Десмонд Бэгли - The Golden Keel

‘You could — and you will,’ I said. ‘This is the boat in which we’re going to take four tons of gold out of Italy.’

He looked surprised and then he frowned. ‘Where are you going to put it?’

I said, ‘Sit down and I’ll tell you something about sailing boats you don’t know.’ Coertze sat uncomfortably on the edge of the starboard settee which had no mattress as yet, and waited for me to explain myself.

‘This boat displaces — weighs, that is — ten tons, and...’

Walker broke in. ‘I thought you said she was a 15-tonner.’

‘That’s Thames measure — yacht measure. Her displacement is different.’

Coertze looked at Walker. ‘Shut up and let the man speak.’ He turned to me. ‘If the boat weighs ten tons and you add another four tons, she’ll be pretty near sinking, won’t she? And where are you going to put it? It can’t be out in the open where the cops can see it.’

I said patiently, ‘I said I’d tell you something about sailing boats that you didn’t know. Now, listen — about forty per cent of the weight of any sailing boat is ballast to keep her the right way up when the wind starts to press on those sails.’

I tapped the cabin sole with my foot. ‘Hanging on the bottom of this boat is a bloody great piece of lead weighing precisely four tons.’

Coertze looked at me incredulously, a dawning surmise in his eyes. I said, ‘Come on, I’ll show you.’

We went outside and I showed them the lead ballast keel. I said, ‘All this will be covered up next week because the boat will be sheathed to keep out the marine borers.’

Coertze was squatting on his heels looking at the keel. ‘This is it,’ he said slowly. ‘This is it. The gold will be hidden under water — built in as part of the boat.’ He began to laugh, and after a while Walker joined in. I began to laugh, too, and the walls of the shed resounded.

Coertze sobered suddenly. ‘What’s the melting point of lead?’ he asked abruptly.

I knew what was coming. ‘Four-fifty degrees centigrade,’ I said. ‘We’ve got a little foundry at the top of the yard where we pour the keels.’

‘ Ja, ’ he said heavily. ‘You can melt lead on a kitchen stove. But gold melts at over a thousand centigrade and we’ll need more than a kitchen stove for that. I know; melting gold is my job. Up at the smelting plant we’ve got bloody big furnaces.’

I said quickly, ‘I’ve thought of that one, too. Come up to the workshop — I’ll show you something else you’ve never seen before.’

In the workshop I opened a cupboard and said, ‘This gadget is brand new — just been invented.’ I hauled out the contraption and put it on the bench. Coertze looked at it uncomprehendingly.

There wasn’t much to see; just a metal box, eighteen inches by fifteen inches by nine inches, on the top of which was an asbestos mat and a Heath Robinson arrangement of clamps.

I said, ‘You’ve heard of instant coffee — this is instant heat.’ I began to get the machine ready for operation. ‘It needs cooling water at at least five pounds an inch pressure — that we get from an ordinary tap. It works on ordinary electric current, too, so you can set it up anywhere.’

I took the heart of the machine from a drawer. Again, it wasn’t much to look at; just a piece of black cloth, three inches by four. I said, ‘Some joker in the States discovered how to spin and weave threads of pure graphite, and someone else discovered this application.’

I lifted the handle on top of the machine, inserted the graphite mat, and clamped it tight. Then I took a bit of metal and gave it to Coertze.

He turned it in his fingers and said, ‘What is it?’

‘Just a piece of ordinary mild steel. But if this gadget can melt steel, it can melt gold. Right?’

He nodded and looked at the machine dubiously — it wasn’t very impressive.

I took the steel from his fingers and dropped it on to the graphite mat, then I gave Walker and Coertze a pair of welders’ goggles each. ‘Better put these on: it gets a bit bright.’

We donned the goggles and I switched on the machine. It was a spectacular display. The graphite mat flashed instantly to a white heat and the piece of steel glowed red, then yellow and finally white. It seemed to slump like a bit of melting wax and in less than fifteen seconds it had melted into a little pool. All this to the accompaniment of a violent shower of sparks as the metal reacted with the air.

I switched off the machine and removed my goggles. ‘We won’t have all these fireworks when we melt gold; it doesn’t oxidize as easily as iron.’

Coertze was staring at the machine. ‘How does it do that?’

‘Something like a carbon arc,’ I said. ‘You can get temperatures up to five thousand degrees centigrade. It’s only intended to be a laboratory instrument, but I reckon we can melt two pounds of gold at a time. With three of these gadgets and a hell of a lot of spare mats we should be able to work pretty fast.’

He said doubtfully, ‘If we can only pour a couple of pounds at a time, the keel is going to be so full of cracks and flaws that I’m not sure it won’t break under its own weight.’

‘I’ve thought of that one, too,’ I said calmly. ‘Have you ever watched anyone pour reinforced concrete?’

He frowned and then caught on, snapping his fingers.

‘We make the mould and put a mesh of wires inside,’ I said. ‘That’ll hold it together.’

I showed him a model I had made, using fuse wire and candle wax, which he examined carefully. ‘You’ve done a hell of a lot of thinking about this,’ he said at last.

‘Somebody has to,’ I said. ‘Or that gold will stay where it is for another fourteen years.’

He didn’t like that because it made him appear stupid; but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He started to say something and bit it short, his face flushing red. Then he took a deep breath and said, ‘All right, you’ve convinced me. I’m in.’

Then I took a deep breath — of relief.

That night we had a conference.

I said, ‘This is the drill. Sanford — my yacht — will be ready for trials next week. As soon as the trials are over you two are going to learn how to sail under my instruction. In under four months from now we sail for Tangier.’

‘Christ!’ said Walker. ‘I don’t know that I like the sound of that.’

‘There’s nothing to it,’ I said. ‘Hundreds of people are buzzing about the Atlantic these days. Hell, people have gone round the world in boats a quarter the size.’

I looked at Coertze. ‘This is going to take a bit of financing. Got any money?’

‘About a thousand,’ he admitted.

‘That gets tossed into the kitty,’ I said. ‘Along with my twenty-five thousand.’

‘ Magtig ,’ he said. ‘That’s a hell of a lot of money.’

‘We’ll need every penny of it,’ I said. ‘We might have to buy a small boatyard in Italy if that’s the only way we can cast the keel in secrecy. Besides, I’m lending it to the firm of Walker, Coertze and Halloran at one hundred per cent interest. I want fifty thousand back before the three-way split begins. You can do the same with your thousand.’

‘That sounds fair enough,’ agreed Coertze.

I said, ‘Walker hasn’t any money and once you’ve thrown your thousand in the kitty, neither have you. So I’m putting you both on my payroll. You’ve got to have your smokes and three squares a day while all this is going on.’

This bit of information perked Walker up considerably. Coertze merely nodded in confirmation. I looked hard at Walker. ‘And you stay off the booze or we drop you over the side. Don’t forget that.’