The Mystery Megapack

notion, and I began to develop it today.
    When I went up to the dock gates this morning, with my bag, I was met by a very courteous and superior person of the Customs Department, who invited me to step into his office. Here, I was again invited into quite a snug little cubicle, and there two searchers made a very thorough examination of me (very thorough indeedl), also of my bag; but, as you may imagine, there was nothing dutiable within a hundred yards of me—that is, nothing of mine.
    At the conclusion of the search, after the superior and affable personage had departed, pleasingly apologetic, I was left to acquire clothing and mental equilibrium in almost equal quantities; for I can tell you I was a bit wrathy. And then—perhaps it was just because my mental pot was so a-boil—up simmered the idea; and I began straight away on the afore-mentioned developing.
    By the time that I had completed my dressing, I had learned not only that the names of the two official searchers were Wentock and Ewiss, but also the numbers of their respective families, and other pleasing details. I dispensed tact and bonhomie with liberality, and eventually suggested an adjournment to the place across the road, for a drink.
    But my two new (very new) friends shook their heads at this. The “boss” might see them. It would not do. I nodded a complete comprehension. Would they be off duty tonight? They would, at six-thirty prompt.
    “Meet me at the corner at seven o’clock,” I said. “I’ve nothing to do and no one to talk to. We’ll make an evening of it.”
    They smiled cheerfully and expansively, and agreed—well, as only such people do agree!
    * * * *
    August 18
    The dinner came off, and was in every way a success, both from their point and my point of view. And I think I may say the same of the two dinners that followed on the fifteenth and the seventeenth. That was yesterday.
    It is now the evening of the eighteenth, and I’m jotting down what happened, in due order.
    It was last night, at our third little dinner together (which for a change I had aboard), that we got really friendly over some of my liqueur whisky. And I saw the chance had come to ask them straight out if they were open to make a fiver each.
    The two men looked at each other for a few moments, without speaking.
    “Well, sir, it all depends,” said Wentock, the older of the two.
    “On what?” I asked.
    “We’ve our place to think of,” he said. “It’s no use asking us to risk anything, if that’s what you mean, sir.”
    “There’s no risk at all,” I told him. “At least, I mean the risk is so infinitesimal as hardly to count at all. What I want you to do is simply this. Tonight, if you agree, I’ll hand you over this bag I’ve got here with me. Take it down to the gates tomorrow, and put it somewhere handy in the office. When I come off from the ship, to come ashore through the gates, I shall be carrying another bag, exactly the same as this in every single detail. You see, I’ve got two of them, made exactly alike.
    “Well, I shall be stopped, as usual, at the gates, and taken into the office, and I and my bag will be pretty well turned inside out again; which I can tell you I’m getting sick of, only your people have got it in for me, pretty savage.”
    The two searchers grinned at this.
    “I ain’t surprised, Cap’n,” said Wentock, “with a reputation like yours. Why, they say as you could retire this minute, with the brass you’ve made, running in stuff without our smelling out the way you do it.”
    “Don’t be so infernally flattering,” I told him. “You mustn’t believe half you hear. And I don’t want you to get imagining I do this kind of thing regularly. It’s just a few trifling trinkets I want to pass in, as a favor to a friend. Not a habit of mine; but just once in a way.”
    Both of the men burst into roars of laughter. They evidently considered this a great joke.
    “Well,” I said, “let me tell you just what I want you to do.
    “When I go into the office, one of you always takes my bag from me. Well, I simply want you to substitute for it the one I shall give you tonight, and which, of course, you can search then as hard as you like, before the boss. Then, when he goes out hand me back the unsearched one, and I shall just clear off with it, and the trick is done. No risk for you at all. You’ve simply to take this bag I have here, with a few shore clothes in it, up to the office tomorrow. When I