The Big Six: A Novel

by Arthur Ransome

  “But it isn’t like that at all,” said Dorothea. “They simply didn’t do any of those things.”

  “Miss Callum,” began Mr. Farland.

  “Oh, look here, Uncle Frank,” said Tom.

  “Miss Callum,” said Mr. Farland again, and went on, “if these boys had no hand in all this, somebody else had. Now, have you any idea who?”

  Dorothea hesitated.

  “We think we know,” she said.

  “Think isn’t enough,” said Mr. Farland.

  “We’re sure we know,” said Dorothea.

  “Take that first occasion,” said Mr. Farland. “When a motor cruiser was cast off from the staithe. Theirs was the only other boat moored at the staithe that night.”

  “There was someone else there,” said Tom.

  “That was the night we outed Pete’s tooth for him,” said Joe, “and there was somebody there in the dark and he bung the brick back through the window.”

  “Did any of you see this other person?”

  “No,” said Tom. “We couldn’t. It was already dark.”

  “You can’t, on the strength of somebody whom you didn’t see having been there some time before the cruiser was sent adrift, get away from the fact that all that night their boat lay there, and was still there in the morning, when the other boat was drifting down the river.”

  “But don’t you see?” said Dorothea. “It was done by an enemy.”

  “Why then did the enemy cast off the other boat instead of theirs? He must have known the difference.”

  “He did it because he hated the Coot Club,” said Dorothea, “and he wanted Tom and the others to get blamed for it.”

  “It’s that George Owdon,” said Bill. “We always think it were and now we know for dead certain sure.”

  “But look here,” said Mr. Farland. “George Owdon was watching the staithe here, when you lads were casting off the boats at Potter.”

  “We ain’t cast off no boats,” said Joe doggedly.

  “We’ve got evidence,” said Dorothea. She put her case on the floor, opened it, rummaged in it for a moment, and laid young Bob’s affidavit on the table.

  Mr. Farland read it. “I swear I see George Owdon by Potter Bridge the night before you come through. Bob Curten.”

  “Was he in two places at once?”

  “Bike,” said Joe.

  “And what about Ranworth?”

  “Bike again.”

  Dorothea took Dick’s drawing of the bicycle tracks out of her case. “We found bicycle tracks on the soft ground by the staithe at Ranworth,” she said. “This is the place.” She put the drawing and a photograph on the table. “It’s a Dunlop tyre. And we know someone crossed the Ferry that night. And we know George Owdon’s got Dunlop tyres….”

  Mr. Farland looked at drawing and photograph. “Almost all bicycles have Dunlop tyres,” he said. “What make of tyre does Tom use? … But never mind that. They tell me you lads were actually seen casting off a yacht from the staithe.”

  “We salvage her,” said Joe. “We was tying her up when we was seen … not casting her off. It’s only that George Owdon say we was.”

  “There’s another thing,” said Mr. Farland, looking at some notes on the table before him. “George Owdon and his friend have been giving up a lot of their nights to watching just to prevent this sort of thing happening. I have to ask myself, ‘Isn’t it likely that you have a grudge against him on that account?’”

  “Not half the grudge he got against the Coot Club,” said Bill.

  “That birds’-nesting affair?” said Mr. Farland thoughtfully.

  “When he try to get them bitterns,” said Joe, “and we fetch keeper just in time.”

  Mr. Farland stroked his chin. “Yes,” he said. “You don’t like George Owdon and George Owdon doesn’t like you. But that doesn’t prove anything much. Now, what about those shackles?”

  “We never steal ’em,” said Joe. “Pete find that first lot in our stove and Bill find that second lot in our cockpit, and the one what put that second lot in our boat is the one what print his hand on our chimbley like Dick say he would.”

  “What’s that?”

  Dorothea explained. “You see, that first time we knew someone had been there. I saw someone feeling the chimney, and then he heard me and ran away in the fog and fell over our bloodhound. And William got a bit of his trousers.” She laid the scrap of flannel on Mr. Farland’s table. “And the next morning they found some shackles in the stove and took them to Mr. Tedder. And then Dick thought that if we kept the chimney covered with wet paint we’d get a fingerprint if whoever it was did it again. And we did get a fingerprint. There it is. And there was some of the green paint on the second lot of shackles.”

