by Eric Ambler
“How’s the road across the marsh?” Andrew asked. “Is it safe?”
“Aye!” The reply rasped through the sound of the truck’s revving engine. “Safe enough if you stick to it.” The man grinned broadly. “Don’t try any short cuts.”
He was quite incurious. He let in his clutch and swung his load of junk into a sharp turn. Another man was standing in the entry to the tip, waving the driver to come on.
“Identify either of them?” Andrew asked Ruth.
She shook her head. “Neither is like the man I saw, but what does it matter?”
“Just wondering.” He was still quite happy about it, but the marsh, now that they were actually upon it, started a germ of uneasiness in his mind. The panic of Ruth on her first visit was easy to understand. The place was fertile ground for any seed of fear. It might even generate fear.
Ruth pointed to the side of the track. “That’s where I fell down,” she said. He stopped the car and got out.
He asked: “Is that the bunch of reeds where the bird was?”
“Yes.”
He was cautious, crossing the spongy ground on the edge of the road. Even after the rain there might be footprints. A man crouching would drive his heels or toes deeply into the turf, and it was not likely they would be soon eliminated. The ground wasn’t that spongy.
“What are you looking for?” the girl asked. “You don’t think a wild bird would have stayed in among those reeds with a man hiding alongside?”
“It was just an idea,” he said. “The bird might have been flushed from another clump. In the twilight you might not have seen clearly.”
She shivered but made no other reply.
The drizzle had stopped, but the sky looked as watery as the earth and the sea. Far away you could just make out the shaft of the windmill and the roof of the adjacent cottage.
“No wonder you were scared,” he said.
He went back to his seat and drove on slowly. The rutted track seemed solid enough. It was the same rain-washed drab green that stretched away on both sides of it, but under the short tough grass it was a made road. Stone and rubble and road metal had been packed down to make a causeway. Someone had made a thorough job of it in the days of cheap labour and material, and it had lasted. But he still drove slowly. There might be a fault somewhere, and it would be no fun getting stranded with a hired car.
Then, indistinctly in the distance, they saw the mill.
They both peered forward through the windscreen, eager for the details that gradually became apparent as they approached. The windmill was like a grey monolith perched on a small knoll with a tumble of low dunes behind it. The monolith grew into an octagonal tower with a domelike cap, and the skeleton remains of the sail-frames, the four long whips or arms, became visible. There had once been a paved yard between the mill and the cottage, but most of the stones had been entirely covered by the coarse grass. Andrew advanced the car gingerly into this space, and backed and turned before pulling up.
The girl moved to get out, but he restrained her. They kept their seats for a moment, listening. There was a sound of wind and the squeaking complaint of corroded metal as the arms of the mill shuddered and swung a little. Nothing else.
Now the two stepped out and stood gazing up at the mill. It was a massive structure when you came close to it. The arms must have measured thirty feet from axis to tip, but they were dead arms, except for that slight shuddering movement that caused the metallic sounds. They would hang on the landward side till they rotted away. The vane that had once been there to rotate the cap and bring the sails to the wind had long since gone. Windows were dark, boarded-up slots. There was a heavy, weather-bleached door. It was shut.
They looked at the cottage-a simple two-storeyed affair in an advanced state of dilapidation. Here the door had fallen in, the windowpanes had been broken, the roof had a hole in it.
“This doesn’t look as if that will add much to the value of the estate,” Ruth said. “Let’s go.”
“In a minute or two.” Andrew grasped her arm and guided her across the yard and round the knoll of the mill.
“Why are you tiptoeing?” the girl asked.
He grinned. “It’s the marsh again. Listen!”
The grinding creak of the mill’s rusted mechanism was followed by the low moan of a dying wind. The sea swished and murmured and hung in silence between the waves. Far off the whistle of a locomotive sounded.
Ruth and Andrew moved on round the mill, and there, before them, were the winding creek and the landing stage.
And there, too, was the boat.
