‘You don’t object to shooting duck?’
‘No sense in carrying sentiment too far. Man must eat. Besides, I like duck and green peas myself, though it’s too early yet for them.’ She laughed a little, and the talk went on in other channels.
It might have been half-an-hour later when somebody jumped aboard and came across the deck. I didn’t recognise the step, but it came down the companionway and proved to belong to Voogdt.
‘Beg pardon, Cap’n,’ he said, in his Cockney accent. ‘Didn’t know you wasn’t alone,’ and disappeared at once. Ward came aboard soon after, and as it was getting dusk the girls shook hands, said thank you very prettily and went off with him. I went forward to see if Voogdt was in the forecastle and found him sitting on one of the empty bunks, looking pale.
‘Are they gone?’ he asked. ‘Yes? Good. I’ll come aft.’ He limped as he walked.
‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.
‘I’ve been shot, Jem. In the leg.’
‘Shot? How? An accident?’
‘Useful sort of accident,’ he said grimly. ‘Here, lend a shoulder and help me down the stairs. I’ve had a fright, I can tell you.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘I went down to those German sheds this afternoon,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d like a look round and see what was doing. I walked down through the fields inside the embankment, and when I turned the corner of the sheds one of the doors was open. Inside was machinery—a big press, amongst other things—and in one corner two-three men were making and laying concrete, I thought they didn’t seem over-pleased to see me; but I did the low-down ’foremast hand and asked if I could get a job there. The man in charge—was that the one you saw? Young and clean-shaven? Fair? … That’s the chap, then—said he couldn’t give me a job, and I was rather put to it for an excuse to hang about. However, I did, most barefacedly, and asked this man what the machinery was for. “Agricultural machinery,” he said. I suppose he took me for a sailor, and thought I shouldn’t know.
‘Like a fool, I said—in German, too—“What use is a heavy-weight press to a farmer?” And he told me it was for packing hay. I just had sense enough to see I’d made an abject ass of myself, so I didn’t comment on the concrete—which I’ll swear was being laid as a bed for the thing—but said, “Oh, yes,” as if convinced and started to walk home. That was about an hour ago.’
‘Well?’ I said.
‘Well! Listen, and tell me if it’s well. I’d got about a couple of hundred yards along the bank, and was walking along with my head on my chest, puzzling over that press, when suddenly I thought I heard somebody smack a whip behind me. At the same time a bee flew by, with a rather shrill buzz. Thinking hard as I was, I took no notice. Then the whip smacked again and another bee flew by, and all at once I tumbled to what was going on and jumped over the embankment down among some cows at pasture. Oh! the sweet smell of cows, Jem! The dear beasts!’
‘I don’t understand you,’ I said.
‘My son, the third bee touched ground by my foot, hit up a splash of gravel and sang off over the river with a note I haven’t heard since Pieter’s Drift; and the fourth bored a hole through the calf of my leg as I jumped. If it had touched bone I shouldn’t be here now.’
‘Good Lord!’ I said, startled. ‘D’you mean—?’
‘I mean they were out to kill,’ he said. ‘Man, think of the barefaced devilry of it. Daylight, our sheds here within a mile, and out in stream, a C.P.R. liner going up to Antwerp with a band playing. I could hear the tune distinctly. It’s a serious business that makes men risk their necks like that by light of day, alongside one of the biggest highways of Europe. If they’d broken my leg and brought me down, I should have been buried in Scheldt mud tonight, and no questions answered. As it was, the cows saved me. Even as I jumped I thought that out. A dead man’s easily moved, and who’s going to ask after one missing ’foremast Jack more or less? But a dead cow’s another matter. If they’d shoot a man for asking a single question they wouldn’t do anything that would bring indignant farmers asking hundreds more round their agricultural sheds.’
‘How did you get home?’
‘Drove the herd this way, keeping carefully in the middle of them—not so easy a business as it sounds, either, especially with a hole in your calf, and the cold fear of death on you. My word, but I was a frightened man, I can tell you. And now—now—now—we come back to the old question, rendered much more anxiously. What is it all about?’
‘But you don’t think this has anything to do with the company, do you?’
