The Lost Luggage Porter (16 page)

'Five quid,' said the clerk, 'and the rest promised, but it ought to've been ten quid down, that was the agreement as you know very well. We shook on that - thee and me.'

The clerkly language was going to pot now.

'...
And that chap was looking
on ...'

He pointed to Miles Hopkins.

'Ten quid down, and ten to follow, you said, if I could

show you to the acetylene van. Well there it bloody is!'

'It's not going to be there for long though, is it?' Hopkins said quietly.

Squinting through the bogies of the vans before us, I saw a pair of boots on the far side. They paused, turned, walked. That would be the goods guard or shunter, signalling to the engine driver.

'I've never worked out why you don't order the stuff direct from the bloody company in London,' said the clerk.

Sampson shook his head as he swung the iron.

At the same moment Hopkins called 'Sam!' which might've been enough warning for the clerk, who any rate stepped back from a blow that would have done for him, had it struck him.

'Five quid,' continued the clerk, looking only a bit sur­prised at having missed death by an eighth of an inch, 'and I know I've not a cat's chance in hell of seeing the rest.'

Sampson was looking at nobody and nothing. The rake of vans seemed to fidget once more. What was going off on the footplate of that shunting engine, I could only guess.

'I'll settle this,' I said, and Valentine Sampson looked at me:

'You'll fucking
what?'
he said, with dead eyes.

'I'll settle it,' I said again, rather shakily.

He nodded and, speaking softly for the first time since we'd entered the goods yard, said: 'I know you will, little Allan. I know it.'

I walked up to the train, which was still shifting, restless. It was going to be shifted at any
moment...
and I didn't step between those wagons for the clerk's sake. It was for my own, for I'd look such a clot if he was brained on my watch. The high side of the acetylene van was on one side, the spir­it merchant's van on the other, and as I bent down to the coupling, I thought: I am in the valley of the shadow of death. Going under a train without the knowledge of the driver was not so much against regulations as plain suicide. I pulled up my sleeves. The wagons were loose-coupled, thank Christ - anything else would have been irregular for freight - and there was no vacuum pipe to wrestle with. I lift­ed the great, greased hook, and just then the train rolled, throwing me down on the sleepers, but there was suddenly freedom and space to one side of me. I stood up to see the back of the spirit van being pulled into darkness. I stood up at the side of the track, and thought I could make out the guard's van in the opposite direction; I was still standing. The engine had taken roughly three quarters of what it want­ed. On the footplate, they should have been able to tell by the beat, and the guard would stir himself before long, but we had a couple of minutes while perplexity set in.

Valentine Sampson was walking towards me, the iron bar still in his hand. He flung it down and embraced me, fairly squeezing the life out of me
for ...
Well I counted the time in my head: one, two, three, four, five clear seconds.

'Tell you what,' he said to Miles Hopkins when he'd final­ly left off, 'we've struck lucky with this one.'

Then he was up in the van, monkey-like again, and Miles Hopkins with him. All the rest happened at a lick: the two in the van grafted
away
and after a few seconds I saw what looked like a cannon sticking through the door of the van - the thing weighed about as much too, as I found out being the one expected to steady the brute as it was lowered down. It was a white, steel, gas cylinder, evidently full, with a big brass nut on the top, and warnings of fire, explosion and other scrawlings in chalk on the side. Sampson and Hopkins leapt down after it, and the three of us were just about able to manage it as we made our escape towards the wall of the goods yard. This time the clerk led the way, gabbling
away
as before:

'Ten tons of spuds I've to get away before sparrer-fart, and more besides. I'm going to have the bloody Ai Biscuit Com­pany down on me like a ton of I don't know what, bloody biscuits, I suppose, and all the kid's bloomers to set right. Sacks he charged for, which he shouldn't have; porterage which he
should've,
he bloody did
not...'

We'd come to rest by the goods yard wall - at what turned out to be a gate in the wall, which happened to be open - and the clerk was pointing the way, as though seeing us out of his parlour. There was a sign next to the gate:

 'North Eastern Railway: Public Warning. Persons are warned not to Tres­pass on this Railway or on any of the Lines, Stations, Works or Premises connected therewith. Any person so Trespassing is liable to a Penalty of Fifty Shillings. Signed, C. N. Wilkin, Secretary.'

 
The three of us heaved up the cylinder again, and carted it through the gate into a black, windy, dog-barking wilder­ness, where Mike, the Blocker, stood waiting with a pony and cart.

After we'd been rolling for half a minute, I realised that we were on the cinder track, where the Camerons had been done in. The excitement of events had bolstered me up, but now I wanted to go straight to the Chief with my evidence. I had no time for my own thoughts though, for Mike was looking back at me from his driving seat.

'Reckon I should apologise for lamming you in the face, mate,' he said.

'Right,' I said. 'Well, I'm sorry for calling you a fucking rotter.'

'Fairly brings a tear to the eye, it really does,' said Miles Hopkins, grinning. He was on the perch next to me, while Sampson was crouching over the cylinder. It was as if he wanted to prettify the thing, for he was brushing off the chalked warning that began: 'DANGER! On no account to be used except by ...'

I should not have let things get this far.

Instead, I asked, 'What's this thing in aid of, then, mates?' pointing at the white cylinder.

'We'd have been in lumber back then, but for you, Allan,' said Sampson, not answering the question.

He was now rolling the cylinder into a tarpaulin that had lain on the cart. He did it as carefully as though putting a baby in a blanket.

'You were just champion, Allan,' he went on, 'the way you fettled that train ...'

