by Paul Somers
It was while Blake was in the cabin that things had started to go wrong. David Scott, hearing Charmian’s scream and all the row outside in the corridor, had presumably tried to open his door and found he couldn’t. He’d looked out of his porthole—this, of course, was all supposition—seen the empty boat tied up alongside, put boat and noise together, and decided that Wanderer was being raided. He’d got out his gun—it now appeared that what he’d owned was a heavy Colt—and emptied into the cruiser below the water line. Thornton, hearing the succession of shots, and realising that he couldn’t get quickly into Scott’s jammed cabin, had emptied his own gun through the cabin door with the intention of disabling Scott and so preventing any further damage to Mary Ann. Scott, it was assumed, had dropped the Colt into the sea as he’d fallen back from the porthole to collapse on the floor.
Thornton and Blake, returning to Mary Ann, had found her making water at an alarming rate. The engine flywheel had been already half-submerged, and Thornton had feared that if the engine were started the flying spray might short-circuit the ignition. As a temporary measure he’d hoisted the sail to take them clear of Wanderer, then both men had set to work to try and plug the holes in the hull. They’d had to break up the starboard bunk with an axe to get at the underwater section, working with feverish haste in cramped surroundings, and it had been during this initial struggle that the jewel case, placed on the table by Blake, had been knocked off into the rapidly rising bilge, scattering its contents. They’d carried on, having much more on their minds just then than jewels, but the water had beaten them. They’d retreated to the cockpit without being able to find the leaks, and Blake had operated the pump while Thornton bailed with a bucket. For a time they’d more than held their own that way, and presently they’d got the engine going and set Mary Ann on her course back to Gillan Creek. But all the way back they’d had to go on pumping and bailing and as the hours had passed they’d tired. By the time they were approaching the Helford estuary the water was beating them again, and Thornton had feared that they might founder before they reached their destination. He’d decided the only thing to do was to beach the boat, and they’d turned in to the coast just south of Gillan Creek. They’d managed to make their way into a quiet cove, but before they could get to the beach the flooded engine had died on them. The two men had hurriedly flung all loose objects into the cabin and shut the doors, so that there wouldn’t be any flotsam to give the boat’s presence away. Then Mary Ann had settled under them, and they’d had to swim for it as she sank.
The time had been just before dawn. They’d cleaned up as best they could, and then made their way by track and minor road to Gillan Creek, little more than a mile distant, without meeting anyone. They’d collected their car, driven back to Falmouth, picked up their dinghy, and slipped aboard Carlew just as Wanderer was returning to the anchorage. They’d changed their clothes, breakfasted, and awaited inquiries.
At low water that day they’d returned to the cove and discovered to their relief that the top of the wreck didn’t show and that there was nothing to reveal its presence. It was then that Thornton had decided to try and salvage the jewels by using aqualungs. But they needed help—they needed a third person around who could keep a permanent and inconspicuous watch on the cove, and grab the jewels if the weather should change suddenly during the night and drive Mary Ann up the beach. Harris was in no position to do it, so that left Mellor. On the Friday night, Thornton had rung up Mellor at his London lodgings.
Mellor, by then, had been in a bit of a flap. He’d returned from Belgium that afternoon, very surprised that the police hadn’t made any effort to get in touch with him. He’d read through the newspaper accounts of the raid and had realised that something had gone very wrong. He’d been in two minds whether to ring up the police himself and say that the boat mentioned in the story sounded like his, or whether to take Gloria down to Cornwall as though the Scillies trip was still on. Thornton, on the phone, had decided the matter for him. He was to go down as though he’d heard nothing, and get all the news when he arrived.
Thornton, meanwhile, had been in communication with Harris by means of the cigarette packets, and had fixed up the Bodmin Moor rendezvous for Mellor. Harris had had no difficulty in passing on the message to Mellor in the course of conversation with him about Mary Ann at Gillan Creek. Mellor had subsequently worked up a quarrel with Gloria, to the point where she’d flounced off and returned to London. Next day he’d kept the appointment with Thornton on Bodmin Moor, heard the story of the raid in detail, and received his instructions—to camp on the cliffside within sight of the cove and keep an eye on developments. Then Blake and Thornto had driven into Plymouth and bought some aqualung equipment, and the next day they’d set to work on their salvage operation. It had taken them longer than they’d expected, for they’d had some trouble locating the wreck, and then they’d had to anchor it as a precaution against worsening weather, and in the actula work of recovery they’d been hapered all the time by the dirty bilge water trapped in the cabin—as well as by the need to go off at frequent intervals to get their bottles recharged. But they’d almost finished the job when we’d got on to their track.
That, broadly, was the story. If ever two men deserved the fate that awaited them, Thornton and Mellor did, but I still felt some regret over Harris. Apparently he’d been even more upset about Scott than we’d realised, and he’d sent a bitter message to Thornton about the unplanned shooting, via Mellor. The real trouble with Harris—apart of course from the fundamental one that he’d been prepared to take part in a criminal raid for money—had been his naïveté. Compared with Thornton and Mellor, and even Blake, he’d been a very simple man, and that had been his undoing.
Chapter Twenty Two
At seven o’clock that evening Mollie and I took the ferry to St. Mawes to be out of the way of the hordes of London reporters who’d be descending on Falmouth again at any moment. We’d phoned our offices, and basked in brief, ecstatic praise. Now we both wanted to relax. We found a pub with an attractive terrace over-looking the water, and I ordered drinks. Mollie was still a little pale after her ordeal, but professionally she was on top of the world. Her only regret was that, by going off to fetch the police, she’d missed the last dramatic episode in the story and hadn’t been able to send an eye-witness account of the Death Climb.
“Next time,” she said, nibbling a salted almond, “I shall let you go for the police.”
I laughed. “There isn’t going to be a next time,” I said, “not as far as I’m concerned. Two narrow squeaks in three months are quite sufficient for me. I want to live!”
“In that case I suppose I’ll have to follow my next hunch on my own.”
“Why follow it at all? I still say there’s no future for you in all this recketing around.”
“But I like racketing around.”
“You might like being married to me if you tried it,” I said. “You never know.”
She considered that. “Yes, I suppose I might, in some ways—but I just don’t have the slightest urge to settle down.”
“Well, it isn’t natural—that’s all I can say.”
She gave me a delightful smile. “I’ve plenty of time to be natural,”
she said.
THE END
Copyright
First published in 1958 by Collins
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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ISBN 978-1-4472-2099-2 EPUB
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Copyright © Paul Somers, 1958
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