by Paul Somers
We discussed, too, the question of how the raiders had reached the creek. It seemed pretty clear that they’d come by land, or they wouldn’t have needed to use the dinghy. That suggested a car, since the creek was remote and they wouldn’t have had much time to spare after learning of Wanderer’s sailing plans. But if they had come by car—and there was no material evidence one way or the other, because the ground among the bushes was too hard to take any tracks—who had driven it away? Since it now seemed certain that the cruiser had escaped across the sea immediately after the raid, the likeliest answer appeared to be that there’d been a third person involved—someone who’d brought the raiders to the creek by car and driven it away afterwards. It was an intriguing new possibility.
Anstey’s men were now busily taking photographs and making plaster casts of the footmarks. Attwood was talking to the superintendent. Some of the reporters had wandered off to see if they could pick up anything at the local cottages; some, the Sunday paper men, had left to phone their stories; some, including Lawson, had gathered round Mellor again. Nobody was paying much attention to Gloria, who was sitting by herself on a fallen tree trunk, looking very fed up. Presently I strolled over and joined her.
“Care for a cigarette?” I said.
She brightened a little. “Well, thanks—I don’t mind if I do.”
I lit it for her. “Rotten bad luck, losing your boat like this.”
She nodded. “I don’t know why he couldn’t have had it looked after properly—it reely is too bad.”
“Well—it ought to have been all right,” I said. “It was a chance in a thousand.”
“What I say is, when a girl only gets a fortnight’s holiday a year and someone asks her to go away with him it’s up to someone to see she’s not let down.”
I made a sympathetic sound.
“All that stuff he talked about blue sea and lovely islands and I don’t know what—and now this!” She jerked her head petulantly towards the policemen. “It’ll go on for days, too, I wouldn’t be surprised. Fat lot of holiday we’re going to get!”
“It may not …” I said. “Still, it must be very disappointing for you. Are you fond of sailing?”
“Me? I’ve never done any. I went on the Serpentine once, that’s all.”
“Well, perhaps you wouldn’t have liked it. It’s all right when the weather’s like this, but it’s a long way to the Scilly Isles and I believe it can be frightfully rough. Not much fun then if you’re not used to it.”
“Go on, you’re just trying to cheer me up,” she said. “Still, thanks all the same.” She glanced across at Mellor, and suddenly got to her feet. “I’d better see what’s happening,” she said.
What was happening was that Mellor had been left alone with Mollie, who was talking to him in a very animated way. She didn’t, I thought, appear to be getting a lot of response out of him, but she was certainly trying. Gloria gave her a pretty snooty look as she joined them, and Mollie detached herself. It seemed a good chance for me to have a few words with Mellor myself.
“Quite an Adonis, isn’t he?” Mollie said, as she passed me.
“The blonde’s not too bad,” I said recklessly.
She just smiled.
Gloria had already moved on. I don’t know what she’d said to Mellor, but whatever it was it hadn’t cheered him up at all. I’d never seen anyone look more down in the mouth. As I strolled towards him, he turned and came to meet me, regarding me intently.
“I say …” he began, and broke off. “You are a reporter, aren’t you?”
“From the Record,” I said. “My name’s Curtis.”
He nodded, frowning. “Look, old chap, I wonder if you could give me a bit of advice. The fact is, I’m in rather a spot.”
“Oh?”
“Why, yes—all this publicity. You see …” he threw a nervous glance in Gloria’s direction “… well, the truth is, Miss Drage isn’t exactly my girl friend—at least, she’s not they only one. I—I thought she’d like to come on this trip, so I asked her, but it’s going to be damned awkward for me if it gets around that I brought her.” He gave a sheepish grin. “I’m going to lose one or two rather cherished telephone numbers! I suppose there isn’t any chance of keeping her out of this, is there?”
