Лесли Чартерис - Salvage for the Saint

“As usual, Monsieur Templar, you are right. We must not be hasty...” They lowered Finnegan to the deck none too gently, and Descartes added, “... with the good Captain.”

Finnegan, who in the last few minutes had sobered up probably faster than ever before in his life, tipped his cap to Simon and scuttled back towards the wheelhouse.

Descartes stood in silent thought for a minute or so, and then went determinedly after him. Simon followed, and so did Arabella; and Bernadotti tagged along too.

“Now!” they heard Descartes say, as the fat man completed the enterprise of squeezing his vast wobbling bulk up into the wheelhouse ahead of them. “It is time we had a truthful, a fully truthful conversation, my fine Captain Finnegan of the bottle!” He stood next to the helm with folded arms so that his presence would be impossible to ignore. “So — please begin the talking. Or we may yet change our minds and put you over the side!”

“I tell you, I had nothin’ to do with it,” Finnegan began.

“The gold! About the gold!”

Finnegan looked blank.

“Sure and didn’t I tell yous before? Two or t’ree times. I know nothin’ about any gold. What gold is it that you’d be t’inkin’ of, now?”

“I am thinking of the gold that you and Mr Charles Tatenor would collect during your cruising to Corsica. So — to where on the island did you go?”

Finnegan eyed him warily, as he might have eyed a mad dog.

“We only went fishin’, and that’s the truth, so it is.”

“And where exactly,” Descartes demanded, looking searingly into Finnegan’s face, “did you fish?”

Finnegan sighed with long-suffering patience.

“Like I said before — we’d anchor in a small bay. Always the same one.”

“Why always the same bay?”

Finnegan shrugged.

“Mr Charles — he liked it there. And... he liked the next bay round. He’d go off around the headland in the dinghy — spearfishin’.”

There was a long silence while the last revelation sank in. Descartes’ eyes lighted up.

“So,” he said softly. “We make progress at last.”

“And you are taking us to that usual bay, aren’t you?” Simon put in.

“Certain it is that I am,” Finnegan said, clearly relieved to have got off the hook so lightly after all. “And we’ll be there in the mornin’.”

Before they left him, Finnegan assured Simon that he was now revivified and daisy-fresh, and would happily stay at the helm through the night until they reached their destination.

“Not another drop,” he told Simon earnestly, “shall pass these trut’ful ould lips this night.”

Simon felt confident in the circumstances that the Captain would be as good as his word; and he was incidentally glad of the opportunity to get his own head down for a few hours of sleep in preparation for whatever tomorrow might bring.

“Time for some shuteye,” he told Descartes as they left the wheelhouse.

“An excellent suggestion,” Descartes agreed. He pointed with his automatic. “Down below — both of you. As you will have observed, Monsieur, we are now outnumbered, my one associate and I.” He indicated Bernadotti. “And since the door to Madame’s cabin cannot now be locked, you will both please to spend the night in the other cabin.”

“You mean — together?” Arabella enquired frostily.

“I object strenuously,” Simon protested, with evident delight.

“Now look here—” Arabella began; but Descartes’ face and voice hardened.

“No, Madame! You look here,” he told here. “And you do, please, as the weapon commands!”

And so it happened that Simon Templar came to be locked in a cabin with Arabella Tatenor; and it happened also that he awoke with the first light of dawn, as he had intended, and slid silently off his bed while she slumbered on in the one opposite.

Their luggage had been carefully searched, of course; but the Saint had one useful possession which nobody had thought worth confiscating; and that was a slim pencil flashlight. He put it in his pocket now in preparation for the early-morning walk which he intended to take as soon as he had disposed of the minor obstacle of the locked cabin door.

He examined the little heap of feminine impedimenta that Arabella had deposited on the dresser, and selected a promising-looking hairclip. The Saint’s experience with locks and the techniques of opening them had been long and varied, and the cabin door would have delayed him only briefly in any case; but here he had an almost unfair advantage which made the enterprise childishly simple. He had been able to get a close-up view, not long before, of a similar lock on the damaged door of the next cabin, so that he knew exactly which type of mechanism he was dealing with.

Less than one minute later, after two minor adjustments to the bend he had made at the end of the clip, the lock gave a satisfying click as his makeshift instrument did the trick. Unfortunately that click also had a side-effect which he would have preferred it not to have.

It woke Arabella.

She rubbed her eyes and looked at him uncomprehendingly for a few moments where he knelt by the door.

“What are you doing?” she asked muzzily.

The Saint held up the bent clip and pointed to the door. Then he put his finger warningly to his lips. Arabella sat up and spoke in a firm whisper.

“OK. I’ll keep quiet, but I’m coming along.”

Simon shrugged his agreement to the ultimatum. He opened the door gradually, making scarcely a sound.

“Where to?” Arabella whispered.

“Finnegan’s cabin. I want to see if he knows more than he’s letting on.”

They made their way noiselessly along the corridor and past the galley to Finnegan’s cabin. But it yielded no surprises to the probing of the Saint’s torch; it merely looked lived in, as indeed it had been. There was a bunk, with the bedding not very tidily straightened since it had last been used; there were a few books on a shelf, some magazines strewn about, and three or four empty bottles. The carpet had a grubby look, and some of Finnegan’s clothes were hung untidily over a chair. It was, in short, just what might have been expected.

“Nothing untoward there,” Simon had to concede as he closed the door again softly from the outside.

Arabella had glanced only briefly around the cabin with him, and now he found her by the open door of a small storage room that faced Finnegan’s cabin.

“Look,” she whispered. “Fishing gear.”

The Saint looked. The store-room, lit by the pale dawn light slanting through a single porthole, was in a bit of a jumble, but he could see that besides the fishing gear various odds and ends were stacked there. There were some assorted cans of paint, a drum of paraffin, some hanks of cord and rope in various thicknesses, some lanterns and a couple of waterproof torches; there was a stack of folded rubber wet-suits — the Saint counted three — and the scuba outfits; a nylon mesh net; rods, reels, tackle boxes — and one large deep angler’s basket complete with lid.

Simon picked up the basket curiously. It was sturdily constructed, and quite heavy. He took off the lid and peered inside. It was empty, but somehow the inside depth seemed less than the outside. He prodded the base from the inside, and it seemed to give slightly.

“Aha! Look here,” he whispered. “Look at the base.”

He tugged experimentally at the raffia weaving of the base. It moved — and then he found he could lift it up and out through the basket’s top.

“A false bottom!” Arabella exclaimed. She reached inside, and pulled out a portable mariner’s compass about six inches in diameter, and then a folded sheet of paper that had been hidden beneath the compass.