“What I am saying is that Thornton is Voss in a sense,” he said. “It may seem rather complicated but it will soon be made clear.”
Inspector Jamison’s face was a study in bafflement.
“You mean to say he murdered himself, Mr Pons?” he said heavily, with a leaden attempt at irony.
“In a way, yes,” Solar Pons replied shortly. “But I suggest this is neither the time nor the place for such explanations. I fancy you will get nothing out of Mr Thornton tonight and I am not yet in a position to hazard a guess at his true identity. I suggest that you formally charge him and then return here to Mr Hibbert’s office.”
“You have a full explanation then, Mr Pons?”
“I trust so, Jamison,” said Pons, straight-faced. “In the meantime, Parker, I suggest we adjourn to the bar. I am sure Mr Hibbert will join us in celebrating his clearance of all suspicion, however far-fetched and idiotic such a supposition might seem to a rational mind.”
And he led the way forward as the officers hurried the blond-haired man away.
7
Solar Pons lit his pipe and blew out a cloud of aromatic smoke toward the ceiling. Jamison had returned from charging his prisoner within the hour and now, flushed and breathless, sank into a chair at the other side of the table in the manager’s office. A tray of drinks was before us and Hibbert himself, who was the only other person in the room apart from Pons, myself and the Inspector, was dispensing the refreshment.
“I don’t know how you did it, Mr Pons,” he said for the third time, “but it was quite brilliant.”
“I am sure you are right, Mr Hibbert,” said Jamison heavily, “and if it helps at all, I apologise on behalf of the police for the suspicion which fell upon you. But you must see how it looked to me.”
“I think we can forget all that, Inspector,” I put in hastily, diverting the manager’s attention as the redness had mounted to his cheeks again at the Scotland Yard man’s words.
“What I would like to know — and I am sure we are all agreed on this — is what this business is all about, for I have not the faintest idea myself.”
Solar Pons half-dosed his eyes, shovelling out blue smoke over his shoulder, taking the proffered glass the manager held out to him.
“There were a number of factors which stood out in a marked manner right from the beginning, Parker. They led to certain inescapable conclusions.”
“And what might those be, Pons?”
“Obvious ones, Parker. The most striking stemming from the entrance of the mysterious hotel guest, with his heavy valise and bizarre appearance.”
I turned puzzled eyes on my companion.
“You mean Voss, Pons. I fail to see…”
“That was because you were not looking, my dear fellow. Everything pointed toward only one set of conclusions. The man wished to draw attention to himself. Or rather, he wished to draw attention to his disguise. The heavy clothing in this warm weather; the guttural accent; the beard; the dark glasses. The man who registered as Otto Voss of Hamburg wished to create an identity.”
Solar Pons paused and opened his penetrating eyes.
“The identity of the man he intended to kill.”
Inspector Jamison gave a muffled exclamation.
“Am I to understand, Mr Pons…” he began ponderously.
“By all means,” my companion interrupted crisply. “I do not yet know his real name but the Otto Voss who registered here was the man we have just arrested in the persona of Esau Thornton. As you will have observed, Parker, they are both of the same general build and height.”
“That is so, Pons. Then the man murdered in Room 31?” “Was the real Voss, of course.”
The manager had consternation on his face and opened his mouth to ask a question when Pons forestalled him.
“What is the motive for all this, you ask? Money of course. Greed. Sheer cupidity. Allied with treachery which one commonly finds among thieves of the more daring sort.”
“You mentioned robbery, Mr Pons,” said Jamison diffidently, his eyes never leaving Solar Pons’ face.
My companion put down his pipe on the edge of a crystal tray on the table and nodded.
“And I commended to you, did I not, the study of languages. The most obvious clues were staring you in the face, in those copies of the Hamburger Zeitung which Thornton evidently overlooked in his baggage when he strangled Voss. Careless, but understandable under the circumstances. My knowledge of German is limited, certainly, but I read enough to realise that the principal items of interest in both issues were reports of a bank robbery in that city in which two daring robbers had escaped with almost £200,000.”
“I see, Pons! And you thought Voss and Thornton were the men?”
Solar Pons inclined his head toward me.
“Obviously, Parker. I had already formed a tentative theory and I now had a possible motive, immeasurably strengthened by the weight of the valise the disguised Voss carried and by the fact that he would not entrust it to anyone else at the hotel. It was obvious too that the papers had been retained by the thieves, who wished to find out how much the police had discovered about the robbery.”
“I confess I am still all at sea,” said Hibbert, somewhat irritably. “I wish you would explain the matter slowly, stage by stage, Mr Pons, for I am but a layman in these matters.”
“By all means, Mr Hibbert,” said my friend with a faint smile. “My apologies for telling the story out of chronological sequence.”
He picked up his pipe again and sat in silence for a moment or two while we waited impatiently for him to go on.
“At this stage many of my suppositions must necessarily be conjecture but I am convinced that when the true facts emerge they will differ from my conclusions only in detail. We will continue to call these two men Thornton and Voss for convenience, until such time as their true identities are established. It is on the cards that Voss is the man’s real name as his passport was undoubtedly genuine and his profession vital to the plan to rob one of Hamburg’s biggest banks.”
Pons pulled absently at the lobe of his left ear, smiling ironically at Inspector Jamison.
“How much money was in that valise, Inspector?”
Jamison shifted uneasily in his chair.
“As near as we can make out in the brief time at our disposal, though it is only a rough estimate, something in excess of £100,000.”
Pons nodded.
“Exactly. The percentage one would have expected had the German deutschmarks been exchanged through the underworld. There were only two men involved in the robbery, which took place a little over three weeks ago. The manager was held up at gun-point in his own office and forced to accompany them to the vaults. There, they were left undisturbed with the manager. They forced him to fill cases with medium-denomination currency. Then they simply walked out in conversation with the manager. The man we know as Thornton even shook hands with him on the front steps while Voss started a fast car at the kerbside.”
“But how was that possible, Pons?” I asked.
“Because, Parker, Thornton was covering the man with a gun in his pocket. There is no doubt he would have shot the manager dead with as little compunction as you or I would squash a mosquito. They got clean away in a daring and simple crime that captured the imagination of the German public.”
“But how do you know all this, Mr Pons?” put in Jamison.
“For the simple reason that it was all in those two newspaper stories,” said Solar Pons, obviously finding difficulty in keeping the impatience from his voice.
“But how would they have got the money to England, Pons?”
“They had thought of that, too, Parker. Again, it was simple but daring. They waited three weeks until the outcry had died down. Then they travelled via Hook of Holland-Harwich.”