The City Dock

The guests went at half past ten, which in Annapolis in June Week was early, and Pershing knew why.

They went in a body, all at once, with a great deal of thanking and a great deal of looking over their shoulders, and they did not go home. He could see that from the porch. He stood on the porch beside Tull and Mrs Tull and shook every hand, and watched each pair of guests go down the steps and through the gate and on to State Circle, and turn, not toward their motors or their houses, but downhill, toward the town and the water, walking a little faster than people walk after a dinner. The Admiral went that way with his wife on his arm. The Mayor went that way. Two members of the General Assembly went that way, talking with their heads together. The member’s daughter went that way, looking back at the house, at the window on the circle, where there was a light.

La Guardia had gone first.

He had shaken Tull’s hand at the door with great warmth and thanked Mrs Tull for the rockfish and said, “Good night, General,” and been told, “Governor-General,” and gone down the steps two at a time with his hat on the back of his head and his red carnation still in his buttonhole, and turned at the bottom of the steps, not left for his hotel but right, down Main Street, at a pace just short of a run.

“He is going to the water,” said Tull, comfortably, beside him. “They all go to the water. It is June Week. There will be music on the dock and the boats will be lit. It is very pretty.” He sighed with deep content. “He will find nothing. There is nothing to find.”

“Wesley,” said Mrs Tull, “go to bed.”

“I am not tired.”

“You will be tomorrow. You have the Superintendent at ten and the commissions at two and the Ball.” She took his arm. “Your Excellency, you will want to go up. Mr Bramwell has put your papers on the desk. He says there is a telegram.”

“Thank you, Mrs Tull.”

They went in. Pershing stood a minute longer on the porch alone, in the warm dark, with the noise of the town coming up the hill to him, music somewhere, a great many voices, the slap of water he could not see. The State House dome above him was white against the stars. The clock said a quarter to eleven.

Then he went in and up the stairs and along the corridor, and stopped at the door at the top, and knocked, and opened it.

The room on the circle was empty. The lamp was lit. The book about birds was face down on the bed. The middle window was open as wide as it would go, and on the sill, set out very neatly side by side, were a pair of patent leather evening shoes.

---

The telegram was from the Minister of Justice, and said that the Minister would be grateful if His Excellency could find a quarter of an hour on Monday morning to receive him on a matter arising from the annual report of the enforcement service. Pershing read it twice and put it down. He would find the quarter of an hour. He would ask the questions he always asked. He had a list.

He sat at the desk in the room on the garden with his hands flat on the blotter and did not undress.

Bramwell knocked at a quarter past eleven.

“Sir.”

“Come in.”

Bramwell came in. He was still in his dinner jacket, and he was holding a coat over his arm, a heavy dark overcoat of good wool with a velvet collar, much too big for either of them.

“There is a midshipman at the side door, sir,” he said. “He has been sent from the City Dock with a message for the referee. He says it is a matter of clause three. He says Mr La Guardia’s compliments, and would the referee be good enough to come and stand at the place.” He held up the coat. “Mrs Tull has sent this down. She says there is a mist on the water and you will want it, and the Lieutenant-Governor will not, because he is asleep.”

Pershing looked at the coat.

“Is my son at the City Dock, Mr Bramwell?”

“The midshipman did not say so, sir.”

“Did you ask him?”

“I did, sir.” Bramwell’s face did not change at all. “He said he had been asked not to say.”

Pershing stood up and held out his arm for the coat.

---

Main Street went down from Church Circle to the water in a long straight slope, a quarter of a mile of brick shops and brick houses with their doors open and the people of June Week in every doorway, and at the bottom it opened out into a market square and a long basin of black water with boats tied up all round it, which was the City Dock, and which was, at half past eleven on the first night of June Week, the most crowded place Pershing had seen since the quays at Liverpool in 1917.

