by Eric Ambler
As Andrew proceeded, methodically replacing scattered papers and restoring drawers to furniture, he was confirmed in his immediate impression that this was no mere sneak-thief affair. Lang’s property included a few pieces of silver that would have been worth something to the ordinary burglar, but these had been ignored. Again and again Andrew went over the contents of the flat, checking his own things, checking Lang’s as far as he could, and he was confident in the end that the scrap of paper from the pocket of his dressing gown was the only thing missing.
So much for the fatuous self-confidence of Inspector Jordaens, to say nothing of the imbecile Stock. He had thrown the clue of the SS 729 in their faces, and they had tossed it back at him. It was true he had not at that time known about its relation to the yawl, but he had insisted on its importance. Now he was vindicated, and by the enemy! Possibly by Kretchmann and Haller, the Inspector’s own pet suspects.
The sense of vindication had no soothing effect on Andrew. He picked up the telephone and dialled Scotland Yard. Now he would really talk to that nitwit Stock. He would demand action, protection, compensation, everything.
First of all he had to demand Detective-Sergeant Stock. There was a delay. He was asked politely to state his business. He said his business was with Detective-Sergeant Stock.
“I’m sorry, sir. Detective-Sergeant Stock is not available. Who is calling him?”
“It doesn’t matter who’s calling. I want to speak to him personally.”
“He’s not on hand, sir. Will you leave a message?”
“No, I will not leave a message!”
He slammed the receiver down hard. He paced the still untidy flat, his mind erupting. The police! What was the good of the police? When you wanted them, they were never available.
It was quite a few minutes before he got round to the thought that he should have left the telephone number for Stock. Or he should have asked where he could get in touch with Jordaens, if the fellow were still in England. He took another turn or two before he started for the telephone again. Then, as he reached out a hand, the instrument exploded into ringing noise.
Scotland Yard! They had traced his call! Or wasn’t that possible with the automatic exchanges?
“Hello!” he said angrily.
“Hello! Is Dr. Maclaren there?”
His heart jumped as he recognised the voice. “Dr. Maclaren speaking,” he said weakly.
The voice said: “This is Ruth Meriden. I didn’t recognise your voice. You were shouting. I just thought you might like to know that I have been visited by the police.”
“Oh!” He was still recovering.
“You don’t seem very interested. Anyway, it was nothing. Just routine questions. When I said I had never met Kusitch, that was almost the end of it. There was nothing about the yawl.”
“I didn’t think there would be. Was the fellow a Belgian, named Jordaens?”
“No. He was from Scotland Yard. Quite a pleasant person. Not at all the sort you led me to expect.”
“Not Detective-Sergeant Stock?”
“Yes. That was the name.”
“Oh!”
He thought he would tell her about his burglar, but hesitated. It might alarm her. He must consider it first.
“You sound odd,” she said. “Has anything happened?”
“Nothing of consequence.” He had a sudden wish to see her again, a wish that made everything else appear trivial. “May I run out tomorrow?” he asked her.
“If it’s anything important, you’d better tell me now,” she answered. “Tomorrow is impossible for me. I’m going to be busy. I have to call at the Blandish Gallery in the morning.”
“What about lunch?”
“No good, I’m afraid.”
“Oh! Well… let me know if you find anything in the diaries.”
“Of course. I must be off now. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
It sounded inane to him even while the words were being said. He put the telephone down slowly. He held it for a moment on the cradle, then snatched it up quickly, moved by sudden fear.
“Hello!” he called. “Hello! Hello!”
He was too late. There was just a dialling tone. He replaced the instrument again and reasoned against his anxiety. It was absurd. She could be in no danger. The fact that his flat had been entered that afternoon was almost an assurance of her safety. No one had followed him to the country. The shadow had been otherwise engaged, and had secured what he had been after all along, the registration number of the yawl. Even if the man deduced from the gibberish of Charley Botten that the yawl was the property of John Quayle Meriden, there was nothing to lead him to Walden House. The only possible contact with her was through Botten’s friends, the Pascoes in Falmouth; and the Pascoes were unlikely to give the address to a stranger. It was certain that, too, Kusitch had not helped them much; otherwise his murderers would have gone straight for their objective, instead of chasing after a harmless doctor.
So the girl was safe…
He looked at his watch. He wanted to confirm his reasoning. He called up Charley Botten, but got no response.
The second time he called up, Charley gave him his confirmation. He had tried every available source for Meriden’s address before telephoning to Falmouth.
“Do me a favour, Charley,” Andrew urged. “Phone Pascoe again and ask him to see that the address is given to nobody; not even to Scotland Yard.”
“What the devil are you up to?” Charley demanded.
“Sticking my long neck out, only it isn’t so long.” He tried to speak lightly but in his own ears sounded merely feeble. “Will you make that call to Falmouth at my expense?”
“I will if you’ll tell me what you’re doing.”
“Not tonight. I’m busy.”
