The Mystery of the Mud Flats

by Maurice Drake

  ‘Has she said anything about Cheyne?’ I asked.

  ‘Not to me. But Miss Lavington tells me she’s taking the matter to heart rather. So keep off the subject all you can.’

  Erith, being a small but busy port, and near London, had proved a convenient place for the syndicate’s operations, and several cargoes of wolframite had crossed its quays during the past twelve months. Miss Brand, in her capacity of agent, had consequently become familiar with the town—had her own regular lodgings in a house out on the London Road—and it was to her rooms that we were invited. Ward was staying at an hotel by the dock entrance, so as to be near us, and we were to call for them on our way up town.

  We dressed ourselves for shore in our usual fashion, in clean flannel shirts and collars and our best serge suits, and I was rather amused than otherwise to find when we reached the hotel that Ward had got into evening dress.

  ‘I suppose our clothes’ll do?’ I said, more in jest than earnest. I couldn’t imagine the Brand girl in fine raiment. ‘We’ve a good excuse, anyhow. One doesn’t carry dress duds on a coaster.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Ward, as though dismissing the question, and we went on our way with minds at ease.

  It was dark when we reached the house, and I could only make it out as a fair-sized villa residence standing back from the road with gardens front and rear. A clean, elderly maid took Ward’s coat and our peaked caps in the hall, and showed us into a candle-lit room with the table laid and a cheerful wood fire burning. Ward sat down, Voogdt went straight to the fire—he was always a cold subject—and I was walking round trying to make out the pictures on the walls, when the door opened again and our hostess entered. And, speaking for myself, I wished I could sink through the floor. I don’t know when I ever had such a surprise in my life.

  To begin with, I hadn’t seen a woman in evening dress close at hand since my two years of folly in South Devon, and they weren’t—well, the class of women I had known there that went in for evening dress had always a little tendency towards slovenliness. Only natural, when you come to think of it. The wasters and their wives, and their wives’ sisters and cousins, had made up all the society I enjoyed then. A waster naturally marries a barmaid ninety-nine times in a hundred, and of course her first purchase after marriage would be an evening frock, to consort with the dignity of her husband’s double-barrelled name. Then the remittances that had been ample for one became a tight fit for two, and the evening frocks soon got slovenly. Poor little women—good wives, most of them … But, associating with them, and with uneducated sailors ever since, I had come to link in my mind the idea of a low-necked dress with some faint suggestion of impropriety. You can’t help being influenced by the notions of the men about you, and the poorer seamen as a class consider bare shoulders improper in themselves. I suppose they get their ideas from the filthy cafés chantants in the ports.

  Then, again, I had lost touch with drawing-rooms. For nearly a year my home had been a three-cornered box of a cabin, nine feet long by twelve wide, and I’d shared that with another man. ’Kiah kept it clean enough for our purposes, but his methods weren’t highly polished, at best. We weren’t exactly insanitary, but Keating’s powder always made a feature in the grocery list, and ’Kiah rather plumed himself on it than otherwise, for boats of our class don’t often go to that expense. Our usual cargo was mud, and the atmosphere of the ports we touched at principally coal dust. We didn’t complain, naturally, because coasting is a rough trade, and cleanliness an unusual luxury for the men engaged in it. I hadn’t seen a bathroom for a year: a bucket and sponge in the cabin, or an occasional swim overside had served my needs well enough. And now, fresh from that atmosphere of dirt and slovenliness and sweating hard work, it came a bit queer to be confronted with a girl one had always associated with open air and salt water, and find her dressed to kill, dainty as a flower.

  Her dress was plain enough, with no frills or furbelows, and she looked sleek and demure as a kitten, and—what I’d never noticed before—really pretty, too. Remember I’d never seen her before except on board or in some port or another, and there she had always been simply and even poorly dressed. Tweeds were her wear; tweed or serge plainly cut, and often well worn at that, with a straw hat and a plain blouse—that sort of thing. Again and again she had reminded me more of a boy in petticoats than anything else; but now—she wasn’t in the least like a boy now, at any rate.