I told him I didn’t think there was a hope. “There must be forty or fifty newspapermen covering this story,” I said, “and I don’t know half of them myself. You’d never be able to round them up. Even if you did, they wouldn’t all play … Sorry, but I’m afraid you’ll just have to face it.”
He gave a rueful nod. “I rather thought that’s how it would be. Ah, well, it’s just one of those things, I suppose … Pity I didn’t leave the blasted boat in the Solent and go to Blackpool instead!”
“Had you had her long?” I said.
“Since March.”
“Was she a nice boat?”
“Damned nice. I bought the hull cheap and had her converted and fitted out to my own ideas—did a hell of a lot of work on her myself, too, as a matter of fact. You have to, these days, otherwise it costs the earth. She looked fine when she was finished.”
“Did she have a good engine?”
“First class. One of our own—reconditioned, but as good as new. At the price, there’s no better bargain on the market.” For a moment I thought he was going to try and sell me one. “She could do over ten knots, you know.”
“Not bad,” I said. “By the way, was she fuelled up for your trip to the Scillies?”
“Fuelled up, and all ready to put to sea. I reckon she had a range of a hundred and fifty miles with the spare cans I’d loaded. Those blighters wouldn’t have had a thing to do, except take her away.”
“I should think they must have known that,” I said. “And that she was a sound boat. It would have been a frightful risk for them otherwise, wouldn’t it?—setting off on a desperate raid like that with an unknown quantity on their hands. The engine might have conked, she might have sprung a leak—anything could have happened.”
“I agree,” Mellor said. “I suppose they must have reconnoitred her pretty thoroughly while she was lying here. It’s quiet enough.”
“It wouldn’t have been an easy thing to do, all the same,” I said, “not thoroughly. If I’d been planning a job like that, I’d have wanted more than a quick look—I’d have wanted a surveyor’s report! I did wonder if you might have discussed her with somebody while you were down here and been pumped without realising it.”
He regarded me thoughtfully for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I didn’t discuss her with anyone—not round here. I was a bit pushed for time, so I just made her all shipshape and went off to Falmouth and got a train … Of course, back in the Solent where I fitted her out, lots of people knew everything about her.”
“Including that you were coming down here for a holiday in her?”
“Well, yes.”
“Did anyone show a special interest?”
He considered. “Well, there was one chap who asked me if I’d sell her—he saw the engine go in, and thought she looked a nice job. He asked me a lot of questions about her, I remember.”
“Who was he?”
“As a matter of fact, I haven’t the slightest idea. I’d never seen him before, and I never saw him again. I think he was just looking over the yard. He was quite an old boy—reddish face, white hair.”
I suddenly remembered the stuffy pair that Mollie and I had gone out to see aboard Spindrif. I said, “Had the chap a rather stiff manner, by any chance? Tall, clean-shaven …”
“No, this fellow had a moustache. And rather a hearty manner, I’d say. Anyway, I don’t see how he could possibly have been involved in this business—it was back in May that I saw him, long before I ever thought of going to the Scillies.”
“When did you plan the trip?” I asked.
“Not till July—I didn’t get my own holiday leave fixed till then.”
I was just debating whether it was worth pur
suing the subject of Mellor’s Solent contacts any further when Gloria came up and joined us again, and I decided not to. “Well, let’s hope you get the boat back, anyway,” I said, preparing to push off.
“I certainly hope I do. It’s damned worrying.”
“Was she insured?”
“Yes, thank heaven!” He looked at Gloria. “The holiday wasn’t, though, was it, Gloria?”
“No, and it makes me sick,” she said.
“What do you think you’ll do?” I asked Mellor. “Spend the fortnight here?”
He shrugged. “I suppose so—I doubt if I’ll be able to tear myself away until I get some news. If the boat turned up, of course, we might still be able to make the trip … Anyway, it’s pretty good country here—I wouldn’t mind doing a bit of walking myself.”
“Catch me walking!” Gloria said.
“Well, there’s always the car, Gloria—we can bat around in that. I’ll think of something, anyway.”
