AN INTERESTING SUGGESTION
About ten o’clock on a fine evening towards the end of June, some six
weeks after the incident described in the last chapter, Merriman formed
one of a group of young men seated round the open window of the smoking
room in the Rovers’ Club in Cranbourne Street. They had dined together,
and were enjoying a slack hour and a little desultory conversation
before moving on, some to catch trains to the suburbs, some to their
chambers in town, and others to round off the evening with some
livelier form of amusement. The Rovers had premises on the fourth floor
of a large building near the Hippodrome. Its membership consisted
principally of business and professional men, but there was also a
sprinkling of members of Parliament, political secretaries, and minor
government officials, who, though its position was not ideal, were
attracted to it because of the moderation of its subscription and the
excellence of its cuisine.
The evening was calm, and the sounds from the street below seemed to
float up lazily to the little group in the open window, as the smoke of
their pipes and cigars floated up lazily to the ceiling above. The
gentle hum of the traffic made a pleasant accompaniment to their
conversation, as the holding down of a soft pedal fills in and supports
dreamy organ music. But for the six young men in the bow window the
room was untenanted, save for a waiter who had just brought some fresh
drinks, and who was now clearing away empty glasses from an adjoining
table.
The talk had turned on foreign travel, and more than one member had
related experiences which he had undergone while abroad. Merriman was
tired and had been rather silent, but it was suddenly borne in on him
that it was his duty, as one of the hosts of the evening, to contribute
somewhat more fully towards the conversation. He determined to relate
his little adventure at the sawmill of the Pit-Prop Syndicate. He
therefore lit a fresh cigar, and began to speak.
“Any of you fellows know the country just south of Bordeaux?” he asked,
and, as no one responded, he went on: “I know it a bit, for I have to
go through it every year on my trip round the wine exporters. This year
a rather queer thing happened when I was about half an hour’s run from
Bordeaux; absolutely a trivial thing and of no importance, you
understand, but it puzzled me. Maybe some of you could throw some light
on it?”
“Proceed, my dear sir, with your trivial narrative,” invited Jelfs, a
man sitting at one end of the group. “We shall give it the weighty
consideration which it doubtless deserves.”
Jelfs was a stockbroker and the professional wit of the party. He was a
good soul, but boring. Merriman took no notice of the interruption.
“It was between five and six in the evening,” he went on, and he told
in some detail of his day’s run, culminating in his visit to the
sawmill and his discovery of the alteration in the number of the lorry.
He gave the facts exactly as they had occurred, with the single
exception that he made no mention of his meeting with Madeleine Coburn.
“And what happened?” asked Drake, another of the men, when he had
finished.
“Nothing more happened,” Merriman returned. “The manager came and gave
me some petrol, and I cleared out. The point is, why should that number
plate have been changed?”
Jelfs fixed his eyes on the speaker, and gave the little sidelong nod
which indicated to the others that another joke was about to be
perpetrated.
“You say,” he asked impressively, “that the lorry was at first 4 and
then 3. Are you sure you haven’t made a mistake of 41?”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that it’s a common enough phenomenon for a No. 4 lorry to
change, after lunch, let us say, into No. 44. Are you sure it wasn’t
44?”
Merriman joined in the laughter against him.
“It wasn’t forty-anything, you old blighter,” he said good-humoredly.
“It was 4 on the road, and 3 at the mill, and I’m as sure of it as that
you’re an amiable imbecile.”
“Inconclusive,” murmured Jelfs, “entirely inconclusive. But,” he
persisted, “you must not hold back material evidence. You haven’t told
us yet what you had at lunch.”
“Oh, stow it, Jelfs,” said Hilliard, a thin-faced, eager-looking young
man who had not yet spoken. “Have you no theory yourself, Merriman?”
“None. I was completely puzzled. I would have mentioned it before, only
it seemed to be making a mountain out of nothing.”
“I think Jelfs’ question should be answered, you know,” Drake said
critically, and after some more good-natured chaff the subject dropped.
Shortly after one of the men had to leave to catch his train, and the
party broke up. As they left the building Merriman found Hilliard at
his elbow.
“Are you walking?” the latter queried. “If so I’ll come along.”
Claud Hilliard was the son of a clergyman in the Midlands, a keen, not
to say brilliant student who had passed through both school and college
with distinction, and was already at the age of eight-and-twenty making
a name for himself on the headquarters staff of the Customs Department.
His thin, eager face, with its hooked nose, pale blue eyes and light,
rather untidy-looking hair, formed a true index of his nimble, somewhat
speculative mind. What he did, he did with his might. He was keenly
interested in whatever he took up, showing a tendency, indeed, to ride
his hobbies to death. He had a particular penchant for puzzles of all
kinds, and many a knotty problem brought to him as a last court of
appeal received a surprisingly rapid and complete solution. His
detractors, while admitting his ingenuity and the almost uncanny
rapidity with which he seized on the essential facts of a case, said he
was lacking in staying power, but if this were so, he had not as yet
shown signs of it.
