The Pit-Prop Syndicate. John Curran

       CHAPTER II

      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 towards 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 saw-mill of the Pit-Prop Syndicate. He therefore lit a fresh cigar, settled himself more comfortably in his chair, 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 laugh against him.

      ‘It wasn’t forty-anything, you old blighter,’ he said good-humouredly. ‘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 Jelf’s 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 his 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 that 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 centre. If I noticed that, it must have been a 4.’

      Hilliard