Luck of the Bodkins (7 page)

The trouble was that, having other and more immediately urgent matters constantly occupying his mind, he knew so little of the pains and penalties attaching to this smuggling business ...

At this moment, the purser came in and started to hurry across the room. Just the man Mr Llewellyn wanted. 'Hey,' he called. 'Got a minute?'

Pursers at the beginning of a voyage never really have a minute, but the speaker was a passenger of more than ordinary importance, so this one stopped.

'Something I can do for you, Mr Llewellyn?'

'Just like a word with you, if you're not too busy.
’

'Certainly. Nothing wrong, I
hope?'

Mr Llewellyn nearly laughed mirthlessly at this. It was as if somebody had asked the same question of a man on the rack.

'No, no. It's just that I'd like your advice about something. Seems to me you'd be the man to know. It's about smuggling stuff through the Customs. Not that I'm planning to do it myself, y'understand. No, sir! I'd be a swell chump to try that game, ha, ha!'

'Ha, ha,' echoed the purser dutifully, for he had been specially notified by the London office to do all that lay in his power to make the other's voyage pleasant.

'No, it simply struck me, mulling things over, that it ought to be one could get a good picture out of this smuggling racket, and I want to have the details right. Listen. What happens to a guy that's caught trying to ease stuff through the New York Customs?'

The purser chuckled.

'The answer to that, Mr Llewellyn, can be given in one wora. Plenty!' 'Plenty?
’

'Plenty,' said the purser, chuckling again. He had a Very rich, jovial chuckle, not unlike the sound of whisky glug-glugging into a glass. It was a sound which Mr Llewellyn, as a rule, liked, but it froze him now with a nameless dread.

There was a pause.

'Well, what?' said Mr Llewellyn at length, in a thin voice.

The purser had become interested. He was a man who enjoyed instructing the ignorant. He forgot that he was busy.

'Well,' he said, 'suppose this fellow in your picture was caught trying to run through something pretty important like a pearl necklace... I beg your pardon?'

'Didn't speak,' mumbled Mr Llewellyn.

‘
I thought you said something.'

'No.'

'Oh? Well, where was I? Oh, yes. This fellow of yours, we'll say, is trying to run a pearl necklace through New York Customs and gets caught. He then finds himself up against a rather stiff situation. Smugglers can be sent to jail, of course, or the authorities may just confiscate the goods and impose a fine of anything up to their full value. Personally, if I may offer a suggestion, I would say, for the purposes of your story, make them confiscate the goods, impose the full fine and send the man to jail as well.'

Mr Llewellyn swallowed rather painfully.

'I'd rather keep it true to life.'

'Oh, that would be quite true to life,' the purser assured him encouragingly. 'It's frequently done. More often than not, I should say. Why I suggest it is that it would give you some prison scenes.'

'I don't like prison scenes,' said Mr Llewellyn.

'Highly effective,' argued the purser.

'I don't care,' said Mr Llewellyn. 'I don't like them.
’

The purser seemed a little damped for the moment, but soon recovered his enthusiasm. He had always been much interested in the pictures, and he knew that a man in Mr Llewellyn's position would want to see all round a subject before deciding which angle was the best from which to approach it. Possibly, he felt, Mr Llewellyn, with that
flair
of his in matters of this kind, was not visualizing the thing as drama at all, but more as comedy. He put this to him.

'It's the funny side of it that appeals to you, perhaps? And I expect you're right. We all like a good laugh, don't we? Well,' said the purser, chuckling that fruity chuckle of his at the visions rising before his mental eye, 'there would certainly be lots of comedy in the scene where they searched the fellow. Especially if he was fat. You get some good fat man - the fatter he is the funnier he'll be - and I'll guarantee that at the Southampton Super-Bijou, at least, they laugh so much you'll be able to hear them over in Portsmouth.'

The ghoulish tastes of the patrons of the Super-Bijou Cinema at Southampton did not appear to be shared by Ivor Llewellyn. His face remained cold and stodgy. He said he did not see where that would be funny.

‘
You don't?'

'Nothing funny about it to me.
’

'What, not when they took that fat man's clothes off and gave him an emetic?' 'An emetic?' Mr Llewellyn stared violently. 'Why?' To see if he was hiding anything else.' 'Would they do that?' 'Oh, yes. Almost routine.'

Mr Llewellyn gazed at him bleakly. He had disliked many continuity writers in his time, but none so much as he now disliked this purser. The unrestrained relish of the man in these revolting details seemed to him quite sickening.

'I never knew that before.'

‘
Oh, yes.'

'It's monstrous!
‘
said Mr Llewellyn.
‘
In a civilized country!
'

'Well, people ought not to go in for smuggling,
’
said the purser virtuously. 'You would think they would have enough sense to know it was hopeless, wouldn't you?'

‘
Is it hopeless?'

'Oh, quite. They have the most extraordinarily efficient spy system.'

Mr Llewellyn licked his lips.

'I was going to ask you about that. How do these spies of theirs operate?'

'Oh, they're everywhere. They loaf about London and Paris and all over the Continent...'

'Places like Cannes?'

'Cannes more than anywhere, I should say, except London and Paris. You see, so many Americans nowadays like to take this new Southern route home, on one of the Italian boats. More sunshine, and it's a novelty. I should think you would find a Customs spy at any of the big hotels at Cannes. I know there's one at the Gigantic and another at the Magnifique
.

'The Magnifique!'

