VII
HOLIDAY WORK
I had not meant to stop at Lunford at all, but to go straight on to town, but my accumulators gave out, and I had to wait to get them recharged. After all, it only meant adding one day to the pleasant week's holiday which I had spent in touring.
That, at any rate, was what I thought at the time. As a matter of fact, it meant that my holiday was to be diversified by a little episode which may perhaps be classed as holiday work.
A few minutes after my arrival I was standing in the doorway of the hotel chatting with my host, a pleasant portly old-fashioned landlord—I regret the rapid disappearance of the type. As we were talking, a man passed us on a bicycle, with a small brown bag attached to the handle-bars. He was a man of about forty, thin and hard, with a worn black morning coat, a felt hat, and a rather solemn expression. The landlord jerked his thumb towards him. "There goes our Friday miracle," he said.
"And what's your Friday miracle?" I asked.
"Bartlett's—cocoa people, you know—have got a factory just outside the town."
"I passed it as I was driving in. Not much of a place, is it?"
"As you say, not much of a place at present. It's bigger than it was, and they say it's going to be bigger still. At present there's about seventy-five employed there. That man on the bicycle is Mr Bosworth, manager at the factory."
"He hardly looks the kind of chap to have the control of a business like that."
"No, no. He has nothing to do with the actual business; that is all run from the London office. He only manages this factory, and this factory is only one of about three in this county that Bartlett owns."
"I see. Well, where does his miraculousness come in?"
"It's a queer story, and you'll hardly believe it The men and the girls at the factory are paid every Saturday. Every Friday afternoon Bosworth comes into the bank here, changes a cheque for the wages over the counter, and takes off the money with him in that brown bag. What do you make of that?"
"Nothing miraculous. Its the ordinary course of business, isn't it?"
The landlord clearly enjoyed the culmination of his story. "Yes," he said, "it's all ordinary so far; but now, sir, you listen to this. Supposing at some point between the bank and the factory you were to knock Mr Bosworth off his bicycle and go over his clothes and his brown bag, you might think that you'd be able to put your hand on the change for that cheque?"
"Certainly, if I were dishonest enough."
"Well," said the landlord, with triumph, "you wouldn't do anything of the kind. You wouldn't find one single penny on him. I have got good reason for what I say, because it has been tried twice. Once it was in the winter, and it was dark when he was returning. Two blackguards—the police have got them now—stretched a wire across the road. Bosworth came an almighty smash and was knocked senseless. They stole his Waterbury, and that was the only thing that they did get. About a year later another man who had noticed Bosworth's habits, and thought he saw a chance of helping himself, held him up on that lonely bit of road just before you get to the factory. 'What do you want?' says Bosworth. 'The week's wages,' says the man 'Not got 'em,' says Bosworth. That didn't do with the man, and he had a set-to with Bosworth and looked into things for himself. There were a few stones in the brown bag, and there wasn't another thing. He didn't even get a Waterbury. Bosworth said he'd given up wearing watches, since they seemed only to put temptation in men's way."
"Yes, it's queer," I said, "but, of course, there can be only one explanation. At some point between the bank and the factory Bosworth hands over that money to another messenger."
The landlord shook his head. "That won't do, I think, sir. The two men who stopped him first stopped him just outside the town. He gets on his old bicycle at the bank, and nobody's ever seen him get off it between here and the factory."
"Then I give it up," I said, as I stepped back into the hall of the hotel. The neat black-silk manageress pushed up her window. "It's only for to-night, sir, that you require your room?"
Circumstances alter cases. I had certainly intended to remain for only one night, but the landlord's story had changed my mind. "I shall be here for a week," I said, "Possibly longer."
I took another look at the Bartlett's cocoa factory on the following day, and had some talk about it at a neighbouring beer house which did its business principally with Bartlett's workpeople. The manager, it appears, lived at the cottage adjoining the factory. He was married, and said to be hen-pecked. He had one child, a girl of ten. The family generally had the reputation of keeping themselves to themselves.
"I was wondering," I said to the girl at the beer house, "if people were allowed to see over the factory. It is the kind of thing that interests me rather."
"Well," she said, "you can but ask. There's the old woman coming down the road now."