The two masts of the craft swung slowly from side to side as the hull yielded to the tidal movement in the creek. Weather-stained, battered, her peeling paint stained with rust, you wondered that she was still sound enough to keep afloat.
Ruefully, the girl stared at her. Then she laughed.
“There’s your prize,” she said. “A nice reward for all the trouble and worry. She’s yours, Andrew. I make you a present of her. What do we do now? Go home?”
The yawl swung round a little with the movement of the water and they could see, showing faintly through the Calabrian fisherman’s casual effort to over paint them, the words on her square stern: Tender to Moonlight.
Andrew shook his head. “She’s got something to tell us: why Kusitch started for England to find her, why he was murdered in Brussels, why…” He broke off. “Anyway, let’s look at her.”
The berth was snug. There was a wide bend in the creek like a small cove, sheltered on the seaward side by the low dunes; on the other side, by the knoll and the windmill and the cottage. The craft was secured by an anchor and a mooring buoy; also she was made fast to the landing stage by a steel cable with sufficient slack to take care of the rise and fall of the tide. And there were rope fenders to protect her if she were forced against the timbers. At the moment there was a clearance of about a yard, and the deck was a few inches below the level of the landing stage, a platform of heavy planks projecting four feet over the water.
Neglect of the paintwork was even more apparent on closer inspection. The hot sun of the Mediterranean had dried out the oils and whitened the woodwork. Paint had peeled and scaled away, but one could still make out the registration number on the bows, SS 729, showing through the over paint applied at Zavrana.
No doubt Ernest Jansen had done his best to bed her down safely after her voyage home from Bova Marina. Sail covers had been lashed in position and everything left shipshape, but now a roughly folded tarpaulin lay on the deck, forward of the coach roof. Andrew stared at it uneasily.
Plainly that tarpaulin had covered the open well of the craft; clearly it had been removed quite recently-today, or yesterday. From the landing stage no other signs of interference could be seen, but Andrew found his uneasiness increasing as he stepped down onto the deck and reached out a hand to his companion.
“Now we’re on board,” she said, “what do we search for and where do we search?”
They stood in the well of the craft and looked round. The auxiliary engine had a teak housing secured by a padlock. At least there was the appearance of security, but, when Andrew tested the padlock, he found that a hack saw had been used on it, and a slight tug brought the hinged part of the lock away from the staple fixed to the housing. He told himself that his worst fears might be unjustified. A deserted craft was an irresistible attraction to marauding boys or petty thieves. Parts of an engine could be removed, sold to a junk dealer, used. But when he lifted the cover of the housing, the engine seemed to have been cleaned quite recently. The magneto looked particularly bright, and might have been placed in position that day.
He thought about the magneto. An experienced man like Ernest Jansen, knowing that the craft would be tied up for months if not years, would never have left it there. The engine housing might be sound and well constructed, but the moist sea air would penetrate at various points, and moist sea air was bad for magnetos. One either took them ashore
or stowed them in a more protected place. Andrew was no sailor, but he knew that much.
“What does it mean?” Ruth asked, sensing his apprehension.
“I don’t know.”
He stood up and looked round, but knoll and windmill hid the track across Groper’s Wade. Above the marsh gulls wheeled, crying raucously, swooping and rising again. There was more light under the overcast, and the gulls were paper-white against the dark cloud. Beyond the dunes, rain squalls slanted across the sea.
Ruth climbed onto the deck, stepped ashore, and mounted the knoll.
“Not a soul in sight,” she announced, “if that’s what’s bothering you.” He nodded. He could feel and smell the emptiness. He could smell something else, too. He went down on his haunches beside the engine and sniffed. Paraffin, and newly poured. Someone had been using paraffin to clean the engine. He picked up a cigarette end and examined it. It had not been there very long.
Ruth came down to the landing stage. “What have you found?” she asked.
