MARK 1702

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 84, 19 January 1938, Page 7

MARK 1702

SERIAL STORY

BY EARDLEY BESWICK. :: Copyright. ::

CHAPTER VIII

“BLIGHT' ON THE JOB.” In the entrance hall the Commissionaire delayed him with sympathetic inquiries, but at last was induced to announce that so far there had been no messages with the exception of one from Mr Meneh, who wanted to have a chat with him as soon as he arrived. He felt hp need have no scruples about keeping the little director waiting. He must see Johnny Cope before he bothered with Mr Meneh, must ask him if there was anything of importance in the little leather bag. By now he was distressed by the idea that it might have contained those two tubes of explosive, in which case he would be inclined to hold Cone to blame for not having told him and, at the same time, Cope alone would know what to do next. He was hot and flurried with his walk and his apprehensions, but he tried to' walk unconcernedly ' through the shops to the toolroom. Everywhere workers glanced at him and smiled and, meeting their eyes ) he managed to grin back good-humoured-ly. It even steadied him to feel the sympathetic interest behind their smiles. His misfortunes of the previous night had provided their dull working lives with something dramatically rousing. There was a sense too in which they understood him to be “up against it,” as they w r ould ; have said, and doubtless, to have come in to work the morning after the explosion seemed to them to demonstrate that he was putting up a fight. He could imagine the sort of rumours that must by now be exciting their interest, the shrewd guesses they would be making as to the connection between the diverse troubles that had all along afflicted the contract for Mark 1702’5. In the |tool-room the foreman came eagerly to meet him.

“I’m not very pleased with it, sir.” He lowered his voice. “I’d a note from Mr Meneh to give the job to Grossmith this morning. There’s only one can work on it now you know, and Grossmith isn’t exactly the man I’d have chosen. He’s one of the new ones, a fine fitter but, well, I’d sooner have a man I knew I could trust after all that’s happened. At present we’re completely held up for that armature. It wasn’t in the foreman’s office after all. It’s extraordinary where that’s got to.” He looked nervously distraught, as if the job was getting on his nerves. “There’s a blight on the job,” he concluded, and chewed savagely at the ragged ends of his moustache.

“Don’t worry,” Hendringham comforted him. “I’ll have another along in a minute or two.”

The foreman brightened visibly. “You will? That’s fine” he said.

“How long will you need after you get it?” j “Take him till evening, I should think. I can’t work more than the one man on it now that the sub-assembles are done. By the way, there was a new Government inspector down here in the night, Crowder left word.” Hendringham said: “I know all about that.” He wasn’t going to let Johnny Cope’s well-meant efforts give the impression he had been superseded. “I wasn’t very fit myself, you know,” 'he explained. The foreman said he should think not. “Lucky you weren’t killed, sir, from the look of the test-room this morning. He went over and examined the job. The fitter was working sullenly, he thought, completing minor adjustments, but it was evident that he was largely filling in time, touching immaculately finished parts ivith a file, brushing joints superfluously with shellac, fitting parts and immediately separating them. He was a dark, squat fellow with a bristling jaw, and he seemed to be ill at ease. Hendringham asked him how he was getting on.

“Waiting for that armature. Can’t do much till they find that,” the man grumbled. “It’ll be here in a few minutes. How long is it going to take you after that?”

There was none of the relief about this mail such as the foreman had shewn. ‘‘Some time to-morrow afteinoon, sir,” he grunted. His face was bent over his filing, hidden, his strokes seemed to have become heavier and faster where hitherto they had been no more than the daintiest of touches. “To-morrow afternoon? Ridiculous! There isn’t four hours’ work on it.” “Perhaps not, if everything goes right, but things aren’t going right with this job.”

A gentle touch on Hendringham’s sleeve quelled the blaze of anger that was rising in him. He turned to observe Johnny Cope beckoning, the crooked finger unobtrusively brushing his own sleeve. He moved a few steps away and inclined his ear. “Get him taken off at once,” murmured Johnny. “Then come outside for a moment. I’d like you to show me the ruins.” He found the foreman again and arranged for the man’s replacement. Then he walked out, making a pretence of an easy chatting with Cope. “But his anxieties were uppermost. “What about that armature?” he asked immediately they had stepped into the sunshine of the yard. “I’m sticking to that until it’s needed. Some time to-morrow that’ll be from the look of things.” He sounded as if reluctantly resigned. “To-morrow?” “Looks like it. You’ll probably find that that felloAV has done in half the odd bits and we’ll have to get them made again. I’d a hunch he rvas up to mischief the moment I set eyes on him.” For a moment his satisfaction

with his own perspicacity, naive as usual, was clouded by an adverse thought. “Sorry, old man, it was my fault this time.” he added. “I hadn’t any hunch last night about that happening. You were quite right. One of us ought to have been here all the time, only there was too much to deal with at the other end for that to have been practicable. And anyway, you can’t stop a destructive file stroke by keeping your eye on the filer. Directly I saw that fellow, though, 1 seemed to be hearing him say it was the easiest fiver that ever he earned in his life. By the way, what have you done with mv marmalade ?”