She was a dumpy old woman, with a face full of character and determination. She carried a large basket.
"Where has she been?" I asked.
"Market. Saturday's market day at Lunford."
"She's back early."
"It's her usual time. Some of them will hang about all day doing nothing, but I will say she's not one of that sort."
On second thoughts I did not speak to Mrs Bosworth, nor did I go on to the factory. I went back to my hotel and thought it over. My idea was now that it was Mrs Bosworth, and not her husband, who brought the money from the bank to the factory. If that were the case the money arrived at the factory not on Friday but on Saturday morning, at the most half an hour before it was distributed in the form of wages. This was, from my point of view, much less promising. Had the money lain in Bosworth's cottage for one night I should have got it with no trouble, but if the money were only there for a few minutes in broad daylight I did not see how to manage it. It was by no means a bad idea on the part of the Bosworths that his Friday visit to the bank should act as a blind. Doubtless something or other was handed him over the counter, dummy bags in return for a dummy cheque, and in this way the attention of the people who wished to secure that money in transit would be confined to Bosworth himself, who never had the money. If I could read character from a face at all, it was Mrs Bosworth who had the cunning to plan this, and who preferred to take the responsibility of carrying the money herself. I remembered that I had been told that Bosworth was hen-pecked.
The irritating feature of the case was that I could only work on one day in the week. I waited in Lunford with what patience I might until the following Saturday, filling in my time by making notes and observations of some of the larger houses in the neighbourhood which might at some time be worth my attention. On Saturday I occupied myself solely in tracking Mrs Bosworth. She visited three shops, and she never went near the bank at all. One of the shops was a saddler's, kept by a man called Fitton. I did not quite see why she should go to a saddler's. Horses were employed at the factory, of course, but their equipment would have nothing to do with the wife of the manager. If Bosworth had kept a little pony and trap of his own I could have understood it; as it was I became suspicious. I left Mrs Bosworth when she started on her return journey, and came back to Fitton's. It was shortly after one when I returned to the shop, and I saw a neatly-dressed young man enter it and pass through the shop into the private part of the house. This, I said to myself, is the younger Mr Fitton. What does the younger Mr Fitton do? I answered that question for myself on the following Monday by calling at the bank on some purely bogus business. The younger Mr Fitton sat there and cast up columns. Now the whole thing was clear. The money was sent from the bank by Fitton to his father's house, and there Mrs Bosworth collected it. Having settled this to my satisfaction I paid my bill at the hotel, ran my car out, and drove back to London.
I was disgusted with the whole thing, and wished I had never embarked upon it. The sum at stake was little if anything over one hundred pounds. It seemed to me that it had involved, and would involve bother, and expense quite out of proportion to the prize. At the same time I did not like the idea of being outwitted by a simple old woman like Mrs Bosworth. What was I to do? I might have gone back on the following Saturday, followed Mrs Bosworth on her return to the factory, and in some lonely part of the road demanded the money from her. But she would not have given it up meekly; she would have fought for it. This course was quite impossible. Had she followed the estimable practice of many of the other old women of the district of looking in at the public-house for a glass of stout before her return journey, I could have made things more certain. As it was I had no chance of administering a drug. After long thought I decided on my knowledge of human nature that there would be just one brief space of time when that money would be less carefully guarded; this would be the short space after her arrival, and before the money was paid out. Once inside her house she would feel secure. I felt pretty certain there would be no servant there. She would put her big basket down on the kitchen table, and then run upstairs to take her bonnet off. That would be the moment.
I returned by train to Lunford on the following Saturday, and walked straight out to the factory. I was provided with nothing but a simple pyrotechnic arrangement intended to attract the attention of anybody in the Bosworth's cottage away from the spot where I should be operating. There were trees and high hedges coming close up to the cottage and providing admirable cover. I chose a position from which I could see the back door and a part of the kitchen through the window.
At her regular hour Mrs Bosworth returned, unlocked the back door and let herself in, leaving the door unlocked. She put her basket down on the kitchen table exactly as I had expected, but she did not go upstairs to take her bonnet off. She sat down on a Windsor chair and ate cheesecakes out of a paper bag. I slipped round to the front of the house, put an ordinary cracker in the long grass, and lit the touch-paper. I had just time to return to the back of the house when the explosion came. It happened exactly as I had supposed. She ran out of the kitchen to see what was the matter, and she was hardly out of it before I was in it. I had only a moment to get the money from the basket.
