Maurice Drake - The Mystery of the Mud Flats

She let me get tea and we drank it on deck, and all the time I felt like one sitting on a powder magazine. Her manner was atrociously correct—demure and sweetie-sweetie, prunes and prisms all the time; and she was making eyes at me most affectedly with every word. But I thought I could read behind that; I guessed she was trying to lure me out into the open and destroy me, and I wasn’t taking any. I was a coasting skipper; she the friend and, in a sense, the representative of my employers. So the more she gushed the politer I got, and when she rowed away I swear she was biting her lip. That sort of sexless little guttersnipe just loves a row, and she didn’t bring it off that time.

Voogdt hailed me from the quay soon after, and I went to fetch him in the dinghy. He had learnt that the deals we had shipped were from the Baltic and fell to discussing the matter with me.

‘More paying trade for our employers,’ he said. ‘Shipping deals from the Baltic to Terneuzen via Dartmouth. You note the direct and economical route, skipper?’

‘Oh, hang the company!’ I said. ‘If they’re going scat, they’re going scat. Meanwhile we’re being paid to learn the coasting trade.’

‘It’ll take a bit of learning, I can see,’ said Voogdt dryly. ‘I hope it won’t be too much for my poor brain.’ And not another word could I get out of him. ’Kiah came back that night, silent as ever, and next day the wind went south with the sun and we got under way for Terneuzen again.

VOOGDT worried me with questions about the cargo all the way up Channel, and for the life of me I couldn’t find an answer for him that even satisfied myself. Here were we being paid on the tonnage of the boat—sixty tons burthen—and only carrying thirty. Last voyage it had been forty, so that in two voyages we were drawing money for fifty tons of cargo which we had never shipped. For the sake of argument I put it that their customer might only have ordered forty tons of clay, and as to the deals, they were ugly stowage for a boat as small as the Luck and Charity. Anyhow, I didn’t see why we should worry so long as our charter money was paid.

His words had stirred my curiosity a little by this time, and when we reached Terneuzen my first care was to see whether any of our clay was left over from the last voyage. It was all gone, however, and I nudged Voogdt, drawing his attention to the fact. In its place was a large heap of broken stone. He looked at it, rubbing his bearded chin in meditation.

‘What’s that stuff for?’ he asked.

‘How should I know?’ I said impatiently. ‘To feed cows on, I suppose.’

‘Looks like road metal to me,’ he said musingly, and sure enough when Cheyne came aboard he told me that was what it was.

‘It came as ballast,’ he condescended to explain. ‘We can use it very well. Some of it’ll stiffen the mud behind the wharf and the rest mend the cart-track between here and the town.’

I told Voogdt this and he nodded. ‘So the Olive Leaf brought ballast, did she? I wonder what she took away?’

By the evening I was able to tell him that too. Cheyne asked me to dinner, as before, and casually mentioned her at the table as having gone farther up river.

‘To Antwerp?’ I asked.

‘Yes. She took up some of your clay. It was sold to Ghent, but the buyers sold again to an Antwerp pottery.’

I didn’t question him farther, but chuckled rather as I thought what a mare’s nest Voogdt would find in that announcement. Cheyne saw my smile and without more reason fired up in a moment.

‘What the—do you see to grin at in that?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Of course I do,’ I asid, surprised. ‘I wasn’t laughing at anything you said.’

For a moment he looked threatening, then calmed down and passed the bottle along.

In the intervals of getting out the deals, I told Voogdt where the clay had gone, but he displayed no surprise.

Ballasting was done the same way as before, except that Voogdt was able to help part of the time, and we sailed with a full twenty-five tons of mud instead of a bare twenty-three. As before, Cheyne was in a hurry to get rid of us at the last.

‘Off with you,’ he said cheerily. ‘On hatches and clear out and make room for your betters.’

‘The Olive Leaf again?’ I asked.

‘The Kismet. She passed the Hasborough last night with a fair wind. Guess she’s outside the river now, waiting tide.’

‘What’s she bringing?’ I asked.

‘What business is that of yours?’ He put on his standoffish manner in an instant. ‘You’re not paid to ask questions, but to obey orders. Just remember your place, Capt’n, and I’ll remember mine.’

I raged inwardly for having laid myself open to the snub. The brute had been genial as a blood-relation till then. But it was no good quarrelling with one’s livelihood, so we got away without another word. Voogdt took the wheel when we got into the main stream.

‘What’s the Hasborough ?’ he asked.

‘A lightship off Norfolk.’

‘Then if the Kismet passed her yesterday, she’s been north, that’s obvious. And if she’s been north, it’s a hundred to one she’s carrying coal. And if she’s carrying coal, which is saleable anywhere, she’ll be loaded deep.’

‘Sherlock Holmes,’ I said, and went below.

When I came on deck half-an-hour later we were passing Flushing, and out at sea a small coaster about our own size was lying at anchor. She was comparatively light, riding high in the water.

‘There’s the Kismet , Sherlock,’ I jeered. ‘And if she’s got more than thirty tons aboard, I’m a Dutchman.’

‘Then either ’tisn’t the Kismet or she isn’t carrying coal,’ he said quietly. Half-an-hour later I had the laugh of him again, for we passed near enough for a glass to show her name in dirty white letters under her bows.

‘What d’ye make of that?’ I handed him my glasses and took the wheel.

He had a long stare and then turned and looked at me queerly.

‘ Kismet it is, right enough. Down helm a wee, skipper, and get a bit closer.’

‘What for?’ I said; but I did as he asked.

‘Now hail ’em,’ he said, when we’d got close enough. He was itching with excitement and curiosity.

‘Ahoy!’ I shouted. ‘ Kismet , ahoy!’

‘Ahoy!’ came down the wind.

‘Ask ’em where they’re bound,’ Voogdt prompted.

‘Where—are—you—bound?’

‘Goole to Terneuzen with coals,’ came the answer.

‘There you are,’ I said. ‘Now you know. Like most of you private detectives, you’re half right and half wrong. She is the Kismet , and you said she wasn’t. She’s come from the north and she’s got coals, just as you said. And she’s got half a cargo and not a full one, which is flat contrary to your notions. Now what d’ye make of it?’

‘I make rank unbusinesslike ways of it,’ he replied. ‘And on the face of it, that’s all one can say. I’m beat I admit.’

‘Well, what odds?’ I said. ‘We’ve got our money, and that’s enough. If the thing’s being mucked I’m sorry for Ward, but he’s big enough to manage his own affairs. I’ll mind mine, you mind yours, and everybody’ll be pleased.

‘Poking my nose into things has been my business for some years,’ Voogdt snapped at me. ‘You can’t drop the habits of a lifetime in ten minutes, you dunderhead,’ and after that stuck to his wheel, grumbling about dolts and thickwits under his breath.

We were bound for Poole this time, and no sooner had we got our ballast on the quay than Ward made his appearance. Voogdt stared at him hard, and late in the evening came aboard full of information about him.