know what your game was the other night.’
Harold sighed wearily. ‘Oh, Lord, you know all about that!’ he exclaimed. ‘I suppose you read the papers?’
‘Yes, I read them right enough,’ replied Mr Boost. ‘I don’t want to pry into your affairs so long as they don’t concern me. When they do, I’m going to have the truth. What happened to my bale of goods, I’d like to know?’
Harold stared at him in amazement. ‘Your bale of goods?’ he repeated. ‘What the devil are you talking about? What bale of goods?’
Mr Boost regarded him suspiciously. ‘I reckon you know more about it than I do,’ he said. ‘Especially as it happens I’ve never seen it.’
‘Look here, Mr Boost. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ replied Harold, now thoroughly roused. ‘I haven’t got anything of yours, you can search the place if you like. And when you’ve finished I’ll trouble you to clear out and leave me in peace.’
Mr Boost laughed scornfully. ‘Oh, I don’t suppose you’ve got it here,’ he said. ‘But it’s like this. I’m not such a fool as to believe that a man comes and dies in these rooms without your knowing something about it. And when a bale of goods of mine disappears on the same night, I can’t help thinking that you know something about that, too.’
‘How do you know it disappeared that night?’ enquired Harold sharply.
‘Did you see it leaning up against my door under the porch when you came home that night?’ replied Mr Boost aggressively. ‘Or were you too beastly drunk to notice anything?’
Harold paused a moment. ‘I won’t swear about when I first came in,’ he said. ‘It was nearly pitch dark, you know. But I know jolly well that there was nothing there when I came back with the police. Someone would have seen it if there had been. And there wasn’t anything there when I went out that evening.’
‘Of course there wasn’t,’ replied Mr Boost testily. ‘It hadn’t been delivered then. Well, I’ll have to tell you what happened, I suppose. You get my stuff back from your pals, and I won’t ask any questions. That’s fair.’
Harold started to make an indignant refutation, but Mr Boost silenced him.
‘Now, just you listen,’ he interrupted. ‘I’ve got some stuff coming down from Leicester, and I’ve just been up to see George, who keeps a van up along the Harrow Road and does a bit of carting for me now and then. I’ve fixed up with him to fetch this stuff from the station, and when I was leaving him he says, “Did you find that lot all right I left for you the other evening, Mr Boost?”’
‘“What other evening?” I said. “You haven’t done a job for me for the last couple of months, George!”
‘“Why, the evening before that there body was found in your house, Mr Boost,” he said. “That’s how I remember the evening it was. I must have been along at your place about an hour or so before the chap broke in.”
‘Well, I knew of nothing coming while I was away, though it does sometimes happen that a friend of mine in the trade sends something along which he knows I can do with. Very often the carman, if he knows me, leaves the stuff outside the door. It’s safe enough in the front garden, especially if it’s heavy, as it usually is. You’ve seen stuff standing under the porch before now, haven’t you?’
Harold nodded. ‘Yes, but I’ve seen nothing there while you’ve been away,’ he said.
Mr Boost looked at him suspiciously. ‘Well, it wasn’t there when I came back, and so I told George. “What was it, anyhow, and where did it come from?” I asked him.
‘“I don’t know what it was, but it was middling heavy,” he said. “I got a message from old Samuels that he had some stuff for you, and I was to be particular and fetch it that very evening. So down I went to Camberwell, picked up the stuff about four, and was back with it here between five and six.”
‘Well, I didn’t know of anything old Samuels had for me, but there was nothing in that. He’s a comrade, or he used to be, he’s got a bit slack lately. Calls himself Samuels, but his real name’s Szamuelly. One of his relations was one of Lenin’s men, and fought a glorious fight for the cause in Hungary. Killed himself rather than be caught when the capitalists put the bourgeois back again. Never mind, that won’t last long. The whole of Europe is already on the brink—’
‘But this man Samuels and his bale of goods?’ interrupted Harold, feeling that an account of anything that happened on that fatal evening was preferable to an oration on Bolshevism.
Mr Boost checked himself and returned to his story. ‘Well, George told me that he got the message—there’s a telephone belonging to a man in his yard, and he’ll take a message for George from one of us dealers—and went down to Samuels’ place. He didn’t see the old man himself, but heard him wheezing and coughing in the back shop. When George raps on the counter, out comes Samuels’ nephew, a half-witted sort of chap who comes and lives with his uncle when he can’t get a job anywhere else. The nephew shows him a bale done up with mats and rope, and between them they got it into the van. George says it was about six foot long, and weighed best part of a couple of hundredweight. “Uncle says if Mr Boost isn’t in, you can leave it under the porch, it won’t hurt in the open for a night or two,” the nephew tells him. George asks if he can have his money, twelve-and-six, for the job. The nephew goes into the back room, and George hears the old man coughing and wheezing again. I’ll bet he did, too.’
Mr Boost allowed his austere frown to melt into a smile at the idea. ‘Old Samuels is worth a lot of money,’ he explained, ‘but it’s like drawing a tooth to get a shilling out of him. By and by the nephew comes back, and gives George his twelve-and-sixpence exact, not a penny more for a drink, you may bet. George comes straight here, or so he says, carries the stuff up to the door, and props it under the porch. And what I want to know is, what’s become of it?’
Mr Boost fixed his fiery eye upon Harold, as though he expected him to confess immediately to the theft of this bale of goods. But for a moment Harold made no reply. There seemed no reason to doubt the truth of the story—in any case it could easily be verified by referring to George or to Mr Boost’s friend, old Samuels. It was just possible that the disappearance of this bale was in some way connected with the other mysterious happening of that eventful night.
‘Look here, Mr Boost,’ he said at last. ‘I may be a pretty fair rotter, but at least I haven’t tried my hand at theft, as yet. Besides, if I wanted to steal a bale of that size and weight, I shouldn’t know how to set about it or where to dispose of it. For that matter, I can account for every minute of my time that evening. I give you my word I know nothing of the matter. Will that do?’
Mr Boost’s frown relaxed a little. ‘I’m not saying you took it,’ he conceded. ‘But there were some pretty queer happenings about here that night, and I reckon that you know more about them than you’re prepared to say. How do I know that the disappearance of that bale hasn’t got something to do with them?’
‘Well, Mr Boost, I can only assure you that nobody wants to know what happened that night more than I do,’ replied Harold. Then he added maliciously, ‘Why don’t you tell the police about it? They’d be glad to help you, I dare say.’
‘Police!’ exclaimed Mr Boost contemptuously. ‘I don’t want them fooling about with my business. I don’t recognise their right to interfere in a free man’s affairs. No, I’m
