Mr American. George Fraser MacDonald

weeks before, the first man to fly from France into England in a crazy contraption that looked like an overgrown kite, the country seemed to have gone flying daft, Inspector Griffin reflected. He didn’t like it; perhaps he was getting old and conservative, but the thought that a man could fly in a few minutes across England’s last line of defence – and from France, of all places – made him uneasy. It wasn’t natural, and it wasn’t safe. And what use would the Royal Navy be, if Frogs and Germans and God knew what other breed of foreigners could soar unscathed over their heads?

      “Farman an’ Cody’s goin’ to be at Doncaster,” said Murphy, with relish. “First flyin’ meetin’ on British soil, by gum! Wouldn’t I like to be there? Cody flew from London to Manchester the other day, over the railway tracks, special markers they had on the ground to guide him – an’ they say Farman’s been up six hundred feet, an’ can go higher yet.” He shuddered deliciously and wiped his nose again. “Think of it, sir! Just them tiny machines, an’ –”

      Females, football and flying, Griffin reflected irritably, that was all these young fellows thought about. The gangways were down, and the first passengers were picking their way gingerly down to the quay, shepherded by the Mauretania’s stewards, but Murphy, who should have been casting a professional eye over them, was plainly miles away in the sky above Doncaster, performing aerobatics with Cody and Farman and his other heroes.

      “Cody’s goin’ to become naturalized British, they reckon,” he went on. “If he lives long enough – there was a crash at Paris t’other day, fellow broke his neck, shocking risks they take –”

      “Thought you were more interested in Everton,” said Griffin, vainly trying to stem the flood. “Aren’t they playing Liverpool this afternoon?”

      “Gah, they’ll get beat, them,” said Murphy derisively. “Play football, that lot? They dunno what football is – you should have been up in Glasgow the other day, sir, my Saturday off. Glasgow versus Sheffield, that was something. See that McMenemy, an’ Quinn – bloody marvellous! We don’t see nothing like ’em, down here. Now, Quinn, he –”

      I was a fool to mention it, thought Griffin, and a bigger fool for being so soft. Any right-minded inspector would have shut up the garrulous Murphy with a look, but he wasn’t a bad lad and Griffin had a liking for him. Irish though – mind you, who wasn’t, in Liverpool these days? Griffin the Welshman had strong views about immigrants and while the Micks were undeniably fellow-Britons there were still a damned sight too many of them about.

      “Come on,” he said, “they’re coming ashore,” and the two officers moved off into the long, dingy Customs shed where the officials were waiting with their watchful eyes and pieces of chalk among the mounds of baggage, to deal soft-voiced with the first passengers who were congregating at the tables.

      This was what Griffin liked. The faces, the clothes, the voices – above all the voices. Many years before, Inspector Griffin had been a strapping young constable in the North-west Mounted Police; it was where his career had begun, and he had never lost his affection for the North American accent – even the harsh nasal Yankee voice which was so often heard in that shed awoke memories for him; he had that vague privileged feeling of kinship that one feels for foreigners in whose country one has lived. Not that Canada was foreign, of course, quite the opposite; neither were Americans, really – he scanned the faces beyond the tables with an interest that was only part-professional, indulging in his habitual speculation. Who were they? Where were they from? What would they be doing in England? How many of them were rascals? One or two, in his experience, but nothing serious this trip, or Delgado in New York would have telegraphed. He’d never met Delgado, and knew him only as a name at the end of cables and occasional official reports – Delgado would know him in the same way. Wonder what he was like? – sounded like an Italian name, maybe. Good policeman, anyway, whatever he was; it was Delgado’s tip that had helped them nail that German forger in Leeds a year ago.

      “Do I look as though I am carrying more than half a pint of spirits?” A mountainous lady in an expensive sealskin coat and a mountainous English accent was glaring at a Customs man. “Spirits, indeed! I never heard of such –”

      “Perfumes are spirits, madam,” said the Customs man quietly. “Have you any perfume, madam?”

      “Of course I have. A normal quantity, and certainly not half a pint –”

      “And chocolates, madam? Confections of any kind?”

      “Chocolates?”

      “Sweets are dutiable, madam. Any American candies, or bonbons –”

      “What arrant nonsense!” The lady turned indignantly to the pale young companion at her side. “Have we any sweets, Evelyn? Dangerous, highly contraband sweets whose introduction into England will unbalance the Budget?”

      Griffin smiled, but his eyes were elsewhere, running over a small, stout man waiting his turn at the next table, politely allowing a lady to go first, smiling affably and tapping his fingers on the handle of his valise. Three or four bottles of brandy in there for a start, thought Griffin. That was not strictly speaking any of his business, but the stout little man could easily be a sharp. Griffin sauntered closer to listen to the voice.

      “… one bottle of bourbon, open, and a half pound of cigars, nothing else, officer.” It was an American voice, sharp and eager, perhaps a little too conciliatory. “Oh, and I have a copy of one of Mr Conan Doyle – I beg your pardon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, printed in America. I know that English copyrighted books are liable to confiscation, but I assure you it’s the only one I’ve got.”

      “ – an’ anyway, Liverpool’ll win by two clear goals, easy,” Constable Murphy was saying. “Want me to keep an eye on that one, sir?”

      Griffin turned away, surveying the other passengers. Rich, influential, upper-class, most of them, as one would expect aboard the Mauretania. Well-fed faces, substantial broadcloths and tweeds on the men, furs on the ladies, fox stoles and sealskins, diamond pins, gold watch-chains, a profusion of expensive rings and brooches – a pickpocket’s paradise, if any of the local dips had had the nerve to invade the area between the quay and Riverside Station, well-policed as it was. About half were American visitors, about half returning Britons; the voices mingled in a babble round the Customs tables. “Anything to declare …? Well, I don’t know how many cigars make a pound, officer.… I have this silk scarf, but it’s a present for my mother, don’t you know … if you’ll open the large trunk, please, sir … but it’s an engagement ring – this is my fiancé – surely you won’t charge on that? … anything to declare, madam?”

      All the usual little lies, the half-hearted deceptions, the unnecessary anxieties, thought Griffin. But nothing really to excite his official interest. He noted that the mountainous lady was preparing to erupt as her nervous companion clumsily unbuckled the straps of a suitcase and twitteringly guided and hindered the Customs man as he plunged into the mass of female clothing within.

      “One would think one were a criminal, or a passenger to New York!” exclaimed the large lady indignantly, her feather hat quivering with affront. “It is bad enough to have one’s belongings turned out wholesale in front of half the population of America, but in England – really!” Plainly the lady had suffered, on her arrival at New York, at the hands of the minions of “Lucky” Loeb, the Customs Chief, whose private war against smuggling had caused considerable indignation and sundry spluttering letters to the New York Times; Griffin seemed to remember that even a steamship line’s director had had to turn out his pockets. But now the Customs man was delving and bringing forth a large bottle of gin, and the lady was going bright purple and demanding of the shrinking Evelyn how that had got there?

      “Serve the old trout right,” observed Murphy coarsely, and Inspector Griffin privately agreed. Nothing much here, though; he glanced again at the little stout man, who was bustling off crying “Thank you, thank you, sir!” to the Customs man, and was preparing to speak to Murphy, when his eye fell on a face at the table beyond.

      A man was stepping forward to