5
Missing Gold Sovereigns
Spade hooked a hip over one corner of Effie Perine’s desk while fishing papers and tobacco from his vest pocket. She looked up from the Chronicle’s shipping news.
“Harry called to say that the hen is sleeping in the henhouse but pecking around Pier 35. He’s betting ten bucks that what you want is the Oceanic Line’s San Anselmo, newly arrived from Sydney via Honolulu and due to go back to Australia after a two-day turnaround here.” She rattled her newspaper in frustration. “Who’s Harry? What’s he talking about?”
“Harry’s a longshoreman when he can get work. He helped lead the strike by the Riggers’ and Stevedores’ Union back in nineteen. Trouble was it broke the union instead of the shipping companies. He was only eighteen then, but they’ve got him down as a dangerous radical — maybe a Commie.”
Her eyes were bright. “So you gave him some work.”
“Ten bucks worth. It ain’t charity, sister. He’s found out that our boy Henny — the hen he mentioned — is bunking in safely with buddies but was hanging around Pier 35 waiting for the San Anselmo to dock. Any other messages?”
She took his cigarette makings from his fingers.
“Sid said that Charles Hendrickson Barber” — she drew out the word Hendrickson in a la-di-da voice — “wants you to call him at the bank when you get in.”
“String him along for me, darling.” He jabbed his lighted cigarette toward her. “Don’t tell him about the San Anselmo. I want to hold off grabbing Henny until just before he tries to stow away.” He winked at her. “Run up the charges.”
“Samuel Spade, never mind about your charges! What about that boy’s poor mother? She thinks he’s in mortal danger—”
“What would your ma do if it was you?”
Effie Perine giggled. “She’d be down on the docks herself raising blue blazes.”
“There’s your answer,” said Spade.
The San Anselmo was a rakish one-stack steamer that had come through the Golden Gate under pilot the night before, too late for quarantine anchorage. That morning early it had docked at its home pier, 35. Spade, carrying a clipboard, looking vaguely official in a watch jacket and a yachting cap with gold braid on the visor, went up the gangplank with authoritative strides. Aft, on the poop deck, stevedores were unloading brown-leafed hands of Hawaiian bananas from between latticed frames.
“Port Authority,” Spade told the seaman standing gangway watch, a blond, clever-looking man with vivid blue eyes.
“Quartermaster Kest, sir.”
“I have to examine your lifeboats for—”
“Christ, man, are we glad to see you!” Advancing on him with outstretched hand was a hard-bitten man with his share of gold braid on his uniform. “Tom Rafferty, first officer.”
“Daniel Gough, Port Authority.”
“How’d you get here so quick? We only just called the International Banking Corporation five minutes ago.”
Spade said blandly, “I was here on another matter.”
“Well, c’mon down to the strong room so you can see firsthand what they did to our specie tank. You’ll have to tell us proper procedure. We’ve never had anything like this before. The officials of the I.B.C. were already planning to come with armed guards and trucks to take the treasure to their vaults, so they shouldn’t be over half an hour getting here.”
Spade wore his poker face. “How much is missing?”
“Captain Ogilvie will want to show you for himself.”
Kest said, “Should I get another quartermaster up here to relieve me, Mr. Rafferty, in case Mr. Gough has any questions?”
“Do so,” said Rafferty. As they descended a series of ladders to the strong room he said over his shoulder, “When the passengers started disembarking, the captain said we’d better open the first two of the three strong room locks.”
“Standard procedure?”
“Not really. The three keys are held by Captain Ogilvie, Purser Abbott G. Battle, and myself. Usually we’d open all three, but because the San Anselmo was going to be carrying such a huge number of gold sovereigns, Captain Ogilvie had his lock replaced with a new one in Sydney.”
Rafferty led Spade through the door from the first-class staterooms to the baggage room. There was a loading port at each side. The room was virtually empty.
“The first-class passengers have gone and their luggage has been taken off. During the voyage they had access to this room for two hours each day. Under guard, of course.”
A door in the opposite wall led to what Rafferty called the extra-mail room. It was empty. Straight ahead was a bulkhead door, closed. To their right was a steel door, open.
“That’s the vault. The other door leads to the messroom. This is the most secure location on the ship.” Rafferty stepped to the strong room door and sang out, “Port Authority’s here.”
Two uniformed men came out. The one introduced as the purser, Abbott G. Battle, had a face shiny with perspiration. The other man was big and hard and fifty, reeking of authority, with a hand made hard by calluses and the deeply tanned face of one who has spent his life at sea.
“Captain Floyd Ogilvie,” he said.
“Daniel Gough,” said Samuel Spade.
The shrewd blue eyes took Spade in. “Where’s your usual man? Frank Petrie?”
“Off sick. What do we have here?”
“A hell of a mess. Three of us have to be here for the vault to be opened because we each hold one of the keys. This morning when we got to port I gave Tom here my key to open up the vault while I was overseeing the passengers’ leaving.”
“My lock and Abbott’s opened up, but the captain’s key wouldn’t fit,” said Rafferty. “I called him down immediately.”
“You keep the keys in your cabins?”
“We do. Abbott and I share quarters. Of course the captain has his own cabin.”
Purser Battle spoke for the first time. He had a husky voice edged with belligerence. “The thieves must have made impressions of our keys so they could get in here and remove the gold between Honolulu and Frisco.”
Ogilvie said, “I saw immediately that the lock’s shackle was brass. The one I had put on in Sydney was steel. We had to get the ship’s carpenter down here to saw it off. When I got the door opened and switched on the light this is what I found...”
Ogilvie led them into the strong room. Quartermaster Kest had shown up to crowd in behind them. Battle mopped his face with his handkerchief and stayed behind in the mail room.
The strong room was a compact armored chamber, cold and clammy. It held ten locked and steel-bound money chests.
“So what’s missing?”
“Five chests just like these. Each chest contains ten thousand sovereigns — five thousand pounds worth of British gold. Seventy-five thousand pounds in gold specie in the fifteen chests, consigned by the Commonwealth of Australia to the International Banking Corporation here in San Francisco.”
Spade gave a low whistle. “Three hundred and seventy-five thousand American, total. Twenty-five thousand bucks in each chest. No wonder you had your lock changed in Sydney.”
“For all the good it did me,” said Ogilvie sourly. “I can’t believe any of my men were involved in something like this. We have a veteran crew of loyal seamen. A union crew.”
“And the looters got what — a third of it? One hundred twenty-five thousand bucks. What do these chests weigh?”
“Including the boxes themselves, eighty pounds each.”
Spade looked at his watch. “Four hundred pounds in all, and clumsy to move. I make it a four-man job, three crewmen to do the work and a first-class passenger who planned it and set it up. Probably boarded the ship at Pago Pago or Honolulu.”