Give Us This Day (9 page)

The cab dropped him off at his hotel in Norfolk Street, the Strand, and he went up to his room with the evening papers, wondering how he would pass the time while Tybalt did his probing.

The city editors, after a surfeit of national junketing, seemed to be turning their attention to the outside world again. One had almost forgotten its existence this last month, and it was now seen to be in its customary turmoil. There was trouble in the Balkans again. Germany was yelping over the murder of two of her missionaries in China. France and Russia were getting together, with a view to giving Kaiser Wilhelm something to worry about. The Americans were slamming high tariffs on imports, in order to stimulate their own industries. They were a restless, quarrelsome lot, with no clearly defined purpose of the kind that had brought Britain to the forefront, that unwavering conspiracy among homebased men of affairs to make money and let politics take care of themselves. Germany had the commercial potential and if she concentrated on trade, instead of trying to get herself elected bully of Europe, she could soon learn the tricks of underselling her competitors. That was the source of real power, not a rabble of clockwork soldiers marching here, there, and everywhere, like overgrown children. But they would never learn, or not while that grandson of Old Vic was in charge, insisting that everybody referred to him as The All-Highest.

He turned, impatiently, to the inside pages, where a domestic item caught his eye. Trunk telephone wires were being transferred to the General Post Office, a sure sign that the contrivance Tybalt had spoken of slightingly was now generally accepted and would soon, he supposed, link every business concern in the country and perhaps, given time, every home as well. He hadn’t installed a telephone at Tryst. With half-a-dozen servants to run his errands, and the telegraph system in the village, it hadn’t seemed necessary, but perhaps Henrietta might like to think about it, if only to gossip to her friends about her interminable round of fetes and croquet parties.

On the following page was a news item of more relevance to him, a debate on the Employers’ Liability Bill, aimed at making hirers of labour responsible for injuries and compensation to men injured on their premises during working hours. He wondered if George had given any thought to it. Swann-on-Wheels had its own provident scheme covering this contingency, a measure he had introduced years ago, so that once again he saw himself as a pioneer and preened himself a little as he shaved and changed for dinner. They would all come round to it in time—that precept of his that a man’s profits were directly related to the way he treated his work force—but for years most city men had regarded him as an eccentric and a radical in this respect. You never got much out of men you regarded as animated tools of the trade. You had to isolate them as individuals, and invest them with some kind of dignity, and Giles had seen to it that his well-defined policy in this respect had survived his father’s retirement.

He thought about Giles for a moment, asking himself if the boy found fulfilment in his job at the yard and deciding, not for the first time, that he hadn’t, and probably regarded his post there as a stop-gap. Not that it was, of course. He was a necessary counterpoise to George, his ideas equating more with Adam’s own than with any of his brothers’.
I should have made a parson out of him
, he thought,
for money doesn’t interest him and never will. He’s always seen himself as some kind of standard-bearer, and standard-bearers need a sound organisation at their backs if they are to survive.

Thus ruminating, and in a relaxed frame of mind considering his purpose here in town, he took a constitutional along the new embankment, winked up at Boadicea’s statue, wondered again at the incongruity of Cleopatra’s Needle, returned to the hotel for a nightcap, and finally toddled off to bed. Tybalt might well draw a blank at the yard tonight and, in any case, he was very unlikely to report in until tomorrow. It would be interesting, to say the least, to learn if the old chap had uncovered anything about Linklater’s.

He already had his nightshirt on, and was in the act of opening the window to get a breath of riverside air, when somebody rapped at his door and he called, gruffly, “Who is it?”

“Me, Mr. Swann! Tybalt! Could I have a word with you, sir?”

He opened the door and the clerk was on the threshold, looking, Adam thought, as though he had met a headless spectre in the corridor.

“I was just going to bed. I didn’t expect you tonight, man!”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t feel I could leave it. Might I… might I step in, sir?”

“Of course. You look about done. Would you like me to ring for a drink?”

“No, Mr. Swann… no drink, thank you… but I had to see you and came as quickly as I could. I did what you asked; I went down to the yard tonight. It was a few minutes to six and everyone was leaving. I said I’d lock up and give the keys to the watchman as usual, so I had the place to myself.”