“Your what?” Hendringham gasped. “Marmalade. You know, it was in that bag I gave you, half a pound of it at least.”

MR MENCH KEEPS ALSATIANS! “Oh, the bag! A dog stole it. I’m afraid I’d forgotten that for the moment. I’ve been awfully worried about it.”

“Nice-looking Alsatian ?” “Yes. Why, how do you know?”

Johnny Cope just leaned against the factory wall and rocked with laughter. He might not have had a care in the world. Presently lie began to speak between his guffaws. “We ought to get a. hill-heading, you and I, Geoff,” he gasped, and seeing tliQ other’s halfangry. han-perplexed frown, continued: “Cope and Hendringham, International Providers. Suppliers of the famous Doctor Gregory’s Powder to the- Ear East aiid genuine home-made marmalade to the Central European Powers.” Hendringham continued to look at him for a moment and then, yielding to the laughter in his eyes, took up the joke. “There’s certainly an impressive demand this morning he said. “At least three customers wanting it and one of them prepared to use firearms to secure priority.” “You don’t say? Amazing how a good article gets itself known, isn’t it? Actually I only gave you that hag to carry on the spur of the moment, hoping you’d draw any fire there was and give me a chance to sneak away with the things that really mattered. I’d have given something to see .your Pandolflus’s face when he opened my little bag.” “Pandolfius?”

“Yes. He’s Pandollius Meneh, isn’t he? He breeds Alsatians, you know. They use ’em as police dogs in the country he has the dishonour to represent in such an underground way.” “You seem to know;all about him.” “Yes. I was doubtful at first if it was really Pandolfius, hut directly I heard about the Alsatian the thing was as clear as mud. It’s about time you introduced us. There seems to be a suspicion of a time-limit about this job and that’s strictly in keeping with the man’s employer’s mentality ... a rather bellicose nation with a nasty habit of working things out to a split second in advance. They’ll have set a time for the completion of the sample and a time for the first delivery on the contract if I know them. Everything will go smoothly as soon as their times are achieved because we shall then be the precise amount behind their own efforts that the situation seems to them to demand. Now the man who can give us a line on their schedule is Pandolfius himself. When we know that we can make our plans accordingly. If we get the sample through and tested in advance of their date that’s first blood to us, and we can leave it to the authorities to speed things up to heat them by a still wider margin. There ought to be at least three factories getting ready for a start at this moment.”

“We’ll go right now. •Meneh was actually asking for me when I came in. Thought I’d 'better keep him waiting until you turned up though. I was a bit worried about your bag.

“Sorry, Geoff. My fault again, but sometimes the less a man knows the more naturally he will act. Meneh knows too much, for example, and he’s acting badly already. According to his scheme you should still be sleeping it off, and yet he advertises the fact that he knows you’re awake and about. Pity, ho may not know about the .glorious feat of his Alsatian, though I daresay someone will have rung him up from ti?e kennels. We’ll put it to him tactfully and see 'what lie says.”

They moved off together, talking as they went. Cope said in that peculiarly amused low mumble of his: “Pretty smart, old Pandolfius when you think of it. it looks as if, having failed to find the tubes himself last night, he stood back and let the other fellows have a go, meaning to relieve them of whatever booty they might secure. He’s got a good means of relieving people in those dogs of his. I shouldn’t be surprised if our friends Pamphlett and Morganthau had already faced a set of snarling teeth while in pursuit of what they doubtless conceive to be their duty.” “By the same argument the Gregory’s Powder may have failed to make its journey to the East." ' “Doubtful. In the Far East they have ways of dealing with savage dogs, you know. Now I want you to insist through thick and thin that the sample can and will be ready to-night. Try to give the impression that you’ve something up your sleeve.” They strolled round to the front entrance and sent a message in to the little director. Presently .the messenger came back to announce that Mr Mench would see Mr Hendringham immediately. They followed along a corridor to the director's office. Hendringham entered first, Johnny Cope hanging back a little. Mr Pandolfius Mench was sitting before his desk, the smoke from his cigar curling bluely into a shaft of sunlight above his head. He looked suavely purposeful, the perfect picture of the business man who relaxes a little after a strenuous bout of correspondence. “Ah, good morning, Mr Hendringham,” he granted amiably. “Congratulate you on getting here, though I fancy you’d have been better advised to stay in hod. You must have a remarkably fine constitution.” “I have,” said Geoffrey grimly, not in the least assuaged by the compliment and remembering the treachery of the previous night. “Explosive proof and dope proof, you see.” Mr Mench waved his cigar as if dismissing the innuendo. Then J 1 is eyes widened and the blood seemed visibly to drain from his hairy lace. For a moment he stared at the figure in the doorway as if he had seen a ghost. Then, recovering, he turned again towards Hendringham. “Is this gentleman with you?” he asked. Cope answered, greeting him breezily. “How do vou do. Mr Mench? We

haven’t met since, let me see . . . . wasn’t it in Amsterdam in ’33?” A smile, broadly false, struggled into being behind the heard and spectacles. “You don’t mean to say ... it surely can’t he Mr Cope?” He rose from his chair,, hand hospitably outstretched.

(To be Continued.)