Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson

by Hodgson, William Hope

  As the bo’sun walked away I looked at the two Mates, and they looked at me.

  “This will need some pondering about,” I said, gravely.

  “What do you think they will do?” asked Mr. Armes. And the two of them stared at me.

  “Exactly what you’d expect them to do,” I said. “They’ll send out a boat to find the buoy. Then they’ll set a watch then, until you go for the stuff. Then they’ll arrest you, and there’ll be something more than the usual bother. You see, it’s a reasonable little haul is a hundred pounds of saccharine; though what’ll make them hot will be to nab us for our past flutters. I should leave it strickly alone. They can’t possibly prove anything against you; for there’s no mark on the paint-drum that Sedwell can swear to; and unless they catch you in the act of hauling it up, you can just keep mum and smile at them. Of course, you’ll have to lose all that valuable stuff!”

  The two Mates grinned at me in what, by a suspicious onlooker, might have been considered a sickly fashion.

  “It’s better, anyway, than anything else you can do,” I said, “except come up to the hotel tonight, and I’ll stand you both to a good dinner to cheer you up.”

  They both agreed that I was right, and accepted my invitation. After all, there was no other course for them to steer.

  A little later, a shore-boat signalled us ahead and hooked on alongside as we came up. A messenger boy had brought an express letter from the owners, asking me to go ashore at once on important business. As I was reading it, the Chief of the Customs came up to see me, before going ashore, and I had to have a few words with him.

  He and his men had certainly done their work in record time. It was quite plain to me, that the “A.B.” Sedwell was a Customs spy, who had shipped for the voyage out and home with us, to try to get a case against the ship or the officers. This is sometimes done (though never admitted) where the authorities have begun to be suspicious of smuggling in a particular vessel, yet cannot fix any proof on her.

  “Perhaps you won’t mind putting me ashore in your launch?” I asked the Chief, as we shook hands. “The owners want to see me at once.”

  He agreed cordially, and I shouted to the steward to bring out my portmanteaux, which he had just been packing.

  “I’ll leave you to see her made fast, Mister,” I called to the First Mate. “As soon as I’ve done my business, I shall take rooms at the Gwalia.”

  This was to let him know where to pick me up before going out to the dinner I had promised him and the Second Mate.

  Twenty minutes later I was ashore. I shared a taxi, part of the way up from the docks, with our genial but dangerous enemy, the Chief of the search officers. As I dropped him, I could not help wondering whether their boat had already gone out to find the buoyed saccharine.

  It is strange, this almost amicable cut-and-thrust, that is none the less deadly because of the quietness and courtesy with which the thrust may be given. Here was I, seated in a taxi, sharing it with the well and pleasant-mannered man on the seat alongside of me, who would, on the first opportunity, do his best to get me into serious trouble, even as I have undoubtedly got him certain ratings from his superiors if office, owing to my wits having, up to the present, out-matched his, as he and they know very well, but cannot prove.

  I thought his eyes twinkled over some secret thought, as he jumped down and shook hands. No doubt he anticipated that the lure of the sunk saccharine would be bound to bring us straight into his hands that very night.

  Maybe my own eyes twinkled as I said good-bye. He might watch a long time, so far, at least, as I was concerned, before the big, sunk paint-drum had a visitor. If only he knew just how much I knew! I thought to myself as I sat back, smiling.

  Then I lapsed into serious thought — a hundred pounds of saccharine represents a certain amount of money. It was a lot for my two Mates to have staked on a single throw of the Customs dice, as one might say.

  Well! Well!… I turned my thoughts on a space, to dinner. At least, I could promise that it should be made a cheering function.

  * * * *

  We had dinner in a private room at the Cecil.

  “Certainly, Mr. Armes and Mr. James,” I told them, as I handed them a fat little bank-note each, “the occasion demands joy, and I think this slight celebration is almost morally justified.”

  My two officers smiled at me, and I raised my glass.