The basket contained tea, sugar, bacon, some remarkably pungent and impressive cheese, a piece of meat destined for Sunday's dinner, and no money at all.
I was back again in London at half-past three, reflecting on the danger of regarding deductions which are no more than possible as if they were absolutely inevitable.
I had been wrong from the very start. These provincial towns have to invent something interesting to save themselves from perishing of utter boredom. My landlord's talk about the Friday miracle was probably not entirely accurate. Certainly I should have had the sense to have seen that if Bosworth's Friday operations were merely a blind, they would not have been continued after this had twice been discovered. It was perfectly possible that on one occasion—I did not suppose there had been more than one—he had been stopped and no money had been found on him, but that did not prove that he never took money back from the bank to the factory. Why had I supposed that because the money was paid weekly it was drawn weekly from the bank? It was perfectly possible that Bosworth rendered a monthly account to his employers. Why had I supposed that the money was ever kept in the cottage at all? True, the business was run from the head office in London, but there would be correspondence with this office, and there would be accounts to be kept of time worked and of money paid. Obviously somewhere within the factory the manager would have his small office, and somewhere in the office there would be a safe.
I dislike safes. I never carry anything that the police could imagine to be a burglarious implement, and one cannot open a safe with a pocket-knife. The opening may sometimes be effected by explosives, and I was familiar with the process, but the noise is an objection. If I have to open a safe at all I prefer to open it with its key.
I was so much in doubt as to whether it would be worth my while to go on at all with this business, that I tossed a penny to decide it. If it came heads, I went to Lunford, if it came tails, I gave up Lunford and devoted myself to a jeweller's shop in Oxford on which I had long had my eye. The penny came down heads.
I now gave up loading myself with reproaches for my previous blunders in the matter, and began in a more steady and workmanlike way, no longer trusting to my own guesses founded on public-house tittle-tattle. I called at the factory on business, which, if it had been genuine, I should have taken to the central office. I asked to see Mr Bosworth, and was shown into his room. There stood the safe in the corner of it. I explained that I had a large order to place and had been told that Bartlett's could execute it, but judging from what I saw it was impossible, and I need not trouble the head office about it.
"Why impossible?" asked Bosworth.
"The place isn't big enough. I don't know what you turn out here."
"Perhaps a bit more than you think," said Mr Bosworth. "Have you got a quarter of an hour to spare? We've got some machinery here I should like you to see."
I looked at my watch doubtfully. "I might spare ten minutes," I said.
We left the office, the door of which shut with a spring lock. The moment we were outside I said, "I must go back for my hat. There is draught enough in these corridors to blow one's head off."
He opened the door again, remaining outside himself. I joined him in a couple of moments with my hat and an excellent impression in wax of the key of the safe. Then I wandered about and saw machinery which I did not understand. I had got up the subject of cocoa, and talked it like an expert. Bosworth said, if I did change my mind and give his firm the order, he hoped I would mention that it was in consequence of what he had shown me. I said I should be certain to do so.
After that everything was of a childish simplicity. I made a key myself, adapting one of the many, which I had in my possession. While Bosworth and his wife sat at supper the following Saturday evening, I was giving the yard dog of the factory his supper also. The yard dog's supper did not agree with it. The office was on the ground floor, and the window was carefully bolted, but it was one of these excellent catches for which every burglar who dislikes hard work must feel grateful. I pushed it back with my knife, and opened the safe. Although wages had been paid that day, I still found close on a couple of hundred pounds there, confirming me in my believe that Bosworth did draw the money monthly. His Friday visits to the bank might have been for the purpose of a blind, but were just as likely to be connected with business of his own. He was just the kind of man to save a few shillings, and bank it every week. But with the possession of the money these undetermined points ceased to have any interest for me. I walked slowly back across fields to the little village where I had left my motor-car, and from thence drove into London.
For the short address which I had promised to deliver on the following Sunday, I chose as a subject the danger of self-confidence. So often it happens that we can make our own failings serve as a help and a warning to others.