I thought he was drunk. He looked it, exactly: flushed, his eyes wild, his speech incoherent; and the first thing he did was to put a gold-topped magnum on the cabin table and rout out two tumblers from a locker.
‘Been painting the town red?’ I asked.
He made no answer, but opened the champagne, smothering the report with a handkerchief wrapped round the cork, and handed one tumbler to me. ‘To you, partner,’ he said, and drained the other at a gulp. ‘That’s good. That’s the first today.’
‘Looks like it,’ I said dryly.
‘’Tis, all the same. Things are oft not what they seem. Do I look drunk?’
‘You do.’
‘So I am.’ The only sign of sobriety about him was that he kept his voice low. ‘Drunk with joy. A most intoxicating tipple. Oh! I am pleased with myself, James … Not that I’ve any reason to be. These past wasted months … The blind mole I’ve been! To think that Accident should do what mighty Reason could not achieve. Here’s to Accident and Reason, Luck and Charity, Voogdt and West.’ He poured out and disposed of another tumbler of wine.
‘Where’ve you been?’
‘To Plymouth—fool that I am. I ought to have gone miles inland—miles and miles and miles from any seaport town. But how was I to know? And time was short. I’ve found out where the profits come from, Jem.’
‘You haven’t!’ I said, jumping up so that I hit my head against a deck-beam.
‘I have. I’ve got the company in my vest pocket. Thousands of pounds, Jem. Thousands. And I think we’re entitled to a partnership in the show.’
‘Has it anything to do with the shooting business and our being nearly run down?’
‘The shooting, almost for certain, and perhaps the other thing. ’Tisn’t all clear to me yet, and I’m not going to tell you much until it is. But we’ve got the Axel Trading Company by the short hairs, and there’s enough profits hanging to the business for us to have a share without hurting anybody. And that share I mean to have.’
‘Is it very fishy?’ I asked.
‘It isn’t too fishy for me,’ he said. ‘And I think I can guarantee it won’t hurt your conscience. In fact, I really can’t see that it’s dishonest at all. It’s smart dealing. That’s Ward, of course. Cheyne hasn’t the brains. But I can’t see that it hurts anybody. Enough of it. I’ve finished talking for the present. Are we loaded?’
‘We shall be by tomorrow evening.’
‘If we aren’t, we’ll sail all the same. There’s no further need to keep up this cargo nonsense. It’s only a waste of money. That business’ll have to be rearranged. We must get back to Terneuzen as hard as we can lick to meet Ward.’
‘He isn’t there.’
‘He will be before we are. I sent him a wire today that’ll give him palpitation of the heart. Oh ho! there’ll be a sitting in council when we arrive. Now finish the fizz and turn in. Not another word do I say about it till we’re out at sea. The very deck-beams might shout it aloud. I was so scared I shouldn’t get back to you—that I should be killed in a railway accident or something of that sort—that I posted you a letter before I left Plymouth to put you on the track, in case of my demise, and now I’m nervous about that letter. You’ll get it in the morning—and mind you do get it, too. Goodnight, partner.’
A letter card addressed in Voogdt’s writing awaited me at the agent’s next day, and I took it back to him unopened.
‘Since you’re not dead,’ I said in explanation, as I handed it to him.
‘It’s your letter, strictly speaking,’ he said. ‘You’re too conscientious. Stick it up in the pipe-rack and open it when we’re past the Mewstone tonight. That’ll please both parties.’
Seeing he treated it so lightly, I forgot all about it in the course of the day’s work, and it was late that evening, and we were well past the Start, before Voogdt, who was at the wheel, recalled it to me.
‘Don’t you want to read your letter?’ he asked slyly.
‘I’d forgotten it.’ I ran below, took it from the rack and tore off the edges. It seemed at first sight to be a collection of initials.
‘DEAR J.,—Ask a chemist what WO2 means.
‘A. V.’
I went back on deck with it in my hand.
‘What does WO2 mean?’ I asked.
‘Ask a chemist, I told you. Ask Ward. I wonder whether he’d shoot you or poison you if you did?’
‘Don’t talk like a fool. Ward’s an honest man.’