‘I’m positive it has. How, I don’t know. But when you get two abnormal things both happening at one spot, you can’t help connecting them. I’m too badly scared even now to think the thing out properly, but I’ll swear that the same cause underlies both Ward’s investments and the hole in my leg. And now this is where you come in, at last, you who refuse to meddle. Ward’s investments aren’t your affair, you say. Are flying bullets your affair?—the attempted murder of a member of your crew? Besides, who’s to say you yourself won’t be the next? You’re in just the same employ as I am; you’ve been messing round those sheds making inquiries, just as I have. I tell you, Jem West, it may become your business—your vitally important business—before you expect it.’
I ran my hand up through my hair, puzzled as a man could be. I didn’t know what to say, the whole thing sounded so impossible. For a minute I was half inclined to think Voogdt had illusions or had been drinking, but one look at his serious face dispelled that idea, and, moreover, there was the bloodstained bandage round his leg—incontrovertible evidence.
‘Was more than one man firing?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t look back to count,’ said he dryly. ‘But if there was only one he had a magazine rifle, for the firing was too quick for anything else. It’s wicked, isn’t it? Now I’m recovering from funk I’m getting in a rage about it. The cold-blooded wickedness of the swabs!’
‘It is a bit hot,’ I admitted. ‘What are you going to do? Tell the police?’
‘You bet I will. If there’s law in Holland I’ll go for ’em. And yet—’ He stopped.
‘Yet what?’
‘I don’t know. I’m thinking. Go and wash off any blood that may have dropped on deck—I’d keep under cover as much as possible if I were you. Meanwhile, say nothing to any single soul about it. This matter requires deliberation.’
I searched the deck with a lantern and a bucket of water, and found and washed away a few stains. There were some on the companion stairs as well, which showed he must have been bleeding fast, for he hadn’t been on them more than a very few seconds. More than ever I was puzzled, and rather scared too, and inclined to get angry as one does when frightened. I was all for laying an information with the Turneuzen police at once, and I couldn’t see any reason for Voogdt’s delay.
’Kiah and Rance came aboard as soon as I’d washed the deck clean, and the ebb clearing the banks, we had three hours to work before I could talk to Voogdt again in private. He came on deck, concealing his limp, and did his work at the hand-winch without remark. When the rising tide sent us aboard, I went down after him into the cabin.
He hummed and hawed a little over his tale, but eventually got it out that for his part he’d rather not have the police called in.
‘I’m shy of asking it,’ he said, ‘because I’m asking you to risk your life, and that’s the plain truth. But see here, now. If you fetch them to meddle here matters won’t end with jailing the men who tried to shoot me. There’s something big behind this—big and dishonest. Before you know where you are our people’ll be in the dock with their German competitors, and Cheyne and Ward, and perhaps the two girls, may all smell the inside of a Dutch prison. Would that please you?’
‘No, it wouldn’t. Not but what it’d do Cheyne good, maybe.’
‘Exactly. Well that’s the only real reason I can give for keeping the police out of it. On the other hand we may be risking more l
ives than our own if we don’t inform. That’s the deuce of it—we’re working in the dark. And that’s what really is influencing me, Jem. I won’t be beat by these people. They’re all in it—from the little Brand girl to the son of a gun who fired at me this afternoon—and I’m out of it, and I hate the feeling. Here I’ve made myself conversant with this trade at both ends: I’ve shovelled their mud and audited their accounts, and I’m still gaping at the business like a fool, unable to see where the profits come in. D’you think I want to call in a fat-headed Dutch policeman to tell me what I ought to have found out for myself long ago?’
‘Speaking for myself, I’m more afraid than curious.’
‘On my honour, I don’t believe I am,’ he said. ‘Oh, I’m afraid all right—I was in a stinking funk this afternoon. But curiosity’s eating me alive. What is it? What is it in this trade that allows Ward to bank money in thousands and incites a German trader to risk hanging? I’m in it up to my eyes. I’ve got the Axel Company’s grime on my hands and their pay in my pockets, and their competitors’ trade-mark on my leg, and here, in the middle of it all, I can’t see how it’s done. And I will!’ He almost shouted it. ‘I will! I’ll get to the bottom of this business if I’ve got to run through storms of cursed bullets. No police, Jem. Hang the police! I’ll find out what the game is if I spend half my life at it. And then, my noble captain, we’ll go into it ourselves—you and I. That’ll hurt the thieves worse than anything else, I’ll swear.’
