Mystery on Southampton Water

by Freeman Wills Crofts

  ‘Next day was Friday, and at intervals during the morning I took first single tickets to Portsmouth, Fratton, Petersfield and Haslemere, so that I could leave the train as soon as I had done my job. Then at four-fifty I repeated my manœuvres of the previous week, except that when Haviland took his place in the tea car I sat down in the same division, only still at the opposite side of the corridor. I was at the single table, you understand, and he at the double.

  ‘My success now depended on my having luck on two points. The first was that no one else should come and sit in that division, the second that Haviland’s sugar bowl should not be markedly fuller than my doped one. On this second point I saw at once that I was all right, and to my great satisfaction no other passengers entered.

  ‘The first thing I did on sitting down was to put the sugar bowl on my table back against the window and to prop the menu card up in front of it. I was carrying the doped sugar bowl in a despatch case, and this I put on the table, and behind the raised lid I managed to exchange the bowls. My doped bowl, that is, was now on the table hidden from Haviland by the card, and the “good” bowl was in my despatch case on the seat beside me. You follow me?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘You must understand that while Haviland could not see the bowl and would think, if he noticed and thought about it at all, that my table had been left without sugar, this would not apply to the attendant. It would spoil the whole scheme if the attendant brought another bowl of sugar, but he would not do so, because he would see my bowl over the edge of the card.’

  Brand nodded without speaking.

  ‘I then went to the attendant and said that I had a nasty headache, and would he please let me have my tea as soon as possible. He was most sympathetic and brought it at once. As soon as he had gone, I leaned across and asked Haviland if I might borrow his sugar as mine had been forgotten. He was reading and he pushed it over without a word. I found I had no difficulty in changing the bowls, so that in ten seconds, when I handed back the bowl, it was the doped one that was on Haviland’s table.’

  ‘Bless my soul, King, but that was good,’ Brand commented with unwilling admiration.

  ‘Thanks to my bits of luck, things were going all right,’ King admitted, ‘but I was by no means out of the wood. You can imagine I was fairly excited, but I choked this down. I didn’t want Haviland to remember me more clearly than was necessary, so like himself I buried myself in my newspaper, and we had no conversation. In due course his tea came, and over my paper I watched him take his two cups and put in four doped lumps.

  ‘When he had taken his second cup I poured out my own second, and again I asked him for the sugar, apologising in a word as one would. Again he pushed it over without looking at me. This time, as you can imagine, I repeated my manœuvre and once more changed the bowls, so that I handed him back his own original bowl of “good” sugar, while keeping behind my menu card my own bowl of doped. I then had occasion to take a book out of my despatch case, and this gave me the opportunity to make the further necessary change of the bowls. When the doped bowl was back in my despatch case, I can tell you I felt a lot happier.’

  ‘I don’t know how you ever thought of it,’ Brand repeated.

  ‘This was my next fence safely taken, but still I didn’t feel safe. If the old boy should become suspicious and accuse me of anything, a search would give me away. I therefore took my despatch case to the lavatory. There I filled the basin and dropped in all the sugar from my bowl. While it was melting I burnt the paper wrappings, destroyed the ashes. Then I broke the bowl, and threw the pieces out of the window one at a time. When the sugary water had been run off and the basin washed round, the last trace of the affair was gone, and at least for what was past, I felt absolutely safe.’

  ‘I should say so!’ Brand agreed.

  ‘I had got over all my fences so far, but there was one still to be taken, infinitely the worst of the lot. I went back to my seat and waited, and soon I had the satisfaction of seeing Haviland lie back in his corner and shut his eyes. In five minutes I could have sworn he was asleep.

  ‘Just then we stopped at Haslemere, and I was able to make sure. He was sound asleep. And here I had another amazing piece of luck. The people in the next division of the car got out, leaving the end in which Haviland and I were sitting otherwise quite unoccupied. The attendants had finished clearing up and had also vanished. I decided that when we left Haslemere I must get on with the business.

