The Pit-Prop Syndicate (13 page)

“Oh, no, no, no!” she cried, putting up her hand as if to shield herself from the idea. “Besides, what about my father?”

“I've thought about him too,” Merriman returned. “We will tell him the whole thing, and he will be able to get out before the crash comes.”

For some moments she sat in silence; then she asked had Hilliard any idea of what was being done.

“He suggested brandy smuggling, but it was only a theory. There was nothing whatever to support it.”

“Brandy smuggling? Oh, if it only were!”

Merriman stared in amazement.

“It wouldn't be so bad as what I had feared,” the girl added, answering his look.

“And that was—? Do trust me, Madeleine.”

“I do trust you, and I will tell you all I know; it isn't much. I was afraid they were printing and circulating false money.”

Merriman was genuinely surprised.

“False money?” he repeated blankly.

“Yes; English Treasury notes. I thought they were perhaps printing them over here, and sending some to England with each trip of the Girondin. It was a remark I accidentally overheard that made me think so. But, like you, it was only a guess. I had no proof.”

“Tell me,” Merriman begged.

“It was last winter when the evenings closed in early. I had had a headache and I had gone to rest for a few minutes in the next room, the dining-room, which was in darkness. The door between it and this room was almost but not quite closed. I must have fallen asleep, for I suddenly became conscious of voices in here, though I had heard no one enter. I was going to call out when a phrase arrested my attention. I did not mean to listen, but involuntarily I stayed quiet for a moment. You understand?”

“Of course. It was the natural thing to do.”

“Captain Beamish was speaking. He was just finishing a sentence and I only caught the last few words. ‘So that's a profit of six thousand, seven hundred and fifty pounds,' he said; ‘fifty pounds loss on the props, and six thousand seven hundred netted over the other. Not bad for one trip!'”

“Lord!” Merriman exclaimed in amazement. “No wonder you stopped!”

“I couldn't understand what was meant, and while I sat undecided what to do I heard my father say, ‘No trouble planting the stuff?' Captain Beamish answered, ‘Archer said not, but then Archer is—Archer. He's planting it in small lots—ten here, twenty there, fifty in t'other place; I don't think he put out more than fifty at any one time. And he says he's only learning his way round, and that he'll be able to form better connections to get rid of it.' Then Mr. Bulla spoke, and this was what upset me so much and made me think, ‘Mr. Archer is a wonderful man,' he said with that horrible fat chuckle of his, ‘he would plant stuff on Old Nick himself with the whole of the C.I.D. looking on.' I was bewildered and rather horrified, and I did not wait to hear any more. I crept away noiselessly, and I didn't want to be found as it were listening. Even then I did not understand that anything was wrong, but it happened that the very next day I was walking through the forest near the lane, and I noticed Henri changing the numbers on the lorry. He didn't see me, and he had such a stealthy surreptitious air, that I couldn't but see it was not a joke. Putting two and two together I felt something serious was going on, and that night I asked my father what it was.”

“Well done!” Merriman exclaimed admiringly.

“But it was no use. He made little of it at first, but when I pressed him he said that against his will he had been forced into an enterprise which he hated and which he was trying to get out of. He said I must be patient and we should get away from it as quickly as possible. But since then,” she added despondently, “though I have returned to the subject time after time he has always put me off, saying that we must wait a little longer.”

“And then you thought of the false notes?”

“Yes, but I had no reason to do so except that I couldn't think of anything else that would fit the words I had overheard. Planting stuff by tens or twenties or fifties seemed to—”

There was a sudden noise in the hall and Madeleine broke off to listen.

“Father,” she whispered breathlessly. “Don't say anything.”

Merriman had just time to nod when the door opened and Mr. Coburn appeared on the threshold. For a moment he stood looking at his daughter's visitor, while the emotions of doubt, surprise and annoyance seemed to pass successively through his mind. Then he advanced with outstretched hand and a somewhat satirical smile on his lips.

“Ah, it is the good Merriman,” he exclaimed. “Welcome once more to our humble abode. And where is brother Hilliard? You don't mean to say you have come without him?”

