The Pit-Prop Syndicate (10 page)

But there was no use in crying over spilt milk. Merriman repeated to himself the adage, though he did not find it at all comforting. Then his thoughts passed on to the immediate present, and he wondered whether he should not try to get out of the barrel and emulate Hilliard's exploit in boarding the Girondin and listening to the conversation in the captain's cabin. But he soon decided he must keep to the arranged plan, and make sure nothing was put ashore from the ship under cover of darkness.

Once again ensued a period of waiting, during which the time dragged terribly heavily. Everything without was perfectly still, until at about half past eleven the door of the captain's cabin opened and its three occupants came out into the night. The starboard deck light was on and by its light Merriman could see the manager take his leave, cross the gangway, pass up the wharf and enter the shed. Bulla went down towards his cabin door and Beamish, snapping off the deck light, returned to his. In about fifteen minutes his light also went out and complete darkness and silence reigned.

Some two hours later Merriman, who had kept awake and on guard only by the most determined effort, heard a gentle tap on the barrel and a faint “Hist!” The lid was slowly raised, and to his intense relief he was able to stand upright and greet Hilliard crouching without.

“Any news?” queried the latter in the faintest of whispers. “Absolutely none. Not a single thing came out of that boat but props. I had a splendid view all the time. Except this, Hilliard”—Merriman's whisper became more intense—“They suspect us and are trying to trace us.”

“Let them try,” breathed Hilliard. “Here, take this in.”

He handed over the satchel of fresh food and took out the old one. Then Merriman climbed out, held up the lid until Hilliard had taken his place, wished his friend good luck, and passing like a shadow along the wharf, noiselessly descended the steps and reached the boat. A few seconds later he had drifted out of sight of the depot, and was pulling with long, easy strokes down-stream.

The air and freedom felt incredibly good after his long confinement, and it was a delight to stretch his muscles at the oars. So hard did he row that it was barely three when he reached the boat slip in Hull. There he tied up the skiff and walked to the hotel. Before four he was sound asleep in his room.

That evening about seven as he strolled along the waterfront waiting until it should be time to take out his boat, he was delighted to observe the Girondin pass out to sea. He had dreaded having to take another twenty-four hours' trick in the cask, which would have been necessary had the ship not left that evening. Now all that was needed was a little care to get Hilliard out, and the immediate job would be done.

He took out the boat about eleven and duly reached the wharf. All was in darkness, and he crept to the barrel and softly raised the lid.

Hilliard was exhausted from the long strain, but with his friend's help he succeeded in clambering out, having first examined the floor of the barrel to see that nothing had been overlooked, as well as plugging the two holes with corks. They regained the boat in silence, and it was not until they were some distance from the wharf that either spoke.

“My goodness! Merriman,” Hilliard said at last, “but that was an awful experience! You left the air in that cursed barrel bad, and it got steadily worse until I thought I should have died or had to lift the lid and give the show away. It was just everything I could do to keep going till the ship left.”

“But did you see anything?” Merriman demanded eagerly.

“See anything? Not a blessed thing! We are barking up the wrong tree, Merriman. I'll stake my life nothing came out of that boat but props. No; what those people are up to I don't know, but there's one thing a dead cert, and that is that they're not smuggling.”

They rowed on in silence, Hilliard almost sick with weariness and disappointment, Merriman lost in thought over their problem. It was still early when they reached their hotel, and they followed Merriman's plan of the morning before and went straight to bed.

Next day they spent in the hotel lounge, gloomily smoking and at intervals discussing the affair. They had admitted themselves outwitted—up to the present at all events. And neither could suggest any further step. There seemed to be no line of investigation left which might bear better fruit. They agreed that the brandy smuggling theory must be abandoned, and they had nothing to take its place.

“We're fairly up against it as far as I can see,” Hilliard admitted despondently. “It's a nasty knock having to give up the only theory we were able to think of, but it's a hanged sight worse not knowing how we are going to carry on the inquiry.”

“That is true,” Merriman returned, Madeleine Coburn's face rising before his imagination, “but we can't give it up for all that. We must go on until we find something.”

“That's all very well. What are we to go on doing?”

Silence reigned for several minutes and then Hilliard spoke again.

“I'm afraid it means Scotland Yard after all.”

Merriman sat up quickly.

