The Pit-Prop Syndicate by Freeman Wills Crofts (readict books TXT) 📕

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.

IX 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 realise 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 percent. 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