‘I think so, too; but, mind you, it’s no good blinking the fact that if we were out of the way it’d mean big money in his pocket. These things make one ponder. That running down business—I’m not saying it had anything to do with our people, because I’m pretty well sure it hadn’t—but it would have been a fine thing for them if it had come off. We happen to represent Ward’s one mistake. I suppose you were down on your luck when he met you, and he took you for an ordinary coasting skipper. As for me, I’m not at all the sort of man they want poking round their wharf. The average coasting Jack wouldn’t have given any trouble; he’s too stupid to try smelling into his employer’s affairs, as I do. There’s the result of your hand. Tear it up in little bits and throw it overboard.’
‘I’m as wise as I was before,’ I said, doing as he told me.
‘You’ve only to go to a chemist to know as much as I do, and then there’d be two more in their secret. Up to now I fancy it’s confined to five people.’
‘Who’s the fifth?’
‘That solicitor clerk of theirs must be in it, I think. Carwithin, he’s called. To think how they’ve been skimming the cream off the market these last eighteen months. This German company means complications, though. Van Noppen’s streets ahead of Cheyne. That explosive pretext is noble.’
‘I’m still in the dark,’ I said. ‘Do get it off your chest straight, instead of hinting like this. You muddle me. Where do the profits come in, and what is WO2?’
‘WO2, my son, is the chemical formula for wolframite or tungsten dioxide,’ he said. ‘Its commercial value is about two hundred and forty pounds per ton. And that mud we’ve been ballasting with is almost pure WO2. Now do you see the game?
‘Reckoning in the Olive Leaf and the Kismet, I calculate they’re turning over about fifteen thousand pounds a week. Think of it! Of course all this secrecy means awful waste but they can’t be netting much less than three or four thousand a week at the worst. And that’s been going on for eighteen months! Get your mind attuned to those figures and you’ll begin to understand why the Germans shot at me and why we must watch Ward and Cheyne like sworn enemies until we know them better.’
I breathed hard, fairly staggered for once. I couldn’t realise such figures. Four thousand a week—two hundred thousand a year—over a quarter of a million pounds in eighteen months. Our footy little freights, thirty pounds a voyage, or so, shrivelled to nothing in the face of such a sum, and I said as much aloud.
‘Four thousand a week! Three small boats and rent to pay out of it—a hundred and twenty at the outside. What a profit!’
‘Not so fast,’ Voogdt interrupted. ‘That four thousand is all profit. I tell you their turnover is nearer fifteen thousand a week. I’ve allowed two-thirds of that for working expenses.’
‘But that’s nonsense. How on earth can they possibly spend more than a hundred and fifty a week? They couldn’t do it, man.’
‘Ah!’ said Voogdt. ‘But there’s one item you don’t take into account, and I’ll bet it’s monstrous—awful.’
‘What item?’
‘Waste. Ghastly waste. Think a minute of all the precautions they’ve taken to ensure secrecy. Do you think they dare sell those heaps of stuff just where we dump them on the ballast quays? Not much. That stuff’s rubbish—just mud ballast—till they’ve got it stowed away in their inland warehouses. They daren’t even look anxious about it; it lies on those quays for anyone to take away. I expect it often is taken away by barges. Who knows how many small craft round the coast
at this minute are carting it about in all good faith as ballast, never dreaming there’s a little fortune under their hatches? No, you mark my words: we shall find waste is the biggest item against the firm; and heart-breaking waste, too, for they daren’t put out a finger to prevent it.’
‘What’s the good of the stuff?’ I asked.
‘It’s used for hardening steel—especially engineers’ saws. Rum stuff, it is. You know when ordinary steel gets hot it loses its temper and goes soft. Well, tungsten steel don’t. Friction only makes it harder, so that saws made of it cut the better for use, and don’t wear out half as fast. That’s what sends up the price. When wolframite was only used for chemical purposes you could buy it for about twenty-five quid a ton. Then some genius discovered its effect on steel, and its cost jumped almost a thousand per cent. at once. And it’s used for electric filaments too. I wonder what effect this supply of ours has had upon the market so far?’
‘What are you going to do when we reach Terneuzen?’
