ Protective Association?”
“Right you are, Doctor, and the trouble is we can’t quite decode it.”
There was something whimsical in the Miami customs force receiving a cablegram which they could not decode. Mr. Poggioli smiled over the telephone as he suggested—
“If you have it by you would you like to read it to me over the wire?”
“M-m... we’d a lot rather you’d come down to the docks, but if you think you can decode the thing right off... ”
Came a pause, and after about a half minute interval the voice began again:
“Here it is:
“BARBERRY. EXTREME CARE. STANHOPE. 36-B — FEATHERS — CONSULAR REPORTS 1915 PP. 1125-6. REWARD CLAIMED. J. DUGMORE LAMPTON, CARE AMERICAN CONSULATE, BELIZE, B. C. A.”
“What is it you don’t understand?” inquired the psychologist.
“Feathers — do you know what feathers means?”
“I don’t know what any of it means.”
“The rest is simple. Barberry means a diamond smuggler. Stanhope is the name of a ship that will dock here in half an hour. The 36-B is his cabin number. The rest is just plain English. If we capture him J. Dugmore Lampton wants the reward offered by the American Jewelers’ Protective Association.”
“What about the consular reports?”
“Don’t know yet. I set a clerk to looking up the reports for 1915. We keep them in the attic of the customs house in goods boxes. This is the first time anybody ever had any reason to refer to them.”
“You don’t suppose consular reports could be another code word?”
“No; we suspected that at first. We searched through all the codes, but ‘consular reports’ seems to have no meaning beyond just — you know, the actual reports themselves.”
“That’s an extraordinary detail of your telegram,” Poggioli admitted after a pause. “It creates a kind of puzzle as to the sender of the message.”
“How’s that?”
“That he should not only quote the consular reports, but he is so familiar with them he actually refers to a particular page.”
“The man is probably in the consular service himself,” returned the customs officer.
“That doesn’t alter anything. Every consul knows that the consular reports are never read, are never filed away properly and are seldom even preserved. Really, Mr. Slidenberry, your cablegram is not only puzzling, it is enigmatic.”
“Really, Doctor,” interposed the inspector, “we wish you’d come down here yourself and see—”
“I think I will; yes, I’ll come. But while I’m on the way down, please cable Belize and get a report on J. Dugmore Lampton. I would like to know something more about a man who refers in a cablegram to a particular page in the American consular reports.”
Fifteen minutes later a group of three uniformed men met Mr. Poggioli’s taxi at pier 26. Captain Slidenberry gripped the arrival’s hand.
“She’s just swinging in now, Dr. Poggioli,” he said gratefully. “Come on inside. The passengers will be down immediately.”
“Now, as I said,” cautioned the psychologist, “I am utterly inexperienced in searching baggage.”
Slidenberry held up a hand.
“The boys will take care of that.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
“Well, I want you to look over the passenger who occupies cabin 36-B and tell me if he is the type of man who would hide his diamonds in his baggage, or drop them in the pocket of some fellow passenger to be retrieved later — or would he wrap his gems in meat and feed them to his pet dog?”
Poggioli smiled and shook his head.
“There may be some physiological index to classify the different types of smugglers; they say it’s true of murderers. I haven’t gone into the matter yet.”
“How would you like to make your headquarters here and measure all the smugglers we arrest?”
“I’ll think that over. By the way, you cabled for the information about J. Dugmore Lampton?”
“Certainly, but I don’t see how that information can aid us here?”
“Well, don’t you think it queer to quote a consular report?”
“Mm... ye-es... queer enough, but what is the connection between a diamond smuggler at this end of the line and a man quoting the reports at the other?”
“I have no idea. That’s what we want to see. When anything seems queer, Mr. Slidenberry, that is merely a psychologic signal that it has connections with something we do not understand. In any crime queerness may very well be a clue.”
The psychologist’s theory was interrupted by cabin boys streaming down the gangplank of the Stanhope bringing luggage and arranging it in alphabetical piles. Captain Slidenberry went aboard to the window of the ship’s purser and asked who occupied room 36-B. The purser ran his finger down the passenger list.