“Not that, not that!” he protested, as he had protested in similar terms on a previous occasion when the same SUGGESTION had been made. “We must keep away from the police at all costs.” He spoke earnestly.

“I know your views,” Hilliard answered, “and agree with them. But if neither of us can suggest an alternative, what else remains?”

This was what Merriman had feared and he determined to play the one poor trump in his hand.

“The number plates,” he suggested. “As I said before, that is the only point at which we have actually come up against this mystery. Why not let us start in on it? If we knew why those plates were changed, the chances are we should know enough to clear up the whole affair.”

Hilliard, who was suffering from the reaction of his night of stress, took a depressed view and did not welcome the SUGGESTION. He seemed to have lost heart in the inquiry, and again urged dropping it and passing on their knowledge to Scotland Yard. But this course Merriman strenuously opposed, pressing his view that the key to the mystery was to be found in the changing of the lorry numbers. Finally they decided to leave the question over until the following day, and to banish the affair from their minds for that evening by a visit to a music hall.

CHAPTER 9.
THE SECOND CARGO

MERRIMAN WAS AWAKENED IN the early hours of the following morning by a push on the shoulder and, opening his eyes, he was amazed to see Hilliard, dressed only in his pajamas, leaning over him. On his friend's face was an expression of excitement and delight which made him a totally different man from the gloomy pessimist of the previous day.

“Merriman, old man,” he cried, though in repressed tones—it was only a little after five—“I'm frightfully sorry to stir you up, but I just couldn't help it. I say, you and I are a nice pair of idiots!”

Merriman grunted.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he murmured sleepily.

“Talking about?” Hilliard returned eagerly. “Why, this affair, of course! I see it now, but what I don't see is how we missed it before. The idea struck me like a flash. Just while you'd wink I saw the whole thing!”

Merriman, now thoroughly aroused, moved with some annoyance.

“For Heaven's sake, explain yourself,” he demanded. “What whole thing?”

“How they do it. We thought it was brandy smuggling but we couldn't see how it was done. Well, I see now. It's brandy smuggling right enough, and we'll get them this time. We'll get them, Merriman, we'll get them yet.”

Hilliard was bubbling over with excitement. He could not remain still, but began to pace up and down the room. His emotion was infectious, and Merriman began to feel his heart beat quicker as he listened.

Hilliard went on:

“We thought there might be brandy, in fact we couldn't suggest anything else. But we didn't see any brandy; we saw pit-props. Isn't that right?”

“Well?” Merriman returned impatiently. “Get on. What next?”

“That's all,” Hilliard declared with a delighted laugh. “That's the whole thing. Don't you see it now?”

Merriman felt his anger rising.

“Confound it all, Hilliard,” he protested. “If you haven't anything better to do than coming round wakening—”

“Oh, don't get on your hind legs,” Hilliard interrupted with another ecstatic chuckle. “What I say is right-enough. Look here, it's perfectly simple. We thought brandy would be unloaded! And what's more, we both sat in that cursed barrel and watched it being done! But all we saw coming ashore was pit-props, Merriman, pit-props! Now don't you see?”

Merriman suddenly gasped.

“Lord!” he cried breathlessly. “It was in the props?”

“Of course it was in the props!” Hilliard repeated triumphantly. “Hollow props; a few hollow ones full of brandy to unload in their shed, many genuine ones to sell! What do you think of that, Merriman? Got them at last, eh?”

Merriman lay still as he tried to realize what this idea involved. Hilliard, moving jerkily about the room as if he were a puppet controlled by wires, went on speaking.

“I thought it out in bed before I came along. All they'd have to do would be to cut the props in half and bore them out, attaching a screwed ring to one half and a screwed socket to the other so that they'd screw together like an ordinary gas thimble. See?”

Merriman nodded.

“Then they'd get some steel things like oxygen gas cylinders to fit inside. They'd be designed of such a thickness that their weight would be right; that their weight plus the brandy would be equal to the weight of the wood bored out.”

He paused and looked at Merriman. The latter nodded again.

“The rest would be as easy as tumbling off a log. At night Coburn and company would screw off the hollow ends, fill the cylinders with brandy, screw on the end again, and there you have your props—harmless, innocent props—ready for loading up on the Girondin. Of course, they'd have them marked. Then when they're being unloaded that manager would get the marked ones put aside—they could somehow be defective, too long or too short or too thin or too anything you like—he would find some reason for separating them out—and then at night he would open the things and pour out the brandy, screw them up again and—there you are!”