  “Here’s my toast,” I said —

  “ ‘To the flour that lies in the paint-drum,

  To the spy that we spotted at once,

  To the two portmanteaux that carried the stuff

  While the Customs swallowed out jolly good bluff

  That we worked on the dunce,

  Viz., Sedwell the bum —

  A right proper bum of a Customs House watcher,

  Who heard, ah! I fear,

  What he has wanted to hear,

  Just that, and no more!

  Let us drink to the dear!’”

  I had put this into shape while I was waiting for them; and, really, I think it explains all that there is to explain.

  We all drank; and as we drank, I doubt not that out on the dark waters of the river, a number of Customs officials kept a shivery and lurid watch for the smugglers who came not.

  THE PROBLEM OF THE PEARLS

  S.S. Zurich,

  June 17.

  If I’d only had the sense to stay ashore when I was a boy and play the fiddle or the flute, I’d have made my fortune,” I told Mister Gamp, my First Mate, this morning.

  Gamp’s got the morals of a virago and the tongue of an Irishman. Oh, I mean it that way! If a virago were moral, she’d hold her tongue and stop being a virago; and if an Irishman held his tongue, he’d stop being an Irishman. So there you are! Any way, Gamp wasn’t complimentary; but he granted it helped a man to think; and somehow the way he admitted even that much wasn’t nice.

  We’re away and away-o across the Western Ocean, bound for little old New York; and I fiddle and flute a bit, as you might say, to keep my hand in, and likewise to help me think.

  You see, I’ve cause to think. I undertook a little private contract, when we were in Amsterdam. I bought six pearls for the respectable sum of £12,375 from a merchant I know there. I supplied the judgement, and a friend of mine, in the jewel trade in New York, supplied the cash. My job now is to hand these over to my friend in New York without undergoing the, shall we call it, formalities of paying the ridiculous duty which the Customs attempt to enforce?

  Unfortunately, I am not unknown to the New York Customs; though, with my hand on my heart, I assure you there had never been anything so vulgar as a, shall I say, débâcle on my part? During the last few years, I have turned an honest dollar or two in this pretty game of wits wit who can; but there! Why give way to naughty vanity? It comes too often before the aforementioned débâcle to be a safe vice for a jewel runner.

  Now, because of past episodes with the people across the way (I refer to the New York Customs) I have been subjected to flattering attentions from their agents, who keep an unobtrusive eye upon the jewel marts of Amsterdam and other places, with or without dams, where the precious “pills” and “pebbles” are on sale.

  Because of this espionnage (a most suitable and fashionable phrase!) I took particular care to “arrange” my transaction with the merchant in Amsterdam. I ‘phoned him from a public cabaret; and only when I had him on the wire did I give my name, and such other particulars as were necessary. I told him to meet me on the dam, on the palace side, away from the cafés.

  I drove round to the back of the palace, in a taxi, and told the driver to wait, while I had a walk on to the big square. Here I found my business acquaintance, and took him back to my taxi, and told the man to drive out to the model cheese farms.

  “You indrested mit cheese, Cap’n?” asked my acquaintance, smiling.

  “Nix!” I told him, in the vernacular. “I want to get away from the cafés. We’ve not got to be seen together
. When we get out there, I’ll leave you in the taxi and come back by tram. I guess you’ll have to pay the taxi. If I’m seen with you, there’ll go a message to New York, and they’ll be waiting for me with open arms, as you might say…. I’d have the very devil then to get the stuff through.”

  He nodded; and we turned to business.

  By the time we reached the cheese farms, we had done business to the tune of the aforementioned £12,375; and I had paid him in cold cash. In return, I had six really wonderful pearls; and the whole transaction was finished.

  “I’m off, now,” I said, and stopped the cabby. “I think we’re safe; but it’s better to part here.”

  “Shoost so,” he agreed, and I jumped out.

  “Back to the dam,” I told the driver, and stood away, while he turned, feeling thankful that I had managed the thing so neatly.

