The Unknown Ajax Read online

‘Some things are common knowledge, sir.’

  ‘Yes, and everyone knows that at many of the regular ports they bring the cargoes in as openly as you please, and how much is declared and how much is slipped through is just a matter of – oh, arrangement between the Revenue officer and the captains of the vessels!’ said Richmond.

  ‘Nay, lad, what difference does that make?’ said Hugo. ‘Dishonesty amongst the Preventives doesn’t alter the case.’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t!’ Matthew said, rather shortly. ‘Free-trading is to be deplored – no one denies that! – but while the duties remain at their present level, particularly on such commodities as tea and tobacco and spirits, the temptation to evade –’

  ‘While duties remain at their present level,’ interrupted his lordship grimly, ‘the Board of Customs will get precious little support for its land-guard. Land-guard! Much hope they have of stopping the trade! By God, it puts me out of all patience when I hear that more and more money is being squandered on so-called Prevention! Now we are to have special coastguards, or some such tomfoolery! I’ll lay you any odds the rascals will run the goods in under their noses.’

  ‘Oh, I should think undoubtedly,’ agreed Vincent. ‘I am not personally acquainted with any of the Gentlemen – at least, not to my knowledge – but I have the greatest admiration for persons so full of spunk. I am unhappily aware that they have more pluck than I have.’

  Richmond laughed; but Matthew said in a displeased voice: ‘I wish you will not talk in that nonsensical style! A very odd idea of you Hugh will have!’

  ‘Oh, no, do you think so, Papa? Have you an odd idea of me, cousin? Or any idea of me?’

  Hugo shook his head. ‘Nay, I’m not judging you,’ he said gently.

  Matthew stared at him for a moment, and then gave a reluctant laugh. ‘Well, there’s for you, Vincent!’

  ‘As you say, sir. Something in the nature of a half-armed stop. Do enlighten my ignorance, cousin! Does your very proper dislike of the Gentlemen arise from – er – an innate respectability, or from some particular cause, connected, perhaps, with the wool-trade?’

  ‘There’s no owling done now!’ Richmond objected.

  ‘What’s owling?’ asked Claud, with a flicker of interest.

  ‘Oh, smuggling wool out of the country! But that was when there was a law against exporting wool, and ages ago, wasn’t it, Grandpapa? There used to be a great deal of it done all along the coast.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of that,’ said Hugo. ‘There were two things smuggled out of the country, and into France, while we were at war with Boney, that did more harm than owling.’

  ‘Why, what?’ demanded Richmond, frowning.

  ‘Guineas, and information. Did you never hear tell of the guinea boats that were built in Calais? It was before your time, and before mine too, but it was English gold that kept the Empire above hatches. Boney used to encourage English smugglers. He came by a deal of information that didn’t make our task any the easier.’

  Richmond looked rather daunted; but Lord Darracott said testily: ‘No doubt! Possibly we too came by information through the same channel. Do you imagine yourself to be the only person here who thinks smuggling a bad thing? We all think it! It sprang from a damned bad cause, and until that’s removed it will go on, and so it may for anything I’ll do to stop it! Don’t you talk to me about the rights and wrongs of it! Bad laws were made to be broken!’

  He stopped, his hands clenching on the arms of his chair, for a chuckle had escaped Hugo. Vincent put up his glass, and eyed his cousin through it. ‘I do trust you mean to share the joke with us?’ he said.

  ‘I was just thinking what a pudder we’d be in, if every Jack rag of us set about breaking all the laws we weren’t suited with,’ explained Hugo, broadly grinning. ‘Donnybrook Fair would be nothing to it, that road!’

  Nine

  Richmond, knowing that his indiscreet confidence to Vincent was largely to blame for Hugo’s fall from grace, tried gallantly to intervene; but it was Claud who saved Hugo from annihilation. To everyone’s surprise, he suddenly said: ‘Well, Hugo’s right! No question about it!’ He looked up to discover that a singularly baleful stare from his grandfather’s hard eyes was bent upon him, and blanched a little. ‘Well, what I mean is,’ he said manfully, though in a less decided tone, ‘no harm in buying run brandy, though I shouldn’t do it myself, because I don’t like brandy above half. The thing is you don’t know where it’s going to stop. Not the brandy. Running it.’

  ‘I collect that some meaning lies behind these cryptic utterances,’ remarked Vincent. ‘Or am I indulging optimism too far?’

  ‘Much too far!’ said Lord Darracott gratingly.

  ‘No, you ain’t!’ retorted Claud, stung. ‘What’s more, if you’d as much know as you think you have, you wouldn’t ask me what I mean, because it’s as plain as a pikestaff!’

  ‘Is that to my address?’ demanded his lordship ominously.

  ‘No, no, sir! Good God, no!’ said Claud hastily. ‘Talking to my brother! Besides, you do know what I mean: you told us all about it yourself! Hawkhurst Gang!’

  ‘The Hawkhurst Gang!’ ejaculated his lordship, and fell suddenly into silence.

  ‘Yes, of course no one wants– But that was years ago!’ Richmond said. ‘Nothing like that happens nowadays!’

  ‘It could, though,’ said Claud. ‘Never thought about it much before, but now I do come to think about it I’m dashed if I don’t think it’s bound to happen!’

  ‘Nonsense!’ snapped his lordship.

  ‘Well, Father –’ said Matthew hesitantly, ‘one must hope, of course – but I own that there is a great deal of sense in what Claud says.’ He looked across the table at Hugo, and said: ‘The Hawkhurst Gang was a pernicious set of ruffians – smugglers, you understand – that held a rule of terror over the countryside when your grandfather was a boy. They committed every sort of atrocity, and were so strong in numbers – how many men was it they were able to muster within an hour, Father?’

  ‘I forget,’ returned his lordship shortly.

  ‘Five hundred,’ supplied Richmond. ‘And they used to have regular battles with rival gangs!’

  ‘They indulged in far worse practices than that, my boy,’ said Matthew dryly.

  ‘Yes, I know – murdering people, and torturing any they thought had informed against them – horrid! It went on for years, too. I wish I had been alive then!’

  ‘Wish you’d been alive then?’ echoed Claud. The height of his collar made it impossible for him to turn his head, so he was obliged to slew his whole body round in his chair to obtain a view of Richmond, seated beside him. ‘Well, of all the jingle-brained things to say!’

  ‘No, because only think what sport it would have been! None of us – I don’t mean only ourselves, but everyone like us! – seems to have made the least push to get the better of the gang, and of course the Government did nothing but what was paltry, but I’ll swear the country people only wanted someone to lead them! Arms, too, but we could have supplied them with arms, and made them into – what do you call those irregular troops that fought in Spain, Hugo?’

  ‘Guerrilleros,’ Hugo responded, regarding him with a lurking twinkle. ‘So that’s what you’d have enjoyed, is it?’

  Richmond blushed, but his eyes still glowed. ‘Well, you must own it – it would have been something like!’

  Hugo shook his head. ‘Nay, lad, what it would have been like is something you’ve never seen.’

  ‘Oh, you mean burning ricks, and laying the country waste, but that wouldn’t happen! I daresay the gang would have tried to burn our houses, but we should have kept watch – yes, and laid ambushes, too!’

  ‘Well, if that’s your notion of comfort it ain’t mine!’ said Claud. ‘Dashed if I don’t think you’ve got windmills in your head!’

  Lord Darracott thr