Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 38, No. 13, Mid-December 1993

Arthur, the first mate, stood on the main deck with a clipboard in his hand, noting each consignment symbol as the pallet loads were removed from the ship. On the dock, three forklifts scurried back and forth, taking the cargo from where the hoists dropped it on the dock to an area farther back where it was stacked, two high, in neat rows, awaiting trucks to transport it to its destination. The only people on the dock beside the longshoremen were a group of three workers repairing a hole in the concrete surface of the dock. They moved with the languid motions of the dispirited workers Maxim remembered seeing when he was stationed in Odessa many years ago. He smiled as he watched one of the workers move a wheelbarrow half filled with sand from a sandpile to a mixer at a speed that guaranteed a four hour repair job would take all day. He noticed that Lila was also watching the dock repairman. Suddenly she laughed.

“When I was very young,” she explained, “we lived near the border of Northern Ireland. It was very hard at that time to find work or get food in our country, so many of the villagers engaged in some smalltime smuggling across the border. There was a constant competition between the English border guards and the local smugglers. My father used to tell me the story of an Irish farmer, Paddy, who crossed the border every day to work on a farm in Northern Ireland. He was paid in potatoes, and every evening he would return with a wheelbarrow half filled with potatoes. This went on for a couple of months until the border guards were notified that Paddy was suspected of smuggling. From that day on, every time he returned home, the guards searched him thoroughly, even emptying the wheelbarrow on the ground and going through the potatoes one by one, but they could never find anything he might be smuggling. After a couple of weeks of this, the head of the border guards admitted defeat, and after a particularly thorough search, he said to Paddy, ‘We know you’re smuggling something across the border, and I could have you thrown in jail just on suspicion, but if you tell me what you’ve been smuggling, I’ll let you go.’

“ ‘Wheelbarrows’ was Paddy’s answer.”

“When I heard the story,” Maxim grinned, “it was Polish smugglers and Russian border guards. But what—”

“It just struck me,” Lila said. “We’ve been concentrating on the potatoes and ignoring the wheelbarrow.”

“You’ll have to explain that in a little more detail.”

“I’d better make sure I’m right before I say any more. Eventually they’ll finish the unloading operation, and then they’ll start moving cargo from the pier to the ship. At that time we should be able to walk around the pier a little.”

When the shiploading operation began, Maxim and Lila got permission from the first mate to stretch their legs on the dock. Lila guided Maxim to the area where the pallets marked with blue squares were stacked.

“I’ve noticed that the cargo marked with blue squares not only has colored labels but that those pallets are also marked.”

“You think those containers have been opened?”

“No, not the containers — the pallets themselves.”

“But they’re just flat boards.”

“Not really. If they were really flat, the forklifts couldn’t get underneath the cargo to lift it. Take a close look at how they’re made. There are four ‘stringers,’ that is, four pieces of lumber, four inches square and four feet long. Then there are one-inch-thick strips of wood nailed across the top and bottom of the stringers. The tines of the forklifts fit between the stringers to lift the cargo.” As she was talking, Lila had maneuvered them so they were concealed from the ship by the stacked cargo. She took a small penknife from her purse and scraped away at the blue paint that had been applied to the end of one of the stringers as an identifying marker. After a few scrapes, she peered closely at the wood that had been exposed. “I was right.”

“What do you see?” asked the still bewildered Maxim.

“A change in the wood grain. Take a look. You see, Maxim, I realized that it’s possible to drill a hole at least two inches in diameter down the center of these stringers. That would give you a hole two inches square and four feet long. That’s a lot of volume. You could then wrap narcotics in plastic tubes, insert them in the hole, and plug up the ends. The dab of paint, supposedly used as a marker, neatly conceals the difference in the wood grain of the plug. If you do that to only one center stringer of the four, you won’t appreciably weaken the pallet, and you can use them over and over again.”

“And there are dozens of pallets going in every week,” added Maxim with a touch of awe in his voice. “So this load is suspect, too.”

“We will still have to notify Fernet—”