His tone jarred on Merriman, but he answered courteously: “I left him in London. I had business bringing me to this neighborhood, and when I reached Bordeaux I took the opportunity to run out to see you and Miss Coburn.”

The manager replied suitably, and the conversation became general. As soon as he could with civility, Merriman rose to go. Mr. Coburn cried out in protest, but the other insisted.

Mr. Coburn had become more cordial, and the two men strolled together across the clearing. Merriman had had no opportunity of further private conversation with Madeleine, but he pressed her hand and smiled at her encouragingly on saying good-bye.

As the taxi bore him swiftly back towards Bordeaux, his mind was occupied with the girl to the exclusion of all else. It was not so much that he thought definitely about her, as that she seemed to fill all his consciousness. He felt numb, and his whole being ached for her as with a dull physical pain. But it was a pain that was mingled with exultation, for if she had refused him, she had at least admitted that she loved him. Incredible thought! He smiled ecstatically, then, the sense of loss returning, once more gazed gloomily ahead into vacancy. As the evening wore on his thoughts turned towards what she had said about the syndicate. Her forged note theory had come to him as a complete surprise, and he wondered whether she really had hit on the true solution of the mystery. The conversation she had overheard undoubtedly pointed in that direction. “Planting stuff” was, he believed, the technical phrase for passing forged notes, and the reference to “tens,” “twenties,” and “fifties,” tended in the same direction. Also “forming connections to get rid of it” seemed to suggest the finding of agents who would take a number of notes at a time, to be passed on by ones and twos, no doubt for a consideration.

But there was the obvious difficulty that the theory did not account for the operations as a whole. The elaborate mechanism of the pit-prop industry was not needed to provide a means of carrying forged notes from France to England. They could be secreted about the person of a traveller crossing by any of the ordinary routes. Hundreds of notes could be sewn into the lining of an overcoat, thousands carried in the double bottom of a suitcase. Of course, so frequent a traveller would require a plausible reason for his journeys, but that would present no difficulty to men like those composing the syndicate. In any case, by crossing in rotation by the dozen or so well-patronized routes between England and the Continent, the continuity of the travelling could be largely hidden. Moreover, thought Merriman, why print the notes in France at all? Why not produce them in England and so save the need for importation?

On the whole there seemed but slight support for the theory and several strong arguments against it, and he felt that Madeleine must be mistaken, just as he and Hilliard had been mistaken.

Oh! how sick of the whole business he was! He no longer cared what the syndicate was doing. He never wanted to hear of it again. He wanted Madeleine, and he wanted nothing else. His thoughts swung back to her as he had seen her that afternoon; her trim figure, her daintiness, her brown eyes clouded with trouble, her little shell-like ears escaping from the tendrils of her hair, her tears.… He broke out once more into a cold sweat as he thought of those tears.

Presently he began wondering what his own next step should be, and he soon decided he must see her again, and with as little delay as possible.

The next afternoon, therefore, he once more presented himself at the house in the clearing. This time the door was opened by an elderly servant, who handed him a note and informed him that Mr. and Miss Coburn had left home for some days.

Bitterly disappointed he turned away, and in the solitude of the lane he opened the note. It read:

“Friday.

“Dear Mr. Merriman,—I feel it is quite impossible that we should part without a word more than could be said at our interrupted interview this afternoon, so with deep sorrow I am writing to you to say to you, dear Mr. Merriman, ‘Good-bye.' I have enjoyed our short friendship, and all my life I shall be proud that you spoke as you did, but, my dear, it is just because I think so much of you that I could not bring your life under the terrible cloud that hangs over mine. Though it hurts me to say it, I have no option but to ask you to accept the answer I gave you as final, and to forget that we met.

“I am leaving home for some time, and I beg of you not to give both of us more pain by trying to follow me. Oh, my dear, I cannot say how grieved I am.

“Your sincere friend,

“Madeleine Coburn.”