  ‘I crossed the corridor and sat down beside Haviland. As I have said, he was at the double seat side of the corridor. I slipped my hand into his pocket. He never moved.’

  ‘Ghastly risk,’ Brand commented.

  ‘It wasn’t really,’ King replied. ‘I could see the door through which the attendant would enter, and I could have got my hand out of Haviland’s pocket before he reached me. But if I was caught I had an answer ready. I would say I had been sitting across the corridor and had thought Haviland was ill and had crossed over to see. He would be ill—doped—and I would have been justified.’

  ‘You foresaw everything.’

  ‘I tried to. But as a matter of fact I wasn’t disturbed. No one came in. Then I had a terrible job. I soon spotted the keys. I saw a chain going into his right trousers pocket, and I guessed the keys were attached to it, and so they were. But from the way he was sitting, it was the very devil to get them out. However, my luck stood. He never waked and I managed it at last. They were just what I expected—a bunch of seven small sized keys, mostly Yale.

  ‘I had prepared a dozen wax moulds in tin cases. I couldn’t get the keys off the chain, so I had to sit there beside Haviland while I was taking my impressions. It’s some job, as I expect you know, to take impressions of Yale keys—much more difficult than with ordinary keys. I didn’t hurry therefore, but worked as carefully as I could. By the time I had finished, we were coming into Petersfield. I got the keys pushed back into Haviland’s pocket and moved across the corridor just as we ran into the station.

  ‘It seemed to me that if Haviland didn’t wake at Portsmouth, I should be better out of it. I therefore got out at Petersfield. No one saw me leave the car.’

  ‘My word!’

  ‘I had luck all through,’ King declared. ‘Half a dozen things might have happened to prevent my success, but they just didn’t. I really had amazing luck. But I’d like to know what did happen to old Haviland. Did he wake up at Portsmouth, or did they send him to the police station or to hospital, or what?’

  ‘What happened to you?’ asked Brand.

  ‘After leaving the train? I got a bus from Petersfield to Winchester, and from there made my way here in the ordinary way. The affair had a perfectly tame ending. But’—King absolutely beamed with delight—‘in my drawer are the Chayle keys, and nobody knows it or will know it but you and me.’

  ‘It’s just about the brainiest bit of work I’ve ever heard of,’ Brand admitted. ‘And what do you propose to do next?’

  ‘Nothing, tonight. I’ll not be ready with the keys. It’s a perfectly hellish job filing them up. An error of a hair’s breadth will put you wrong and make the whole job useless.’

  ‘Tomorrow night, then?’

  ‘Yes, tomorrow night. We’ll repeat last Wednesday’s performance, except that this time we’ll get into the sheds. And then, Brand, then, old man, we shall know what we shall know!’ King chuckled in triumph, and though Brand hated the means, he chuckled too when he thought of the almost certain end.

  As the two young men rounded a bend on the road they met Tasker. He stopped and they began to chat.

  ‘You were away the last couple of days?’ he presently said to King.

  ‘I spent the night in Town,’ King returned, ‘and I dare say you can imagine how. I was trying to get information about this wretched problem.’

  ‘So I supposed,’ Tasker agreed. ‘I’ll be glad when this period’s over, King.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘Of course, I know that a definite arrangement was made
that you would do as you liked this month and I’m not grumbling, but I do think the head of a business should know what the other members are doing.’ He became more serious. ‘I wish you could give me some information. I’m getting upset about what we’re going to do. Here’s Saturday, and on next Wednesday the board meets, and if you haven’t got your process by then, we’ll be in the soup. Can you not tell me how you’re getting on?’

