The Big Six: A Novel

by Arthur Ransome

  “Tom,” whispered Joe, in the sort of whisper that is meant to carry from the ground to an upper window. “He’s been at our chimbley.”

  “All five fingers,” whispered Bill.

  “We ain’t looked in the stove yet,” said Pete.

  “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  “Coming down the rope?” said Joe hoarsely.

  “No,” said Tom.

  Two minutes later he joined them in the garden, and they set off at a run back to the Wilderness.

  “Dad’s not in yet,” said Tom, “and Mother says I must come straight back. What sort of print is it?”

  “Good ’un,” said Joe.

  “Might have done it apurpose,” said Bill.

  It was a curious thing but, as they hurried through the osier bushes in the dark, Pete found himself wondering if the print were there at all. He had the oddest feeling that when they came to look at the chimney again they would find nothing but smooth green paint. What would Tom say then, dragged out in the night all for nothing?

  Tom was first at the chimney, and, in the light of his torch, Pete saw the print again. It was there all right, and what a print! Thumb and all four fingers plain to see, and below them a long smear made by someone pulling his hand suddenly away.

  “Gosh!” said Tom. “It’s a beauty.”

  “Look out, don’t go clumping,” said Joe as they climbed on the cabin roof. “You’ll have us all through.”

  “Look out for the paint,” said Bill, as Pete worked his hand in under the mushroom top to feel if the chimney was full to the brim with shackles.

  Joe had jumped down into the cockpit and was unlocking the cabin door.

  “Half a jiff while I get that lantern lit,” he said.

  The others with lit torches crowded in after him. Joe wrestling with the lantern blocked their way. One match flared and went out and then another. Then the wick of the lantern burned up and Joe hung it from its hook.

  “Let Tom ope that stove,” he said. “So it won’t be us find ’em.”

  There was a tight jam in the cabin in front of the stove. Tom crouched before it, lifted the latch of the door and swung it open.

  The stove was empty, except for the ashes of their last fire.

  “Stuck in the chimbley,” suggested Pete.

  Tom thrust his hand up inside the stove and brought it out black with soot.

  “Somebody shine a torch down the chimney,” said Tom. “No good shining it up with that cap on the top.” Bill scrambled for the door and Tom called after him, “Don’t touch the chimney. We’ll want to let the paint dry with that print.”

  “I ain’t a roaring donkey,” said Bill.

  They heard his footsteps overhead. There was a pause and then a glimmering of light came down the chimney lighting up the dead ashes in the stove.

  “There’s nothing there,” said Tom.

  “That’s a rum ’un,” said Joe.

  “We come too soon,” said Pete. “Reckon that old villain hear us and run for it.”

  “Let’s have a look round on deck…. All right, Bill. Nothing here,” Tom shouted up the chimney.

  But there were no shackles to be seen on deck and few places where shackles could be hidden. There was a bollard on the foredeck, a coil of rope and a small hatch. The sail, neatly stowed along its spar, lay on the roof of the cabin, and the pair of oars that in the Death and Glory served as engines. Otherwise the cabin-top was clear but for the mast tabernacle and the green-painted chimney pot. They turned their torches again on that print of the enemy’s hand.

  “That Dick and Dot ought to see it,” said Joe.

  “Too late to yank them out now,” said Tom. “They’ll be in bed. What are you doing, Bill?”

  FIVE FINGER PRINT

  Bill had left the others on the cabin-top and the light of his torch was playing round the cockpit.

  “Look ahere. Look ahere!” he suddenly shouted.

  “What is it?”

  “Them shackles,” shouted Bill.

  The others scrambled aft. Right in the stern, under the little bit of an after deck, in the place where usually was nothing but a bucket and a warp, the light of Bill’s torch was playing on a pile of new shackles strung together on a bit of tarred marline.

  “Gee whizz,” said Joe. “We got him. Yank ’em out and let’s see.”

  “Don’t touch them,” said Tom, just as Bill was reaching in to bring them out. “Scotland Yard’ll want a photograph. Don’t touch them till we can get Dick.”