'That's the name of one of the hotels at Cannes,' explained the purser. 'I've no doubt each of the others has its man, too. It pays the United States Customs people to keep them there, because sooner or later they're sure to justify the expense. You see, people are so apt to talk injudiciously at foreign hotels, and they get overheard. They don't imagine there's anything wrong with the well-dressed young man who happened to brush against them in the bar while they were discussing how to get the stuff through, and when they meet the same fellow on board it never occurs to them that he's there for a reason. But he is, and they find it out when they land in New York."

Mr Llewellyn cleared his throat.

'Ever - ever seen him? The Magnifique fellow?'

'Not myself. A friend of mine did. Tall, well-dressed, languid, good-looking young chap, my friend said he was, the last person you would ever suspect ... Good heavens!' said the purser, looking at his watch. 'Is that the time? I shall really have to run along. Well, I hope I have been able to be of some use to you, Mr Llewellyn. I would certainly have a Customs spy in this picture of yours, if I were you. Most picturesque profession, I have always thought. And now you will excuse me, won't you? I have a thousand things to attend to. Always the way till we clear Cherbourg.'

Mr Llewellyn excused him gladly. He had derived no pleasure whatever from his conversation. He fell into a reverie, his teeth grinding at the unlighted cigar that lay between them. And

this reverie might have lasted indefinitely, had not something occurred to interrupt it. A voice spoke behind him.

‘
I say,' it said, 'excuse me, but do you happen to know how to spell "inexplicable"?'

Mr Llewellyn's physique was such as to make it impossible for him, whatever the provocation, to turn like a flash, but he turned as much like a flash as was in the power of a man whose waistline had disappeared in the year 1912. And having done so he uttered a faint, mouselike squeak and sat goggling.

It was the sinister stranger of the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes.

At this moment, the door opened and Gertrude Butterwick walked in.

Chapter 6

Gertrude Butterwick had spent the early hours of the voyage closeted with Miss Passenger, the captain of the All England Ladies' Hockey Team, trying on hats. That was why Monty, for all his assiduity, had failed to find her. While he had been shimmering about the promenade deck, the boat deck, the drawing-room, the smoking-room, the library, the gymnasium and virtually everywhere else except the engine-rooms and the Captain's cabin, she was in Miss Passenger's state-room on Deck B, trying on, as we say, hats.

Miss Passenger had done hers
elf well in the matter of hats,
for it was her intention on this fi
rst visit of hers to the United
States of North America to give the na
tives a treat. She had
blue hats, pink hats, beige hats,
green hats, straw hats, string
hats, and felt hats, and Gertrude
had tried them on, all of them,
one by one. She found that the
process helped to dull the pain that gnawed at her heart.

For, little as anybody would have suspected it who had seen her at Waterloo Station, there was a pain gnawing at her heart. Her pride made it impossible, after what had occurred, for her ever to consider the idea of marrying Monty, but that did not mean that she did not think of him with a wild, aching regret-Reggie Tennyson had been quite mistaken in supposing that she no
longer found her former fiance
glamorous. His fatal spell still operated.

She was doing her best to shake it off, when the supply of hats gave out. Miss Passenger had stockings, too, but stockings are not quite the same thing. She excused herself, accordingly, and went on deck. And, happening to find herself outside the library, it occurred to her that she had better have a book. There might, she felt, be a wakeful night before her.

The position of affairs by the time she entered was as follows.

Mr Llewellyn and Monty had parted company. The motion-picture magnate remained hunched up in his chair, and Monty had returned to the corner from which he had come. A man in his state of mind is easily discouraged, and the complete failure of his attempt to get Mr Llewellyn to cooperate with him in the spelling of the word 'inexplicable
’
had caused him to abandon his letter for the time being. When Gertrude came in, he was staring before him, chewing the pen.

Gertrude did not see him. The library of the
Atlantic
is tastefully decorated with potted palms, and one of these interrupted her line of vision. She went to the shelves, found them locked, discovered that the attendant was not at his post, and crossed to the round table in the middle of the room and took up a magazine.

This enabled Monty to catch sight of her, with the result that scarcely had she settled herself in a chair by the window and begun to read when there was a sound of emotional breathing above her head, and, looking up, she beheld a pale, set face. The shock made her hiccough. Her magazine fell to the floor. This was the first intimation she had received that he was not still in London. She had never for a moment supposed that his presence at Waterloo had meant that he was catching the boat train.

'Ha!'
said Monty.

Two things prevented Gertrude Butterwick from rising to her feet and sweeping out of the room. One was that the chair in which she sat was so deep that to extricate herself from it she would have had to employ a sort of Swedish exercise quite out of keeping with the solemnity of the moment. The other was that Monty, having said 'Ha!', had begun to gaze at her sternly and accusingly, like King Arthur at Queen Guinevere, and the colossal crust of this held her spellbound. That this man should behave as he had done with one hand and come gazing sternly and accusingly at her with the other made her proud spirit boil.

'At last!' said Monty.

'Go away!' said Gertrude.

'Not,' said Monty, with quiet dignity, 'till I have spoken.'

'I don't want to talk to you.'

Monty laughed like a squeaking slate pencil.

‘
Don't you worry. I'll do all the bally talking that's required,
’
he said - the very words, in all probability, with which King Arthur had opened his interview with Guinevere. Much brooding on his wrongs, taken in conjunction with the fact that his feet were still hurting him, had turned Monty Bodkin into something very different from the apologetic bleater who had stood on one leg in this girl's presence at Waterloo. He was cold and pop-eyed and ruthless.