Andrew went to a restaurant in the neighbourhood for an early dinner. His purpose was less to get a meal than to find out if he were still being followed. Before he reached the restaurant he was reasonably certain that there was no one on his trail. Going home, he took a circuitous route and made elaborate tests. The result was negative. He felt quite pleased with himself when he bolted the door of his flat. He was no longer being watched, and the enemy had got virtually nothing for his pains. At this moment of satisfaction, he decided against a second effort to report the burglary to Stock. He could not give up this important evening to the further entertainment of Inspector Jordaens and his taciturn yes-man. He had far too much to do.
He proceeded to do it. He sat in Lang’s armchair with tobacco, cigarettes, and the Meriden diaries on the table beside him. The books he had brought from Walden Hall covered the years from 1944 onward. Ruth Meriden had promised to examine the diaries from ‘39 to ‘43, but he believed he had selected the more promising period. The yawl must have been recovered after the war, if it had been recovered at all, but he began with the year ‘44 and read steadily for two hours, taking up one book after another. He made coffee, rested a while, then returned to the job.
The diaries were the dull, stupid reflections of a dull, stupid man. John Quayle Meriden had loved John Quayle Meriden dearly; and in this passionate affair there had been room for no other person. He had been absorbed completely by everything about himself. His purchases, his collections, his hates, his petty vengeances, what he said to a careless servant, even the state of his digestive tract, everything was recorded with remorseless attention to detail. And throughout it all, recurring like an hallelujah, was the John Q. Meriden word of praise and triumph-”cheap.”
“Bought copy of the Canova Venus cheap… Am offered two genuine Copleys cheap… Got onto Pierce-Arrow in good condition cheap… Mill and cottage cheap… brasswork cheap… cheap
… cheap… cheap…”
Ruth Meriden was a constant cause of displeasure. The school reports were never good enough, the fees were always too high. It was a sheer waste of money, because the girl, like her useless mother, had nothing in her. No culture. No talent. Give her domestic t
raining and marry her off. Get rid of her.
Yet there had been quite a storm when Ruth had insisted on going to Aunt Clara in Belgium in the second year after the war’s end. Why couldn’t she finish her education in England? And, anyway, a girl of eighteen should be thinking of settling down, acquiring some sense of responsibility, preparing for the great fortune she would inherit.
That was curious, and there was to be more of it. It went on as if John Quayle Meriden had suddenly taken a new view of himself. He was now the devoted guardian whose one aim had been to accumulate a store of wonderful things, of money and property, for the girl. And his reward was that she must go gadding about in Europe with the detestable Aunt Clara.
Then sculpture! More expensive lessons. Not worth the money. The girl had no idea of art, making tinkling toys out of wire and bits of brass. And this, after all the trouble he had taken to surround her with the great works of the Masters. If she wanted sculpture, let her look in the garden at Cheriton Shawe.
He had grandiose plans for the restoration of Walden Hall, as soon as an ungrateful government had settled up with him. He would build a new wing, make a pleasure garden of fountains and statuary. He would show her!
Andrew paused before he turned the page. Overleaf there was only one entry, and that at the end of the week.
“It is terrible here without Ruth. Why doesn’t she come home?”
But that was an isolated phenomenon. For the other three hundred and sixty-four days of the year, the incredible possibility that self-love might not be all was quite discounted.
The diary for the next day went on as usual. John Q. was right back on form, sacking servants, vilifying acquaintances, starting lawsuits, buying things cheap.
Andrew stopped reading. He wanted to think about Ruth Meriden, to see her against this monstrous background. It was important to him. It was far more important than any search for a lost fishing craft. For the background threw the girl into relief, and the more he learned of it, the more she stepped out in front of it, detached, disowning it, insisting upon her own identity. She was a good person.
Perhaps there had been moments when John Quayle Meriden might have been pitied, but it was difficult to make any allowances when you remembered those heroic, badly painted canvases of the mayor and the yachtsman. One should go no further than to say that, as a psychological study, he was mildly interesting.
The girl was very interesting, and not as a psychological study. He saw her as she went down the road to Cheriton Shawe, waving a friendly hand.
He closed his eyes and the haze of contemplation thickened into darkness. He awoke with a start when the diary slipped from his knee and hit the carpet.
It was very late, but there wasn’t much left of the year 1948. He was determined to finish it off before he went to bed.
He found his lost place with some difficulty and read on. Meriden had devoted ’48 to tracing and retrieving property in the war torn countries, and the diary was full of incomprehensible details with a free use of abbreviations and meaningless initials.
Andrew thought he would have to give it up after all. He was too sleepy; couldn’t keep alert enough. Blinking, he turned a page. Then his eyes came wide open and he jerked up in his chair. It was there at last, in the first entry on the new page.
F. reports tender to Moonlight found at Bova Marina. Last heard from Dubrovnik it was missing, believed sunk. How the devil did it get from Zavrana to Calabria? Asking F. send full details.
There was another entry five days later:
Heard from F. in Naples. Says escaping Italians seized tender at Zavrana and sailed it to Calabria where made “present” of it to fisherman. Present indeed! Instructing F. insist on return of my property, take up with Italian authorities and British representatives if necessary. Compensation?