Miles Hopkins, the weird smile once again about his lips, began a speech I wasn't keen he should finish:

'How come you knew what was what on the .. . ?'

'Nowt to it,' I said, interrupting.

'You're coming on like anything, Allan,' said Sampson as the pony and cart approached the goods station, the centre of events, once more. The drays were still flowing in, either side of the clock house that stood in front of the entrance.

We struck Leeman Road before turning into Station Road, right in front of the railway offices. There was a small dark court between the offices and the building facing, which had been the old station hotel, and was now used for storage. The main doors of each building faced one anoth­er, with their gas lamps dangling above, but the lamp over the entrance to the store was never lit. Beyond the two buildings ran a cobbled lane called Tanner Row, which was one long terrace of tall black houses. Set in the middle of that terrace, and overseeing the stand-off between the old hotel and the offices was a pub: the Grapes. Its front win­dow was in three sections, and each one carried a word. The three words glowed out darkly towards us: 'Wines' 'And' 'Spirits'.

Sampson, with one foot steadying the gas cylinder, was looking thoughtful.

'What's the next business?' I asked.

Sampson's and Hopkins's eyes locked.

Sampson said, 'A week Sunday?' speaking more to Miles Hopkins than to me.

He got the nod from Hopkins, and said again 'A week Sunday', this time addressing me.

'Quite a long space between now and then,' I said, and it

was queer: I felt somehow let down. I would be back to waiting and worrying for a week.

Sampson nodded, seemingly to himself.

I risked another question.

'Will that be the day of the big show?' I said,'... the great doing?'

'We've a few more movables to collect first,' said Hopkins, and I thought it a little odd that
he
should have answered the question.

Mike had turned us over the river by Lendal Bridge, and along Blake Street, where half a dozen gas standards await­ed us, and no people.

'Where are we to meet then?' I asked.

I noticed another glance fired between our leader and his lieutenant. At the end of it, Miles Hopkins shrugged, and Sampson looked down at his boots, and his beloved gas cylinder. I knew what he was about: he was revolving in his mind the low pubs of York.

'The Grapes,' he said, looking up.

'The one we've just passed?' I said, for there were half a dozen houses called the Grapes in York. The one in Tanner Row was a smart place, frequented by a superior grade of clerk. It was as though, having netted the cylinder, the gang could afford to put on swank.

I decided to go fishing again.

'So it's one more little job, with a big one to follow?'

Sampson nodded. 'Big one's a little way off, though.'

'What he's saying’ said Hopkins, nodding towards me, 'is that he's not had his wages.'

He was wrong over that, but I was glad he'd spoken up. The only reason I'd not mentioned the matter of payment was that I was a policeman playing a double game - simple as that.

Sampson put his hand in his pocket book, and after some

thought gave me a pound, saying: 'You kept the line beauti­fully today, kidder.'

My first thought was: that's the wife's new fur-lined gloves paid for. A lot of other thoughts came as I pocketed the note - of some vicars I'd known, of Dad and the family name, written above the butcher's shop in Bay town . . . But in the working world of York, extra money was something miraculous.

There was silence as the pony plodded on, and it seemed to mark the end of the night's business, or my part in it. 'I'll get down here,' I said. 'My lodge is t'other way.'

Sampson stood up in the cart to see me off - very courtly, he was.

'Keep it dark about tonight's work, won't you, little Allan?' he said, as I climbed down.

'You bet,' I said.

'And you're all set for Sunday week?'

I nodded again, watching the cart roll on. As Mike steered into Lendal, Miles Hopkins turned his head, and looked back at me, not breaking off his stare until buildings came between us.

As I biked back home past the dark villas of Thorpe-on-Ouse Road, I kept trying to think when I might've shown my hand. Favourite was the moment when the cylinder was being extracted from the van. That's when I could've raised my arm to declare: 'It's all up for you lot. I am a detective with the rail­way force, and I am arresting you on a charge of theft.' I might also have mentioned trespass, assault, a spot of blackmail (in the case of the clerk, no doubt), and then the bill topper: the Cameron brothers, side by side in the York mortuary.

Valentine Sampson was nuts and the other, Miles, was clever.

Which was worse?

And where was Edwin Lund in all this? He was clever
and
nuts.

I stowed the Humber by the cottage wall and, removing the fake glasses, opened the door to see the wife, who was at her typewriting of course, by a dead fire.

'Well then?' she said, not stopping typewriting.

She
had
seen me in Fossgate. It was ten-thirty by the man­tel clock . . . And there was a bottle of beer waiting by it, which was a good sign - a sign that I might kiss her, which I did. I had half expected to find the wife in tears. As it was, she just looked tired.

'Just at present,' I said, standing by the rocking chair, 'I'm put to spying for the police.'

It sounded like a confession.

'Does that require you to wear funny glasses?' she said.

'What's funny about them?' I said, removing them from the pocket in which I'd just stowed them. 'They're a pair of perfectly ordinary glasses, except that they don't have any glasses in them.'

'And a terrible suit,' she said, standing up from the typewrit­ing table and walking over to the sofa. She sat down here, sprawling rather, with legs wide underneath her skirts. Her condition probably made this a necessity, but it was all for it in any case. She was brownish, skinny but for the football under her dress, and altogether indestructible-looking, somehow.

'That can't be helped’ I said, taking a pull on the bottle of Smith's. 'You have a husband who's pretending to be a vagabond.'

I sat down next to her. 'I suppose I must admit’ she said, 'that with many women it's the other way about.'

She fiddled with the locket at her chest, then looked up at me, and said: 'Let's have it, Jim.'