The Cask. Freeman Wills Crofts

      CHAPTER I

      A STRANGE CONSIGNMENT

       Table of Contents

      Mr. Avery, managing

      director of the Insular and Continental Steam Navigation Company, had just arrived at his office. He glanced at his inward letters, ran his eye over his list of engagements for the day, and inspected the return of the movements of his Company’s steamers. Then, after spending a few moments in thought, he called his chief clerk, Wilcox.

      ‘I see the Bullfinch is in this morning from Rouen,’ he said. ‘I take it she’ll have that consignment of wines for Norton and Banks?’

      ‘She has,’ replied the chief clerk, ‘I’ve just rung up the dock office to inquire.’

      ‘I think we ought to have it specially checked from here. You remember all the trouble they gave us about the last lot. Will you send some reliable man down? Whom can you spare?’

      ‘Broughton could go. He has done it before.’

      ‘Well, see to it, will you, and then send in Miss Johnson, and I shall go through the mail.’

      The office was the headquarters of the Insular and Continental Steam Navigation Company, colloquially known as the I. and C., and occupied the second floor of a large block of buildings at the western end of Fenchurch Street. The Company was an important concern, and owned a fleet of some thirty steamers ranging from 300 to 1000 tons burden, which traded between London and the smaller Continental ports. Low freights was their specialty, but they did not drive their boats, and no attempt was made to compete with the more expensive routes in the matter of speed. Under these circumstances they did a large trade in all kinds of goods other than perishables.

      Mr. Wilcox picked up some papers and stepped over to the desk at which Tom Broughton was working.

      ‘Broughton,’ he said, ‘Mr. Avery wants you to go down at once to the docks and check a consignment of wines for Norton and Banks. It came in last night from Rouen in the Bullfinch. These people gave us a lot of trouble about their last lot, disputing our figures, so you will have to be very careful. Here are the invoices, and don’t take the men’s figures but see each cask yourself.’

      ‘Right, sir,’ replied Broughton, a young fellow of three-and-twenty, with a frank, boyish face and an alert manner.