Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/419

 gem has fallen into disfavour, and is fast becoming a lost art.

Did the gentle reader never inspect a pigeon-box? A pigeon-box is a tall, oblong affair, in several storeys, each divided by a diagonal partition. In each of the compartments thus provided a pigeon is placed, the broad end of the triangle accommodating the bird's head and shoulders, and the tapering tail just fitting in the sharper apex. Now, if a searcher omit to lift out the upper storeys, it is plain he will not see any pigeons in the storeys below—nor, indeed, any tobacco or brandy. At some far-off, guileless, Arcadian time, it would seem that the searchers did not look into the lower storeys, and the result of this carelessness may be imagined. Once, however, somebody did look, and saw something that certainly wasn't pigeons. After this other expedients had to be adopted. The bottoms of the boxes were made double, and tobacco and cigars found their way into these happy realms between these double bottoms. Then this little game was spoiled by a meddlesome person who measured the depth of the whole concern inside and compared it with the height outside; and then arose the final triumph of smuggling art as applied to pigeon-boxes. The boxes became stout and clumsy; the walls were thick, the bottoms were thick—they were thick altogether. No sliding bottoms here, no storeys full of "jack," all solid, sound, and thick—until you whittled some of the wood away with a knife. Then it became evident that all this stout, clumsy wood was hollow, built of fine match-boarding, and—so full is the heart of man with deceit and desperately wicked—very fully and completely packed with tobacco. After this discovery pigeon-boxes from Antwerp were abandoned as vehicles of the surreptitious weed. It was felt that ingenuity could go no further than hollow planks, and attention was turned to other gear. Still false backs and bottoms to boxes and drawers continue in favour, from the many opportunities for their use which a ship's furniture gives. It is not long since a monkey of much activity and intelligence was brought ashore in a sort of exaggerated parrot cage. Something led to an examination of the tin bottom of this cage, when it was found to be as hollow as the woodpecker's beech-tree—a tin canister, in fact, full of canaster.

Hollowness is a great characteristic of things manipulated to carry contraband goods; indeed, to a fairly successful Custom-house officer the world must appear a very hollow thing altogether. It is a fairly good number of years ago now, as a man's life lasts, since what had probably been a most successful hollow fraud was discovered at the Custom-house. Broomsticks were imported into this country in very large numbers, and one importer was very regular with his consignments.

One fine day, however, the consignment arrived, but nobody appeared to claim it. Several fine days passed—several weeks and months, fine and otherwise, but still nobody came. The broomsticks were put away in an odd corner in a spare room of the Custom-house, and became dusty. The winter arrived, and upon a cold morning two Custom-house clerks found they had nothing to do. This is not an alarming state of affairs for two Government clerks—it has occurred at other times. But the morning was really too cold to permit of much comfort being extracted from gentle exercise with The Times newspaper, and the eyes of the two clerks fell upon the heap of broomsticks. Single-stick was obviously the pursuit most suited to the occasion, and here were the sticks to hand—rather long, of course, but that was a detail. So single-stick they began, with energy. At the first sharp cut and guard off snapped eighteen inches from the end of one broomstick, followed by a flying tail of cigars. The combat ceased on the spot, and an examination of the sticks revealed the fact that they were simply wooden tubes, neatly stopped with wooden plugs at the ends, and filled up as to the remainder of their length with cigars and hard