The Cask

"The Cask" by Freeman Wills Crofts is an early 20th-century mystery where a young clerk named Broughton finds himself caught up in a puzzling crime after discovering a strange cask. He’s inspecting cargo from a ship when he finds a barrel labeled as wine, but inside, there’s a woman's hand and a stash of gold coins. Broughton tells his foreman, Harkness, and they decide to look into it, soon meeting Mr. Léon Felix, who says he owns the cask. This makes Broughton suspicious, so he reports everything, bringing in Scotland Yard to solve what looks like a very serious crime with secrets hidden beneath the surface.