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

“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 Jelfs’ 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 the 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 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 center. If I noticed that, it must have been a 4.”

Hilliard nodded.

“Pretty conclusive, I should say.” He paused for a few moments, then moved a little irresolutely. “Don’t think me impertinent, old man,” he went on with a sidelong glance, “but I imagined from your manner you were holding something back. Is there more in the story than you told?”

It was now Merriman’s turn to hesitate. Although Madeleine Coburn had been in his thoughts more or less continuously since he returned to town, he had never mentioned her name, and he was not sure that he wanted to now.

“Sorry I spoke, old man,” Hilliard went on. “Don’t mind answering.”

Merriman came to a decision.

“Not at all,” he answered slowly. “I’m a fool to make any mystery of it. I’ll tell you. There is a girl there, the manager’s daughter. I met her in the lane when I was following the lorry, and asked her about petrol. She was frightfully decent; came back with me and told her father what I wanted, and all that. But, Hilliard, here’s the point. She knew! There’s something, and she knows it too. She got quite scared when that driver fixed me with his eyes, and tried to get me away, and she was quite unmistakably relieved when the incident passed. Then later her father suggested she should see me to the road, and on the way I mentioned the thing⁠—said I was afraid I had upset the driver somehow⁠—and she got embarrassed at once, told me the man was shell-shocked, implying that he was queer, and switched off on to another subject so pointedly I had to let it go at that.”

Hilliard’s eyes glistened.

“Quite a good little mystery,” he said. “I suppose the man couldn’t have been a relation, or even her fiancé?”

“That occurred to me, and it is possible. But I don’t think so. I believe she wanted to try to account for his manner, so as to prevent my smelling a rat.”

“And she did not account for it?”

“Perhaps she did, but again I don’t think so. I have a pretty good knowledge of shell-shock, as you know, and it didn’t look like it to me. I don’t suggest she wasn’t speaking the truth. I mean that this particular action didn’t seem to be so caused.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Merriman continued:

“There was another thing which might bear in the same direction, or again it may only