Hilliard paused dramatically, like a conjurer who has just drawn a rabbit from a lady's vanity bag.

“That would explain that Ferriby manager sleeping in the shed,” Merriman put in.

“So it would. I hadn't thought of that.”

“And,” Merriman went on, “there'd be enough genuine props carried on each trip to justify the trade.”

“Of course. A very few faked ones would do all they wanted—say two or three per cent. My goodness, Merriman, it's a clever scheme; they deserve to win. But they're not going to.” Again he laughed delightedly.

Merriman was thinking deeply. He had recovered his composure, and had begun to weigh the idea critically.

“They mightn't empty the brandy themselves at all,” he said slowly. “What's to prevent them running the faked props to the firm who plants the brandy?”

“That's true,” Hilliard returned. “That's another idea. My eyes, what possibilities the notion has!”

They talked on for some moments, then Hilliard, whose first excitement was beginning to wane, went back to his room for some clothes. In a few minutes he returned full of another side of the idea.

“Let's just work out,” he suggested, “how much you could put into a prop. Take a prop say nine inches in diameter and nine feet long. Now you can't weaken it enough to risk its breaking if it accidentally falls. Suppose you bored a six-inch hole down its center. That would leave the sides one and half inches thick, which should be ample. What do you think?”

“Take it at that anyway,” answered Merriman.

“Very well. Now how long would it be? If we bore too deep a hole we may split the prop. What about two feet six inches into each end? Say a five-foot tube?”

“Take it at that,” Merriman repeated.

“How much brandy could you put into a six-inch tube, five feet long?” He calculated aloud, Merriman checking each step. “That works out at a cubic foot of brandy, six and a quarter gallons, fifty pints or four hundred glasses-four hundred glasses per prop.”

He paused, looked at his friend, and resumed:

“A glass of brandy in France costs you sixpence; in England it costs you half-a-crown. Therefore, if you can smuggle the stuff over you make a profit of two shillings a glass. Four hundred glasses at two shillings. There's a profit of 40 pounds per prop, Merriman!”

Merriman whistled. He was growing more and more impressed. The longer he considered the idea, the more likely it seemed. He listened eagerly as Hilliard, once again excitedly pacing the room, resumed his calculations.

“Now you have a cargo of about seven thousand props. Suppose you assume one per cent of them are faked, that would be seventy. We don't know how many they have, of course, but one out of every hundred is surely a conservative figure. Seventy props means 2,800 pounds profit per trip. And they have a trip every ten days—say thirty trips a year to be on the safe side—84,000 pounds a year profit! My eyes, Merriman, it would be worth running some risks for 84,000 a year!”

“Risks?” cried Merriman, now as much excited as his friend. “They'd risk hell for it! I bet, Hilliard, you've got it at last. 84,000 pounds a year! But look here,”—his voice changed—“you have to divide it among the members.”

“That's true, you have,” Hilliard admitted, “but even so—how many are there? Beamish, Bulla, Coburn, Henri, the manager here, and the two men they spoke of, Morton and Archer—that makes seven. That would give them 12,000 a year each. It's still jolly well worth while.”

“Worth while? I should just say so.” Merriman lay silently pondering the idea. Presently he spoke again.

“Of course those figures of yours are only guesswork.”

“They're only guesswork,” Hilliard agreed with a trace of impatience in his manner, “because we don't know the size of the tubes and the number of the props, but it's not guesswork that they can make a fortune out of smuggling in that way. We see now that the thing can be done, and how it can be done. That's something gained anyway.”

Merriman nodded and sat up in bed.

“Hand me my pipe and baccy out of that coat pocket like a good man,” he asked, continuing slowly:

“It'll be some job, I fancy, proving it. We shall have to see first if the props are emptied at that depot, and if not we shall have to find out where they're sent, and investigate. I seem to see a pretty long program opening out. Have you any plans?”

“Not a plan,” Hilliard declared cheerfully. “No time to make 'em yet. But we shall find a way somehow.”