‘Play with my cards face upwards on the table. Tell them plainly how much we know, and ask for a sixth share between us. That’s not greedy: there’s enough and to spare, and since we’re doing the work and standing the risks, I think we’re entitled to our whack.’
‘Who d’ye mean by “we”?’ I asked.
‘You and myself. I did think of letting ’Kiah in, but not Rance. Even ’Kiah—he’s a good chap, but I doubt whether sharing profits is likely to do him any good. He might only lose his head and play the fool with the money. What do you think about him? Wouldn’t it be wiser to give him a decent rise in screw and put away good bonuses for him from time to time without his knowledge?’
‘Seems to me you’re busy counting your chickens before they’re hatched,’ I said. ‘Better wait till you’ve got your share before you start spending it.’
‘Maybe; though I think we’re safe to get decent terms. But, as you pertinently remark, there’s nothing can be settled till we’ve reached Terneuzen.
I turned in, but of course I couldn’t sleep. For a couple of hours I lay awake figuring out the results of the discovery. Ward and Miss Lavington—and the Brand girl, too—came into my mind, and the more I thought of them the less I liked the notion of forcing them to accept us as partners. They’d always treated me well, and it seemed a scurvy way to repay them.
Then Voogdt. I’d always liked the man—liked him from our first meeting, when, dusty and hungry and cheerful, he had thrown his broken boots into Exmouth Dock and philosophised over them. He’d been a good shipmate to me, and I had been glad to know he’d benefited in pocket and health by cruising with me. Now that was all altered—turned upside-down. Here was my friend, a joyous-hearted pauper, proposing to take my employers by the throats, so to speak, and wring money out of them, money that he wanted me to share. It was too much of an inversion of things to please me, and I couldn’t pretend I liked it. He’d talked of ’Kiah being spoiled by money: how would money react on him?
At last I pushed open the skylight and called him.
‘Wheel ho! Voogdt.’
‘Hello, yourself.’
‘I don’t approve of this business. It’s blackmail.’
‘Quite right,’ he answered. ‘So it is. And I’m going to do it.’
‘I ain’t,’ I said. ‘I stand out. Where’s your philosophy, you who scorn property?’
‘Money isn’t property,’ he said. ‘Money’s a tool. I never objected to tools—things to do things with. Scythe, spade, plane, ships, machinery—I love ’em all. It’s clothes and furniture, houses, farms and land make me tired. They’d weigh me down, man. But money! Money’s the grandest tool of all. Property—go to! It’s fluid energy—compressible energy. It annihilates space and time, makes war and peace, makes grass to grow, builds ships and houses for fools to live in. With it I can carry the labour of a thousand men bottled in a scrap of paper in my vest pocket. No, money’s good enough for me. Call it property, energy, a tool, what you will, I’m out after it this trip. And I’m going to get it.’
I slammed down the skylight, conscious of a crick in my neck, turned in again and managed to catch an hour’s uneasy nap before change of watch.
CHAPTER X
OF A PARTNERSHIP IN CRIME
BESIDES the distaste I had conceived for the whole business, I was naturally inclined to be anxious about the reception we were to get at Terneuzen. If the German company could find it worth their while to try to run us down and shoot at Voogdt, what were we to expect from our own people when we came demanding a share in the concern? I had never liked Voogdt’s habit of poking his nose into their business, and now they would be sure to think me a partner in his precious attempt at blackmail. The worst of it was that I couldn’t pull out very well. If I refused to stand by Voogdt, that didn’t prevent him using his knowledge. If we had a row about it subsequent inquiries might arise, or suspicions be roused on the part of ’Kiah or Rance; and if I went straight to the company and repudiated Voogdt altogether, for aught I know he might be shot at by somebody else, and this time with better aim—and I liked him a lot too well for that. In a word, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t persuade him to lie low and do nothing; I couldn’t quarrel with him; I couldn’t take the company’s side against him, and yet I didn’t want to be his partner in the matter. So I did the next best thing: said nothing at all. This I was the more able to do, for Voogdt took the whole conduct of affairs out of my hands from the moment we landed at Terneuzen.
