The Mystery of the Mud Flats. Maurice Drake
I came on deck half-an-hour later we were passing Flushing, and out at sea a small coaster about our own size was lying at anchor. She was comparatively light, riding high in the water.
‘There’s the Kismet, Sherlock,’ I jeered. ‘And if she’s got more than thirty tons aboard, I’m a Dutchman.’
‘Then either ’tisn’t the Kismet or she isn’t carrying coal,’ he said quietly. Half-an-hour later I had the laugh of him again, for we passed near enough for a glass to show her name in dirty white letters under her bows.
‘What d’ye make of that?’ I handed him my glasses and took the wheel.
He had a long stare and then turned and looked at me queerly.
‘Kismet it is, right enough. Down helm a wee, skipper, and get a bit closer.’
‘What for?’ I said; but I did as he asked.
‘Now hail ’em,’ he said, when we’d got close enough. He was itching with excitement and curiosity.
‘Ahoy!’ I shouted. ‘Kismet, ahoy!’
‘Ahoy!’ came down the wind.
‘Ask ’em where they’re bound,’ Voogdt prompted.
‘Where—are—you—bound?’
‘Goole to Terneuzen with coals,’ came the answer.
‘There you are,’ I said. ‘Now you know. Like most of you private detectives, you’re half right and half wrong. She is the Kismet, and you said she wasn’t. She’s come from the north and she’s got coals, just as you said. And she’s got half a cargo and not a full one, which is flat contrary to your notions. Now what d’ye make of it?’
‘I make rank unbusinesslike ways of it,’ he replied. ‘And on the face of it, that’s all one can say. I’m beat I admit.’
‘Well, what odds?’ I said. ‘We’ve got our money, and that’s enough. If the thing’s being mucked I’m sorry for Ward, but he’s big enough to manage his own affairs. I’ll mind mine, you mind yours, and everybody’ll be pleased.
‘Poking my nose into things has been my business for some years,’ Voogdt snapped at me. ‘You can’t drop the habits of a lifetime in ten minutes, you dunderhead,’ and after that stuck to his wheel, grumbling about dolts and thickwits under his breath.
We were bound for Poole this time, and no sooner had we got our ballast on the quay than Ward made his appearance. Voogdt stared at him hard, and late in the evening came aboard full of information about him.
‘He’s a chemist. He’s got a professor’s job at Mason College, Birmingham.’
‘He’s a sound man—a worker. He’s had the gold medal of the Royal Society of Arts, is a Felton prizeman and heaps more besides. What on earth can he be doing dabbling in a little trading concern like this? A man with his record could get to the top, if he liked, and yet here he is tinkering at this business with a cub like Willis Cheyne for a manager. He isn’t a fool, yet he behaves like one.’
‘Oh, hang!’ I said. ‘You worry me with your twaddle. Let’s do our work, and draw our pay and live in peace. Go to bed. We start loading potatoes tomorrow at six a.m.’
‘Potatoes!’ he said wearily. ‘They’re shipping potatoes to an agricultural country now. Next time we shall carry windmills in sections, or canal water. They’re short of both in Holland, and naturally can pay big freights on ’em. Good-night, 0 massive-brained ruminant. Good-night.’
I thought potatoes were a funny cargo myself, but I wouldn’t encourage him in his silly ways and so swore I considered it natural they should be imported. ‘There’s Ghent handy,’ I said, as we were squabbling about it on the way up Channel. ‘Ghent and all the other Belgian industrial centres close by. A big population wants food, don’t it?—and industries want deals and clay and coal.’
‘In half cargoes!’ he jerked out; but I had him there, having been thinking about the Kismet myself.
‘That’s because of the tide,’ I said. ‘How could they get deep-laden boats, even of our light draught over those mud-banks at neap tides?’
That shut him up and so ended the discussion for the time being and we got in, discharged our potatoes and ballasted as before. Some of the Kismet’s coal still lay by the warehouse, but not more than ten tons at the outside. The rest was gone. Even Voogdt grudgingly admitted there was nothing unusual to comment upon.
But the evening before we sailed we had a shock. Our bags of potatoes were lying neatly stacked by the wharf, twenty-five tons of ballast were aboard, and the hatches were on, ready for sailing. Having an hour or two to wait for the tide I suggested to Voogdt that we should stroll along the bank to Terneuzen and have a drink before we went. When we got to the canal entrance we had to wait, the lock-gates being open. Right beside us was a German coasting schooner, and I thought I’d air my German a bit and impress Voogdt.
‘Wo gehen sie?’ I said to a boy on deck.
‘Emden. Mit Erdapfeln.’
He used the slang word ‘Erdapfeln’ instead of the more correct ‘Kartoffeln’ and I turned to Voogdt to translate without thinking of the sense of the words. But he needed no translator, it was evident.
‘Potatoes,’ he said under his breath, like one dazed. ‘Potatoes! Hear that?’ He leaned over and spoke to the boy himself.
‘Woher sint sie gekommen?’
‘Sas van Gent.’
The thing had soaked into my thick head by this time and we stared at each other in silent amazement. I was being paid a sovereign a ton to bring potatoes three hundred miles to Terneuzen; whilst Sas van Gent, only ten miles up the canal, was exporting them in bulk to Emden. No explanations could spare that. We forgot the drink we’d come out for, and turned to walk back to the Luck and Charity with our heads in a whirl.
Half-way back I stopped in my stride. ‘I read a yarn once,’ I said, ‘about a man who saw a Government announcement in the papers that the Woods and Forests had oak-trees to sell, and another from the Admiralty to say that they wanted oak timber. So he stepped in and sold England her own property and retired on it.’
Voogdt patted me on the shoulder softly, speaking with exaggerated gentleness, as though to a sick child.
‘Don’t fash yourself, my son,’ he said. ‘This thing is beyond your great brain. ’Tisn’t a fool Government this time. It’s the rules of trade, and demand and supply, and a dozen other things, all being turned upside-down. It’s water flowing up a hill, James, that’s what it is. It’s rank raving lunacy, apparently run at a profit, and that’s impossible. Impossible, I tell you.’
Walking slowly and thinking hard, Cheyne overtook us as we neared the wharf, and asked us into the office for a drink. To my surprise Voogdt, answering him, put on a raw Cockney drawl, and spoke as though he were an illiterate coasting hand.
We sailed for Torquay this time, but conversation languished on the voyage. The more I thought of that German-bound boat the crazier the whole thing seemed, and, think as I would, I couldn’t see a light anywhere, Once or twice I made some sort of suggestion, more in protest against the clashing facts than anything else, but each time Voogdt shut me up sharp.
‘Oh! go and boil your head,’ he said rudely. ‘I’ve been over and under and all round it; and all I can say is that it’s against nature. But you mark my words, Mr James Carthew Hyphen West, if any more funny things like that happen, I shall go slap off my rocker.’
Another cargo of potatoes awaited us at Torquay, and Voogdt nearly danced on the deck when I told him so.
‘I hate being beat. That’s what I’m suffering from,’ he said,