He and Merriman had first met on business, when Hilliard was sent to
the wine merchants on some matter of Customs. The acquaintanceship thus
formed had ripened into a mild friendship, though the two had not seen
a great deal of each other.
They passed up Coventry Street and across the Circus into Piccadilly.
Hilliard had a flat in a side street off Knightsbridge, while Merriman
lived farther west in Kensington. At the door of the flat Hilliard
stopped.
“Come in for a last drink, won’t you?” he invited. “It’s ages since
you’ve been here.”
Merriman agreed, and soon the two friends were seated at another open
window in the small but comfortable sitting-room of the flat.
They chatted for some time, and then Hilliard turned the conversation
to the story Merriman had told in the club.
“You know,” he said, knocking the ash carefully off his cigar, “I was
rather interested in that tale of yours. It’s quite an intriguing
little mystery. I suppose it’s not possible that you could have made a
mistake about those numbers?”
Merriman laughed.
“I’m not exactly infallible, and I have, once or twice in my life, made
mistakes. But I don’t think I made one this time. You see, the only
question is the number at the bridge. The number at the mill is
certain. My attention was drawn to it, and I looked at it too often for
there to be the slightest doubt. It was No. 3 as certainly as I’m
alive. But the number at the bridge is different. There was nothing to
draw my attention to it, and I only glanced at it casually. I would say
that I was mistaken about it only for one thing. It was a black figure
on a polished brass ground, and I particularly remarked that the black
lines were very wide, leaving an unusually small brass triangle in the
center. If I noticed that, it must have been a 4.”
Hilliard nodded.
“Pretty conclusive, I should say.” He paused for a few moments, then
moved a little irresolutely. “Don’t think me impertinent, old man,” he
went on with a sidelong glance, “but I imagined from your manner you
were holding something back. Is there more in the story than you told?”
It was now Merriman’s turn to hesitate. Although Madeleine Coburn had
been in his thoughts more or less continuously since he returned to
town, he had never mentioned her name, and he was not sure that he
wanted to now.
“Sorry I spoke, old man,” Hilliard went on. “Don’t mind answering.”
Merriman came to a decision.
“Not at all” he answered slowly. “I’m a fool to make any mystery of it.
I’ll tell you. There is a girl there, the manager’s daughter. I met her
in the lane when I was following the lorry, and asked her about petrol.
She was frightfully decent; came back with me and told her father what
I wanted, and all that. But, Hilliard, here’s the point. She knew!
There’s something, and she knows it too. She got quite scared when that
driver fixed me with his eyes, and tried to get me away, and she was
quite unmistakably relieved when the incident passed. Then later her
father suggested she should see me to the road, and on the way I
mentioned the thing—said I was afraid I had upset the driver
somehow—and she got embarrassed at once, told me the man was
shell-shocked, implying that he was queer, and switched off on to
another subject so pointedly I had to let it go at that.”
Hilliard’s eyes glistened.
“Quite a good little mystery,” he said. “I suppose the man couldn’t
have been a relation, or even her fiancee?”
“That occurred to me, and it is possible. But I don’t think so. I
believe she wanted to try to account for his manner, so as to prevent
my smelling a rat.”
“And she did not account for it?”
“Perhaps she did, but again I don’t think so. I have a pretty good
knowledge of shell-shock, as you know, and it didn’t look like it to
me. I don’t suggest she wasn’t speaking the truth. I mean that this
particular action didn’t seem to be so caused.”
There was silence for a moment, and then Merriman continued:
“There was another thing which might bear in the same direction, or
again it may only be my imagination—I’m not sure of it. I told you the
manager appeared just in the middle of the little scene, but I forgot
to tell you that the driver went up to him and said something in a low
tone, and the manager started and looked at me and seemed annoyed. But
it was very slight and only for a second; I would have noticed nothing
only for what went before. He was quite polite and friendly immediately
after, and I may have been mistaken and imagined the whole thing.”
“But it works in,” Hilliard commented. “If the driver saw what you were
looking at and your expression, he would naturally guess what you had
noticed, and he would warn his boss that you had tumbled to it. The
manager would look surprised and annoyed for a moment, then he would
see he must divert your suspicion, and talk to you as if nothing had
happened.”
“Quite. That’s just what I thought. But again, I may have been
mistaken.”
They continued discussing the matter for some time longer, and then the
conversation turned into other channels. Finally the clocks chiming
midnight aroused Merriman, and he got up and said he must be going.
Three days later he had a note from Hilliard.
“Come in tonight about ten if you are doing nothing,” it read. “I have
a scheme on, and I hope you’ll join in with me. Tell you when I see
you.”