  “Not quite good enough,” said Mr. Farland. “If Bill or Joe or Pete had been messing about with green paint they’d be likely to get some on the shackles themselves.”

  “Ask George Owdon to fit his hand to that print,” said Joe. “It’s a sight too big for us.”

  “And we’ve got a photograph showing that even Tom couldn’t reach from the bank,” said Dorothea, dipping in her suitcase.

  “It’s no good, Uncle Frank,” burst out Tom. “If you don’t want to believe them. If only Port and Starboard were here, they’d tell you.”

  “There’s green paint on George Owdon’s bicycle,” said Dorothea.

  A bell jangled somewhere in the house. A moment later the door opened, and Mrs. McGinty, Mr. Farland’s housekeeper, came in and said, “Mr. Tedder to see you, Sir. Urgent.”

  Mr. Tedder came in, but he did not come alone. With him came George Owdon and his friend.

  “We ought to have gone to him right away,” said Bill. “Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Shut up, Bill,” whispered Tom.

  George Owdon and his friend had just for one second looked taken aback when they saw Tom and Dorothea and Bill and Joe standing in the room. But only for a second. Then they stood quite at their ease, listening to Mr. Tedder.

  Mr. Tedder had the air of the detective who has run his criminal to earth. “Open and shut,” he said. “We know who done it now. Got all the proof we was needing. From information received Mr. Owdon and” (he looked in his note-book) “Mr. Strakey kep watch on the cruiser Cachalot last night where she were moored below the Ferry. At ten forty-three p.m. they hear footsteps approaching. At ten forty-seven….”

  The door opened again and Pete and Dick, very much out of breath, slipped into the room.

  “I’m very sorry we’re late,” said Dick, and dodged past the others to the window, where he stood in the sunlight with both hands behind his back.

  Pete looked from face to face, and stood by Bill and Joe. They looked at him, but could make nothing of the violent nodding of his head.

  “At ten forty-seven,” went on Mr. Tedder, “the witnesses, Mr. Owdon and Mr. Strakey, hear anchors bein’ put on deck. At ten forty-eight they jump up out of their place of concealment and catch the guilty party apushing of the Cachalot off of the bank. He dodge ’em and they give chase and run him till he lock himself into his own boat. Not being official they couldn’t take his name and address, but they catch him proper, and report to me, and sorry I am, young Bill, for your Dad’s as decent a man as there is about this place.”

  Mr. Farland looked at Bill.

  Bill spluttered. “But it was t’other way about. It was Pete and me catch them two pushing of her off.”

  “He said he was going to say that,” said George Owdon.

  “One minute,” said Mr. Farland. “You see that chimney pot, Owdon. Would you mind just fitting your hand to that mark?”

  “Certainly,” said George Owdon. “It’ll be a perfect fit, too, for I made it myself.”

  “How was that?” asked Mr. Farland.

  “Ralph and I knew pretty well all along that it was these boys who had been playing the mischief with the boats, and one evening when there was a bit of a fog, we expected they’d be up to somethi
ng, so I went to their boat and felt the chimney to see if they were at home, or if we had to go to see what they were doing elsewhere.”

  “And you found them not at home?” said Mr. Farland.

  Dorothea almost groaned. Here was one of their best bits of evidence and it did not seem to be evidence at all. She looked at Dick, but Dick had his back to her. He was looking at something in his hands.

  Mr. Farland turned to Bill. “About this affair last night. Did I hear you say you saw these boys pushing off the Cachalot?”

  Bill waited a moment. “Not what you call see ’em,” he said, “not till they chase me to the Death and Glory and we had to ope our door along with their emping buckets down our chimbley.

  “So you admit that you were near the Cachalot at the time they say. Why did you run away if you were doing no harm?”

  “Didn’t want ’em to catch Pete,” said Bill.

  George Owdon looked at his friend. Mr. Farland looked at George.

