The Lost Luggage Porter (2 page)

The Lost Luggage Office was on Queen Street, which was
half under the bridge made by Station Road. Before it, came
a part of the mighty South End goods yard, which lapped up
to Queen Street like a railway flood, and before
that
came the
Institute, from which came a beer smell that decided me to
put off my enquiry for a moment. I turned into the Institute,
where I passed by the reading room - where the fire looked
restless and the sole occupant slept - and walked through
the long billiard hall towards the bar at the far end, reaching
into my coat pocket as I did so.

'How do, love?' said the barmaid, reading the warrant
card in my hand: 'Be it remembered that we the under­signed, two of His Majesty's Justices of the Peace in and for
the City of York have this day, upon the application of the
North Eastern Railway, appointed James Harrison Stringer
to be a Detective with and upon the railway stations and the
Works of the North Eastern Company.'

'That's smashing’ she said, when she'd left off reading.

Only railwaymen could get a look-in at the Institute, and I
was a railwayman of sorts, though not the
right
sort.

I put the card back in my pocketbook, and ordered a pint
of John Smith's. Outside, the raindrops hitting the tops of the
windows had a long way to fall. There was electric light in a
green shade over each of the tables, darkness in between,
and only one game in progress. The blokes playing looked a
proper pair of vagabonds.

A copy of the
Yorkshire Evening Press
lay on the bar, and the
barmaid passed it over to me. It was open at an inside page,
from which one article had been neatly snipped. The bar­maid saw me staring down at this hole, and she pointed to
the glass cabinet, where the article had been pinned. It was
headed 'The Twinkling Wanderer', and gave the news that
the planet Mercury would be visible from York between 7.16
and 8.57 that evening, just as if it had been timetabled by
Bradshaw. 'No difficulty should be found in picking out the
planet’ I read, 'as no other object in the sky has sufficient
lightness at that hour . ..'

I turned forward a page, then found the front page and
read: 'Hotel Porter Found with his Throat Cut'. The article
ran on: 'Late last night when the hotel night porter at the
Station Hotel at York was called to go on duty, he was found
in his bedroom with his throat cut. The unfortunate man,
named Mr Richard Mariner, aged about 50, was found quite
dead, and a razor with which the wound had been inflicted
was also found in the bedroom.' That might turn out a mat­ter for the Railway Police, I thought - the Pantomime Police,
as I already knew they were called throughout the Company.

I looked again at the words 'throat cut'. The average man
could read that and give it the go-by. Not if you were a cop­per, though.

The date at the top of the page was Friday 26 January. On
Tuesday the 30th, I would report to the Railway Police Office
on York Station for the commencement of my duties. I'd
been sworn the week before at the York Police Court, and
collected my suit as provided for in the clothing regulations.
Detectives were allowed a plain suit and they could choose it
themselves, providing the cost didn't overtop sixteen bob.
I'd gone with the wife to the tailoring department of one of
the big York stores for a fitting, and the design that we - by
which I mean the wife - had settled on was a slate-blue mix
twill; pilot cloth, 27 ounces to the yard, with Italian silk lining.
I was now wearing it in ... and it was sodden from the day's
rain.

Next to the bar were notices in a glass cabinet. The minutes
of the North Eastern Railway's Clerks' Amateur Swimming
Club were posted up there. Membership was not up to its
usual standard, the locomotive department having for some
reason dropped out. I wondered whether it was to do with
the strike: some York enginemen had been on strike for the
best part of a month.

I looked above the bar: 5.45 p.m.

I would drink my pint before asking after my magazines,
and I would have ten minutes' study. So I left the
Evening
Press
and, taking from my side coat pocket my
Railway Police
Manual,
I sauntered over to one of the long wooden benches
lining the room.

The book was set out like a police work dictionary, and I
began at 'Accomplice' while supping at my pint. But the
queer talk of the two snooker players kept breaking in. They
were both weird-looking: something wild about them, but
something half dead too. One had his black hair kept down
by Brilliantine (or a superior sort of engine grease); the
other's hair sprang up. But they had about the same
quantity
of hair, so I guessed they were brothers, and pretty close in
age, too: middle-twenties or so. Brilliantine was making all
the shots, although he wasn't a great hand at potting. Curly
hair was just looking on.