  I’m no man-milliner, and to this day I can’t tell what she had on, though I can see her plainly enough every time I shut my eyes. I know her dress was a pale dove-grey, very soft and clinging smoothly, so as to show the round curves of her. Her arms were bare, rounded and pinky-white: I couldn’t picture them now akimbo on her hips, nor could I recognise in her any trace of the quick little shrew who had squabbled with Voogdt across a cabin full of crumbled foresail. She had taken on an air of costliness; her hair was done elaborately, twisted in coils round the top of her little head, and round her neck she had a collar of pearls. Miss Out-of-doors I’d called her in my mind, but now she looked as though she’d never been outside a drawing-room: it was as though a tough little sea-pink had become an exotic from the hothouse.

  I stared so—with my mouth open, as likely as not—that I think she must have felt a little shy—just enough to make her play the dignified hostess for the first few minutes. She blushed, too, and of course that made things worse than ever; and what with that, and what with the strange new daintiness of her, and what with my serge clothes and thick boots, I felt so awkward that I thought I should never get out a civil answer to her greetings. It was all over in a moment: just a ‘How d’you do?’ and ‘I’m glad to see you,’ and she had turned to Ward and Voogdt, and left me with my ears burning, wondering at the prettiness of her bare neck and trim waist seen from behind. Whilst she was talking to them I had time to catch my breath, to pull myself together and resolve to try and behave more like a civilised man and less like a ’foremast Jack ashore.

  After the first few minutes that came easily, for she hadn’t changed her manners with her frock, and her chatter soon set me at ease again. Only when we sat down I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Ward sat facing her, Voogdt was on her right and I was opposite him. I think the dinner was simple enough, though I don’t know in the least what was served: fish and fowl and sweets, or something like that, with claret to drink and lemonade. The elderly maid waited on us, and until she withdrew with the last of the dishes the talk was necessarily on general subjects. When the door shut behind her Miss Brand took a cigarette, leaned forward and plunged directly into the very subject we had been warned to avoid.

  ‘Business before pleasure,’ she said. ‘I want the whole of this story about Willis.’

  She looked at me, I looked at Voogdt, and we both turned awkwardly to Ward, who answered for the pair of us.

  ‘My last words on leaving the Luck and Charity this afternoon were to warn these two to keep off that subject,’ he said.

  ‘And why?’

  ‘Well—for your comfort.’

  ‘Comfort!’ she cried, with a sudden passion, and slapped a hand upon the table. ‘Why will you persist in this attitude of shielding tender woman from the cold wind? Haven’t I worked for the syndicate like a man?’

  ‘Better than most men,’ Ward answered her.

  ‘Then why can’t you treat me like a man?’

  ‘Because you aren’t one. Because you approach a business matter with heat, and bang tables and make us all uncomfortable. That’s why.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She was shamefaced on the instant. ‘I’m very sorry. But he’s my cousin, as you know—and I thought a lot of Willis. I won’t be silly again. Now, Mr Voogdt, tell me the whole story plainly. I must know it, you know.’

  With her elbows on the table, she listened quietly, never moving except to blink or wave away the cigarette smoke when it got into her eyes, whilst Voogdt went over the whole story again. Now that she was exercising self-control no one would hav
e imagined the matter had any importance for either of them. He spoke without a trace of heat or sneering or emphasis of any sort, and she never once interrupted or showed any trace of emotion whatever. When he had done her manner was as cool and collected as though she had no interest in the affair, and I began to recollect what Ward had said about her business ability.

  ‘You think it wise to let him have this promised cargo?’ she asked.

  Voogdt gave his reasons, like a man reciting a lesson. ‘I don’t see any other alternative,’ he concluded.

  ‘Nor do I. But—we must do it, I quite see—but it’s annoying to be compelled to give them anything at all. And suppose he wants it done again?’

  ‘He shan’t do that. We’ll make that clear to him, rest assured. And, as I’ve already pointed out to West, I don’t think the firm will be much out of pocket on the deal in the end.’

  ‘Somebody must be there to keep an eye on him,’ she said, with decision. ‘You’ll be away on voyages; there’s nothing to prevent him making those voyages long ones; and in your absence he can do as he likes. I must stay at Terneuzen myself after this.’

