MARK 1702

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 86, 21 January 1938, Page 7

MARK 1702

SERIAL STORY

BY EARDLEY BESWICK.

:: Copyright ::

CHAPTER IX

“SABOTAGE!”

Miss Silvane looked “Ferris is asking to see you, sir,?’ she announced. She showed not the faintest glimmering of recognition of the other two. “He says it’s urgent.” “Show him in,” instructed the director. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Some routine matter, I expect.” The toolroom foreman paused respectfully at the door, his cap in his hand, looking even more worried, than before. “Half of them parts is ruined, si;,” he announced despairingly. Cope flashed an understanding look in Geoffrey’s direction. “Half of what parts?” asked Mr Mench, laying down his newly lit cigar. “The sample, sir, for Mark 1702’5. That fellow Grossmitli you said I was to put on has done them in properly.” For the moment Mr Mench looked furiously angry. “I said you were to put on? What do you mean?” he stormed. “I gave you no instructions in the matter. 1 expect you to know how to run your own shop, my man, without dragging my name into such questions. You musn’t think you can get rid of your responsibilities by making absurd statements like that. Send GroSsmith here at once.” “He’s gone, sir. Clocked out immediately I took him off the job. I expect he saw he was rumbled and wouldn’t stay to face it.” “Sabotage! Rank sabotage. He must put the police on to him at once. Perhaps you’di like to confirm the extent of the damage, Mr Hendringham. I generally find these troubles are exaggerated.” Whatever the reality oi Mr Mench’s unconcern over the suggested destruction of the tubes, there was an air of inner satisfaction behind his bluster in the matter of the sample. Cope flashed a look as he rose to follow out the director’s suggestion, and Geoffrey, responding to liis interpretation of that look, said: “I’ll have a look by all means. I don’t think it will make much difference, though. I happen to have something up my sleeve for such everitualities this time.” “You mean I shall have my sample to-night after all?” Cope asked alertly. “You can rely on it being ready, absolutely,” Hendringham answered, in spite of the despair he felt at heart, and he at once followed the foieman out of the room. Cope turned to the director as the door closed. “Smart fellow, Hendringham, don’t you think?” he asked sweetly. Mr Mench’s agreement had a grim sound. “Over-optimistic, like most men of his age,” re remarked by way of qualification. “You mean about that sample. “Of course. ■ He can’t possibly have a satisfactory sample ready by tonight, and if he rushes the tiling and something is found to be wrong, it is th firm’s reputation that will suffer. When wo send out a sample we like it to Be as perfect as skill can make it.” “You’d suggest we ought to wait until to-morrow, then?” “Until Friday. Alter all it can t make much difference, a day or two either way.” “No, I don’t suppose it can, agreed Johnny Cope. “And yet . . his great head jerked up from contemplation or the floor. “How are the dogs getting on?” he asked. Again he had Mr Mench flustered,. “The dogs?” “Yes, the Alsatians. Don t me you have given up breeding! buch handsome creatures, and so useful when properly trained.” “Look here, Cope . . .’ “Mulligan, if you please,” he was corrected gently. “Well, Mulligan if you will have it. Do you mind telling me what my -dogs have to do with you?” The sense of having been bested all along and not always in a way he was capable of realising had at last exasperated the little man out of his habitual overstudied politeness. “Nothing at all, at least I hope not. To tell you the plain truth, Mr Mench, I’m afraid of them.” “It isn’t yourself that’s been throwing pepper in their eyes, then? I’ve had a telephone complaint fr.om my man this morning.” “You ought to know me better than that. The name of Mulligan' in itself should be a guarantee against such an accusation. Let me telf you, sir, the Mulligans have been dog-lovers for generations. As a matter of fact I’ve been thinking of setting up a kennels for myself, only I’m a bit uncertain how to feed them. They: tell me Alsaffcians have a passion for marmalade, but pepper! You know I doubt if it really was pepper. Those Alsatians have such a number of funny drugs at their command. And cruelty, I shouldn the surprised if the poor things went completely blind.” “Ah!” said Mr Mench, recovering an acute interest. “So it was they i who got away with them, was itP “Better ask the dogs that.” “But still I don’t understand. If they went off in the explosion ...” “A'h !” said Johnny Cope. .

They sat silent for a few minutes eyeing one another narrowly. Then, “I’m beginning to think it would be a o-ood thing if you were out of the way once for all, Mr Mulligan,” the little director said in a thoughtful tone, not a hint of animosity in his threat. “You complicate one’s thinking.” “Surely not that! And remember, you had the chance once at Amsterdam,” said Cope. “Such opportunities seldom recur, I’m afraid.” He sighed. They might have been discussing some remote ethical problem, so solemn were their bent faces, so calm and detached was the sound of their voices. Cope broke the silence at last. “Well, I think we have exchanged all the information at our disposal. I’d better see how Hendringham’s gettiing on.” He rose, stretched bis ungainly body and, smiling genially with every feature of his grotesque face, he walked leisurely out of the room. Mr Mench sat for* a long, while, his brow furrowed with the effort to think. Then he

straightened up and rang the bell for Miss Silvane.