  “Couple o’ score of ’em,” said Joe.

  “Can’t we pull ’em out and count ’em?” said Pete.

  “Better not,” said Tom. “Let’s have a look for any more.”

  They shone their torches this way and that under the seats, but found nothing else that did not belong to the boat.

  “What are we going to do with ’em?” said Joe. “Take ’em to Tedder and be told we stole ’em?”

  “I’m not going to Tedder with ’em,” said Pete.

  “Look here,” said Tom. “I think I’d better ask Dad. But don’t touch them till Dick and Dot have seen them. It was Dick’s idea trying to get the fingerprints. Leave them where they are till the morning.”

  “What if that Tedder come and find ’em here?” said Pete.

  Tom thought for a moment. “I’ll bolt up to Mrs. Barrable’s before breakfast and get Dick and Dot here first thing. Dick’ll get them photographed and then if Dad says we’ve got to take them to Tedder we’ll have to. I’ll come too. We’ll all go. And if Mr. Tedder comes first …”

  “He may come in the night,” said Pete.

  “And if that old villain tell him where to look …,” said Bill.

  “You’ll have to get word to me quick,” said Tom. “And I’ll tell Dad what’s happened. But we won’t touch them now. Not till Dick and Dot have had a sleuth at them. And I’ve got to bolt. I promised I’d come straight back.”

  “What if that chap come again?” said Pete.

  “Get a sight of him if you can. But he won’t. At least I shouldn’t think so. He’s probably too busy getting the paint off.”

  “That’ll be another clue,” said Joe. “He’ll be properly stinking of turps.”

  “We can’t go round sniffing for him,” said Bill.

  “We can’t do anything till morning,” said Tom. “Good night.”

  *

  The crew of the Death and Glory watched Tom’s torch flickering through the osiers until it disappeared for the last time. They had a last look at the print of the villain’s hand on their chimney. They had two or three last looks at that little heap of shackles that had been pushed in under the after deck.

  “Wish it was morning,” said Pete.

  “You turn in and go to sleep,” said Bill. “What’d your Mum say?”

  But when they were in their bunks and rolled up in their blankets, Joe was the only one who fell asleep at once.

  “Think of that chap come pawing our chimbley,” said Pete. “How’d that Dot know he’d be coming? That’s what beat me.”

  “It’s having ’em aboard I don’t like,” said Bill. “Wish Tom had took ’em. And that’s not the lot neither. He’ve the most of ’em to bring.”

  The thought that a stranger had been at their boat, had been aboard, and might come again, and had left aboard something that was certainly not meant as a sign of good will, somehow made their boat feel less like home. She was the same old Death and Glory but that night, for Bill and Pete, she felt quite different. For a long time they did not get properly to sleep, but dozed and woke to listen for strange hands feeling round her.

  *

  In the morning Bill was the first to wake. He screwed himself round to look up at the old clock thinking he would have time to turn over and go to sleep again. Then he remembered. He tugged the blankets off the others and hurried out.

  Yes. There was the pile of shackles well in under the after deck. He climbed on the roof to look at the h
and-print on the chimney. “Give himself away that time,” he said gleefully as Joe, rubbing his eyes, came out and joined him.

  Pete came out too, blinking in the morning sunshine. He looked first at the print on the chimney which, in daylight, did not seem so clear as it had last night in the white gleam of the torches. Still, it was there all right, and proof that somebody had indeed laid his paw on the chimney. Pete turned and crouched in the cockpit to look in under the after deck.

  “Let’s get on with it,” said Joe. “Tom’ll be up at the Admiral’s by now and they’ll be along all three before we had our grub.”

  “Hope they come before that Tedder poke his nose in,” said Bill. “If he come and find them shackles now …”

  “Your turn,” said Joe. “Primus to save time. Boiled eggs. Two apiece and put ’em in the kettle when that start boiling. We got no time to lose.”

  Less soap than usual was used in the morning wash and it was a quick breakfast. Everybody was in a desperate hurry to get done and be ready for the rest of the detectives. And everybody was in a desperate stew lest Mr. Tedder should come first.