  ‘If I’ve anything to say about it, you won’t,’ I said, finding my tongue at last.

  ‘And why not?’ She had never put me on the same footing as Voogdt, but now her manner seemed positively insulting.

  ‘Because it’s no place for a woman. We don’t know what risks there are, and we do know that Cheyne can’t be relied on.’

  ‘Do you think I want Willis Cheyne to look after me?’ she said sharply. ‘On the contrary. I’m going there to look after him.’

  ‘That’s a man’s job.’

  ‘I’ve already told you to consider me as a man. I was doing a man’s work before you were a member of the syndicate, and I don’t see that your joining it affects my position.’ She turned to Ward. ‘I’ll stay there till the end,’ she said.

  ‘The end?’ I asked, puzzled, for she spoke as though the end were already in sight.

  She still looked at Ward. ‘Tell them what we decided when we took them into partnership,’ she ordered.

  ‘Oh! that.’ Ward spread his hand on the table, examining his finger-nails minutely. ‘We—ah—we decided that if we didn’t approve of you as partners we would throw up the whole business. We’ve made enough out of it for our purposes, you see.’

  ‘Why didn’t you throw it up at once?’ Voogdt asked.

  ‘It didn’t matter much, one way or the other. I think West’s work throughout the winter decided us as much as anything. Cheyne pointed out that he’d served us loyally through a very trying winter—’

  ‘The deuce he did!’ I said. ‘Why, he detests me.’

  ‘Whether he detests you or not, he protested strongly against any suggestion of throwing up the business.’

  ‘Has he drawn his profits as they became due?’ Voogdt asked, and Ward nodded.

  ‘That explains it. He’s broke. I guessed as much, from half-a-dozen little signs.’

  ‘It’s impossible,’ Pamily Brand said. ‘We’re—we’re all well-to-do. How can he have spent his share in that quiet place?’

  ‘Gambling. The fool I—as if there weren’t enough excitement in the business itself. He hasn’t been buying securities—such as Japanese loans.’ He threw a sly glance sideways at Ward. ‘You may as well throw water into a sieve as expect that sort of chap to keep big money. He’s just lost his head, and gambled. I’ll bet you what you please that he hasn’t a thousand pounds in the world, and that he owes more than that. That explains his desire to keep the business going—and explains some other things as well. Thieving, for instance.’

  Ward seemed inclined to doubt, but Pamily Brand insisted that Voogdt was right. It was evident that she had tried and condemned Cheyne, and now, like a woman, she wouldn’t hear a word in his favour.

  ‘Of course he’s a fool,’ she said, and then suddenly dragged me in as conclusive evidence. ‘Didn’t he try to start stealing from his own friends and call you in as an accomplice?’ she said, as though that settled the matter once for all.

  She took me all aback.

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘What do you mean?’

  For once she sort of twinkled at me as though I were an old friend, but when I saw that Ward and Voogdt were laughing, I understood she was making a butt of me and it made me furious.

  ‘Look here, Miss Brand,’ I said, getting up, ‘I’m at your table, and that makes it very difficult for me to say anything. All the same, you should remember I’m your guest and stop your sneering for once. You’ve never treated me fairly. From the first you’ve always treated me like a fool—which I am, I daresay. I’m not as clever as you are, and when your cleverness leads to making people uncomfortable, I don’t want to be. You sneer at me as Cheyne’s accomplice. I never wanted to be. Ask Voogdt, there, whether I didn’t want to punch his head at the very start of this thieving.’

  ‘I knew it!’ she cried. Her voice shook so that I thought I’d gone too far and frightened her. ‘I knew it. I c-could have sworn it.’ She turned to Voogdt. ‘“Punch his damned head and write to Ward and expose the whole business.” Weren’t those his very words?’

  ‘Those very words, as far as I remember,’ Voogdt said. ‘If you’d been there you couldn’t have reported them better.’

  I was standing with my hand on the back of my chair ready to go. Her face I couldn’t see whilst she was talking to Voogdt, but when she turned to me again she was smiling quietly, and she spoke as pleasantly as if we were old friends.