Merriman was overwhelmed utterly by the blow. Mechanically he regained the taxi, where he lay limply back, gripping the note and unconscious of his position, while his bloodless lips repeated over and over again the phrase, “I'll find her. I'll find her. If it takes me all my life I'll find her and I'll marry her.”

Like a man in a state of coma he returned to his hotel in Bordeaux, and there, for the first time in his life, he drank himself into forgetfulness.

CHAPTER 11.
AN UNEXPECTED ALLY

FOR SEVERAL DAYS MERRIMAN, sick at heart and shaken in body, remained on at Bordeaux, too numbed by the blow which had fallen on him to take any decisive action. He now understood that Madeleine Coburn had refused him because she loved him, and he vowed he would rest neither day nor night till he had seen her and obtained a reversal of her decision. But for the moment his energy had departed, and he spent his time smoking in the Jardin and brooding over his troubles.

It was true that on three separate occasions he had called at the manager's house, only to be told that Mr. and Miss Coburn were still from home, and neither there nor from the foreman at the works could he learn their addresses or the date of their return. He had also written a couple of scrappy notes to Hilliard, merely saying he was on a fresh scent, and to make no move in the matter until he heard further. Of the Pit-Prop Syndicate as apart from Madeleine he was now profoundly wearied, and he wished for nothing more than never again to hear its name mentioned.

But after a week of depression and self-pity his natural good sense reasserted itself, and he began seriously to consider his position. He honestly believed that Madeleine's happiness could best be brought about by the fulfilment of his own, in other words by their marriage. He appreciated the motives which had caused her to refuse him, but he hoped that by his continued persuasion he might be able, as he put it to himself, to talk her round. Her very flight from him, for such he believed her absence to be, seemed to indicate that she herself was doubtful of her power to hold out against him, and to this extent he drew comfort from his immediate difficulty.

He concluded before trying any new plan to call once again at the clearing, in the hope that Mr. Coburn at least might have returned. The next afternoon, therefore, saw him driving out along the now familiar road. It was still hot, with the heavy enervating heat of air held stagnant by the trees. The freshness of early summer had gone, and there was a hint of approaching autumn in the darker greenery of the firs, and the overmaturity of such shrubs and wild flowers as could find along the edge of the road a precarious roothold on the patches of ground not covered by pine needles. Merriman gazed unceasingly ahead at the straight white ribbon of the road, as he pondered the problem of what he should do if once again he should be disappointed in his quest. Madeleine could not, he thought, remain indefinitely away. Mr. Coburn at all events would have to return to his work, and it would be a strange thing if he could not obtain from the father some indication of his daughter's whereabouts.

But his call at the manager's house was as fruitless on this occasion as on those preceding. The woman from whom he had received the note opened the door and repeated her former statement. Mr. and Miss Coburn were still from home.

Merriman turned away disconsolately, and walked slowly back across the clearing and down the lane. Though he told himself he had expected nothing from the visit, he was nevertheless bitterly disappointed with its result. And worse than his disappointment was his inability to see his next step, or even to think of any scheme which might lead him to the object of his hopes.

He trudged on down the lane, his head sunk and his brows knitted, only half conscious of his surroundings. Looking up listlessly as he rounded a bend, he stopped suddenly as if turned to stone, while his heart first stood still, then began thumping wildly as if to choke him. A few yards away and coming to meet him was Madeleine!

She caught sight of him at the same instant and stopped with a low cry, while an expression of dread came over her face. So for an appreciable time they stood looking at one another, then Merriman, regaining the power of motion, sprang forward and seized her hands.

“Madeleine! Madeleine!” he cried brokenly. “My own one! My beloved!” He almost sobbed as he attempted to strain her to his heart.

But she wrenched herself from him.

“No, no!” she gasped. “You must not! I told you. It cannot be.”

He pleaded with her, fiercely, passionately, and at last despairingly. But he could not move her. Always she repeated that it could not be.

“At least tell me this,” he begged at last. “Would you marry me if this syndicate did not exist; I mean if Mr. Coburn was not mixed up with it?”