Meriden had been interested. It seemed that he had had enough imagination to appreciate this extraordinary case of his tender to the lost Moonlight. He recorded every detail he could gather, and the odd bits of information that reached him over the next month told the full story.
Five deserters from the Italian Army of Occupation along the Dalmatian coast had made for Zavrana, had seized the yawl, had stolen provisions, and slipped from the port at night without difficulty.
Luck had sailed with them, for no patrol boat of any navy challenged them, and they had reached their objective, a lonely spot along the toe of Italy. They had found help there. The father of one of them was a Calabrian fisherman. The deserters had taken to the fastnesses of the Aspromonte, and vanished. The old fisherman had appropriated the yawl after securing false papers and distributing a few bribes. He had claimed to have acquired the craft in Reggio, from a Sardinian who had bought it in Corsica.
This involved invention had caused Meriden’s agent some trouble, but finally he had taken a firm line with the fisherman. The old man had had no resources to meet a threat of proceedings from an Englishman with all the evidence of ownership. He had changed his tune and claimed salvage. He had found a derelict, drifting helplessly on a stormy sea towards the savage shore. At the risk of his life he had saved it. He had looked after it, kept it in order, painted it in bright colours twice a year. Fifty thousand lire would scarcely compensate him for the trouble and expense he had been to. It was true he had used the craft now and then, but merely to give the engine a run and to maintain the sails in good repair.
The sails were shreds and patches, no paintbrush had touched the yawl, it had been worked continuously, but the hull was sound and the engine still running. The old boy had loved engines more than anything in the world. He had claimed to have been devoted to this one.
Meriden had been unmoved. Rather than pay one penny of ransom, he would see the tender at the bottom of the Mediterranean. He had issued a final warning. Then he had changed his mind and made a concession. On the last day of the year he had written:
Tired of F.’s arguments. Have agreed to pay Calabrian bandit?5. Sending E.J. to pick up tender and bring home. Not worth the expense, but E. pestering me for job with sick wife. Very dissatisfied with F. Anyone would think had no right to my own property. Pity Moonlight gone. Tender would have been useful. Get E. repair landing stage mill if draught all right for depth. Don’t want to dredge. Can’t waste more money over old tub unless survey proves her bargain.
That was all. Andrew looked closely through the first three months of the next year’s diary, but found no further reference to the yawl; nothing to indicate whether E.J. had picked her up at Bova Marina, no jubilant note of homecoming. The tender had dropped right out of the consciousness of John Quayle Meriden. Possibly the survey had proved her no bargain. In any case, Mr. Meriden had been busy with other affairs, writing to the War Office about damage done to Walden House, fighting with his lawyers over the extent of his claims, threatening to put the government out of office unless he were paid right down to the last penny. Only at the end of March was there an item that might be related, not to the yawl, but to the last entry about the yawl. It said:
E.J. pestering me again. Am sick of that whining Norski. Now wants to take his sick wife to Algiers. Says he can get a job there. Told him he won’t get another penny out of me.
In the interval E.J. may have made the trip to Calabria. Most likely he had, since the hunt for the craft had focused on England. All the rest was surmise.
If it was safe to come to any conclusion, it was that Meriden had placed no special value on the yawl. If the craft contained a treasured object-something to start a chase across Europe and cause a murder in Brussels-Meriden could not have known about it, or he would never have haggled over the few pounds that fifty thousand lire represented at the time of the Calabrian’s demand. Yet the lure for Kusitch and the others must have been placed in the yawl while she was at Zavrana or in Dalmatian waters, or Kusitch would not have known of it.
War loot? That’s what it looked like. Kusitch was the expert, employed by his government, devoting all his time to the tracing
of war loot. The trail of some stolen object had led to the yawl, and it was to be assumed that the object had remained on board through all the vicissitudes endured by the little craft.
It was a difficult assumption. The yawl had been repaired, launched again by some local authority, used in the port and nearby waters; it had been stolen by the Italian fugitives, sailed to Bova Marina, used by the old fisherman, and, possibly, brought back to England as the property of Meriden. An object would have to be pretty small to remain hidden under those circumstances.
Perhaps it had not remained hidden. Yet Kusitch had been so certain that he had staked his future on it; others had been so sure that they had used the desperate expedient of abduction from a hotel and followed it up with murder. The motive must be material gain, though it could be the suppression of a menace, the destruction of documents that threatened newly achieved careers. Treacheries, betrayals, treasons had smeared Europe in the wake of the Nazis. Men who had compromised themselves were anxious to forget; more anxious that others should never know about it. Documents stolen from archives could bring ruin. Documents could be safely hidden in a small craft and recovered later on for purposes of blackmail.
Meriden himself? Somehow it did not seem likely.
Andrew jotted down facts from the diaries on a sheet of note paper. He considered again and again the last entry about the tender. “Get E. repair landing stage mill if draught all right for depth. Don’t want to dredge.”
The meaning was clear enough. Meriden had meant to bring the yawl to a landing stage near some mill if the water was deep enough without dredging. Since he could order repairs to the landing stage he must own the property. There had been some reference somewhere to a mill and cottage, with the commendation “cheap” attached to it. A mill suggested a river, or at least a creek somewhere.