  ‘Sit down, Mr West,’ she said. ‘You take my nonsense too seriously. Now I’ll try to speak plainly, so that you can’t misunderstand me. When I laugh at you, remember it’s a privilege I always claim towards people I consider my friends. Ask Leonard there whether I never tease him. When I said Willis was a fool in choosing you as an accomplice I didn’t mean that you were stupid—though you are, to take fire at nothing—but that you were too honest for his purpose. He ought to have known that. I knew it, ever since that night you came to us at Terneuzen, tired out and wet through, poor dear. Another thing: I’m a woman and I mix much with other women, and clever quick-witted men who try to think and talk like women. And that means that they avoid the obvious—put the cart before the horse, so to speak. You don’t, you sailors. Willis didn’t. He just said what he meant, and it was a blessed change and I liked him for it. And you’re the same, and I like you for it. You’re honest, and Willis is not, so I like you the better. And you’ve worked and risked your life in my—in our interests. Do you think I don’t appreciate that? Surely you aren’t going to deny me my privilege of making fun of you a little sometimes?’

  ‘Sometimes? It’s always,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t understand it was just teasing. It seemed sneering to me.’

  ‘Please believe me, it never was,’ she said very seriously. ‘Come. Shake hands and sit down and be friends. I won’t tease again if you don’t like it.’

  That disarmed me. ‘Tease as much as you like,’ I said, sitting down, as she told me. ‘As long as I know you’re only teasing. I thought you were angry with me because I didn’t like Cheyne.’

  ‘Well, now you know better, because I don’t like him myself,’ she said shortly, as though dismissing an unpleasant subject. ‘Now, business. Anything further to lay before the meeting?’

  Voogdt plunged into the business at once as though to help change the subject.

  ‘Our methods are too primitive,’ he said.

  ‘You’ll find it difficult to better them,’ Ward said briskly, and the two of them began a lively discussion. I said nothing, and Pamily Brand very little for once. She sat listening, putting in a word now and then, and occasionally smiling round at me as though to reassure me of her good will.

  Voogdt got out several suggestions, more to make talk than anything else, I fancy, for Ward disposed of them easily enough. Primitive as the ballasting seemed, it was evidently the only practical method of removing the wolframite without ar
ousing suspicion.

  ‘But things are changed now,’ Voogdt insisted. ‘You haven’t any object in deceiving your one crew any more. Surely that should permit of some safer way of doing business.’

  ‘Suggest one,’ was all Ward would say.

  ‘What about packing it in bags labelled as fertiliser?’

  ‘It would come to the ears of the farmers at Terneuzen at once. They’d try it, find it worthless, and then begin to make inquiries as to our English market. No good. You dare not betray that it has any value until it’s safe in our warehouses.’

  ‘It’s losing stuff from English quaysides bothers me,’ Voogdt explained.

  ‘We’ve had to put up with it, and you’ll have to do the same.’

  ‘Can’t we take the bags aboard empty and fill them from the ballast in the hold when at sea?’

  ‘That’s not a bad notion,’ Pamily Brand cut in. She must have been listening keenly, for all her air of inattention.

  Ward agreed. ‘Not a bad notion at all.’

  They appealed to me, and I said I thought we could bag some part of each cargo, though not all, as that would mean long delays at sea as well as considerable practical difficulty.

  ‘Then we order the bags here tomorrow and you can get them aboard at once,’ Ward said.

  ‘How long will they be making?’ I asked.

  ‘A couple of days or so. There’s no such violent hurry for you to get away. A day or two of holiday won’t hurt you.’

  That point settled, we all got up to go. Pamily Brand saw us to the door and shook hands all round, with me last.

  ‘You won’t be silly again, will you?’ she said. The others were going down the path towards the gate.

  ‘You must forgive me for behaving like a fool,’ I said.

  ‘I will,’ said she. ‘As a token of forgiveness you can call for me here tomorrow morning at eleven, and take me out. I want to do some shopping and you shall carry the parcels. A great privilege. Goodnight.’