It happened that Merriman was not engaged that evening, and shortly
after ten the two men were occupying the same arm-chairs at the same
open window, their glasses within easy reach and their cigars well
under way.
“And what is your great idea?” Merriman asked when they had conversed
for a few moments. “If it’s as good as your cigars, I’m on.”
Hilliard moved nervously, as if he found a difficulty in replying.
Merriman could see that he was excited, and his own interest quickened.
“It’s about that tale of yours,” Hilliard said at length. “I’ve been
thinking it over.”
He paused as if in doubt. Merriman felt like Alice when she had heard
the mock-turtle’s story, but he waited in silence, and presently
Hilliard went on.
“You told it with a certain amount of hesitation,” he said. “You
suggested you might be mistaken in thinking there was anything in it.
Now I’m going to make a suggestion with even more hesitation, for it’s
ten times wilder than yours, and there is simply nothing to back it up.
But here goes all the same.”
His indecision had passed now, and he went on fluently and with a
certain excitement.
“Here you have a trade with something fishy about it. Perhaps you think
that’s putting it too strongly; if so, let us say there is something
peculiar about it; something, at all events, to call one’s attention to
it, as being in some way out of the common. And when we do think about
it, what’s the first thing we discover?”
Hilliard looked inquiringly at his friend. The latter sat listening
carefully, but did not speak, and Hilliard answered his own question.
“Why, that it’s an export trade from France to England—an export trade
only, mind you. As far as you learned, these people’s boat runs the
pit-props to England, but carries nothing back. Isn’t that so?”
“They didn’t mention return cargoes,” Merriman answered, “but that
doesn’t mean there aren’t any. I did not go into the thing
exhaustively.”
“But what could there be? What possible thing could be shipped in bulk
from this country to the middle of a wood near Bordeaux? Something,
mind you, that you, there at the very place, didn’t see. Can you think
of anything?”
“Not at the moment. But I don’t see what that has to do with it.”
“Quite possibly nothing, and yet it’s an interesting point.”
“Don’t see it.”
“Well, look here. I’ve been making inquiries, and I find most of our
pit-props come from Norway and the Baltic. But the ships that bring
them don’t go back empty. They carry coal. Now do you see?”
It was becoming evident that Hilliard was talking of something quite
definite, and Merriman’s interest increased still further.
“I daresay I’m a frightful ass,” he said, “but I’m blessed if I know
what you’re driving at.”
“Costs,” Hilliard returned. “Look at it from the point of view of
costs. Timber in Norway is as plentiful and as cheap to cut as in the
Landes, indeed, possibly cheaper, for there is water there available
for power. But your freight will be much less if you can get a return
cargo. Therefore, _a priori_, it should be cheaper to bring props from
Norway than from France. Do you follow me so far?”
Merriman nodded.
“If it costs the same amount to cut the props at each place,” Hilliard
resumed, “and the Norwegian freight is lower, the Norwegian props must
be cheaper in England. How then do your friends make it pay?”
“Methods more up to date perhaps. Things looked efficient, and that
manager seemed pretty wide-awake.”
Hilliard shook his head.
“Perhaps, but I doubt it. I don’t think you have much to teach the
Norwegians about the export of timber. Mind you, it may be all right,
but it seems to me a question if the Bordeaux people have a paying
trade.”
Merriman was puzzled.
“But it must pay or they wouldn’t go on with it. Mr. Coburn said it was
paying well enough.”
Hilliard bent forward eagerly.
“Of course he would say so,” he cried. “Don’t you see that his saying
so is in itself suspicious? Why should he want to tell you that if
there was nothing to make you doubt it?”
“There is nothing to make me doubt it. See here, Hilliard, I don’t for
the life of me know what you’re getting at. For the Lord’s sake explain
yourself.”
“Ah,” Hilliard returned with a smile, “you see you weren’t brought up
in the Customs. Do you know, Merriman, that the thing of all others
we’re keenest on is an import trade that doesn’t pay?” He paused a
moment, then added slowly: “Because if a trade which doesn’t pay is
continued, there must be something else to make it pay. Just think,
Merriman. What would make a trade from France to this country pay?”
Merriman gasped.
“By Jove, Hilliard! You mean smuggling?”
Hilliard laughed delightedly.
“Of course I mean smuggling, what else?”
He waited for the idea to sink into his companion’s brain, and then
went on:
“And now another thing. Bordeaux, as no one knows better than yourself,
is just the center of the brandy district. You see what I’m getting at.
My department would naturally be interested in a mysterious trade from
the Bordeaux district. You accidentally find one. See? Now what do you
think of it?”