CHAPTER VIII
FURTHER RESULTS OF CURIOSITY
WE had no sleep that night, either of us: Voogdt because of his excitement and the pain in his leg, and I because he kept me awake arguing the matter to and fro until the morning ebb, when we turned out, got the last of the ballast aboard and put the hatch covers on. At first I was inclined to treat the whole affair as an accident; but Voogdt convinced me, as he had a way of doing and by daylight I had come round to his opinion that it was a deliberate attempt to get him out of the way. Not that I was persuaded so much by his words; it was his evident anger and fright that weighed with me, for I knew it took a good deal to scare him in earnest.
I was so thoroughly convinced by the morning that when two figures came marching down the bank from the German sheds I proposed to Voogdt to be ready to resist an armed attack.
‘Pooh!’ he said. ‘What nonsense! They’ve come to explain the matter away. You say nothing. Leave it to me.’
When they reached the wharf they hailed us and asked if they might come aboard. The taller man, whom I recognised as the manager, Van Noppen, had a little gun in his hand, and with him was a hobbledehoy youth with a broad, cheerful face, dressed in the clay-smeared clothes of a lumper.
When they got on our deck Van Noppen led off with abject apologies in English.
‘Dis young fool here’—he indicated the boy at his side—‘he has yoost bought a new rifle, an’ yesterday afternoon he must start shootin’ at a paper target, de fool. He never looked to see vhere his shots vass gone vhen dey hat gone t’rough de target. One off your men vass on de bank an’ I see him yoomp away off it. I hope he vass not hurt.’
I looked over my shoulder as though beckoning Voogdt, and he came to my assistance.
‘’E was, though,’ he said truculently. ‘’E was shot in the leg. Look ’ere.’ He pulled up his trouser-leg and displayed the bandage. ‘Nice thing, thet is. Shootin’ blind an’ large. ’E might ’a corpsed me. A bloomin’ nice thing, I call it.’
‘He is very sorry,’ Van Noppen said, but Voogdt was not to be appeased.
‘Sorry! Thet’s a lot o’ good, ain’t it? Thet’ll mend my leg, won’t it? S’pose I gets blood poisonin,’ an’ as to lay by an’ loses my job.’ He turned to the boy and abused him in such execrable German as ’foremast hands pick up in the ports, and then turned to Van Noppen again. ‘I’ll ’ave the law on yer both.’
Van Noppen shrugged his shoulders. ‘The law? Oh yes. But how vill that do you good? If any leedle compensation—’
Voogdt cut in.
‘Compensation. Oh yus, I don’t think. ’Ow can ’e pay compensation?’
‘I haf no doubt our company vill make him an advance on his wages,’ Van Noppen suggested.
‘Then I want a ’undred quid. One ’undred pounds. Savvy?’
‘But that is reedeeculous,’ Van Noppen said placidly. ‘A pound, yes—or two. But a hundert for a leedle accident is foolish talk.’
I stood back and let them squabble over the sum, Voogdt playing the half-angry, half-frightened ’foremast hand to perfection, and Van Noppen quietly persuasive. If Voogdt’s strident accents hadn’t been a constant reminder that he was playing a part I should have been less interested. As it was, he had so convinced me that I seemed to be looking on at a play. The German clerk, well clad and businesslike, with the silent, sheepish lumper at his side, only filled me with suspicion, and their argument, all about money compensation, seemed a thin veneer of civilisation over some hidden abyss of savagery. I almost expected Van Noppen to bring the rifle to his shoulder and shoot one of us on the spot, and half unconsciously put one hand towards the weapon. He handed it to me at once and went on talking to Voogdt, whilst I examined the weapon with curiosity. It was a little Belgian rook-rifle, such a cheap toy as is made for export at about half-a-soverign. I opened the breech, looked through the barrel and was idly sighting it out across the water when Van Noppen appealed to me.
‘I ask you, Captain. I offer feefty pounds to your man. Ees it enough?’