  “How was it you didn’t see Pete if he was pushing off the Cachalot with Bill?”

  “He wasn’t,” said George.

  Mr. Farland turned to Pete. “Were you there?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Pete.

  “What did you do when Bill ran away?”

  “Sit tight,” said Pete. “That’s what they tell me to do.”

  “Did you see those two pushing off the Cachalot?”

  “Not to know ’em,” said Pete. “But someone push her off. We do know that. We….”

  Mr. Farland turned again to George. “Dark night wasn’t it?” he said. “You had torches, I suppose.”

  It was George’s friend, Ralph, who answered. “With that great flare they made we couldn’t help seeing him.”

  George, for the first time, stopped smiling and gave his friend an angry look.

  “Flare?” said Mr. Farland. “They lit a flare just when they were pushing the boat off?”

  “Not exactly,” said George. “If Pete was there too, that perhaps explains it. We didn’t understand it at the time. There was a white flare, and we saw Bill pushing the boat off. He must have see us at the same moment, for he bolted and we ran him to earth in their old boat.”

  “What was the flare like?” asked Mr. Farland.

  “Like a photographic flashlight,” said George.

  “Did you light a flare?” Mr. Farland asked Pete.

  “I did,” said Bill.

  “But how could you light a flare when you were pushing off the Cachalot?” asked Mr. Farland.

  “I tell you I weren’t pushing of her off.”

  “We saw you,” said George Owdon.

  “Why did you light the flare?” asked Mr. Farland in the same quiet, even tone that he had used all the time.

  “We was taking a photograph,” said Bill. “To catch whoever it were pushing the Cachalot adrift.”

  “They hadn’t got a camera,” said George.

  Mr. Farland swung round.

  “How do you know?”

  Neither George nor his friend answered that question. There was a stir by the window. Dick was fumbling with something in his hands. “It’s done,” he said. “It’ll go black if you keep it in the light. But I can print another.” He dropped his printing frame on the floor, pushed his way to the table and laid a photograph in front of Mr. Farland. Then he tore his spectacles off and began wiping them, and then, with his spectacles in one hand, groped blindly over the carpet for the dropped frame.

  “Come on,” said George’s friend.

  “Not just yet,” said Mr. Farland, without lifting his eyes from the photograph. “Just shut the door, will you, Tedder? This is very interesting.”

  Tom, Bill, Joe, Pete, and Dorothea strained their eyes to see what there was on that small piece of shiny paper lying on Mr. Farland’s blotting pad. George and his friend were also doing their best to see from where they stood.

  “A very remarkable likeness,” said Mr. Farland. “What do you think, constable?”

  Mr. Tedder looked at the photograph.

  “Well, I’ll be danged!” he said.

  Mr. Farland thought for some minutes.

  “The value of evidence,” he said, “fluctuates with its context.” The six detectives heard the words but had not the smallest idea what he meant. He went on. “This photograph will in any court of law” (here he looked gravely at George and his friend) “serve as proof that the boat that was cast off last night was cast off by George Owdon and …”

  “Strakey,” said Mr. Tedder.

  “Strakey,” said Mr. Farland. “But that is not all. It gives an entirely new value to a great deal of other evidence that, without it, I should have been justified in dismissing as unconvincing. Owdon, am I right in thinking that you ride a bicycle?”

  George nodded.

  “And it has Dunlop tyres.” He laid Dick’s drawing on the table in front of him. “This,” he said, “concerns the Ranworth affair. It also has reference to the theft at Potter Heigham. One of our witnesses is prepared to swear that George Owdon was at Potter Heigham on the night that the theft was committed. Again the fact that Owdon and, er, Strakey did in fact cast off the boat last night and informed the constable that they had seen the boat cast off by someone else, who in fact was in the public interest recording by means of photography the truth of that case, suggests with other evidence that might otherwise be unmeaning that Owdon and Strakey were deliberately trying to manufacture evidence to bring innocent persons into disrepute and even into danger of punishment by law. Have you anything to say, Owdon?”

  ‘It was his idea,” said George Owdon.

  “I knew nothing about it except what you told me,” said Ralph Strakey.