“You’d better,” Gloria said. “And it had better be good!”
I left them to it. By and large, I didn’t envy Mellor his girl friend.
Chapter Eight
Lawson and I stayed on at the creek for a little while longer, but it soon became clear that there weren’t going to be any more developments that day. Attwood and Harris had already left, and presently Mellor and his girl went off to look for somewhere comfortable to stay in Falmouth The reporters had dispersed and the police were packing up. Soon after seven we returned to Falmouth ourselves and went into the Anchor bar to review the situation over a before-dinner sherry. There was no need to phone a story that evening, since it was Saturday and the Record wouldn’t be appearing again till Monday morning.
Reviewing the situation didn’t take long because there was so little now to go on. The identification of the raiding cruiser had not only wrecked Lawson’s most ambitious and persuasive theory—it had thrown us right back into a thicket of insoluble problems. We still didn’t know for certain what had happened to the cruiser; we still had no satisfactory explanation of why her flare hadn’t been seen. Lawson made a half-hearted suggestion that perhaps the captain of the Northern Trader had been in too much of a hurry to stop and investigate, and having failed to stop had been obliged to say he hadn’t seen it, but there was the second mate to consider, too, and one way and another the idea didn’t seem worth pursuing. The point about the unnoticed navigation lights had been cleared up, after a fashion, but why the cruiser had sailed, rather tan motored away, was still a complete mystery. It wasn’t as though there could have been anything wrong with an engine that in four hours had carried the boat outside the radius of the aircraft sweep. In addition, we were no nearer explaining how the raiders had managed to keep tabs on Wanderer’s movements up to the last minute, or, convincingly, why David Scott had been shot. The whole case seemed wide open again.
Oddly enough, the only theory that now stood up at all was the one I’d thrown out jokingly as a counter to Lawson—that Scott had himself organised the raid with two other men, and tipped them off about Wanderer when he’d gone ashore to post his letter, and subsequently been shot for his share of the loot. But even that theory only covered some of the facts, and there wasn’t really a shred of evidence for it. It certainly did nothing to clear up the latest puzzle—how the raiders could have dared to rely for their purpose on a stolen boat that might have let them down. Lawson scouted the Solent contact idea—he seemed to think it would have been altogether too much of a coincidence if they’d happened to find a boat that suited them, that happened to be about to make a trip to Cornwall, just at the time that Attwood’s yacht happened to be sailing from Cornwall—and put that way it certainly didn’t sound very likely. He thought it might be worth while telling Anstey about the man who’d tried to buy Mary Ann, in case Mellor hadn’t mentioned it, but he didn’t see that we could do much about it ourselves. On the whole, he favoured Mellor’s explanation—that the raiders had made a careful reconnaissance of the boat in Gillan Creek. I said that at the very least they’d have had to run the engine, and Lawson said why shouldn’t they have done—the creek would have been deserted enogh, particularly at night. I felt far from satisfied, but I couldn’t suggest anything better.
We continued to chew over the case through most of the evening, but we made no appreciable progress. At ten-thirty, Lawson said, “Two minds without a single thought, that’s us, old boy—let’s call it a day,” and we went to bed.
Sunday was, comparatively speaking, a day of rest. Indeed, one of the first things I saw from my bedroom window in the morning was Mollie emerging from her hotel opposite with a towel and a swimsuit and going off in her car for a swim. She was back in time to join the rest of us at the police station around ten, and we haunted the place all morning, though nobody expected much to happen. Mellor looked in about eleven to see if there was any news of his boat—Gloria, we gathered, had flatly refused to come with him. There wasn’t any news, and he went off gloomily after a short talk with Anstey. Since there was so little doing, I took the opportunity to raise the question of Spindrift’s movements with the superintendent, and tell him about the telephone call her occupants had made from St. Mawes. He was mildly interested, and said he’d see if he could get the call traced. As it turned out, he had no difficulty, because it had been a trunk call to Winchester. My first reaction was that that ruled out any possibility that it had been used to tip off someone about Wanderer’s plans, but Lawson, more subtle, wouldn’t have that. He said the people who’d been rung at Winchester could have been in on the conspiracy, and might immediately have phoned the information back to someone in Cornwall. Anstey agreed, and made further inquiries, and it turned out there hadn’t been a single phone call from Winchester to the Falmouth area around that time. Of course, in theory a message could have been passed on from place to place several times before it finally came back to Falmouth, but there was no means of checking that. On the whole, I was inclined to think that Spindrift could be written off as a suspect.
