The Lost Luggage Porter (5 page)

I moved in on to Platform Four. The station was alive even
if the city was not, and it was ablaze with gaslight. 'Down
side,' the lost-luggage porter had said. That meant crossing
the footbridge, and, as I put my boot on the first step, the
telegraph lad came skipping down towards me with tele­graph forms in his hands.

'You found it then, chief?'

He was looking at the portmanteau.

'Aye,' I said, grinning at him, 'office and bag both.'

'Champion,' he said, before haring along Platform Four to
the telegraph office, where he would doubtless have a cou­ple of minutes' rest before being shot out again like a
bagatelle ball.

'Down' side ...

Well, half the platforms were on the 'down'.

With the portmanteau seeming to grow heavier by the
minute I walked over the bridge to Platform Five, where a
train was about due. A dozen folk stood waiting, and there
was a big fellow lying on a luggage trolley smoking: a station
lounger, waiting for a 'carry'. I walked west of the platform,
through an arch in the station wall to Platform Fourteen. It
was a wooden platform - a new addition - but this was where
the Scotch expresses called, and there must have been one
due, for thirty or so people waited, including the platform
guard with his silver whistle strung about his neck, and his
little army of porters, all talking in short bursts, as if nervous.

The clock on Platform Fourteen showed 6.40 when I saw
the engine come swerving through Holgate Junction, steam
flowing from the chimney like a witch's hair, the line of lights
behind bulging to the left, then to the right. I heard a cough
behind me, and it was the lost-luggage porter, sopping wet
and with a small valise over his shoulder. He said nothing but
just gave me a half-nod as the engine came up, the handles on
its smoke box making the shape of half-past four.

The engine pulled up alongside us, and it was another
thing again close to, with the leaking steam, and the rain on
the boiler like sweat. Hard to credit that it needed the per­mission of signals or the help of men to get to its destination.

'What's going off then?' I asked, just as the engine came to
a stand alongside us.

'Summat
is,' said the porter. 'The Blocker's pitched up, so
the Brains'll be here presently.' He was looking vexed, star­ing along the length of the platform, observing all the give-
and-take of train arrival.

'What's your name?' I said.

'Edwin Lund.'

He said it fast, without putting out his hand; he didn't
seem over-keen to learn mine but I gave it him:

'Stringer,' I said. 'Detective James Stringer.'

No; still didn't sound right.

A man came up, half running half walking through the
arch that led to Platform Five.

'The Brains, I call him' said Lund in an under-breath nod­ding in the direction of the man. As he spoke, Lund was
shifting along towards the north end of the platform, looking
away from the man he'd just identified.

The man was too tall for his coat, and his long hands were
held out to the side, so that he settled like a bird onto the
platform. He began looking about. Then the really big fellow,
the lounger from Platform Five, was with him.

'You'll have your bob's worth now, mister,' said Lund,
who'd taken up position on the opposite side of a porter's
cabin from the two blokes we were watching.

The Blocker was straight into a party of ladies boarding at
a door somewhere about the middle of the train. He seemed
set on doing the job of a porter, and was offering to help a
lady with her basket, but she was shaking her head, and so
he only added to a mix-up of cloaks, bags, and over-sized
bonnets. The Brains stood looking on. A porter was coming
up the crowd now. The Brains stopped him in his tracks, and
started trying to chat with him, but the porter would have
none. He was after the tips from that scrimmage of train-
boarding women.

At the front end of the train, the north end, the fireman was
down on the tracks, wrestling with the coupling and the vac­uum pipe. The engine he'd helped bring in belonged to the
Great Northern Company. It would now be replaced, and the
train taken onward by one of the North Eastern's locomotives.
The fireman was right below my boots. The fellow was sod­den from the rain that had blown into the cab on the trip; he
was clarted with oil and coal dust, and his oilcloth cap had a
great burn hole in its middle. I was jealous of him all the same
...
I was jealous of every engine man that stepped.

I moved to try and make out the number of the engine,
which was an Ivatt Atlantic.

'Look out’ said Lund.