“I don’t think much of it,” Merriman answered sharply, while a wave of
unreasoning anger passed over him. The suggestion annoyed him
unaccountably. The vision of Madeleine Coburn’s clear, honest eyes
returned forcibly to his recollection. “I’m afraid you’re out of it
this time. If you had seen Miss Coburn you would have known she is not
the sort of girl to lend herself to anything of that kind.”
Hilliard eyed his friend narrowly and with some surprise, but he only
said:
“You think not? Well, perhaps you are right. You’ve seen her and I
haven’t. But those two points are at least interesting—the changing of
the numbers and the absence of a return trade.”
“I don’t believe there’s anything in it.”
“Probably you’re right, but the idea interests me. I was going to make
a proposal, but I expect now you won’t agree to it.”
Merriman’s momentary annoyance was subsiding.
“Let’s hear it anyway, old man,” he said in conciliatory tones.
“You get your holidays shortly, don’t you?”
“Monday week. My partner is away now, but he’ll be back on Wednesday. I
go next.”
“I thought so. I’m going on mine next week—taking the motor launch, you
know. I had made plans for the Riviera—to go by the Seine, and from
there by canal to the Rhone and out at Marseilles. Higginson was coming
with me, but as you know he’s crocked up and won’t be out of bed for a
month. My proposal is that you come in his place, and that instead of
crossing France in the orthodox way by the Seine, we try to work
through from Bordeaux by the Garonne. I don’t know if we can do it, but
it would be rather fun trying. But anyway the point would be that we
should pay a call at your sawmill on the way, and see if we can learn
anything more about the lorry numbers. What do you say?”
“Sounds jolly fascinating.” Merriman had quite recovered his good
humor. “But I’m not a yachtsman. I know nothing about the business.”
“Pooh! What do you want to know? We’re not sailing, and motoring
through these rivers and canals is great sport. And then we can go on
to Monte and any of those places you like. I’ve done it before and had
no end of a good time. What do you say? Are you on?”
“It’s jolly decent of you, I’m sure, Hilliard. If you think you can put
up with a hopeless landlubber, I’m certainly on.”
Merriman was surprised to find how much he was thrilled by the
proposal. He enjoyed boating, though only very mildly, and it was
certainly not the prospect of endless journeyings along the canals and
rivers of France that attracted him. Still less was it the sea, of
which he hated the motion. Nor was it the question of the lorry
numbers. He was puzzled and interested in the affair, and he would like
to know the solution, but his curiosity was not desperately keen, and
he did not feel like taking a great deal of trouble to satisfy it. At
all events he was not going to do any spying, if that was what Hilliard
wanted, for he did not for a moment accept that smuggling theory. But
when they were in the neighborhood he supposed it would be permissible
to call and see the Coburns. Miss Coburn had seemed lonely. It would be
decent to try to cheer her up. They might invite her on board, and have
tea and perhaps a run up the river. He seemed to visualize the launch
moving easily between the tree-clad banks, Hilliard attending to the
engine and steering, he and the brown-eyed girl in the taffrail, or the
cockpit, or the well, or whatever you sat in on a motor boat. He
pictured a gloriously sunny afternoon, warm and delightful, with just
enough air made by the movement to prevent it being too hot. It
would...
Hilliard’s voice broke in on his thoughts, and he realized his friend
had been speaking for some time.
“She’s over-engined, if anything,” he was saying, “but that’s all to
the good for emergencies. I got fifteen knots out of her once, but she
averages about twelve. And good in a sea-way, too. For her size, as dry
a boat as ever I was in.”
“What size is she?” asked Merriman.
“Thirty feet, eight feet beam, draws two feet ten. She’ll go down any
of the French canals. Two four-cylinder engines, either of which will
run her. Engines and wheel amidships, cabin aft, decked over. Oh, she’s
a beauty. You’ll like her, I can tell you.”
“But do you mean to tell me you would cross the Bay of Biscay in a boat
that size?”
“The Bay’s maligned. I’ve been across it six times and it was only
rough once. Of course, I’d keep near the coast and run for shelter if
it came on to blow. You need not worry. She’s as safe as a house.”
“I’m not worrying about her going to the bottom,” Merriman answered.
“It’s much worse than that. The fact is,” he went on in a burst of
confidence, “I can’t stand the motion. I’m ill all the time. Couldn’t I
join you later?”
Hilliard nodded.
“I had that in my mind, but I didn’t like to suggest it. As a matter of
fact it would suit me better. You see, I go on my holidays a week
earlier than you. I don’t want to hang about all that time waiting for
you. I’ll get a man and take the boat over to Bordeaux, send the man
home, and you can come overland and join me there. How would that suit
you?”
“A1, Hilliard. Nothing could be better.”
They continued discussing details for the best part of an hour, and
when Merriman left for home it had been arranged that he should follow
Hilliard by the night train from Charing Cross on the following Monday
week.