  King nodded. ‘Your criticism’s justified, I admit. Obviously you’re entitled to know everything that’s going on, and that before anyone else. But I ask you to believe me, Tasker, that the reason why I haven’t told you whether or not I’m going to succeed, is that I don’t know. It’s like this, you understand. There are several lines of enquiry into this thing, any one of which might get us what we want. Well, I’ve worked four of these to the very bone, and they’ve led nowhere. Now I’m on to the fifth. It seems promising—more promising, I think, than any of the others—but I can’t say whether it’ll turn out trumps, because I don’t know. But I’ll say this: there’s a reasonable hope of success. Certainly I’ll know by Wednesday whether there’s any use in going on, or whether I’m beaten.’

  ‘Well, an agreement is an agreement and I don’t want to force your confidence. But your success or failure is going to make a hell of a difference to all of us.’

  ‘Don’t I know it! And you know that if I can do it, it’ll be done.’

  Tasker supposed that that was so, and with a nod passed on.

  6

  Disaster

  All the next day, Sunday, the two young men anxiously watched the weather. Fog had come down, a regular pea-soup fog. Fog in moderation would be their greatest ally, enabling them to go on their dubious occasions with despatch and secrecy. But fog in excess, as it was now, was an enemy which might easily upset their whole plan of campaign. Brand was one of the best amateur navigators on Southampton Water, but even he shook his head over the possibilities of reaching Chayle, as he gazed into the blank wall of mist which surrounded them.

  ‘We can do it by dead reckoning,’ King urged. ‘We’ll have to in fact. I must give myself some time to experiment with what I find. I daren’t wait for another night.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ Brand returned. ‘But it won’t help us if we find ourselves ashore in the Medina or athwart the bows of some liner.’

  ‘We must just take the risk. If we’ve luck, the fog will be all to the good. We don’t want to be seen by coastguards or lightkeepers. And if it’s as thick as this your liners’ll be at anchor.’

  Fortunately in the afternoon it cleared slightly. It was still very thick, but it was not utterly hopeless. They could see twenty yards instead of five.

  They took the same precautions as on the previous occasion. The whole technical staff had worked on that Sunday, but when four o’clock came King said he was fed up, that that was enough for the day, and that they’d go home. He was the last to leave the room, and when he did so the rope was hanging out of his office window. Having made sure that the watchman had seen them leave the building, he and Brand returned by this emergency means. In this the fog was their ally, preventing any chance of their being seen by passers-by. Getting down to it at once, they managed by dinner time to produce what looked like a fair night’s work. This would be required for the building up of their alibi, and if they were asked where they had been between four o’clock and eight, they would say, gone for a long tramp to clear the cobwebs of the laboratory out of their brains. If they couldn’t prove this, the fog would prevent anyone else from disproving it.

  After dinner they once more told the boarding-house people their story of late work. As before they picked up the ladder and kit, carried them along the beach to the boathouse, and put them on Brand’s launch. Going round to the entrance to the works, they made the same point of greeting the night watchman, turned on the light in the laboratory, locked the door of the private office and reached the ground by the rope. With the same caution they got out the launch, rowing away from the wharf with muffled oars.

  So far everything had been easy; the fog had not seriously inconvenienced them. But now as they rowed out into the Hamble Estuary it began to grow more important. It was not dark, for above the fog the moon was still nearly full. But all contact with their fellows was cut off. They were floating on an illimitable extent of black water, surrounded with a faintly luminous haze, and apparently alone in the universe. Tonight King was rowing and Brand, bent over watch and compass and chart, was steering.

  ‘We’d want a patent log for this job,’ Brand grumbled. ‘Hang it all, dead reckoning by time alone is not much good, particularly when you’re dealing with tides.’

  ‘We’ll do our best,’ King answered shortly.

  When they had reached what Brand judged was the same point as on the previous occasion, King started the motor and lit the lights. Brand headed as straight as he knew for the Calshot lightship. If they went anywhere within a couple of hundred yards of it they should see the light, and if they saw the light the greater part of their difficulties would be over. All around them were horns and bells and fog sounds of various kinds. But in most cases it was impossible to tell the direction from which these sounds were coming, particularly as their own motor was making a quite respectable noise. King added to the raucous sounds by a free rendering of themes from the ‘Unfinished Symphony’; at least Brand believed that to be their source.