He threw the butt into the creek. “Doesn’t mean a thing,” he commented. “Someone has been taking an interest in her, that’s all. It’s a miracle she hasn’t been looted before this. Your Uncle John should have had more sense. I’m going to take a look inside.”
Ruth came on board again.
The padlock of the sliding companion hatch had been treated in the same way as that on the engine housing. In addition a fitted lock had been forced with a chisel or similar tool. Andrew opened the hatch and led the way below deck. There was a miniature galley on one side of the entrance, a small pantry or storeroom on the other side. Both were completely empty, stripped of whatever fittings they had once contained.
Beyond was a fairly roomy saloon with a chart table in the centre and bunks on either side. A door forward gave access to a small water closet, and right forward, divided from this cubicle by a wooden partition with a sliding panel, was the usual chain locker. There were fitted drawers for clothes under the bunks, and one of them contained a piece of old blanket, a piece of oilskin, and a length of string; more evidence that Ernest Jansen had been thorough in preparing for the lay-up, for it was plain enough that here the magneto had been wrapped and stowed.
The wrappings were the sole find. The saloon, like the galley and pantry, had been stripped. Once, no doubt, there had been mattresses and cushions but at some time, in Dalmatian or Calabrian waters, someone had gone through the craft and left only the bare boards. Was it rational, then, to suppose that anything of value remained in the yawl?
Andrew peered into corners, resisting the thought of the anti-climax that now seemed inevitable. But it was difficult to resist with much conviction. He was a fool, and must appear doubly a fool in the eyes of Ruth Meriden. Kusitch had thrown away his life in pursuit of a myth. Kretchmann and Haller had committed murder for nothing and embarked on a futile errand. The treasure coveted by Kusitch and his assassins had vanished. Whatever it was, a booty of jewels or a priceless old master, someone had removed it. Unless there was some secret hiding place in the craft. As well expect to find a hiding place in a matchbox.
“If there ever was anything, we’re too late,” Ruth said.
She was thinking that Kretchmann and Haller might have preceded them by a few hours, even an hour. The possibility was not to be dismissed, but if Kretchmann and Haller were the interlopers, why had they taken the magneto from the saloon drawer and fitted it to the engine?
Andrew went forward and opened the panel of the chain locker, but it was empty except for some rusty anchor chain. He rapped on timbers and looked behind the drawers. There were no secret cavities that he could discover.
Ruth had returned to the well to watch the wheeling sea gulls. Perhaps she had been merely curious about the yawl, for she showed no sign of disappointment. Andrew imagined that there was even a hint of secret amusement in her smile when he emerged from the saloon and shrugged his shoulders.
She said: “If the masts were hollow, you could hide a few Rembrandts in them.”
He grinned but a trifle sheepishly. She climbed ashore again and watched him from the landing stage, while he rummaged among fragments of canvas and broken tools and other odds and ends in the sail lockers.
“While you do that,” she said after a moment, “I’m going to take a look at my new cottage. It may be full of Persian miniatures or Aztec birdbaths.”
Andrew looked after her gloomily as she limped up the knoll. The implied criticism may have been aimed at the late Uncle John, but it could have had another target. This hypothetical treasure of the tender to Moonlight must seem absurd to her now, but it had been real enough to Kusitch.
Somewhere in this shabby tub there was or had been something, but Andrew could think of no further place where he might search. If there were a concealed cache, an unsuspected space behind an undiscovered bulkhead, he did not know what he could do about it short of ripping the craft to pieces. He looked up at the solemn heavens, but they just went on being solemn. He looked down at the rust-marked, oil-stained boards on which he stood, and they were but little more inspiring. He observed, but without conscious intention, how neatly they were fitted together to make a floor; how each board had a finger hole for ease in lifting. An idea came to him, but when he translated it into action it was with no eagerness.