  And then, just as the driver let in his clutch again, the ass of a merchant shoved his fat, round face out of the taxi —

  “Goot voyage, Cap’n!” he said, beaming like a full moon. “Und I pe glad to know you ged all safe trou de Gusdoms.”

  “Shove your head in, you idiot!” I said. “Quick!”

  He looked started, and his face went back into the taxi with considerable speed, for so fat a man. I saw the vehicle lurch as he sat down; and then it gathered way and presently vanished in the distance.

  I turned round from watching it, and pulled out a cigarette. As I did so, I saw a man step back rather hastily, into one of the small village shops, a little way up the short street. There was something at once familiar and suspicious about the thing I had seen. Why should a man seem to dodge back into one of the shops? And why had I that vague sense of something familiar?

  I walked up to the door of the shop, one of those Dutch shops that seem to overflow with innumerable broods of brass candlesticks, unnameable pottery and unashamedly “antique” furniture, lying in wait to ensnare the expectedly asinine tourist.

  I went right into the shop, and stared, for maybe a full minute, at a back that I seemed to know. It was very “touristy,” in the worst “British” style, by means of which continental tailors vent upon Britain the venom of centuries. But I was sure I knew what I might call “the Man in the Check Coat” — and trousers, of course; not to forget the stockings that would have put to shame a full-blooded Cockney.

  I am sure the man’s interest in the impossible plaque he was studying was due to the fact that it offered so good an excuse to withdraw from me the light of his countenance.

  But I persisted in my exposition of patience; and because I stood so calmly behind him, the woman in the shop did not press me to buy a fumed-oak cradle for the babe that I have not; being evidently under the impression that I was a friend of the man in the checked coat, and was no more than waiting for him — which was a just and exact estimate of what I was doing.

  At last, the plaque afforded no longer any pretext for silence and study; and the man, evidently embarrassed, unhung it, and presented it to the woman, with a dumb gesture of: “How much?”

  “Twenty florins?” said the woman, without changing colour.

  The unfortunate man paid the money, grabbed the plaque, and walked out hastily, tumbling over a cradle and upsetting half a dozen Birmingham candlesticks, in his anxiety to go out with his back turned to me, and yet to appear as if he were not badly deformed or mentally deficient.

  But I knew who it was; for I had got one good square look at his side face. It was James Atkinson, one of the most active of the Customs’ agents on the European side of the pond.

  And now, as I fiddle and flute, here in my chart-house, I am eternally asking myself: Did he see who I was with, in the taxi? That’s the question! If he did, then good-bye to my getting the pearls ashore, without the devil’s own trouble!

  I know the New York Customs! They’re IT — when it comes to acting on sure information. They’ll turn the ship inside out, and afterwards skin her alive, before they’ll let these six wee jewels of the sea get past their infernal hawks’-eyes! Gracious me! I wish I knew!

  Do you wonder that I fiddle and flute, flute and fiddle, and that Mr. Gamp looks sourer and sourer, and wears ostentatious pads of cotton wool in his somewhat oversized ears? I’m sure I don’t blame him. It’s as absurd to blame a man for having no soul for music, as it is to blame a man for being born without legs. You don’t blame him?

  Meanwhile, what did that infernal Atkinson-Paul-pry see or suspect?

  New York, June 29.

  “I’d like a word with you in the cabin, Captain Gault.”

  Those were the words I got from MacAllister, the chief searcher, when he came aboard this morning, as we were docking. I knew then that the agent in Amsterdam had seen who was in the taxi; and if he had seen that much, there was a good certainty he’d followed up the clue.... Well, it was no use cursing; so I went below with the searcher.

  “Look here, old man,” he said, in his friendly way, when we reached the cabin, “we know you’ve got pearls. We know you paid £12,375 for six of them. Is that enough to show you it’s no use playing tricks and getting yourself into trouble? Be a sensible man and don’t try to run ’em through. You can’t do it; for we’re alive to what you’re up to.

  “Now, I’ve warned you fair!” he went on; “so you’re getting a square chance. I ask you now, formally, Captain Gault, have you anything to declare?”