  ‘Keep a good look out, King,’ Brand said after a few more minutes; ‘we should be on to the Calshot Light any moment.’

  He had scarcely spoken when King cried out. Right ahead a little ball of light was slowly growing.

  Brand turned sharply to port and the luminosity swung round to their starboard bow, drew abeam, remained abeam for some seconds as they traversed the arc of a circle into a sou’-sou’-west direction. Then it slowly faded out on their quarter.

  ‘Jolly good,’ King said warmly.

  ‘Lucky so far,’ Brand agreed. ‘Now for the Egypt Point light. We’d have no trouble if it wasn’t for these confounded tides.’

  The tides in this waterway are indeed confusing, not only for the amateur, but for the professional also. Two separate waves or pulses of tide come into Southampton Water and the area connecting it to Cowes Roads: one via the Solent and a later one through Spithead. The result is that there are really the equivalent of four tides in the twenty-four hours instead of two. A good deal of experience had given Brand a fair idea of how the currents ran, but even so, a mistake would be the easiest thing in the world. Fortunately their problem was not complicated by wind, or they might indeed have given it up as hopeless. Fortunately also the distance was not great, only some three miles. With luck they would do it in quarter of an hour.

  Both agreed that they must keep the launch to its normal full speed, as the danger of losing their way was so much greater than that of collision. As a matter of fact they saw no ships, though once the deep-throated roar of a big foghorn sounded unpleasantly close.

  At the end of fifteen minutes King reduced the speed to dead slow. If they missed the Egypt Point Light nothing would be easier than to run ashore, and though such a contingency on soft slob mightn’t harm the launch, if they struck a stone it might hole her.

  For three or four minutes they nosed slowly along, and then for a moment the fog thinned and they caught on their starboard bow a light. It waxed and waned.

  ‘Got him!’ Brand breathed triumphantly. ‘Bit of luck the fog lifted! We were heading straight for the shore.’

  ‘We’re pretty well all right now,’ King returned. ‘We’ve done the worst at all events.’

  They swung round west till the light came on their port bow. For a mile or more they ran west, then turned south-west for another two or three.

  ‘We should be nearly there,’ said Brand. ‘Shut off that motor and get out the sculls.’

  As he spoke Brand steered due south. The fog had come down thicker again and they could see a very sh
ort distance over the water. But it felt damper to the skin.

  ‘It’s going to turn to rain,’ Brand remarked. ‘Lucky for us if it does. Steady!’ he went on in a more urgent voice. ‘I hear the wash of ripples on the shore.’

  King held water and a moment later they grounded gently. King silently unshipped his oars and lowered the anchor overboard. Then loading themselves as before, the men got out over the bow. This time they stepped into less than six inches of water. There was no fear of the launch going aground, as the tide was still flowing.

  They were sure from the distance they had come that they must be on the west side of the works. Accordingly they turned east. The fog once again had thinned and they could see they were opposite low irregular clay cliffs. Soon these tailed out and they knew they had reached the low ground on which the works stood. A few more moments and the wall loomed faintly up, and with a sigh of relief they realised that their first difficulty had been overcome.

  Without a word they repeated their previous actions. King extended the ladder and set it against the same point on the wall, and then climbing up, laid the mat across the glass and went down inside by the rope ladder. Brand followed and after halting a moment to listen, they crossed to the new shed and passed round it to its door.

  Now came the critical point of their adventure.

  Had King got hold of the right keys, and if so, had he been able to make sufficiently correct duplicates? Both men held their breath as King produced his bunch. And then a great feeling of relief swept over them, as one of the keys went into the lock, turned, and the door opened!

  ‘Look out, Brand,’ King whispered, ‘some of those machine fellows may be in here. You’d better stay near the door, and if I’m nabbed, get home as quick as you can.’