At first she would not answer, but presently, overcome by his persistence, she burst once again into tears and admitted that her fear of disgrace arising through discovery of the syndicate's activities was her only reason for refusal.

“Then,” said Merriman resolutely, “I will go back with you now and see Mr. Coburn, and we will talk over what is to be done.”

At this her eyes dilated with terror.

“No, no!” she cried again. “He would be in danger. He would try something that might offend the others, and his life might not be safe. I tell you I don't trust Captain Beamish and Mr. Bulla. I don't think they would stop at anything to keep their secret. He is trying to get out of it, and he must not be hurried. He will do what he can.”

“But, my dearest,” Merriman remonstrated, “it could do no harm, to talk the matter over with him. That would commit him to nothing.”

But she would not hear of it.

“If he thought my happiness depended on it,” she declared, “he would break with them at all costs. I could not risk it. You must go away. Oh, my dear, you must go. Go, go!” she entreated almost hysterically, “it will be best for us both.”

Merriman, though beside himself with suffering, felt he could no longer disregard her.

“I shall go,” he answered sadly, “since you require it, but I will never give you up. Not until one of us is dead or you marry someone else—I will never give you up. Oh, Madeleine, have pity and give me some hope; something to keep me alive till this trouble is over.”

She was beginning to reply when she stopped suddenly and stood listening.

“The lorry!” she cried. “Go! Go!” Then pointing wildly in the direction of the road, she turned and fled rapidly back towards the clearing.

Merriman gazed after her until she passed round a corner of the lane and was lost to sight among the trees. Then, with a weight of hopeless despair on his heart, he began to walk towards the road. The lorry, driven by Henri, passed him at the next bend, and Henri, though he saluted with a show of respect, smiled sardonically as he noted the other's woebegone appearance.

But Merriman neither knew nor cared what the driver thought. Almost physically sick with misery and disappointment, he regained his taxi and was driven back to Bordeaux.

The next few days seemed to him like a nightmare of hideous reality and permanence. He moved as a man in a dream, living under a shadow of almost tangible weight, as a criminal must do who has been sentenced to early execution. The longing to see Madeleine again, to hear the sound of her voice, to feel her presence, was so intense as to be almost unendurable. Again and again he said to himself that had she cared for another, had she even told him that she could not care for him, he would have taken his dismissal as irrevocable and gone to try and drag out the remainder of his life elsewhere as best he could. But he was maddened to think that the major difficulty—the overwhelming, insuperable difficulty—of his suit had been overcome. She loved him! Miraculous and incredible though it might seem—though it was—it was the amazing truth. And that being so, it was beyond bearing that a mere truckling to convention should be allowed to step in and snatch away the ecstasy of happiness that was within his grasp. And worse still, this truckling to convention was to save him! What, he asked himself, did it matter about him? Even if the worst happened and she suffered shame through her father, wasn't all he wanted to be allowed to share it with her? And if narrow, stupid fools did talk, what matter? They could do without their companionship.

Fits of wild rage alternated with periods of cold and numbing despair, but as day succeeded day the desire to be near her grew until it could no longer be denied. He dared not again attempt to force himself into her presence, lest she should be angry and shatter irrevocably the hope to which he still clung with desperation. But he might without fear of disaster be nearer to her for a time. He hired a bicycle, and after dark had fallen that evening he rode out to the lane, and leaving his machine on the road, walked to the edge of the clearing. It was a perfect night, calm and silent, though with a slight touch of chill in the air. A crescent moon shone soft and silvery, lighting up pallidly the open space, gleaming on the white wood of the freshly cut stumps, and throwing black shadows from the ghostly looking buildings. It was close on midnight, and Merriman looked eagerly across the clearing to the manager's house. He was not disappointed. There, in the window that he knew belonged to her room, shone a light.

He slowly approached, keeping on the fringe of the clearing and beneath the shadow of the trees. Some shrubs had taken root on the open ground, and behind a clump of these, not far from the door, he lay down, filled his pipe, and gave himself up to his dreams. The light still showed in the window, but even as he looked it went out, leaving the front of the house dark and, as it seemed to him, unfriendly and forbidding. “Perhaps she'll look out before going to bed,” he thought, as he gazed disconsolately at the blank, unsympathetic opening. But he could see no movement therein.

