Agar, whose face was the very picture of gloom, must have been thinking the same thing. “Shall we put off until next month, then?”
“No,” Pierce said. He immediately shifted to his next problem. “Now, this lock they’ve installed on the luggage-van door. Can it be worked from inside?”
Burgess shook his head. “It’s a padlock— hooks through a bolt and iron latch, outside.”
Pierce was still pacing. “Could it be unlocked during one of the stops— say, Redhill— and then locked again at Tonbridge, further down the line?”
“Be a risk,” Burgess said. “She’s a fat lock, big as, your fist, and it might be noticed.”
Pierce continued to pace. For a long time, his footsteps on the carpet and the ticking of the clock on the mantel were the only sounds in the room. Agar and Burgess watched him. Finally Pierce said, “If the van door is locked, how do you get ventilation?”
Burgess, looking a little confused, said, “Oh, there’s air enough. That van’s shoddy made, and when the train gets to speed, the breeze whistles through the cracks and chinks loud enough to pain your ears.”
“I meant,” Pierce said, “is there any apparatus for ventilation of the van?”
“Well, there’s the slappers in the roof…”
“What’re they?” Pierce said.
“Slappers? Slappers— well, to speak true, they’re not your proper slappers, on account of the lack of hinging. Many’s the time I was wishing they were true slappers, I mean a slapper fit with hinging, and all the more when it rains— then it’s a cold puddle inside, I can tell you—”
“What is a slapper?” Pierce interrupted. “Time is short.”
“A slapper? A slapper’s what your railway folks call a manner of trap. She’s a hinged door up in the roof, mounted center, and inside you’ve a rod to open or shut the slapper. Some of your slappers— I mean proper slappers— they fit two to a coach, facing opposite ways. That’s so’s one is always away from the wind. Now, other coaches, they’ve their slappers mounted both the same, but it’s a bother in the yards, you see, for it means the coach must be clamped with the slappers backward, and—”
“And you have two of these slappers in the luggage van?”
“Aye, that’s true,” Burgess said, “but they’re not proper, because they’re fixed open, you see, no hinging on the van slappers, and so when it rains there I be, soaked through—”
“The slappers give access directly to the interior of the luggage van?”
“They do, direct down.” Burgess paused. “But if you’re thinking of slipping a bloke through, it can’t be done. They’re no more than a hand’s breadth square, and—”
“I’m not,” Pierce said. “Now, you say you have two slappers? Where are they located?”
“On the roof, like I said, center of the roof, and—”
“Where in relation to the length of the car?” Pierce said. His pacing back and forth, and his brusque, irritable manner left Burgess, who was nervous and trying to be helpful, at a complete loss.
“Where… in relation…” His voice trailed off.
Agar said, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but my knee pains me— my left knee here— and that’s always a bad sign. I say, quit the lay for a deadly flummut, and be done.”
“Shut up,” Pierce said, with a sudden flaring anger that made Agar take a step backward. Pierce turned to Burgess. “Now I am asking,” he said, “if you look at the van from the side, you see it as a kind of box, a large box. And on the top of this box are the slappers. Now, where are they?”
“Not proper set, and that’s God’s truth,” Burgess said. “A proper slapper’s near the ends of the coach, one at each end, so’s to allow air to pass end to end, one slapper to the next. That’s the way to arrange it ,for the best—”
“Where are the slappers on the luggage van?” Pierce laid, glancing again at his watch. “I care only about the van.”
“That’s the hell of it,”. Burgess said. “They’re near center, and no more than three paces separate. And they’ve no hinge. Now when it rains, down comes the water, direct to the center of the van, and there’s one great puddle, straightaway in the center.”