The only other thing of interest that morning was that Anstey—with Mellor’s rather rueful co-operation, we gathered—asked Scotland Yard to send someone along to have a look at Mellor’s passport at his lodgings in twon and confirm that he really had been in Belgium! It was just a routine check, of course, and when the report came through it simply said that Mellor had been in Belgium and that the dates tallied with what he’d told us.
In the afternoon I went over the story again with Lawson and we discussed what we should send that evening. Quite a lot had happened since our last message—the inquest on Scott, the arrival of Mellor, the identification of the raider and the confirmatory discoveries at the creek—but the trouble was that all of it had been very adequately covered in the Sunday papers, and by Monday morning it would cut no ice at all. The best we could do was what Lawson called a “think-piece”—a sort of round-up of the unanswered questions. The way things were going, it was beginning to look as though the story would soon die of undernourishment. Blair seemed to have the same feeling when I phoned our piece that evening. He hummed and hawed and fussed, and said it was all very disappointing after such a fine start, and weren’t there any new angles, and in the end he said Lawson had better leave me to it and go back to town, because there’d been a razor slashing in Mayfair that offered more scope for him. Lawson was very peeved, especially when he learned that he was expected to catch a train at eight-fifty that evening that wouldn’t get him to London until daybreak. However, Blair didn’t sound in the mood to be argued with, and at eight-fifty I took Lawson to the train. His last words to me, with a characteristically lecherous grin, were, “I don’t have to remind you to keep an eye on Mollie, do I?” and I said he didn’t.
I felt a bit flat after Lawson had gone, and presently I walked across the square to Mollie’s hotel, the Falcon, to see if she was around, but she wasn’t. Then I thought I’d see what Mellor was doing, because his hotel was next door, and I went into the ba
r there. I found him—and Mollie, too! They were sitting in a corner together. He was drinking beer and Mollie was drinking whisky—a thing I’d never known her to do before. She was looking very gay, and seemed to be doing most of the talking. Mellor, I thought, looked a bit hemmed in. There was no sign of Gloria.
I walked over to them and said “Hallo!” Mellor said, “Why, hallo, there!” in a friendly way, and beckoned the waiter. Mollie looked cross.
“I’m not butting in, am I?” I asked.
“Now why should you think that?” she said ambiguously.
I grinned at Mellor. “You want to be careful what you say to this young woman,” I said. “The Courier’s a sensational rag—always ruining reputations.”
“As a matter of fact,” Mollie said, “we were talking about motor cars. I’m not on duty every moment of the day, you know.”
“My mistake,” I said. “You must have changed!” I glanced towards the door, expecting to see Gloria come in at any moment, but she didn’t. “What’s happened to Miss Drage?” I asked
Mellor’s handsome face turned slightly pink under its tan, and he looked very sheepish. “I’m afraid she’s left,” he said.
“Left?”
“Yes—she’s gone back to London. We—er—had a bit of a quarrel.”
“Never mind,” Mollie said soothingly to Mellor, “you know very well she wasn’t your type.” She gave him a quite devastating smile, a real come-hither smile. “I have a feeling you’re not going to miss her.”
I could scarcely believe my ears. I stared at Mollie, but she was still looking at Mellor. After a moment I said, “What happened?”