“Well?”

“You were right. There is something queer going on. There’s no mention in the current ledgers or day-books of a sub-contract with Linklater’s, but I wanted to be quite sure, so I had a word with that coffee-stall proprietor and he confirmed what he’d told you. He said one of Linklater’s vans had been there again last night, about nine-thirty. It stayed about ten minutes, no more, and was backed in so tightly that he didn’t see what was offloaded or taken aboard.”

“What then?”

“Well, seeing that the man seemed so positive, I looked in at Linklater’s yard on my way home. I pass near the gate, it’s in a cul-de-sac off Jamaica Road. There were several vans in the yard so I… well, Mr. Swann, I slipped in and I looked inside a half-dozen of them. Most of them were empty but the last one was fully loaded. There were several of our crates, Mr. Swann, with our brand on them.”

“What was inside? Did you get a chance to look?”

“No, sir. I was going to, even if it meant prising one open, but then two men came out of the shed across the yard.” Tybalt paused, drawing a deep breath, and blinking twice a second. “One of them was Robsart, our yard foreman. I didn’t know the other. It was getting dusk then so I thought it best to slip away behind the vans and make my way out. I signed Robsart on myself, sir. He’d been with us four years on suburban runs. I remember I was surprised when he told me Wesley had promoted him yard foreman. There were several men there with more experience, but later Wesley said Robsart was the brightest of the bunch and thoroughly up to the job.”

“He’s certainly up to something,” Adam said. “Did you come straight here after that?”

“Yes. Though I had it in mind to do something else.”

“What was that?”

“Take a train out to Annerley to talk it over with my boy.”

“I’m glad you didn’t, Tybalt.”

He turned away, moving over to the window. The night was clear and there was very little river mist about. The light of a thousand lamps reflected on the sliding Thames and the muted roar of the city came to him like the long roll of muffled drums. He had little doubt now but that Wesley Tybalt was implicated, and that some really massive “shouldering” was going on down there. He remembered coachman Blubb introducing him to that word, a phrase the old coachees applied to the practice of picking up passengers at intermediate stops on a regular run, dropping them off one stage short of the terminus, and pocketing the fare. Only in this case it was not passengers but goods that were being shouldered, and suddenly two-thirds of the pattern became distinct to him, incorporating Sam’s hint; the leak from Linklater’s northern headquarters; that warehouse with an unobtrusive exit that they kept locked, back and front, during the day; and Travis’s reports of vans calling after the yard had closed and when only one or two men would be on duty.

The goods, he imagined, would start out from northern and Midland bases in Linklater’s vans, to be offloaded close to the starting point and hauled south in Swann’s waggons, stored in that warehouse—uninvoiced, of course—until one of Linklater’s vans could collect them, with nobody a penny the wiser save a sprinkling of rascals in both firms operating the swindle. He said, quietly, “You realise there must be at least half-a-dozen of our chaps involved in this, Tybalt. Waggoners from the original depots would have to be squared, as well as the yard men like Robsart. They’ve been making a very good thing of it, I wouldn’t wonder, and it must have been going some time to develop to this stage.”

“You’re saying we’ve hauled hundreds of pounds’ worth of goods into London for Linklater, Mr. Swann?”

“That’s putting it very mildly.”

“But it’s the most outrageous confidence trick I’ve ever heard of! To do that, openly, night after night… A regular smuggling run, practised on that scale? I simply can’t imagine what Wesley could have been about to let something like that happen under his nose! I mean, the boy must be a complete fool not to have checked the contents of that warehouse from time to time.”

“What about my George?” Adam asked, but Tybalt went on tut-tutting, so that Adam thought, miserably,
He’ll have to know, but I’m damned if I can tell him. How the devil does a man convince an old friend that his own child is a cutpurse heading for gaol? No wonder Wesley covered up for George that time. That young fool’s whoring must have been a Godsend to him. I daresay he stages a pickup every time he knows George is off somewhere with that woman
… He said, “I’m very indebted to you, Tybalt. For the time being let’s face the fact that both your son and mine are hard at work proving neither one of ‘em is fit to put in charge of a waggon, much less a fleet of ‘em. I’ll locate George tomorrow somehow, and lay it all on the table for him. There’s nothing more you can do except go home and go to bed. It was sharp of you to check on Linklater’s yard. I’ll see that place has its shutters up before another twenty-four hours are past.”