  Tom, Dick and Dot arrived together, on the run. Dick and Dot went straight for the chimney. Tom had urgent news for the others.

  “I say,” he said. “I told Dad about the shackles and about your not wanting to take them to Tedder after what happened last time. He says he’ll take them for you. He’s coming along here just before he goes off on his rounds. You don’t mind do you? Dorothea says it’s all right.”

  “Good,” said Joe. “That Tedder’ll think twice before he say the Doctor steal ’em.”

  Dorothea, looking at the chimney and its print, felt much as she felt when reading over a good bit in one of her own stories. She had been sure the villain would come, and now it was almost as if he were obeying her orders. “I knew he’d do it,” she said. “And hasn’t Dick’s idea worked beautifully … the wet paint, I mean.”

  “Going to photograph it, Dick?” asked Tom.

  “Of course he must,” said Dorothea. “But where are the shackles? You haven’t moved them, have you?”

  “Ain’t touched ’em,” said Joe.

  “That’s how I find ’em,” said Bill, and all six detectives peered in under the after deck.

  “I’ll get a photograph of the chimney all right,” said Dick. “But I don’t know about the shackles. Nothing’ll show much. It’s too dark in there, and …”

  “But it’s like the corpse,” said Dorothea. “Scotland Yard always wants a picture of that to show just where it was found.”

  “I’ll have a shot,” said Dick.

  He fixed the camera on a box on the cockpit floor to get it at the right level, and moved the focusing lever to the spot marked “3 to 10 feet”.

  “I’ll give it half a minute,” he said, “just to give the shackles a chance of showing. And then I’ll take a photograph from the top of the cabin to show the whole cockpit.”

  “And we can mark it with a cross to show the place where the shackles were found,” said Dorothea.

  Dick took his three photographs, while the others waited, reminding him in chorus to wind on the film after making each exposure. With pictures as serious as these it would be dreadful if one came out on top of another.

  “Done?” said Joe. “Shall I get ’em out?”

  “Go ahead,” said Tom.

  Joe reached in and pulled a heavy bundle of shackles out into the light.

  “Green paint,” cried Dorothea.

  “Look at that now,” said Bill.

  There was no doubt about it. Some of the new gunmetal shackles were smeared with the same green paint that Pete had put on the chimney.

  Dick had a close look at the shackles, pulled off his spectacles, polished them with his handkerchief and put them on again.

  “What is it, Dick?” asked Dorothea, who knew the signs.

  “Clue,” said Dick. “Let me just try.”

  He went ashore and stood on the bank opposite the Death and Glory’s chimney and leant out as if to touch it. Then he began searching the ground at his feet.

  “Here’s where he put them down,” he said. “You can see there’s been something heavy in the grass. He must have put them down while he was feeling the chimney. He wouldn’t want them to clink or anything in case there was somebody at home. Then he got his hand all over paint. Then he must have picked up the shackles and got some paint on them. He wouldn’t know if it was pretty dark. The next thing he did was to get into your cockpit and push the shackles into that hole.”

  “Under our after deck,” said Joe, who liked things aboard his ship to be given their proper names.

  “Let’s see if he left any paintmarks on the way,” said Dick.

  “Here you are,” shouted Pete. “On the edge of the coaming. But maybe I do it when I done painting the chimbley.”

  “More likely the villain,” said Dorothea. “Go on, Dick.” She knew his mind was running ahead like a hound with its nose on a fresh scent.

  “He went ashore again,” said Dick. “He’d have to get out of the Wilderness. He wouldn’t go our way through the garden. He’d go the way he went that time Dot and William saw him. We ought to track him.”

  “Come on, quick,” said Dorothea.

  “You go first, Dick,” said Joe. “Let’s see how you do it.”

  “Spread out a bit,” said Dick, “so as not to miss anything.”

  Crouching low and peering at the ground, the six detectives worked their way through the osier bushes to the fence that shut off the Wilderness from the road.

