20
French Gets Help from the Sea
French had already met Major Considine at conferences on the case and he had been much impressed by his ability and by the up-to-date way in which he looked at things. Sir Mortimer Ellison had said that Colonel Tressider was what was called in certain circles a downy bird, and that if he said anything wanted looking into, he, French, might take it from him, Sir Mortimer, that it did. French had come to think the same could be said of Major Considine.
By a lucky chance it happened that the Major was expected at the police station in Cowes that morning, and by eleven o’clock he and Hanbury were seated at one side of a table in the latter’s office, with French and Carter opposite.
‘Well, Chief-Inspector,’ Major Considine began, ‘I was glad to hear you wanted a conference. A prelude to action, eh?’
French shrugged. ‘I’m afraid, sir, not the kind of action you are hoping for. I’m not in a position to suggest an arrest.’
‘But it means progress of some kind?’
‘Yes, but the last kind you will want to hear of. I want, sir, a good deal of money to be spent.’
The Chief Constable shook his head. ‘That’s a bad hearing certainly. However, in this world we must pay for our pleasures. Let’s hear the worst.’
‘It arises out of a theory I’ve formed, sir, and which I’d like to put up to you before we go any further. I was considering just how the charge on that launch could have been exploded at exactly the right moment,’ and French went on to describe his idea of Samson’s guilt, the use of an electric circuit, and his belief that the switch and wires must have remained in position, ending up by pointing out the completeness of the proof against Samson their discovery would be.
Considine and Hanbury were obviously impressed.
‘And what exactly do you propose?’ the Major went on.
‘What of course I would like,’ French returned, ‘would be to have the launch lifted. However as I presume that’s out of the question, I was going to ask you for a diver.’
Considine moved uneasily. ‘Cost a hell of a lot of money, I’m afraid. What would it cost us, Hanbury?’
‘Not such a great deal, I fancy, sir,’ the Super answered. ‘I happen to know that the Eureka Salvage people over in Southampton are very slack at present. I’m sure they’d be glad to do the thing cheap. Shall I ring ’em up and ask?’
‘I suppose you’d better.’
Some telephoning took place and then Hanbury reported. ‘The manager says he couldn’t give a figure because he doesn’t know how long the job would take. He says they might spend quite a time finding the boat. But he’s slack and he’d do it for practically cost price. You see, sir,’ he went on confidentially, ‘he has to pay his men retaining wages, and it would save him money to get them working.’
‘Well, we can’t run into it blindly. He could give us a figure per day, I suppose?’
Further telephoning produced a maximum figure per day which Major Considine thought the police finances could bear, and it was decided to go ahead with the work.
‘When can he start?’ asked the Major.
‘Tomorrow morning, if we give him the order at once.’
‘Very well; get it out and I’ll sign it and you can post it immediately.’
After still more telephoning it was arranged that the salvage company’s boat would leave Southampton at six next morning. The salvage manager thought it might save time if he sent a man over to Cowes to try to locate the area of search. This man would cross that afternoon by the 2.20 boat, and the manager asked that someone would meet him.
‘’Pon my soul, I think I’ll go with you tomorrow,’ Major Considine declared. ‘Let’s see. I have an appointment in Ryde tomorrow at eleven. I’ll come on to Cowes and if you’re still there I’ll go aboard and see how you’re getting on.’
French said with unction that he would be very pleased if the Chief Constable could find it convenient to be present, and the conference terminated.
‘Now, Carter,’ French said as they left the station, ‘for something that’ll interest you. What about a spot of lunch?’
Carter said the chief was full of brainy ideas that day, and they turned into a convenient restaurant.
On the arrival of the Medina they made the acquaintance of Mr Tim O’Brien, a burly gentleman in a peaked cap and dungarees, with shrewd eyes and a tongue which betrayed his native land. ‘Is it the Chief-Inspector ye are?’ he said to French, and thereafter appeared to consider him an old friend.