  “Nothing, dear man,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he replied. “I’ve given you every chance; and now I tell you plainly that if the boss can nail you, he’ll do it, and he’ll not spare you, either. You’ve had things too much your own way, and you think you can’t get caught. Now you’ll see!”

  “Excuse me one moment, Mac,” I said. “But I thought I heard someone outside the door.”

  I stepped across smartly, as I spoke, and flung it open; but there was no one there.

  “Funny!” I said. “I could have sworn I heard something.”

  “So could I,” said MacAllister, looking puzzled. “Anyway, there’s no one; and I guess now I’d better get up and put my men on to the job of rooting out where you’ve hid the pills. You’re an owl, old man, to butt into trouble like this!”

  New York, July 3.

  Well, that was something of a search! Though I wasn’t afraid they’d ever find the place where I’ve hid the stuff. They’d have to take the ship to pieces, first; but they did their best! They kept thirty men on the job, for seventy-two hours, changing them every eight hours. They simply mapped the vessel out into sections, and went over every available foot of her; but there are many unavailable feet in a vessel; and six pearls can lie in a very small place indeed. I need hardly add that they searched me also, and my personal belongings. They found nothing.

  They searched everybody and everything that came near the ship, so it seemed to me; also they’ve got one of their men aboard all the time, to keep a general eye on things. The final trouble was a pompous Treasury official, who came down and tried to bully me —

  “We know you’ve got the pearls,” he told me. “We know it, because we know all about you, and all you did in Amsterdam. You bought six pearls from Van Lumb, and you paid £12,375 for them. That means that somewhere in this ship there are hidden over sixty thousand dollars’ worth of pearls. And we mean to have them. Where are they?”

  “Now, Sir,” I said, “you’ve asked me a leading question, and I’ll answer it as frankly as it was asked. I’m a bit of a ladies’ man, like I’ve heard you say you are yourself, when your wife’s gone South.

  “Well, I guess you’ll feel in sympathy with me when I tell you I bought those pearls for a lady friend of mine, and she’s got them this present moment.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” he said, getting warm. “Your ship sailed direct here from Amsterdam. You were watched every hour in Holland, after you bought the pearls.”

  “It was since then,” I explained. “My dear man, do be a bit more helpful. These — er — aff
airs are somewhat delicate to talk about, as you should know; but I suppose I had better forget my finer feelings. In short, Sir, the lady was one we met on the trip across.”

  “What!” he said. “You have neither touched anywhere nor boarded any vessel since leaving the continent of Europe. What do you mean by this stupidity? There are no ladies floating loose about on the North Atlantic!”

  “Well, you see,” I continued, “I was not right in calling her a lady — as a matter of honest fact she was only a mere maid — or I believe it is fashionable to omit the second ‘e’!”

  He got up then, and went. I’ve seen him since; and I’ve felt him, often, or rather the effects of him, for the way I’m searched each time I go ashore is nothing short of immodest.

  The first time I went ashore I was stopped by the Customs, and taken into a comfortable enough office, with a room at the back of it that I know too well by now, for I’ve been there before. It has a big skylight overhead, plus windows all round, except where a cubicle stands in one corner.

  There were two officers in the place, and I was invited to step into the cubicle and strip. The two officers then took my clothes out into the room and examined every square inch of them, also my boots; they were very particular about the heels; but they found everything all right. Then they started on me, and gave me a similar course of treatment. It was very embarrassing; but life has its thorny places; so I made the best of things.

  They found nothing, of course, for I wasn’t risking sixty thousand dollars, odd, on the chance of getting through, unsearched. After they had searched me, they examined the floor and walls of the cubicle, to be sure I had not dropped anything, or stuck anything up above the eye “level” with a bit of chewing gum. They were up to all the dodges!

  Then they introduced me to a new fakement, an upright grey panel, that I had to stand against, with a pattern of big brass balls, on a framework, the other side of me. They pulled a switch and flared off a criss-cross of great violet coloured sparks, that went jumping and cracking across and across the curious framework of brass balls.