There was a band on a barge, playing dance music. There were lanterns strung from the masts of the boats, red and yellow and green, so that the water under them was full of colour, broken and moving. There were midshipmen everywhere in white, and girls in light dresses with shawls, and families who should have been in bed, and men in shirtsleeves sitting on the bollards, and a fried oyster stall doing tremendous trade under a naphtha flare, and smoke, and the smell of the oysters and the tide and the tar on the pilings and something under all of it, faint and sweet and sharp, that Pershing recognised from a great many villages behind a great many lines and had not smelled on the King’s soil in six years.

The crowd parted for him. It did not know who he was, in the coat, in the dark. It parted because he walked down the middle of it the way he walked down the middle of everything, and it found out who he was afterwards, from the way it had parted.

The mist was coming in off the river as Mrs Tull had said, low and white, lying on the water between the boats.

La Guardia was at the end of the dock, where the basin met the harbour, beside a boat.

It was one of the Bay boats Pershing had seen from the bridge, long and low and white, with a single raked mast that went up into the dark much higher than seemed reasonable and a great boom lying along her deck furled in its sail, and a little cabin aft no bigger than a coffin, with a lantern in its door. Her name was painted across her stern in black letters: SISTER ROSE. SMITH IS. There were four men aboard her. They were sitting on the deck and on the cabin roof and on the rail with their legs over the side, all of them in rubber boots and old felt hats, all of them brown and lean and silent, and they were watching La Guardia on the dock in front of them with the interest of men watching a dog that has learned to count.

There was a fifth man at the tiller. He was older than the others, sixty or more, small and dried and very upright, with a white beard cut square and a black coat buttoned to the neck and a hat with a flat brim, and he looked, of all things, Pershing thought, like a Methodist preacher. He had a jug in his lap. It was a plain brown stoneware jug with a cork in it, the kind farmers kept vinegar in.

Beside La Guardia, at the edge of the dock, with his hands in the pockets of his dinner trousers and his shirt-front glowing in the lantern light and his feet bare, was Warren.

“General,” said La Guardia, with enormous pleasure. “You came.”

“Governor-General.”

“I knew you’d come. I said you’d come. Didn’t I say he’d come?” This was to the boat. Nobody on the boat answered. “This is Captain Tyler, of Smith Island. Captain, this is the referee.”

The old man at the tiller looked at Pershing for a long moment, all the way up and all the way down, coat and collar and moustache, and nodded once.

“Evening,” he said.

“Good evening, Captain.”

“Captain Tyler,” said La Guardia, “is a Methodist.”

“I see.”

“He’s never touched a drop. Not one. Not in his life. Nobody on Smith Island touches a drop, it’s a dry island, it was dry before the Act, it was dry before the Charter, they’re all Methodists out there, they’ve had a camp meeting every August since Asbury. Tell him, Captain.”

“Never touched a drop,” said Captain Tyler. He had an accent Pershing had never heard before, soft and old and rounded, with the vowels in strange places, like an Englishman’s from a century before. “Nor my father. Nor his.”

“But he carries it,” said La Guardia.

Captain Tyler said nothing to that at all. He sat at his tiller with the jug in his lap and looked at the Governor-General with an expression of perfect Christian composure.

“I’d guess he carries it from the big ships off the Capes,” said La Guardia, “up the Bay, to whoever’s paying. Because the oysters are out of season and a man has to feed his family and the Act doesn’t say anything about carrying it for a Methodist. Does it, Captain?”

“Couldn’t say,” said Captain Tyler. “Never read it.”

“Mr Spratt’s read it,” said Warren.

“Mr Spratt,” said La Guardia, “has read it four times, including the schedules, and I’ll bet you he’s coming down Main Street right now with his black book.” He turned back to Pershing and lowered his voice, which meant he dropped it to the level at which most men speak. “Here’s the thing, General. Captain Tyler’s willing. He doesn’t hold with drink, but he holds with a bet, it turns out. They had a preacher out there once who told them the Lieutenant-Governor said Smith Island ought to have a proper harbour and then he never built it. So he’s willing to hand me that jug. And I’m willing to drink out of it. Clause one, served, handed by another person and drunk. Clause two, it’s applejack, it’s from New Jersey, it’ll take the paint off the State House.” He pointed. “Clause three’s the problem.”

