“Ah, that will be Heathfield,” said Pons calmly, jumping down into the well of the vessel. “Just sound that whistle, if you please.”
I had no sooner given three sharp blasts of the police whistle than the three swearing men were on us. I saw Pons close with one and heard a hoarse shout; a heavy body fell with a resounding splash and was soon left astern. A villainous-looking fellow with a shaven head had his hands at my windpipe but I managed to break his hold and he fell back into the cabin interior where a fair-haired girl was steering the launch and looking anxiously back over her shoulder.
The third man, who could only be Koch had closed with Pons, and was reaching for his pocket. I heard him grunt as my companion caught him a well-timed blow on the face and then he was asprawl on the deck, the revolver falling from his pocket. Pons was on it in a flash and steadied the barrel on the big man who came in a rush through the door.
“The game is up,” he said sternly. Just place your hands on the cabin top.”
The big man sullenly obeyed and I went to help Koch up. The other launch was approaching rapidly now, the yellow beam of the searchlight playing on our vessel. Heathfield’s voice, clipped and confident, came across the water to us.
“Is all well, Mr Pons?”
“All well, Superintendent. We have our men. You will find one in the river yonder. Fortunately, it is a nice night for a swim.”
He chuckled as he glanced at the bearded features of Koch. “You may tell the lady to switch off the engine now. You have no further cards to play.”
The sound of the motor died away and the Moorhen began to drift as the bows of the other launch bumped against the rubbing strake of ours. Heathfield jumped aboard, followed by two uniformed constables. The searchlight beam had picked out the agitation in the water where the third man was trying to swim ashore. He was still some yards from the bank when a constable on a bicycle stopped on the tow-path and waited for him to scramble out. Heathfield rubbed his hands together.
“Excellent, Mr Pons! I am again in your debt. You have handled this in a masterly fashion.”
Solar Pons smiled thinly.
“You are too kind, Superintendent. It was a fairly simple matter once I read about your two convicts.”
Heathfield looked sharply at the bearded man who stood opening and closing his fists impotently at the cabin-door and then turned to the big man.
“Well, Blakeney, I am sorry it has come to this. Greed has been your undoing throughout life. You have lost your remission and the money to boot.”
The big man with the close-cropped head spat angrily into the water and mumbled something unintelligible. There was the flash of handcuffs as two constables closed in on him. The man we had known as Karl Koch stood straight and pale in front of us; there was something noble, almost tragic about him, as he glanced at the slim woman called Elise, who had joined him from the wheelhouse. She carried a heavy black suitcase and Heathfield moved immediately to take it from her.
The girl’s face was white and strained.
“Fool!” she told her companion. “This has been bungled from the beginning.”
Pons had lit his pipe and now he blew a stream of aromatic blue smoke thoughtfully into the warm summer night.
“Do not blame your husband too much, Mrs Kramer. The scheme was a good one but you relied upon poor tools.”
The slim woman turned like a snake. Her eyes were burning savagely as she stared at Pons.
“You know us, then?”
Pons inclined his head.
“Who does not know Karl and Elise Kramer of Zurich in international criminal circles?”
Heathfield turned to my companion, consternation on his face.
“I do not understand, Mr Pons.”
“It came to me rather late, Superintendent,” said Pons. “I thought the man’s face was somehow familiar but I could not at first place it. However, I put through a call to the Sureté yesterday from my hotel and soon had the identification. Mr and Mrs Kramer, alias Koch, are now based in Switzerland.
They are wanted in Dusseldorf as well as in this country so it is rather a question of where the trial will take place as I fancy the Germans will ask for their extradition.”
“But what is all this about, Pons?” I burst in.
My companion looked dreamily along the searchlight beam to where the third man was being handcuffed by the constable on the bank.
“I think we have had enough excitement for one night, Parker, and it is now almost two A.M. More detailed explanations must wait until the morning.”
“I agree, Mr Pons,” said Heathfield. “In any event, so far as I am concerned, it will take most of the night to charge this precious band and to take their statements.”
He raised his hand in a signal to the constable who had taken over the controls of the Moorhen. The two launches slowly began to get under way, turning to head up river and back toward Norwich Yacht Station.
10
“It was a remarkable performance, Mr Pons!”
Solar Pons smilingly disclaimed Superintendent Heathfield’s statement, the smoke from his pipe ascending in fragrant spirals toward the ceiling of our hotel. We were a small group gathered in a quiet corner of the coffee lounge the following evening and the fragrant perfume of roses came in through the open windows.
“The only thing remarkable about it was the coincidence. There was little of the ratiocinative process involved and, of course, as soon as I knew of the escaped convicts’ presence in the city the motivation of the strange events in the Cathedral became clear to me.”
“That is all very well, Mr Pons,” said Canon Stacey, “but I am inclined to agree with Mr Heathfield. I must confess that I am still in the dark over most of these matters.”
“You are not the only one,” I said somewhat caustically and Pons turned to me a mocking visage in which one eyebrow was visibly raised.
“Come now, my dear fellow.”
He glanced round the small company composed of myself, the Superintendent, the Canon and Mr Miggs who perched somewhat uneasily on a bar-stool in the far corner as though he were excluded both socially and physically from the gathering.
“As soon as I heard Canon Stacey’s story it became obvious that the bizarre events he mentioned were interconnected. Let us just recall them, my dear Parker.”
“Well, Pons,” I said. “As I remember, Canon Stacey first heard evil whispering from two rough men who were lying on the seats of one of the pews in the dusk, eating a meal. The Canon heard them speak of ‘robbery’ and ‘killing’.”
“Excellent, Parker,” said Solar Pons, his eyes fixed unwinkingly on me. “My training has not been entirely wasted.”
I confess I felt a flush rise to my cheek at the compliment as I went on.
“Then, sometime later, one of the side-chapels had been desecrated; altar ornaments removed and ornamental candlesticks unscrewed.”
Pons nodded, his eyes half-closed now.
“That was extremely significant and you may remember I commended it to you, Parker.”
“So you did, Pons. That brought us to the horrifying experience of the Canon, when he saw the lid on the tomb rising in the crypt. Not to mention Mr Miggs’ own experience when he went to pick up that cylinder out of the font and was bitten by the gargoyle!”
My companion smiled thinly.
“A fairly accurate and concise, if colourful résumé. I gave a good deal of thought to the matter and had no difficulty in assigning a fairly logical explanation, particularly in view of our own first-hand knowledge of Karl and Elise Kramer whom we saw behaving strangely in the crypt on the first day of our arrival in Norwich. They had apparently dropped or mislaid a coded message in the little wooden cylinder identical to the one Mr Miggs attempted to pick up from the bowl of the font. The code was an elementary one and yielded the message: TOO DANGEROUS. WE MUST WAIT. The longer I thought about the matter the more I became convinced that the two men seen by the Canon and our couple were connected.”