The circumstances of this little smuggling incident, though known to several persons in the Far East, have hitherto been hidden, so to speak, under a bushel. In bringing them to the light it should be stated that—for obvious reasons—fictitious names have been given to the individuals chiefly concerned, but the facts are just as stated.
Far and away the most distinguished passenger on the big German liner was the homeward bound Japanese Ambassador. He did not look the part, however. He was a squat, unobtrusive little man whose trousers fitted him badly, and whose carriage, when he was hampered by European clothes, suggested an insignificance that was only partially belied by the intelligence of his homely countenance. His appearance reflected no radiant blaze of glory, yet he was returning to his native land crowned with some of the finest diplomatic achievements of the century.
This statement is due to his Excellency, but it practically dismisses him from the story, which mainly concerns his trunk—his trunk No. 23, to be precise, for the Ambassador’s trunks were all numbered. There must have been half a hundred of them at least; all the same typical German steel trunks, but distinguished from other less important trunks of the same make insomuch that each one was adorned with two broad painted bands of scarlet, which showed out bravely and effectually prevented their being mixed up with any ordinary baggage. Apart from all other considerations, the wisdom of the Ambassador in thus distinctively marking his own trunks lay in the fact that the process insured their instant recognition by the Japanese Customs officials, by whom they were immune from examination.
This last fact was the one which counted for most with Fritz Vogel, steward and trombonist of the liner, as he daily contemplated the mountain of luggage and calculated how many Manila cigars one of those great red-striped trunks would hold.
“HE DAILY CONTEMPLATED THE MOUNTAIN OF LUGGAGE AND CALCULATED HOW MANY MANILA CIGARS ONE OF THOSE GREAT RED-STRIPED TRUNKS WOULD HOLD.”
Carefully packed, he figured it, one might crowd ten thousand cigars into each trunk. Ten thousand cigars, at eighty Mexican dollars a thousand, meant eighty pounds. Duty at one hundred and fifty per cent. ad valorem on eighty pounds would mean a hundred and twenty pounds, or, as Fritz Vogel calculated, two thousand four hundred marks. Therefore, as the meditative trombonist further worked out the possibilities, his Excellency could, by simply loading up a few dozen more trunks with cigars at Hong-Kong and getting them passed free through the Customs at Yokohama—or at Nagasaki or Kobe for that matter—make more in a week than he could hope to earn in a month of Sundays by sticking to the thorny paths of diplomacy.
Born west of the Suez, the fertile idea germinated in Vogel’s brain all through the dreary wastes of the Canal, and sprouted up green and vigorous, despite the withering blasts that pursued the liner down the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean to Colombo. At Singapore it had become an obsession. When steaming through the Narrows into the latter port, however, on the way to the German mail wharf, Vogel observed a red-funnelled Jardine liner at the Messageries wharf, with the blue-peter flying.
An hour later the Laisang left for China, carrying a hastily-written letter from Fritz Vogel to his friend Max Krebs at Hong-Kong. It contained a fair statement of the salient facts in the case, and a crude but lucid sketch of one of the pieces of baggage, together with a description of the scarlet bands and full measurements. It also stated what has not been set forth above—that each of his Excellency’s trunks was numbered in large white figures at each end and on the top, and it suggested that in the case of any person desiring to have access to those trunks whilst they were still on board the liner, Nos. 23, 24, 27, 32, etc., were the easiest to reach.