I had no mind to complain of that. His brains were worth double mine; his was the discovery, and his the right to exploit it, but Cheyne bitterly resented his attitude of command, and tricked as he had been by his antagonist from the very start, I admit he had some of my sympathy.
Voogdt, in the highest spirits, met sulks with light chaff, and his manner, a blend of good temper and condescension, would have irritated a saint. It drove Cheyne to the point of ferocity. Even as he tried again and again to address me as the principal member on our side, so Voogdt persisted throughout all their first conversation in treating him with patronising politeness, as though regarding him only as an agent of that more worthy antagonist, Ward.
All this took place early on a rain-swept morning off the wharf. Cheyne, dressed in slovenly fashion, with a coloured kerchief about his neck in place of a collar, and a general air of frowsy sleep under his dripping mackintosh, came off to us in a boat from the shore, and greeted me sullenly.
‘’Morning,’ he said. ‘Come below, will you? I want a word with you.’
When Voogdt followed us downstairs Cheyne looked at him savagely.
‘What d’you want?’ he demanded.
‘To hear this word of yours with the skipper. Don’t look so sulky, my dear sir. We’re partners, you must know. There’s our registered trade-mark.’
He pointed to the little looking-glass over the piperack. On it was written, apparently with the corner of a cake of soap, the formula WO2 in letters six inches high. Cheyne went livid.
‘You fool!’ he said savagely. ‘Anybody might have looked in through the skylight,’ and he rubbed the letters into indistinguishable blurred streaks with his fingers before he sat down again. ‘Now out with it,’ he said. ‘What’s your price?’
‘Are you empowered to deal?’ Voogdt asked sharply.
‘Of course I am.’
‘I don’t see that there’s any “of course” about it,’ said Voogdt. ‘I understand Mr Ward and Miss Lavington are the largest shareholders, and I prefer to deal with principals. All the same, it may save time to tell you that our price is a sixth share in the concern. You can mention that to Mr Ward, and if he consents he can come and say so.’
‘A sixth share! And if we don’t consent?’
‘Then Messrs. Voogdt & West start in opposition to you within a week.’
‘That’d be a terrible blow, wouldn’t it?’ Cheyne tried to sneer. ‘What harm could you do us, with your one twopenny-ha’penny boat?’
‘We should be the worst opponents you ever had,’ he said. ‘And shall I tell you why? Because we don’t want a lot. Three full cargoes, or four at most, dumped the other side of the water, and then sold openly, would make us and finish you. Two hundred and forty tons at two hundred and forty quid and we retire from business with over fifty thousand pounds between us. Half of that’s enough for my simple needs, and I think I can say the same for the skipper here.’
‘You’ve got to find a market.’ Cheyne objected.
‘Advertisement’ll do that. “To engineers and steel-founders. Two hundred and forty tons of wolframite for sale in sixty-ton lots. Purchasers can view on quayside at Shoreham, Southampton, Portsmouth and Newhaven.” That would suit your book, wouldn’t it? That and the consequent inquiries into the source of the stuff. It’s no go, Master Cheyne. We’ve got you in a cleft stick, and you may as well climb down.’
Cheyne cursed us both roundly. ‘You haven’t thought the thing out yet,’ he said. ‘You don’t know the losses. Besides, a lump like that would cause a drop in price immediately.’
‘It wouldn’t knock the bottom out of the market,’ Voogdt said calmly. ‘That’d happen later, when the deposits here became known. That one sale would be enough for us, and we should be able to retire from business. You needn’t grumble, you know; you must have all made a decent pile in the last eighteen months. That’s our weak point, I won’t deny. The only way by which you can hurt us is by realising you’ve got enough and giving the show away yourselves. That would knock us out, I freely admit. You see I’m open with you. But you won’t do it. Better take in two new partners. As to the losses, I’m not over-sanguine. I can guess what those losses mean pretty well; but we’ll manage to cut some of them in future.’
‘How?’
‘That I’ll tell you when the new partnership’s in existence. Mr Ward’s in Terneuzen, I suppose? Yes? Then you’d better go ashore again and arrange a meeting as soon as we land. No sense in wasting time.’
The Mystery of the Mud Flats Page 12