  Mr. Farland looked from one to the other of them and back again.

  “Apart from the first lot of shackles,” said Mr. Farland, “which you dropped down the chimney of these boys’ boat on the day when you suffered, I think, some damage to your trousers …” (George stared at the scrap of grey flannel at which Mr. Farland’s finger was pointing). “Apart, I say, from the first lot of shackles, and the second lot on which you left some green paint that had covered your hand when you felt their chimney to make sure that your victims were away, there are more than a gross that have not yet been recovered. Where are they?”

  “Box in the tool-shed,” said George. “Look here. I’m not going to stand any more of this. I’m going.”

  “I shall not keep you,” said Mr. Farland. “But, before you go, let me tell you that I shall be calling on your uncle when I return from my office tonight. Between now and then I shall expect you to write an exact confession of all that you have done in this damnable, yes, damnable, plot to bring discredit on the innocent. As solicitor to the firm you robbed I shall have to decide whether or not I advise them to prosecute. My decision will depend on the completeness of the document that you will have ready for me before I see your uncle. It had better be signed by your accomplice as well as by yourself. You can go.”

  George Owdon and Ralph Strakey left the room without a word. As Joe said afterwards, “If they’d have had tails they’d have tripped on ’em.”

  Dorothea gasped. It was as if she had not breathed for the last five minutes. Tom had turned very red. Dick was again blindly rubbing at his spectacles. Bill and Joe were staring at Mr. Farland as if they saw him for the first time. Pete found he had tears in his eyes. He blinked angrily. “Might have been us,” he said. “Only we didn’t do it.”

  Police Constable Tedder cleared his throat.

  “I’m sorry I ever thought it,” he said. “Ought to have knowed different I ought. If anybody say a word against you young chaps again I’ll know what to say to ’em. My garden’s open to you day or night, for worrams, so you leave they chrysanthemums alone.”

  Mr. Farland was smiling now. He said, “They’ll forgive you, Tedder. It was a wicked plot and a clever plot, and many people have been taken in by it beside you. It wouldn’t be a bad thing if the truth go
t about, though as a solicitor I suppose I ought not to say so.”

  “I’ll tell ’em at the Post Office,” said Mr. Tedder. “I’ll tell ’em at the store. I’ll be up the village, come opening time. Chaps’ll be rare pleased to hear that bit of news.”

  “And I’m late for my office,” said Mr. Farland. “Well, I know some others who’ll be pleased. I’ll be writing to my daughters tonight. And, if I may, I should like to congratulate the detectives….” He looked to see that Mr. Tedder had already gone. “I’m ashamed to think that if you had left it to the law things might have gone badly with you.”

  The door opened, and Mrs. McGinty came in and said, “There’s a gentleman to see you, Sir, urgent….” but she had not got more than three words out of her mouth before the owner of the Cachalot was in the room beside her.

  “They tell me these boys are accused of casting off my boat,” he said. “I’ve come to say I lent her to them and they’re free to cast her off if they want and not get into trouble about it.”

  “They’re not in trouble,” said Mr. Farland.

  “It’s all right,” said Dorothea. “Everything worked beautifully. They fell into the trap, but if the photograph hadn’t come out we might have been done at the last minute. Scotland Yard’s won in the end. I knew it would.”

  Mr. Farland picked up the photograph and passed it to his latest visitor. Then he saw the little pile of money on the table.

  “Six and eightpence,” he said, “is a solicitor’s fee. You are quite right.” He bowed to Dorothea. “But, in this case, as I told you, I could hardly be solicitor for the accused. I seem, indeed, to have been acting as judge. And the one thing you mustn’t do in a court of law is to try to bribe the judge. You had better put this money away before I see it….”

  “Your boat’s all right,” said Joe to the owner of the Cachalot. “They push her off but they never see she were anchored. She lie there beautiful, just off the bank. We’ll put you aboard if you’ll come along to the Death and Glory.”

  “I shall be getting the sack from my partners if I don’t leave you,” said Mr. Farland.

  “Thanks a million times,” said Dorothea.