‘Yes,’ he went on apropos of nothing in particular, ‘there was one time a job—’ and he began an involved reminiscence which French had to interrupt with pertinacity before he could make headway with the business in hand.
They called at police headquarters to pick up Hanbury. ‘Mr O’Brien here,’ French explained, ‘has come over to help us to get the area defined over which we’ll search tomorrow. He says that in this job the time will go in locating the launch, and that the diving won’t amount to much.’
Hanbury nodded to the salvage man. ‘Have you any notion how we should set about it?’ he asked.
‘We were discussing that on the way up,’ French answered. ‘It seems there’s a chance of getting something. We have that gentleman who saw the explosion and we have Locke and the three other men who went out in launches, and we have the skipper of the Benbolt, and lastly we have Samson. Mr O’Brien thinks that if we got them all to give us positions and took the mean, we couldn’t be very far wrong.’
Hanbury nodded again. ‘We’ll go up and see Dr Sadler,’ he said shortly, and led the way along the shore towards the west.
‘Dr Sadler’s the man who saw the flash,’ French explained to O’Brien as they walked. ‘A retired doctor of science, I think you said, Super?’
‘Yes. An astronomer, I believe. He’s not been here long: under a year.’
‘Barring he was a shipmaster itself,’ said O’Brien, ‘an astronomer’s just the boy we want. He’ll be acquainted with taking bearings and he’ll have noted where the thing happened.’
The Irishman proved a true prophet. Dr Sadler, though apparently slightly taken aback by the size of his deputation, quickly grasped what was required of him.
‘Oh yes,’ he said at once, ‘I can help you there. But in one dimension only, I’m afraid. I can give you the bearing of the flash fairly accurately, but its distance only very approximately.’
‘Sure, doctor, that’s the best of good news,’ broke in O’Brien. ‘It was the bearing we’d hoped to get from you, though we scarcely expected it. But we never thought you could tell us the distance, and for the life of me I don’t see how you’d know it.’
Sadler smiled rather wanly. ‘Only by an estimate of the time between the flash and the boom,’ he explained. ‘Naturally very approximate, but still a rough guide.’
‘Faith now, but that’s clever. I’ll warrant you didn’t think of that, Chief-Inspector?’
‘I didn’t,’ French admitted. ‘We’re going to be a good deal in your debt, Dr Sadler.’
‘Not at all,’ the scientist returned. ‘I’m rather fond of looking at the lights at night, when it’s clear enough to distinguish them, as it was that night. I suppose it’s because it’s the next best thing to looking at the stars, which I’ve been doing all my life. But of course you’re not interested in that. Well, as I was saying, I was looking at the lights. I had just identified the Calshot Point Light when the flare went up. It was about ten degrees west of Calshot.’
O’Brien was enthusiastic. ‘We couldn’t have asked for better than that,’ he declared warmly. ‘It would be about a point, doctor?’
‘About that. There are really about eleven degrees in a point, but a point is as near as I could go.’
‘A point west of Calshot,’ the salvage man repeated. ‘And where would you say that would be, doctor? See the west end of that long grey shed? What about that?’
‘Just about that, I should sa
y. If the boat sank at once, I’ve no doubt you’ll find her close to that line.’
‘Aye, be jabbers, we’ve to think about that too. If she didn’t sink at once, goodness only knows where she mayn’t have got to.’
‘She must have sunk pretty quickly,’ French pointed out, ‘because of where Samson was picked up.’
‘True for you, Chief-Inspector.’ O’Brien gazed through a pair of binoculars in the indicated direction. ‘Bad cess to it,’ he went on, ‘I can’t pick up another bearing. You see,’ he turned to French, ‘if you can get two bearings on a line to the one side of where you’re searching, the skipper can see where he is for himself. But if you can only get one bearing someone has to stay ashore and signal port or starboard to the ship. I expect I’ll be for that.’
‘If you want to signal you can do so from my front garden,’ said Dr Sadler. ‘It’s fairly private.’
