It was the usual tape pasted on a Cable and Wireless form. Have received cable offering ten shillings a share signed Slattery stop who’s behind him and whats the game—Peter. “And here’s what I replied.” He handed me a typewritten sheet, which in addition to the motive for the offer, which I already knew, gave the name of the man behind it: Slattery’s principals are property dealer Joseph Lingrose and his associates. The cable concluded with these words: These are very slick operators with no other interest but a quick profit. If you sell to them they will dispose of what remains of your heritage and you will regret it to your dying day.
When I had read it the old lawyer said, “You’re a naval man and I don’t expect you to understand what all this is about. But I think you may understand this much. These men are bloodsuckers, and they smell money. Peter will be subjected to very great pressure. I don’t want him to yield to that pressure. I’d rather he made peace with his half-brothers and joined the board of Strode & Company. That’s why I’m going to ignore my instructions and give you his address. Now listen carefully please——” And for the next ten minutes he gave me a detailed and very lucid analysis of the financial position and future prospects of the Strode Orient Line, finishing up with these words: “As a director of Strode & Company he will be on the inside, which will mean that he will be in a position not so much to dictate as to influence decisions. And time is on his side. He’ll be the youngest member of the board by more than ten years.” He picked up his pen and reached for a sheet of paper. “I’ve been waiting for them to make a move like this, and I think Peter has, too. At any rate, he’s done his best these last three years to groom himself for the job.” He wrote down the address for me and then sat for a moment, quite still, staring at it. “I’d like to think that in bringing the two of you together …” But then he sighed and shook his head. “It’s too late for that now.” He folded the sheet of paper, slipped it into an envelope and handed it to me. Then he pressed the bell again. He didn’t say anything more and glancing back from the doorway I saw he had turned his swivel chair to the window and was leaning back in it, staring up at the sky.
The address he had given me was Guthrie & Coy. (Singapore) Ltd., 24 Battery Road, Singapore 1. And underneath he had written: Ask for Charles Legrand. I knew Guthrie’s of course; everybody does who has been stationed in Singapore. Their offices in Bank Chambers look out over the Singapore river and when I rang Latham for details it was apparent why Strode had chosen that particular firm. It had been founded in 1821, but though a relic of the great days of the East India Company it had adjusted its merchanting techniques to the changed conditions of the Far East and now had some twenty offices and godowns in Malaysia alone. “Same sort of business as Strode & Company,” he said. “Except that Guthrie’s have moved with the times. Strodes haven’t—not in recent years.” The name Legrand was also a natural choice, for Ida Roche had told me that her mother had been known as Marie Legrand when she was a model, before her marriage to their father. But why had he felt it necessary to change his name?
I had two days to spare whilst waiting for the plane and I used them to see the children. Those two days made my whole trip—John bubbling over with the news that next term, his last before going to public school, he’d be captaining the cricket team, and Mary already losing her puppy fat and showing obvious signs of girlhood. She already had something of her mother’s looks, the same sparkling vitality, but she was darker and there was a seriousness about her that touched a chord in me. I had to break it to them that they wouldn’t be coming out to Singapore any more for the holidays. They were old enough to be told the facts of the situation and they seemed to understand. But their questions were disconcerting in the circumstances: Will we have a London flat? Will you buy a house in Sussex? You’ll be a director or something like that, won’t you?
How do you answer the questions of youth when they leap-frog all the difficulties? It saddened me, and at the same time it bolstered my courage. Whether I was a civilian or a naval officer made no difference to them—they looked up to me with the same absolute confidence.
It was on the Saturday evening that I arrived back in Singapore. I should have cabled Barbara, of course. But I hadn’t. It wasn’t a conscious attempt to catch her out, though she naturally accused me of that. The truth was that I just didn’t think of it. My mind was full of other things. The result was that my unexpected arrival precipitated the crisis that had long been inevitable. The two chairs drawn up close on the veranda, the two glasses on the table were a warning. Inside the pattern was repeated, dinner for two and a man’s jacket thrown carelessly over the back of a chair. Our house was of the bungalow type and before I had started to move hesitantly and with great reluctance towards the bedroom, Barbara appeared. She was flushed and slightly dishevelled, but with a bloom on her that still had the power to make me catch my breath even though the bloom wasn’t of my getting.
It was a hopeless situation and it was only later that she found her voice and began to upbraid me. For the moment she was as aghast as I was and let me pass without a word. At least he hadn’t tried to hide or anything stupid like that. “You’d better get dressed and then we’ll discuss this over a drink,” I told him. What else could I say? It wasn’t altogether his fault and my appearance must have come as a shock to the poor devil. He was an American businessman.