He lost count of time as he lay dreaming of the girl whose existence had become more to him than his very life, and it was not until he suddenly realized that he had become stiff and cramped from the cold that he looked at his watch. Nearly two! Once more he glanced sorrowfully at the window, realizing that no comfort was to be obtained therefrom, and decided he might as well make his way back, for all the ease of mind he was getting.

He turned slowly to get up, but just as he did so he noticed a slight movement at the side of the house before him, and he remained motionless, gazing intently forward. Then, spellbound, he watched Mr. Coburn leave by the side door, walk quickly to the shed, unlock a door, and disappear within.

There was something so secretive in the way the manager looked around before venturing into the open, and so stealthy about his whole walk and bearing, that Merriman's heart beat more quickly as he wondered if he was now on the threshold of some revelation of the mystery of that outwardly innocent place. Obeying a sudden instinct, he rose from his hiding-place in the bushes and crept silently across the sward to the door by which the other had entered.

It was locked, and the whole place was dark and silent. Were it not for what he had just seen, Merriman would have believed it deserted. But it was evident that some secret and perhaps sinister activity was in progress within, and for the moment he forgot even Madeleine in his anxiety to learn its nature.

He crept silently round the shed, trying each door and peering into each window, but without result. All remained fast and in darkness, and though he listened with the utmost intentness of which he was capable, he could not catch any sound.

His round of the building completed, he paused in doubt. Should he retire while there was time, and watch for Mr. Coburn's reappearance with perhaps some of his accomplices, or should he wait at the door and tackle him on the matter when he came out? His first preference was for the latter course, but as he thought it over he felt it would be better to reserve his knowledge, and he turned to make for cover.

But even as he did so he heard the manager say in low harsh tones: “Hands up now, or I fire!” and swinging round, he found himself gazing into the bore of a small deadly-looking repeating pistol.

Automatically he raised his arms, and for a few moments both men stood motionless, staring perplexedly at one another. Then Mr. Coburn lowered the pistol and attempted a laugh, a laugh nervous, shaky, and without merriment. His lips smiled, but his eyes remained cold and venomous.

“Good heavens, Merriman, but you did give me a start,” he cried, making an evident effort to be jocular. “What in all the world are you doing here at this hour? Sorry for my greeting, but one has to be careful here. You know the district is notorious for brigands.”

Merriman was not usually very prompt to meet emergencies. He generally realized when it was too late what he ought to have said or done in any given circumstances. But on this occasion a flash of veritable inspiration revealed a way by which he might at one and the same time account for his presence, disarm the manager's suspicions, and perhaps even gain his point with regard to Madeleine. He smiled back at the other.

“Sorry for startling you. Mr. Coburn. I have been looking for you for some days to discuss a very delicate matter, and I came out late this evening in the hope of attracting your attention after Miss Coburn had retired, so that our chat could be quite confidential. But in the darkness I fell and hurt my knee, and I spent so much time in waiting for it to get better that I was ashamed to go to the house. Imagine my delight when, just as I was turning to leave, I saw you coming down to the shed, and I followed with the object of trying to attract your attention.”

He hardly expected that Mr. Coburn would have accepted his statement, but whatever the manager believed privately, he gave no sign of suspicion.

“I'm glad your journey was not fruitless,” he answered courteously. “As a matter of fact, my neuralgia kept me from sleeping, and I found I had forgotten my bottle of aspirin down here, where I had brought it for the same purpose this morning. It seemed worth the trouble of coming for it, and I came.”

As he spoke Mr. Coburn took from his pocket and held up for Merriman's inspection a tiny phial half full of white tablets.

It was now Merriman's turn to be sceptical, but he murmured polite regrets in as convincing a way as he was able. “Let us go back into my office,” the manager continued. “If you want a private chat you can have it there.”