O’Brien was obliged. This would suit him exactly. He would be up about seven if the morning were clear. ‘And now, doctor,’ he went on, ‘you were saying about the distance the flash was away. We’d thank you to tell us about that.’
‘I estimated between four and five seconds passed between the flash and the boom,’ Sadler answered. ‘If so, at eleven hundred feet per second that means about a mile or less from the house—say three-quarters of a mile from the shore.’
‘That agrees pretty well with what Captain Jones of the Benbolt said, and also with Samson’s statement,’ French pointed out. ‘Both said they were about a mile from the shore.’
‘Good enough,’ O’Brien declared. ‘We’ll not get it much nearer than that.’
‘Better see Locke all the same,’ Hanbury suggested. ‘We can get hold of him quite easily.’
‘Yes,’ French approved. ‘The more, the merrier.’
Having thanked Dr Sadler for his information, they returned into the town in search of Locke. They ran him to earth in his club, and he at once confirmed the other evidence. ‘A mile,’ he declared, ‘would be the outside figure. I should say three-quarters would be nearer it.’
In the street once more, French took Hanbury aside. ‘There’s one thing we mustn’t overlook,’ he pointed out. ‘Suppose for argument’s sake Samson is guilty. Suppose he sees the diving going on and tumbles to what we’re doing. Suppose that the wire and switch are there. Well, he’ll know at once that he’s for it. You see?’
Hanbury nodded significantly. ‘That’s true, Chief-Inspector. You think he might slip his cable?’
‘I think we’d be wise to keep him under observation till this affair is over.’
‘I’ll arrange it,’ Hanbury declared, and the men separated.
It was not yet light when next morning the optimistically-named steamship Eureka left Southampton with, in addition to its crew and much strange apparatus, two passengers, Chief-Inspector French and Sergeant Carter. As is somewhat unusual for passengers without maritime connections, they occupied positions of honour on the bridge, the guests of the skipper.
Captain Soutar was as taciturn as his satellite O’Brien was talkative. He explained briefly that the morning was fine, that the bridge was the only place there was room to move on that damned hooker, and that they would be at the scene of operations in about an hour, and then relapsed into a moody silence.
In darkness they sailed down the famous waterway and it was not till they were near their objective that the south-eastern sky began to brighten and the low lines of the various coasts came dimly into view.
The crew however had not been idle during the run. Apparatus was being brought on deck and overhauled. Winches, of which there seemed to be a vast number in every part of the ship, were clanking slowly and unsteadily, getting heated up and cleared of condensed water. The diver, a hercules named Kendrick, was screwing and unscrewing the valve of his helmet, which lay on a packing-case beside him, as if dissatisfied with the way it was working. French went down and began to chat with him, taking the opportunity of explaining exactly what he wanted him to look for. ‘And by the way,’ he went on, ‘it’s all very confidential. So I want you to keep what you see to yourself.’
The giant nodded. ‘I’ve got you,’ he agreed, and went on to talk of the job. ‘Where you’re going to lose the time,’ he said, with a deplorable absence of originality, ‘is searching for the blinking boat. With a small thing like that we may pass right over her and the grabs may miss her. And in these waters we may get a dozen hulls before we strike the right one.’
‘You’re not encouraging,’ French smiled.
‘On the other hand we may come on her first shot. You never know your luck. But once we find her, your job won’t take long.’
French watched the proceedings with interest. First the ship was taken to within half a mile of the shore and manœuvred on to the line with her bows pointing towards Calshot. It was still too dark to see the burly O’Brien and the flags that he would afterwards use, but red and green lights seen in the correct direction were taken to be his contribution to the proceedings. Strange objects were then lowered over the stern and checked carefully for depth and the ship moved slowly forward, steering to right or left according to the colour of O’Brien’s light. For something over half a mile they crawled on, and then, turning, came back to where they had started from.