“There’s no possibility of some other explanation?”

“None that doesn’t nail your boy and mine as victims of a three-card trick, Tybalt. Are you sure you won’t take a drink?”

The little man shuffled, then threw up his round head. “I’ve faced a good many upsets in my time, Mr. Swann, and I’ve done it on tea.”

“Then let me order you a pot of tea,” and without waiting for Tybalt’s assent, Adam rang the bell and summoned a waiter. When the tea appeared, Tybalt poured, his movements as precise as an old maid’s, and Adam thought, dolefully,
I wish to God I hadn’t involved him now. This is going to hit him damned hard
, and he urged the clerk to drink up, get a cab, and go home to bed.

When Tybalt had left, Adam sat in his nightshirt at the window looking over the river, musing on his tactics from this point on. He had a penchant for French metaphors and one occurred to him now,
offensive à outrance
. There was no point in nibbling around the edge of this unsavoury mess. George would have to be located and brought back, by the ear if necessary, and both he and Wesley would have to be confronted with the situation as far as he knew it. That foreman Robsart would have to be threatened until he told all he knew. The thieves would have to be run down, here and out in the network, and sent packing. There would be prosecutions, no doubt. Charges would have to be formulated against Linklater and Linklater’s operators. It was likely to be a long, sordid business, with half the yard men under suspicion during the investigation. He lit one of his favourite Burmese cheroots, a solace granted him over the years ever since, as a youngster, he and Roberts and other men long since in their graves had ridden across the Bengal plains. Beyond his window the roar of the city subsided to a soft, insistent murmur.

2

He had his first piece of luck next morning. He was dawdling over his second cup of coffee in the breakfast-room when a waiter brought him a message that a Mr. Giles Swann had called, but could only stop a short while. Adam said, eagerly, “Tell him to come in and fetch some fresh coffee, will you?” Giles, dressed for travelling, entered from the foyer, taking the seat indicated but saying he only had twenty minutes as he was anxious to catch the ten-ten West Country train from Waterloo. “I’m going down to clear up that Gimblett claim,” he said. “That old Scrooge is still bucking at paying up, although the adjudicators declared for us a month ago. That collision at Taunton was his liability.”

“How the devil did you know I was here?” Adam asked, and Giles said, smiling, that he was always here when he was in town, and Hugo had word from Henrietta yesterday that he was off on one of his junk-buying jaunts. “My words, not his,” he added. “I think you’ve got a collector’s eye.” They talked as equals, something he was unable to do with his other children, but Giles, unlike him in so many ways, had a maturity that the more extrovert of his family lacked. “As a matter of fact, I’m here to ask a favour, Father. A small one.”

“It wouldn’t have to do with George, would it?”

“No. Why should it?”

“I don’t know. Just a hunch. Is George at the yard?”

“No, he isn’t. He hasn’t been for a day or so.”

“Where is he? I can never find him these days. He’s here, there, and everywhere, and I particularly want a word with him while I’m up here.”

“He’s in the regions,” Giles said. “They expect him back sometime tomorrow.”

“Do you know where in the regions?”

“No, but Wesley Tybalt would tell you.”

“I don’t think he would.” He looked at Giles narrowly. “How do you hit it off with that chap, Giles?”

“Not all that well,” Giles said, looking a little puzzled, “He’s a first-class yard manager, according to George, but I don’t find him as likeable as his father. He’s a bit of a know-all, and talks down to the men and up to us.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Adam said, “and he resents my poking my nose in when I feel like it. He probably takes his cue from George in that respect.”

He toyed with the notion of taking Giles into his confidence, but quickly decided against it. All his life he had been jumping on people for coming to him with untidy briefs and his own was far from complete. “What was the favour, boy?”