'I like the red balls,' curly hair said, and a lot of spittle
came with the words. 'I like them to stay up.'

'You're in luck then, en't you?' said Brilliantine, taking
aim, and making another poor shot.

'Will I get a turn soon, our kid?' asked curly, who was evi­dently a bit cracked.

'You'll get what you're given.'

No sound but that of missed shots for a while.

'I have a glass of beer but no cigarette,' said the crackpot.

Brilliantine moved around the table, looking at the balls.

'Will I have a cigarette soon, our kid?' said the crackpot.

'How do I fucking know?' said Brilliantine, still pacing the
table. 'It's nowt to do wi' me.'

The crackpot caught me eyeballing him.

'You all right?' he said, fast.

'Aye,' I said, colouring up a little at being found out spying.

'Keeping all right?' this funny fellow said, in the same
rushed way.

'Topping,' I said.

'Still raining out?'

'It is that.'

Brilliantine looked up from the table, saying:

'Don't mind him. Lad's a bit simple.'

I nodded, made a show of going back to my reading. Bril­liantine made a few more shots in the game he was playing
against himself, then took out a tin of cigarettes and lit one,
grinning fit to bust. He handed a cigarette to the younger
one, and struck a light.

'I like you, our kid’ said the crackpot in his gurgling voice.
'Nice, wide smile ...'

Brilliantine played on for a while, and the idiot brother
smoked. At last Brilliantine struck a red ball sweetly, and it
went away straight towards an end pocket, or would have
done but for the brother, who stepped forward, put his hand
down over the hole and blocked it.

Brilliantine looked up sharply, saying, 'What are you play­ing at, you soft bugger?'

He walked the length of the table, and lammed out at his
brother. As the lad went down, I stood up.

'Hold on,' I said to Brilliantine. 'That's an offence you've
just committed.'

'Who are you .. . Talking like a fucking copy book?'

'I'm detective with the railway force,' I said, only half
believing it myself.

'Give over,' said the bloke. After a space, he added: 'Prove
it.'

I held up the warrant card.

'Means nowt to me,' he said. 'I don't know me letters.' He
nodded towards the cracked kid, saying, 'How will he ever
learn if I don't learn him? Smart table, this is - slate bed, best
green baize.
She'll
not thank me for letting him put his grapplers all over it.'

He pointed along the hall towards the barmaid, who was
looking on from the far end.

'It does not justify blows,' I said.

Nothing was said for a moment; then the bloke piped up
with:

'Reckon you're going to nick me, then?'

I didn't know whether I was or not.

'Or would you let us off with a caution?'

That was a good idea.

I looked back at the nutty one.

'How's that cut?'

'Champion,' he said. There was a bright, brimming red
line at his eye. 'You all right?' the boy then called out to me,
'Keeping all right?'

His affliction took him in such a way that he never uttered
the first of those two questions without adding the second.
At any rate, I ignored him.

A caution would meet the case, I decided.

'You are to be cautioned’ I said to Brilliantine, wishing I'd
reached up to 'C' in my
Railway Police Manual.

The bloke was chalking his cue.

I took out my notebook.

'Name?'

'Cameron,' he said, blowing loose chalk off the cue tip.
'John Cameron.'

'What's your brother's name?'

'Duncan,' he said.

I set down the date and then: 'I, John Cameron, having
committed the affray of assault, have been cautioned by
Detective Stringer of the Railway Force.'

'Sign here,' I said, passing over the pencil and the note­book, which came back with a great cross over the entire
page, and most of what I'd set down obliterated.

'There's no need to look like that,' he said, 'I told you I
didn't know me letters.'

I put the notebook away.

'Work for the Company, do you?' I said.

But he must have done, otherwise he wouldn't have been
drinking in the Institute.

He nodded.

'Department?' I asked.

'Goods station’ he said, with the greatest reluctance. 'Out­door porter.'

'And what about the lad?'

'Not up to working.'