‘I should take it, if I were you,’ I said to Voogdt. ‘You’ll very likely get nothing if you go to law, you know.’
‘Aw right, sir,’ he said. ‘If you sye it’s aw right, I’ll take it. ’And it over,’ he said to Van Noppen.
The money in notes was immediately forthcoming, and I saw that the bundle the German returned to his pocket was far larger than the sheaf he handed to Voogdt. Their business being concluded, Van Noppen held out a hand for his rifle, but Voogdt made a gesture to restrain me from returning it.
‘Thet bloke ain’t fit t’ be trusted wiv a gun,’ he said. ‘I’ll ’ave thet too—’e can chuck it in to make up the bargain. It’ll come in’ andy f’r shootin’ gulls.’
Van Noppen hesitated a moment, but finally handed over the rifle with a box of ammunition which the hobbledehoy produced from his pocket, and the pair went ashore just as the Luck and Charity floated. Voogdt watched them start on their homeward journey and then handed the notes to me. ‘The fifty I owe you,’ he said. ‘The hundred per cent. interest will follow later, I fancy,’ and before I could say a word, he had gone forward and was rousing out the other two to help cast off from the wharf.
Once outside the breeze fell light, and we drifted aimlessly. Off the Weilingen, Voogdt amused himeslf by bringing up the rifle and shooting at the razorbills on the water round us.
‘Don’t do that, you bird-killing Cockney,’ I said.
He wheeled round.
‘Who’s killing birds, you fool? I haven’t touched a bird, and don’t mean to. I’m trying the range of this kid’s toy. I must have been over two hundred yards from the man who potted at me, and this fool thing won’t carry half that distance.’ He paused, looking thoughtfully out across the water. ‘What a game it is,’ he said slowly. ‘Fifty pounds out of a labourer’s pocket to salve the leg of a coasting hand! It all points the same way. Cheyne talks of losses, whilst Ward is banking big money. Both they and the German crowd lie like steam, and both are very anxious to avoid inquiry into their business. Cheyne doesn’t like sacking men. Why? Because it means employing new ones. And the Germans try and shoot a man for asking a simple question, and then come and tell lies and pay up hard money to square it. Why, again? To keep strangers—the police—out of the way of their wharf. What other points have they in common, Jem?’
‘Well, they both open tin sheds and do the same class of general trading business in the same district,’ I said.
‘That’s true.’ He s
eemed to ponder on my rather obvious suggestion. ‘That’s true. But why the secrecy, and the shooting? And where do the profits come in?’
‘Beats me,’ I said briefly, looking over the side at the birds. As I watched a tiny catspaw broke the glassy surface of the water like anyone breathing on a window-pane. ‘And here comes a fair breeze, so we shall have something better to do than sit here and cackle and vex our brains. Ease that sheet a bit, Austin, and then get a cup of tea.’
After the first few puffs it blew steady, and by the time tea was over I had half-a-mind to take in the topsail. However, we were only for Southampton, and I thought that by carrying it we should save a tide, and very fortunate it was for us I did, for we had a bad scare before we rounded the Nab lightship next evening.
Three or four pilot cutters were cruising about off Dungeness, and with them was one small steamboat, slowly doing the same aimless round. She had the appearance of an old tug, being very shabby and narrower in the beam than the great modern ocean towing boats. I pointed her out to Voogdt and drew his attention to her shape.
‘She’d be faster than the modern broad-breasted tug?’ he suggested.
‘Faster, yes. But a modern tug ’ud pull this one backwards whilst she went full steam ahead.’
‘That’s be funny to see,’ he said. ‘Suggestion for a fête maritime—tug-o’-war between two tugs. What’s she doing here, think?’
‘Brought down a crowd of Channel pilots to wait for upward-bound vessels, I expect.’
That was about six o’clock. Past Dungeness we laid our course for the Owers light, and I went below to catch a short nap, leaving Voogdt in charge. At a quarter-past eight I was waked by his usual signal—three bumps with his heel on the deck above my head—and went up the stair, yawning.
‘What’s the row?’ I asked.
‘Something’s gone wrong astern of us,’ he said. ‘I saw the lights of a steamer there ten minutes ago, and now she’s disappeared.’
The Mystery of the Mud Flats Page 10