Pershing turned and looked where he was pointing.

From the end of the dock the whole of the town went up the hill in front of him, the market square and the long slope of Main Street with its lights and, at the top of it, much higher than it had seemed from above, the dark mass of St Anne’s on its circle with the white spire going up out of it and the lit face of the clock. To the right of St Anne’s, a little behind it and higher still, he could see the State House dome, white, catching some light from somewhere. And to the right of the dome, where Government House would be, on the far side of State Circle, there was the roof of a building on the corner of the square in front of him: a tall narrow brick building of three storeys with a sign on its front that said PURNELL & SON SHIP CHANDLERS ROPE CANVAS PAINT, and a cupola on top with a weathervane in the shape of a fish.

The cupola was exactly where Government House would be.

“It’s behind the chandlery,” said La Guardia. “I’ve been all over this dock. I’ve been up and down it for an hour. From the end of this dock you can see the church and you can see the dome and you can see three-quarters of the town. You can’t see the house. You can see its chimneys.” He pointed again, a little to the right of the fish. “There. Two chimneys. Just over Purnell’s roof. Those are the house’s chimneys, I’d swear to it. I’ve been looking at them since dinner. If you can see the chimneys you can see the house. A house is its chimneys.”

“Clause three,” said Pershing, “says Government House.”

“The chimneys are part of Government House.”

“The chimneys are part of the roof of Government House. Can you see the house?”

“I can see its chimneys.”

“Captain Tyler,” said Pershing, without turning round. “Would you be kind enough to stand up?”

There was a pause. Then there was a creak behind him, and the boat moved on the water, and he heard the old man stand.

“From where you are standing,” said Pershing, “can you see the Lieutenant-Governor’s house?”

“No, sir,” said Captain Tyler.

“Can you see its chimneys?”

“Can’t say they’re its chimneys, sir. They’re somebody’s.”

“Warren,” said Pershing.

“Sir?”

“Whose chimneys are they?”

Warren looked up the hill for a long moment, at the chandlery and the fish and the two dark chimneys behind it in the mist.

“I don’t know, sir,” he said. “There are about four houses on that side of State Circle. And the treasury. They could be anybody’s.” He paused. “I’m sorry, Mr La Guardia.”

“Don’t be sorry, kid,” said La Guardia. “You told the truth. It’s a terrible habit. You’ll grow out of it in politics.”

“It is not within sight,” said Pershing. “In the light then prevailing. Without glass.” He looked at La Guardia. “That is my ruling.”

“What if I went up the mast?”

“The place is the place where the drink is served. If you are served at the top of the mast, I shall have to stand at the top of the mast.”

“Would you?”

“I would rather not.”

La Guardia looked up the mast of the Sister Rose, which went up into the mist about sixty feet and disappeared, and then at the Governor-General in his borrowed coat, and then, for some reason, at Captain Tyler, who had sat down again with the jug, and whose face was perfectly composed and perfectly unreadable and who had, in the corner of his white beard, the very smallest movement that might have been a smile.

“Captain,” said La Guardia, “how do you feel about the top of the mast?”

“Feel about it fine,” said Captain Tyler. “Been up it a thousand times.”

“How does the Governor-General feel about it?”

“Couldn’t say.”

They both looked at Pershing.

He was spared. He was spared by a voice from the crowd behind him, a flat, careful, slightly nasal voice, saying, “Excuse me. Excuse me. Federal officer. Excuse me,” and coming steadily nearer, and by the sound, quite distinct even over the dance band, of Captain Tyler pulling the cork out of the jug, turning it upside down over the side of the Sister Rose, and emptying a quart of New Jersey applejack into the City Dock.

---

Spratt arrived about four seconds after the last of it. He arrived in his brown suit and his brown hat, slightly out of breath, with his leather case under his arm, and stopped at the edge of the dock, and looked at the Sister Rose, and at the four silent men, and at Captain Tyler, who was rinsing out the jug over the side with dock water with an air of great domestic thoroughness.

“Captain Tyler,” said Spratt.