Out in the toolroom Hendringham was collecting such parts as still gauged up to size or in which the defects were unimportant. Johnny Cope strolled in as the leaving hooter was blowing for the dinner break. When the scuffle of departing feet bad died away he found a cigarette and casually, as he tapped the end on his case, asked “Well?”

“Take at least a couple of days to put this right,” answered Hendringham despoiidentely. “Well, our friend Mr Mench has been good enough to inform us that two and a half days is the period scheduled for it by his friends.” He turned towards the still waiting foreman and in louder tones instructed him to lock up the undamaged parts. “Mr Hendringham and I will take the others with us,” he said. Between them they made a parcel which presently was stowed on the floor of Cope’s sleek, long-bodied open tourer.

At a touch the engine throbbed to life. They scrambled in and Cope drove slowly out of the yard and swung into the long straight empty road that skirted the Works fence.

The road was deserted except for a solitary workman who held a red flag and stood in front of a temporary barrier that for a distance divided the road along its crown. On the right, behind the fence and opposite the barrier, was a scaffolding about some new works building, an extension that was in progress. In the half of the roadway on the left there seemed to be little obstruction beyond a few carelessly discarded picks and shovels, a heap of sand and a- wheelbarrow. The man with the flag waved them on towards the right. Johnny Cope was driving with, for him, unwonted sedateness. As a rule he would slip along using to the utmost the flexible power at his. disposal, apparently quite reckless but, as Geoffrey knew, alert to every conceivable danger that a highly developed road-sense could envisage. They had driven many thousand miles together and, though there had been squeaks of the narrowest kind imaginable, he had learnt to trust to the utmost in that caTm, quick brain and the immediate reaction of those thin, nervous fingers, those elegantly long, yellow shod feet, to its commands.

The big car swung over to the right in response to the watchman’s signal. Then it swung left again and accelerated. The watchman furiously urged them back to the right and, puzzled, Geoffrey glanced at' the driver inquiringly. Johnny Cope was sitting hunched, his big ears spreading over his coat collar, his rough hair fanned backward by the increasing wind of their motion, .eyes steady on the road ahead, two bony fingers casually tapping the steering wheel rim after his manner when the driving was about to become difficult.

The watchman bravely made a motion to step into their path. Then he sprang aside as the great car, hurtling now, dashed into the control on the wrong side of the barrier. Then from the corner of an eye the passenger observed behind the fence to the left two men struggling with a long ladder that was clearly getting the better of them, over-balancing towards the roadway. Kope-hung packs of bricks dangled from its upper end as slowly it toppled forward. Picks and shovels went clattering from beneath their tyres, but deflected them not in the slightest. Their speed and the grip of knuckly fingers on the wheel-rim were too much for that. No obstacle less than a considerable boulder would have been capable of diverting them now. The ladder hung over the roadway, its brick-weighted ends hastening its no longer controllable descent. They were directly under it, and their course narrowed by a wheelbarrow and a pile of sand, when it caught the top of the fence and its heels kicked skyward even as the upper rail splintered under its weight. , The wheelbarrow went up in fragments, and the crash of its destruction was followed by that of the ladder behind them. The near wheels lurched perilously through the sand heap. They were through. Johnny Cope eased to a more comfortable speed and swung over again. Even when slowed he didn’t trouble to glance round. With his free hand he extracted a cigarette, held it to the lighteruntil its tip glowd, raised it to his thin wide lips, and inhaled as if gratefully. “Help yourself, Geoff,” he said, tossing the case over. “Pretty neat trick that, wasn’t it?”

Imitating him, Hendringham helped himself and lit up before replying: “Well, if a display of sheer recklessness that would have disgraced a roadhog is to be described in that way, I’m inclined to think your satisfaction justified,” he said. “But what on earth made you try to get through?” “In the heat of the moment I fancied I saw three pretty good reasons. U'ne, that pukka builders’ labourers generally remove the loading from the top of a ladder before they attempt to lower it i an unweighted ladder of that size is bad. enough, but a weighted one’s like a rogue elephant on holiday you know. Two, that the gentleman with the flag appeared to be our old friend Mr Lrossmith disguised by a clean shave, a blue handkerchief, and a suit of corduroys. And, thre z, that dear old 1 audolfius suggested during conversation that it would reany be a very good tiling indeed if I were out ol the way once and for all. He says I complicate his thinking, which I confess I have tried to do, so we must not judge him too harshly over his latest effort. I myself ’d probably^want to destroy any man who complicated my thinking. After all a man’s entitled to protect bis intellect.”

(To Be Continued)