  “A whole lot of people have been along here,” said Dick.

  “Course there has,” said Pete. “There was our Mums yesterday, and that Tedder and all of us….”

  “But Tom didn’t bring his paint this way,” said Dick in triumph. There, on the top bar of the fence, was another smear of green. “Here’s where the villain got across,” said Dick.

  “And then what?” said Dorothea.

  “Don’t get over just here,” said Dick. He went a few yards along the fence and climbed over, jumping clear so as to land a foot or two beyond it. Then he worked carefully back looking at every inch of the ground under the fence.

  “Here it is,” he said suddenly. “More bicycle tracks.”

  The others crowded to see.

  “Dunlops!” said Pete. “Same as that Tedder’s.”

  “We can’t know for certain they’re his,” said Dick. “But he had a bicycle the night William got him, and he had a bicycle at Ranworth.” He thought for a moment, pulled off his spectacles, looked at them with eyes that hardly saw them and smiled with the happiness of the successful scientist. “Yes,” he said. “He got on his bicycle and rode away. And we know another thing about his bicycle now.”

  “What?” asked everybody at once.

  “It’s got some green paint on the grip of the right handlebar.”

  “How d’you know?”

  “He’d got a lot of paint on his hand…. That’s a big smear on the fence and it wouldn’t all come off the first time he touched anything. Of course we don’t know how he took hold of his bicycle when it was leaning up against the fence. There may be other smears on it too. But there’s sure to be some on his right handlebar.”

  “Why the right one?” said Dorothea.

  “I know that,” said Pete. “That were his right hand on our chimbley. Thumb and fingers go so….” He put his own right hand on one of the posts of the fence.

  “We got him now,” said Joe.

  A motor car hooted somewhere up the road.

  “That’s Dad coming out of our gate,” said Tom.

  The Doctor’s car passed them, went on to the Ferry Inn to find room to turn round, came back and pulled up beside the detectives.

  “We’ve caught him,” cried Dorothea as the Doctor got out. “We’ve got his fingerprints, and there’s the green mark where he put his hand on the fence.”

  “Look here,” said D
r. Dudgeon, “I’m in an awful hurry. I ought to be on my rounds and instead I’m leaving my patients to die in dozens. So don’t waste time. I’ll take those shackles to Tedder for you. It doesn’t matter how you come to have them, but you are putting yourselves in the wrong by not letting him have them at once. And I want to have a look at those fingerprints. Come along quick and tell me all about it.”

  “Look at the paint on the fence first,” said Dorothea.

  The Doctor looked at the smear of paint.

  “How do you say it got there?” he asked. “You begin at Ranworth and tell me the whole story. Never mind the things that happened before that.”

  They told him everything they could remember, of bicycle tracks, of the figure Dorothea had seen, of William’s trophy of grey flannel, of the painting of the chimney. Dr. Dudgeon listened carefully. Presently he stepped over the fence. The others scrambled over and took him through the bushes to the Death and Glory.

  He had a good look at the chimney.

  “Who’s got the biggest hands?” he said.

  “Mine,” said Joe.

  “What about Tom’s?” said Pete. “And Tom’s ain’t big enough.”

  “Let’s have a look at them,” said Dr. Dudgeon. “And yours, Tom.”

  Tom and the Death and Glories showed their hands.

  “Green paint on yours, Pete.”

  “I paint that old chimbley,” said Pete. “That stuff don’t come off so easy.”

  “Um,” said Dr. Dudgeon. “That’s a fair sized hand. Bigger than any of yours.”

  “That settles it, doesn’t it?” said Dorothea hopefully.

  “I’m not sure that it does,” said Dr. Dudgeon.

  “Green paint on the shackles,” said Dick.

  Dr. Dudgeon looked gravely at the shackles. “Look here, I may as well tell you. Tedder wants to take out a summons right away.”

  “We’re sunk,” said Joe bitterly.

  Dr. Dudgeon looked at him but for a moment said nothing.

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said at last. “It isn’t only shackles.”

  “But they didn’t do any of the things,” said Dorothea.