The Pit-Prop Syndicate | Page 9

had undergone while abroad. Merriman
was tired and had been rather silent, but it was suddenly borne in on
him that it was his duty, as one of the hosts of the evening, to
contribute somewhat more fully towards the conversation. He
determined to relate his little adventure at the sawmill of the Pit-Prop
Syndicate. He therefore lit a fresh cigar, and began to speak.
"Any of you fellows know the country just south of Bordeaux?" he
asked, and, as no one responded, he went on: "I know it a bit, for I have
to go through it every year on my trip round the wine exporters. This
year a rather queer thing happened when I was about half an hour's run
from Bordeaux; absolutely a trivial thing and of no importance, you
understand, but it puzzled me. Maybe some of you could throw some
light on it?"
"Proceed, my dear sir, with your trivial narrative," invited Jelfs, a man
sitting at one end of the group. "We shall give it the weighty
consideration which it doubtless deserves."

Jelfs was a stockbroker and the professional wit of the party. He was a
good soul, but boring. Merriman took no notice of the interruption.
"It was between five and six in the evening," he went on, and he told in
some detail of his day's run, culminating in his visit to the sawmill and
his discovery of the alteration in the number of the lorry. He gave the
facts exactly as they had occurred, with the single exception that he
made no mention of his meeting with Madeleine Coburn.
"And what happened?" asked Drake, another of the men, when he had
finished.
"Nothing more happened," Merriman returned. "The manager came and
gave me some petrol, and I cleared out. The point is, why should that
number plate have been changed?"
Jelfs fixed his eyes on the speaker, and gave the little sidelong nod
which indicated to the others that another joke was about to be
perpetrated.
"You say," he asked impressively, "that the lorry was at first 4 and then
3. Are you sure you haven't made a mistake of 41?"
"How do you mean?"
"I mean that it's a common enough phenomenon for a No. 4 lorry to
change, after lunch, let us say, into No. 44. Are you sure it wasn't 44?"
Merriman joined in the laughter against him.
"It wasn't forty-anything, you old blighter," he said good-humoredly.
"It was 4 on the road, and 3 at the mill, and I'm as sure of it as that
you're an amiable imbecile."
"Inconclusive," murmured Jelfs, "entirely inconclusive. But," he
persisted, "you must not hold back material evidence. You haven't told
us yet what you had at lunch."
"Oh, stow it, Jelfs," said Hilliard, a thin-faced, eager-looking young

man who had not yet spoken. "Have you no theory yourself,
Merriman?"
"None. I was completely puzzled. I would have mentioned it before,
only it seemed to be making a mountain out of nothing."
"I think Jelfs' question should be answered, you know," Drake said
critically, and after some more good-natured chaff the subject dropped.
Shortly after one of the men had to leave to catch his train, and the
party broke up. As they left the building Merriman found Hilliard at his
elbow.
"Are you walking?" the latter queried. "If so I'll come along."
Claud Hilliard was the son of a clergyman in the Midlands, a keen, not
to say brilliant student who had passed through both school and college
with distinction, and was already at the age of eight-and-twenty making
a name for himself on the headquarters staff of the Customs
Department. His thin, eager face, with its hooked nose, pale blue eyes
and light, rather untidy-looking hair, formed a true index of his nimble,
somewhat speculative mind. What he did, he did with his might. He
was keenly interested in whatever he took up, showing a tendency,
indeed, to ride his hobbies to death. He had a particular penchant for
puzzles of all kinds, and many a knotty problem brought to him as a
last court of appeal received a surprisingly rapid and complete solution.
His detractors, while admitting his ingenuity and the almost uncanny
rapidity with which he seized on the essential facts of a case, said he
was lacking in staying power, but if this were so, he had not as yet
shown signs of it.
He and Merriman had first met on business, when Hilliard was sent to
the wine merchants on some matter of Customs. The acquaintanceship
thus formed had ripened into a mild friendship, though the two had not
seen a great deal of each other.
They passed up Coventry Street and across the Circus into Piccadilly.
Hilliard had a flat in a side street off Knightsbridge,