They went on discussing the matter in more detail. At first the testing of Hilliard's new theory appeared a simple matter, but the more they thought it over the more difficult it seemed to become. For one thing there would be the investigations at the depot. Whatever unloading of the brandy was carried on there would probably be done inside the shed and at night. It would therefore be necessary to find some hiding place within the building from which the investigations could be made. This alone was an undertaking bristling with difficulties. In the first place, all the doors of the shed were locked and none of them opened without noise. How were they without keys to open the doors in the dark, silently and without leaving traces? Observations might be required during the entire ten-day cycle, and that would mean that at some time each night one of these doors would have to be opened and shut to allow the watcher to be relieved. And if the emptying of the props were done at night how were they to ensure that this operation should not coincide with the visit of the relief? And this was all presupposing that a suitable hiding place could be found inside the building in such a position that from it the operations in question could be overlooked.

Here no doubt were pretty serious obstacles, but even were they all successfully overcome it did not follow that they would have solved the problem. The faked props might be loaded up and forwarded to some other depot, and, if so, this other depot might be by no means easy to find. Further, if it were found, nocturnal observation of what went on within would then become necessary.

It seemed to the friends that all they had done up to the present would be the merest child's play in comparison to what was now required. During the whole of that day and the next they brooded over the problem, but without avail. The more they thought about it the more hopeless it seemed. Even Hilliard's cheery optimism was not proof against the wave of depression which swept over him.

Curiously enough it was to Merriman, the plodding rather than the brilliant, that light first came. They were seated in the otherwise empty hotel lounge when he suddenly stopped smoking, sat motionless for nearly a minute, and then turned eagerly to his companion.

“I say, Hilliard,” he exclaimed. “I wonder if there mightn't be another way out after all—a scheme for making them separate the faked and the genuine props? Do you know Leatham—Charlie Leatham of Ellerby, somewhere between Selby and Boughton? No? Well, he owns a group of mines in that district. He's as decent a soul as ever breathed, and is just rolling in money. Now,—how would it do if we were to go to Charlie and tell him the whole thing, and ask him to approach these people to see if they would sell him a cargo of props—an entire cargo. I should explain that he has a private wharf for lighters on one of those rivers up beyond Goole, but the approach is too shallow for a sea-going boat. Now, why shouldn't he tell these people about his wharf, saying he had heard the Girondin was shallow in the draught, and might get up? He would then say he would take an entire cargo on condition that he could have it at his own place and so save rail carriage from Ferriby. That would put the syndicate in a hole. They couldn't let any of the faked props out of their possession, and if they agreed to Leatham's proposal they'd have to separate out the faked props from the genuine, and keep the faked aboard. On their way back from Leatham's they would have to call at Ferriby to put these faked ones ashore, and if we are not utter fools we should surely be able to get hold of them then. What do you think, Hilliard?”

Hilliard smote his thigh.

“Bravo!” he cried with enthusiasm. “I think it's just splendid. But is there any chance your friend would take a cargo? It's rather a large order, you know. What would it run into? Four or five thousand pounds?”

“Why shouldn't he? He has to buy props anyway, and these are good props and they would be as cheap as any he could get elsewhere. Taking them at his own wharf would be good business. Besides, 7,000 props is not a big thing for a group of mines. There are a tremendous lot used.”

“That's true.”

“But the syndicate may not agree,” Merriman went on. “And yet I think they will. It would look suspicious for them to refuse so good an offer.”

Hilliard nodded. Then a further idea seemed to strike him and he sat up suddenly.

“But, Merriman, old man,” he exclaimed, “you've forgotten one thing. If they sent a cargo of that kind they'd send only genuine props. They wouldn't risk the others.”

But Merriman was not cast down.

“I dare say you're right,” he admitted, “but we can easily prevent that. Suppose Leatham arranges for a cargo for some indefinite date ahead, then on the day after the Girondin leaves France he goes to Ferriby and says some other consignment has failed him, and could they let him have the next cargo? That would meet the case, wouldn't it?”

“By Jove, Merriman, but you're developing the detective instinct and no mistake! I think the scheme's worth trying anyway. How can you get in touch with your friend?”

“I'll phone him now that we shall be over tomorrow to see him.”

Leatham was just leaving his office when Merriman's call reached him.

“Delighted to see you and meet your friend,” he answered. “But couldn't you both come over now and stay the night? You would be a perfect godsend to me, for Hilda's in London and I have the house to myself.”