The confused ladies had been abandoned. The Blocker
was walking fast along the platform in our direction, and the
other was following behind, but he was the one you noticed,
and what you noticed most particularly were his long
hands. The Ivatt Atlantic was now pulling away from the
front carriage, leaving a great gap in the air. It always
looked wrong when an engine uncoupled, like a head being

chopped from a body. You half expected blood.

But I should have been looking south, as Lund was.

'Wham!' he cried, and his thin voice cracked at the word,
just as the Blocker clattered straight into a man who'd lately
climbed down from a carriage, and was fishing in his waist­coat for his watch.

And now the Brains was on the scene, also assisting the
gent who'd been knocked down. The Great Northern engine
was off and away, leaving the train beheaded. The knocked-
over gent was set back on his feet, helped into the train, and
Lund was saying quietly, half to me, half to himself: 'They
have it now, I'm certain they do.'

Brains now had his back to us; after a second, a small black
object twirled away from him and landed under the carriage of
the train into which the toff had stepped. Almost before it had
landed, he was walking away, his hands held out and down,
like something precious, and the Blocker was at his side.

Then they were running, as they went through the arch
leading to Platform Five.

'Watch that,' I said to Lund, pointing at my bagful of maga­zines, and I scarpered after them. 'I am a detective, and I shall
arrest you on a charge of theft.' The words ran through my
head as I came onto Platform Five, where there was a man
leaning against a pillar . . . and
another
man leaning against a
pillar. They were not the Brains or the Blocker; they had simi­lar weird looks to the fighting Camerons of the Institute. All of
a sudden, the station seemed full of loungers - fellows who
could not be relied on to come and go with the trains.

I dashed onto the footbridge. I was the arresting officer,
and I would bring the charge; I would be in the Police Court,
and in the
Yorkshire Evening Press,
too: 'Detective James
Stringer, of the North Eastern Railway force, who is sta­tioned at York, took the stand .
.
.'
The thing was not to fret about the job. Get in deep. Then I
again couldn't see the Blocker and the Brains even from the
centre of the footbridge, which gave views of the whole sta­tion. I looked about for a constable, and gave a glance over in
the direction of the Police Office, which was also on Platform
Four. My view was blocked by the signal box that overhung
the bookstall on that platform, and I couldn't even make out
if light burned in the Police Office.

I gave it up, walked back to Platform Fourteen.

The 'down' express had gone, carried by its new North
Eastern engine off to Newcastle, Berwick, Edinburgh. Lund,
the lost-luggage porter, stood on the platform coughing. The
pocketbook was in his hand, caught up from the tracks.

'Did you tell the gent that his pocketbook had been lifted?'
I said.

He shook his head.

'Why ever not?'

'Train pulled out in double quick time,' he said, and he
began coughing again - a real workhouse cough.

'You all right, mate?' I asked him.

He nodded. His uniform gave him a schoolboy look, but it
was impossible to make out his age.

'I'd have thought you'd take an umbrella with you on
evenings like this.'

'Why?'

'Well you've about three thousand to hand in your place of
work.'

'It's against regulations to take 'em out.'

'But your governor, Parkinson, does it.'

No answer to that.

'Why did you not tell the police before
-
about those two,
I mean?'

I gestured along the empty platform.
No reply.

'What'll you do?' he said after a while.

I thought hard for a second.

'I'll make a report’ I said.

He looked at me and then looked away. He'd been gal­vanised by the activities of two vagabonds, but now he'd
gone back to his silent ways.

'You'll be a witness, won't you?' I said. 'You'll stand to all
we've just seen?'

He might've nodded; hard to tell. I picked up my bag, just
as an S class 4-6-0 rumbled up to the place recently left by the
Scotch Express. More steam, more rain-sweat. It was a mighty
green beast, hard to ignore, but Edwin Lund managed, stand­ing there on Platform Fourteen with his cap in his hand and
his long, twisted face turned away from the engine.

As I made to walk off, he suddenly called: 'Garden Gate!'

'You what?' I said, stopping in my tracks.

'Garden Gate,' he repeated. 'Public house. You'll be able to
put your hands on those chaps in there.'

'How do you know?' I said.

He shrugged.

'They're regulars there. Never fail.'

'But
how
do you know?'

'I live close by, Ward Street, and I've seen 'em in there’ he
said. 'Well...
going
in, any road.'