He lifted one of the boards from the bilge stringer and detached it from its ledge on the middle bearer. He lifted a second board, but he was already convinced that no one would have hidden an art treasure in such a place. The wash of water in the bilge was filthy with grease and drippings of oil from the engine. Ribs, strakes and keelson were smeared with something that looked like tar, and the heavy slabs of metal that served as ballast had been daubed with the stuff. He tapped one of the bars with a screwdriver from a locker. Pig iron.
Rocking in the slow swirl of the bilge was a tin can with part of a bright new label attached.
If he had not observed it, he might not have realised that someone had been bailing out the bilge, though the little depth of water in the bottom should have told him that at once. Since Jansen tied up the craft, the bilge would have filled with water in one way or another. The fact that it had been bailed out linked up with the curious business of the magneto. Some sort of overhaul had been attempted. The floor boards had been removed to get at the propeller shafting and coupling.
Andrew gazed down at the dark water and the iron pigs for a moment. Then he replaced the floor boards and closed the companion hatch, putting the padlock back as he had found it. He saw then that the deck was almost level with the landing stage and the tide was still running in.
Ruth called from the knoll, “There’s a man coming along on a bike.”
One of the local inhabitants, no doubt! Might even be a coast guard or something. Possibly he would know if anyone had been nosing round the yawl in the last few days.
Andrew stepped ashore and climbed the knoll to Ruth’s side. The man was pedalling slowly across the wade, taking the bumps, weaving and twisting in his course to avoid the worst of the depressions in the track. Andrew watched without suspicion until he saw that the burden of a two-gallon petrol tin was adding to the cyclist’s difficulties. The fact was too peculiar not to be taken as a warning. If the tin contained petrol, the fellow’s objective must be the yawl. At once the other peculiarities fell into line: the sawn padlocks, the cigarette end, the magneto.
At that moment the cyclist saw them. No doubt he also saw the car in the yard. He came on without hesitation, quite confidently, as if he knew his way about.
Andrew gripped Ruth by one arm. “Don’t say anything,” he told her. “Leave it to me.”
She turned to smile. The smile said clearly: “Oh, come now!”
“We must find out what he’s up to,” Andrew added in justification. “I’ll bet he’s been messing around with that engine.”
“If he’s that interested, maybe we can sell him the whole thing.”
The man was about
forty-five. He had a hard, weather-tanned face and fairish grizzled hair. He wore toil-marked grey slacks and an old brown jacket over a dark green sweater. He dismounted and leaned the bike against the mill. He was cheerful and friendly, with a proprietorial assurance. He put an empty pipe in his mouth.
“Afternoon,” he said. “Come out to see the mill?”
“That’s it,” Andrew agreed. “I suppose it’s quite noted.”
“I suppose.” The man nodded and grinned, jumped into the well of the yawl, and began to pour the petrol into the fuel tank aft. Andrew and Ruth followed to the landing stage and watched him.
“What do you think you’re doing with that craft?” Andrew inquired, forcing back his indignation.
“Making her work,” came the affable reply. “Owner’s instructions. Mr. Robison says make her work. So, I make her work.”
Having disposed of the petrol, he uncovered the engine, fussed with the carburettor for a moment, then swung the starting handle.
There was no result.
“Is Mr. Robison the owner?” Andrew asked.
“No, he’s the boss.” The fellow looked up for a moment. “Bad state this engine’s in! Bad! Know you anything about them?”
“Not much. Do you?”
“Nothing I don’t know.” He swung on the handle again, and again there was no result. “Looks like real trouble. Maybe the plugs.” He frowned, taking it hardly. His heart was in his work.
“Who’s Mr. Robison?” Andrew persisted, ignoring an attempt by Ruth to draw him from the landing stage.
“I told you who he is.” The mechanic was less affable. “He has a garage, if you wish to know.”
“In Britsea?”
“Along the London road.”
“Who’s the owner of the craft?”
“That’s not my business.” The mechanic straightened himself. “And it’s not yours. This is private property. You have no rights here. You wish to look at the windmill, no one is going to object.” He took his pipe out of his mouth.
