Post Haste by R. M. Ballantyne (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

it from us to presume to point it out, or elucidate or expound it in any degree. We can only give a vague, incomplete, it may be even incorrect, view of what the man in grey did and achieved, nevertheless we are bound to record what we know as to this officer’s proceedings, inasmuch as they have to do with the thread of our narrative.

It may be that other motives, besides those connected with George Aspel, induced the man in grey to visit the General Post-Office, but we do not certainly know. It is quite possible that a whole host of subsidiary and incidental cases on hand might have induced him to take up the Post-Office like a huge stone, wherewith to knock down innumerable birds at one and the same throw; we cannot tell. The brain of a detective must be essentially different from the brains of ordinary men. His powers of perception—we might add, of conception, reception, deception, and particularly of interception—are marvellous. They are altogether too high for us. How then can we be expected to explain why it was that, on arriving at the Post-Office, the man in grey, instead of asking eagerly for George Aspel at the Inquiry Office, or the Returned Letter Office, or the poste restante, as any sane man would have done, began to put careless and apparently unmeaning questions about little dogs, and to manifest a desire to be shown the chief points of interest in the basement of St. Martin’s-le-Grand?

In the gratifying of his desires the man in grey experienced no difficulty. The staff of the Post-Office is unvaryingly polite and obliging to the public. An order was procured, and he soon found himself with a guide traversing the mysterious regions underneath the splendid new building where the great work of postal telegraphy is carried on.

While his conductor led him through the labyrinthine passages in which a stranger would infallibly have lost his way, he explained the various objects of interest—especially pointing out the racks where thousands on thousands of old telegrams are kept, for a short time, for reference in case of dispute, and then destroyed. He found the man in grey so intelligent and sympathetic that he quite took a fancy to him.

“Do you happen to remember,” asked the detective, in a quiet way, during a pause in his companion’s remarks, “anything about a mad dog taking refuge in this basement some time ago—a small poodle I think it was—which disappeared in some mysterious way?”

The conductor had heard a rumour of such an event, but had been ill and off duty at the time, and could give him no details.

“This,” said he, opening a door, “is the Battery Room, where the electricity is generated for the instruments above.—Allow me to introduce you to the Battery Inspector.”

The man in grey bowed to the Inspector, who was a tall, powerful man, quite fit, apparently, to take charge of a battery of horse artillery if need were.

“A singular place,” remarked the detective, looking sharply round the large room, whose dimensions were partially concealed, however, by the rows of shelving which completely filled it from floor to ceiling.

“Somewhat curious,” assented the Inspector; “you see our batteries require a good deal of shelving. All put together, there is in this room about three miles of shelving, completely filled, as you see, with about 22,000 cells or jars. The electricity is generated in these jars. They contain carbon and zinc plates in a solution of bichromate of potash and sulphuric acid and water. We fill them up once every two weeks, and renew the plates occasionally. There is a deal of sulphate of copper used up here, sir, in creating electricity—about six tons in the year. Pure copper accumulates on the plates in the operation, but the zinc wears away.”

The detective expressed real astonishment and interest in all this, and much more that the Inspector told him.

“Poisonous stuff in your jars, I should fancy?” he inquired.

“Rather,” replied the Inspector.

“Does your door ever stand open?” asked the detective.

“Sometimes,” said the other, with a look of slight surprise.

“You never received a visit down here from a mad dog, did you?” asked the man in grey.

“Never!”

“I only ask the question,” continued the other, in a careless tone, “because I once read in the newspapers of a poodle being chased into the Post-Office and never heard of again. It occurred to me that poison might account for it.—A curious-looking thing here; what is it?”

He had come to a part of the Battery Room where there was a large frame or case of dark wood, the surface of which was covered with innumerable brass knobs or buttons, which were coupled together by wires.

“That is our Battery Test-Box,” explained the Inspector. “There are four thousand wires connected with it—two thousand going to the instruments up-stairs, and two thousand connected with the battery-jars. When I complete the circuit by connecting any couple of these buttons, the influence of the current is at once perceived.”

He took a piece of charcoal, as he spoke, and brought it into contact with two of the knobs. The result was to convert the coal instantly into an intense electric light of dazzling beauty. The point of an ordinary lead pencil applied in the same way became equally brilliant.

“That must be a powerful battery,” remarked the detective.

The Inspector smilingly took two handles from a neighbouring shelf and held them out to his visitor.

“Lay hold of these,” he said, “and you will feel its powers.”

The detective did as directed, and received a shock which caused him to fling down the handles with great promptitude and violence. He was too self-possessed a man, however, to seem put out.

“Strong!” he said, with a short laugh; “remarkably strong and effective.”