“Mr Spratt.”

They knew each other. Pershing saw that at once. They knew each other the way two old dogs on the same road know each other, without affection and without much hostility, from a long acquaintance of being, every night, on opposite sides of the same fence.

“What’s in the jug, Captain?”

“Water, Mr Spratt.”

“What was in it?”

“Vinegar.”

Spratt looked down into the City Dock, where the mist lay on the water and the lanterns of the boats were reflected in long trembling lines of red and green, and where a smell was coming up off the surface, quite strong now, sweet and sharp, that was not vinegar.

He took out his black book and wrote in it.

Then he turned and saw who was standing next to La Guardia, and stopped writing, and took his hat off.

“Your Excellency.”

“Mr Spratt.”

“I did not know Your Excellency was on the dock.”

“I was sent for, Mr Spratt. On a matter of clause three.”

“Yes, Your Excellency.” Spratt looked at La Guardia, and at Warren’s bare feet, and at the chandlery, and at the fish on the chandlery’s cupola, and his long pale face went through a series of small, exact calculations, and came out the other side with nothing on it at all. “Was there a ruling, Your Excellency?”

“There was. Not within sight.”

“Then no offence was committed within sight, Your Excellency,” said Spratt, and wrote that down too.

---

The late car from the capital came in at twenty to midnight, and the man who got off it walked straight down Main Street to the City Dock with the confidence of a man who has been studying a map on the train, and found them there, all of them, still at the end of the dock: the Member of Parliament, the federal agent, the Governor-General in a coat that was not his, the Governor-General’s son with no shoes on, and an old Methodist rinsing out a jug.

He was a young man, not thirty, very clean, in a grey suit and a grey hat and rimless spectacles, and he had a grey canvas bag over one shoulder that was full of paper, and he had the look, Pershing thought, of a man who had been top of his class at something and had not yet been told that this was the least important thing about him.

“Agent Spratt,” he said. “Leland Voss. The Bureau. Federal Investigation.” He did not offer his hand either. “I was told I’d find you at the water.”

“Who told you?”

“Your office. I telephoned from the junction. They said you’d been at Government House all evening, at the dinner, in your capacity.” He said in your capacity exactly as Spratt said it, and Spratt’s face moved, very slightly. “Agent Spratt, the Bureau has received information. At a quarter to ten this evening the night desk of the Baltimore Sun telephoned the Ministry of Justice and asked for comment on a report that a Member of Parliament intends, before midnight on Sunday, to cause liquor to be brought into the immediate vicinity of Government House, Annapolis, and there consumed, in the presence of the Crown’s representative.”

“Which Crown’s representative?” said Warren.

Voss looked at him. He looked at Warren’s feet.

“Who is this?”

“My son,” said Pershing.

Voss turned his head, slowly, and looked at Pershing properly for the first time, at the coat, and the collar, and the moustache, and his face, which was very young, went white and then red and then, by an effort Pershing could almost hear, back to grey.

“Your Excellency,” he said.

“Mr Voss.”

“I did not see Your Excellency.”

“It is the coat,” said La Guardia helpfully.

“Your Excellency,” said Voss, and swallowed, and Pershing watched him decide, there on the dock in the mist, with the dance band playing on the barge, that the thing he had been sent to look into was considerably larger than he had been told, and that he was going to look into it anyway, and he very nearly admired him for it. “I have been sent by the Bureau to look into a report of a conspiracy to transport intoxicating liquor to Government House. I am obliged to tell you that I shall be looking into it. All of it.” He paused. “Whoever is involved.”

“I am the referee, Mr Voss.”

“Yes, Your Excellency. I have that in my notes.” Voss took a notebook out of his canvas bag. It was larger than Spratt’s, and grey. “I shall need to know what a referee is.”

Across the dock, Spratt, very quietly, closed his black book.

And Captain Tyler, at the tiller of the Sister Rose, put his clean jug down on the deck at his feet with a small, unhurried knock, and looked up the hill at the chimneys behind the chandlery, and said, to nobody, in his old soft voice: “It’ll be a long weekend.”