Give Us This Day by R.F. Delderfield

quickly as I could. I did what you asked; I went down to the yard tonight. It was a few minutes to six and everyone was leaving. I said I’d lock up and give the keys to the watchman as usual, so I had the place to myself.”
    “Well?”
    “You were right. There is something queer going on. There’s no mention in the current ledgers or day-books of a sub-contract with Linklater’s, but I wanted to be quite sure, so I had a word with that coffee-stall proprietor and he confirmed what he’d told you. He said one of Linklater’s vans had been there again last night, about nine-thirty. It stayed about ten minutes, no more, and was backed in so tightly that he didn’t see what was offloaded or taken aboard.”
    “What then?”
    “Well, seeing that the man seemed so positive, I looked in at Linklater’s yard on my way home. I pass near the gate, it’s in a cul-de-sac off Jamaica Road. There were several vans in the yard so I… well, Mr. Swann, I slipped in and I looked inside a half-dozen of them. Most of them were empty but the last one was fully loaded. There were several of our crates, Mr. Swann, with our brand on them.”
    “What was inside? Did you get a chance to look?”
    “No, sir. I was going to, even if it meant prising one open, but then two men came out of the shed across the yard.” Tybalt paused, drawing a deep breath, and blinking twice a second. “One of them was Robsart, our yard foreman. I didn’t know the other. It was getting dusk then so I thought it best to slip away behind the vans and make my way out. I signed Robsart on myself, sir. He’d been with us four years on suburban runs. I remember I was surprised when he told me Wesley had promoted him yard foreman. There were several men there with more experience, but later Wesley said Robsart was the brightest of the bunch and thoroughly up to the job.”
    “He’s certainly up to something,” Adam said. “Did you come straight here after that?”
    “Yes. Though I had it in mind to do something else.”
    “What was that?”
    “Take a train out to Annerley to talk it over with my boy.”
    “I’m glad you didn’t, Tybalt.”
    He turned away, moving over to the window. The night was clear and there was very little river mist about. The light of a thousand lamps reflected on the sliding Thames and the muted roar of the city came to him like the long roll of muffled drums. He had little doubt now but that Wesley Tybalt was implicated, and that some really massive “shouldering” was going on down there. He remembered coachman Blubb introducing him to that word, a phrase the old coachees applied to the practice of picking up passengers at intermediate stops on a regular run, dropping them off one stage short of the terminus, and pocketing the fare. Only in this case it was not passengers but goods that were being shouldered, and suddenly two-thirds of the pattern became distinct to him, incorporating Sam’s hint; the leak from Linklater’s northern headquarters; that warehouse with an unobtrusive exit that they kept locked, back and front, during the day; and Travis’s reports of vans calling after the yard had closed and when only one or two men would be on duty.
    The goods, he imagined, would start out from northern and Midland bases in Linklater’s vans, to be offloaded close to the starting point and hauled south in Swann’s waggons, stored in that warehouse—uninvoiced, of course—until one of Linklater’s vans could collect them, with nobody a penny the wiser save a sprinkling of rascals in both firms operating the swindle. He said, quietly, “You realise there must be at least half-a-dozen of our chaps involved in this, Tybalt. Waggoners from the original depots would have to be squared, as well as the yard men like Robsart. They’ve been making a very good thing of it, I wouldn’t wonder, and it must have been going some time to develop to this stage.”
    “You’re saying we’ve hauled hundreds of pounds’ worth of