“Yes,” assented the Inspector, “it is pretty powerful, and it requires to be so, for it does heavy work and travels a considerable distance. The greater the distance, you know, the greater the power required to do the work and transmit the messages. This is the battery that fires two signal-guns every day at one o’clock—one at Newcastle, the other at South Shields, and supplies Greenwich time to all our principal stations over a radius of three hundred miles.—I sent the contents of one hundred and twenty jars through you just now!”

“That’s curious and interesting; I may even say it is suggestive,” returned the detective, in a meditative tone. “Double that number of jars, now, applied to the locks of street doors at night and the fastenings of windows would give a powerful surprise to burglars.”

“Ah, no doubt, and also to belated friends,” said the Inspector, “not to mention the effect on servant-maids in the morning when people forgot to disconnect the wires.”

The man in grey admitted the truth of the observation, and, thanking the Battery Inspector for his kind attentions, bade him a cordial adieu. Continuing his investigation of the basement, he came to the three huge fifty-horse-power engines, whose duty it is to suck the air from the pneumatic telegraph tubes in the great hall above. Here the detective became quite an engineer, asked with much interest and intelligence about governors, pistons, escape-valves, actions, etcetera, and wound up with a proposition.

“Suppose, now,” he said, “that a little dog were to come suddenly into this room and dash about in a miscellaneous sort of way, could it by any means manage to become entangled in your machinery and get so demolished as never more to be seen or heard of?”

The engineer looked at his questioner with a somewhat amused expression. “No, sir, I don’t think it could. No doubt it might kill itself with much facility in various ways, for fifty horsepower, properly applied, would do for an elephant, much more a dog. But I don’t believe that power to be sufficient to produce annihilation. There would have been remains of some sort.”

From the engine-room our detective proceeded to the boiler-room and the various kitchens, and thence to the basement of the old building on the opposite side of the street, where he found a similarly perplexing labyrinth. He was taken in hand here by Mr Bright, who chanced to be on duty, and led him first to the Stamp Department. There was much to draw him off his “canine” mania here. First he was introduced to the chief of the department, who gave him much interesting information about stamps in general.

Then he was conducted to another room, and shown the tables at which men were busy counting sheets of postage-stamps and putting them up in envelopes for all parts of the United Kingdom. The officer in charge told him that the weight of stamps sent out from that room averaged a little over three tons daily, and that the average value of the weekly issue was 150,000 pounds. Then he was led into a fireproof safe—a solid stone apartment—which was piled from floor to ceiling with sheets of postage-stamps of different values. Those for letters ranged from one halfpenny to one pound, but those used for telegrams ran up to as much as five pounds sterling for a single stamp. Taking down from a shelf a packet of these high-priced stamps, which was about the size of a thick octavo book, the official stated that it was worth 35,000 pounds.

“Yes, sir,” he added, “this strong box of ours holds a deal of money. You are at this moment in the presence of nearly two millions sterling!”

“A tidy little sum to retire upon. Would build two thousand Board Schools at a thousand pounds each,” said the detective, who was an adept at figures,—as at everything else.

Feeling that it would be ridiculous to inquire about mad dogs in the presence of two millions sterling, the man in grey suffered himself to be led through long passages and vaulted chambers, some of which latter were kitchens, where the men on duty had splendid fires, oceans of hot water, benches and tables, and liberty to cook the food either brought by themselves for the day or procured from a caterer on the premises—for Post-Office officials when on duty may not leave the premises for any purpose whatever, except duty, and must sign books specifying to the minute when, where, and why, they come and go. In this basement also, as in the other, were long rows of numbered cupboards or large pigeon-holes with lockable doors, one of which was appropriated to each man for the safe depositing of his victuals and other private property.

Here, too, were whitewashed lavatories conveniently and plentifully distributed, with every appliance for cleanliness and comfort, including a large supply of fresh and good water. Of this, 49,000 gallons a day is supplied by an artesian well, and 39,000 gallons a day by the New River Company, in the new building. In the old building the 27,000 gallons consumed daily is supplied by the New River Company. It is, however, due to the 5900 human beings who labour in both buildings to state that at least 55,000 of these gallons are swallowed by steam-engines on the premises.

To all these things Mr Bright directed attention with professional zeal, and the man in grey observed with much interest all that he saw and heard, until he came to the letter-carriers’ kitchen, where several of the men were cooking food at the fire, while others were eating or chatting at the tables.

Happening to mention the dog here, he found that Mr Bright was partially acquainted with the incident.

“It was down these stairs it ran,” he said, “and was knocked on the head in this very room by the policeman. No one knows where he took the body to, but he went out at that door, in the direction, it is supposed, of the boiler-house.”

The detective had at last got hold of a clew. He was what is styled, in a well-known game, “getting warm.”

“Let us visit the boiler-house,” he said.

Again, for the nonce, he became an engineer. Like Paul, he was all things to