‘O’Brien moves a few feet to the side each time,’ Captain Soutar explained, ‘so that we may sweep all the ground once and none of it twice, but where the tide runs strongly like here, it’s chancy work.’ He shook his head lugubriously.
French was soon to learn its monotony. Backwards and forwards they swept, slowly and painfully and quite without result. O’Brien had early come into view and exchanged his lights for flags. Time was passing and French was beginning to get peckish, when a cry went up from the men who were operating the drags.
It appeared that they had hooked an obstruction, and for a few moments all was ordered confusion. The engines were stopped and anchors were dropped in three directions, to hold the Eureka stationary over the object. It was all done with immense skill, but it took time.
Captain Soutar was, however, no sooner satisfied as to their position than Kendrick was ready to go down. At the first call of an obstruction he had begun to put on his gear. French had never seen diving and was immensely interested. First the giant put on numerous socks and sweaters and a beret, and then drew on the strong rubbered canvas dress. French was surprised to find that the sleeves ended at the wrists, the hands being ungloved. Rubber bands round the wrists made a watertight joint, so he was assured, but it seemed to him that the wrists must be badly constricted. However, Kendrick didn’t seem to mind. French noticed, however, that he looked very sharply to see that the bands were properly in position.
For a few minutes the man sat in the dress, entirely clothed up to the brass ring which went round his neck. Then he gave a wave of his great hand and his assistant lifted on the heavy brass helmet, screwing it fast. Two other men were now working the pump, which was supplying air to the imprisoned diver. Huge boots with enormously thick leaden soles were quickly strapped on, and Kendrick was ready to go down.
Giant and all as he was, he could scarcely move under the weight of his trappings. They would, however, be balanced by the buoyancy of the air in the dress once he was under water, so it was explained to French. He was assisted to a ladder which had been lowered over the side, and he began to descend. First the great boots disappeared beneath the water, then his body and the powerful electric light he was carrying, and at last his round polished helmet, its glass window winking like the eye of some brazen cyclops. In a moment nothing was to be seen of him except the rubber air supply tube, leading down like a water-snake heading for the depths, the twitching rope which he held in his hand, and the fizz of the bubbles of surplus air, released from the automatic valve in the helmet.
He was a surprisingly long time going down. He had to take his time, so it was explained to French, because of the increasing pressure, too sudden an alt
eration of which might be dangerous. ‘In deep work,’ said the skipper, ‘the going down and coming up takes most of the time. But here it’s shallow enough to do it without much delay.’
‘What would happen to him if he was too quick?’ French asked.
‘Nothing very much here,’ Soutar answered. ‘But if a man came up suddenly from a great depth his eardrums would go and his blood would boil. An increase of pressure’s all right if it’s the same inside and out. But high internal pressure and low external will kill you. We have airtight chambers on board and if a man comes up too quickly we rush him into the chamber and blow up the pressure till it’s equal to what he was under below. That puts him right again.’
‘And then what happens, because he’s surely just as much cut off in the chamber as below water?’
‘We let the pressure down slowly so that he has, so to speak, time to leak off inside. Then he’s all right.’
There was a telephone in Kendrick’s helmet and one of the assistants was wearing earphones. This man now came forward.
‘He says we’ve hooked a small steamer, sir,’ he explained. ‘There’s no sign of the boat anywhere round and he’s coming up.’
‘We need scarcely hope to get it first shot,’ the skipper said to French. ‘It’s a pity it’s so deep, else a plane might have seen it on the bottom. But it’ld be too small for a plane to pick out at that depth. Better go down, gentlemen, and have something to eat. I’ll join you when we get under way again.’
As soon as Kendrick had come aboard the anchors were raised and the sweeping began again. French and Carter did full justice to the rough but excellent meal which was provided, and then with pipes drawing comfortingly, they watched from the bridge the slow back and forward traverse of the ship. Time began to drag. French realised that what he had been told about the difficulty of finding the boat was only too true.
Mystery on Southampton Water Page 24