There are no rules for a situation like this. A combative mood is the prerogative of those who feel that a theft has been committed, but Barbara hadn’t really belonged to me for a long time. There was no anger as I surveyed the final wreck of my family. Bitterness, yes. You can’t help feeling bitter when the evidence that you’ve been cuckolded is forced on you. It’s a slap in the face to your male pride so that the desire to hurt is very strong. For a moment I felt I could have strangled Barbara with my bare hands. But I kept a hold on my temper and gradually the mood passed, leaving me drained of all emotion and with a feeling of icy coldness. I gave him a drink whilst I explained that my lawyers would be in touch with him in due course and then I took the car and drove into Singapore. I spent the night at an hotel, lying awake for hours, remembering every one of Barbara’s vicious, frightened words, the way she’d pleaded, using the children as the basis of her argument, and how she’d finally assumed a sullen victimized air.
There’s no point in dwelling on this or giving the name of the man I cited as co-respondent. I knew him quite well and even liked him. The only reason I have referred to my personal affairs at all is because my break with Barbara had a considerable influence on my subsequent actions. For one thing it left me entirely free of any encumbrance. The children were taken care of—they would spend the holidays with my sister in Scotland as they did whenever they couldn’t come out to join us. Barbara could now fend for herself. For another, it induced in me an urgent desire to involve myself in something that would effectively take my mind off my own affairs. In other words, I was in the right frame of mind to give myself whole-heartedly to any project, however outlandish or fantastic. Such a project was ready to hand.
Charles Legrand was in the phone book, but when I rang him from the hotel on Sunday morning his house-boy told me he was away. I spent part of the day clearing my own personal belongings out of the house. The Symingtons—Alec was an old friend from destroyer days—put a room at my disposal and I moved in with them that evening. On the Monday morning I phoned Guthrie’s. I had presumed “Legrand” was merely away for the week-end. Instead, I discovered he had been gone over a week.
I drove into town then. Battery Road is on the waterfront and as usual the river was thronged with tongkangs lightering goods out to the ships in the Roads. Peter Strode was on the general imports side of the business and I was passed to his boss, a man named Ferguson whose office looked across the river to the godowns on the North Boat Quay. He told me Charles Legrand was on indefinite leave.
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No, and I didn’t ask him. But he mentione
d something about it being quite a long voyage so I imagine it was by sea. He was due for a long leave anyway.”
“When exactly did he go?”
“As far as we’re concerned the Friday before last. Would you like me to check for you?” He reached for the phone and rang Legrand’s house. Ferguson was a very thorough individual. He not only produced the time at which Legrand had left—shortly after ten on the Sunday morning—but also the fact that his car was still at the house. He’d left in a taxi with almost no luggage, just an old bed-roll, a cardboard box containing some books, sextant and chronometer and a roll of charts. “Not unnaturally the house-boy didn’t take the number of the taxi and I’m afraid he doesn’t know the driver. My guess is that Charles was planning a trip up the coast on a native boat.”
It was a shrewd guess on his part and entirely in keeping with what I knew of the man. If he’d gone on a native craft he might be anywhere—on the Malay coast or Burma or up the east side of the archipelago to Siam, even China. And there were all the Indonesian islands. It seemed hopeless. “Have you got a list of sailings?” I asked.
He rang for his clerk and a few minutes later the list was in my hands. The s.s. Montrose and the m.v. Nagasaki—those were the only two ships that had sailed on Sunday, 17th March. Four had left on the Monday and suddenly my quest seemed less hopeless, for one of them was a Strode ship. “Do you happen to know where the Strode Venturer was bound for?” I asked.
“She’s on a regular run. From here she normally goes to the Maldives—to Addu Atoll. Provided, of course, she’s got cargo on board for R.A.F. Gan. It’s a somewhat irregular service, but still a service.”
“Who are the agents?”
“Strode & Company. But she’s under charter to a Chinese outfit, the Tai Wan Shipping Company.”
A Strode ship and her destination the Maldives. Remembering the paper he had written for the R.G.S. I felt certain he was on board. “And she sails direct for Addu Atoll—no stops between?”
“Aye, direct. It usually take her about a week. She should be there this evening or to-morrow morning at the latest.” And he added, “Since it’s urgent the best thing for you to do is cable her.”
But a cable wouldn’t be any use if he didn’t want anybody to know he was on board. “How long will the ship stay at Addu Atoll?” It was now 25th March and I was thinking that if I could get a flight to-morrow I might still catch up with him. Gan was the first stage on Transport Command’s Singapore-U.K. run.
But he couldn’t tell me that. “You’d better ask Strode & Company. It depends how much cargo she’s got on board for Gan.”
I thanked him and went out again into the torrid heat of Battery Road. The Strode offices were only a short distance away and I had to be certain before I committed myself to Transport Command, for I didn’t think they’d fly me back to Singapore. It would be Gan and on to the U.K. But at Strode & Company I came up against a blank wall. The manager, a man named Alexander who looked half Chinese, assured me that no passengers were carried on the Strode Venturer. He was far less helpful than Ferguson and when I suggested he telephoned the charterers he simply said, “The Strode Venturer is a cargo vessel.”
“My information is that Legrand joined the ship on the morning of Sunday, 17th March—the day before she sailed,” I told him. But it was only after I’d informed him that I was acting on the direct instructions of Mr. George Strode that he reluctantly picked up the phone. The conversation was in Chinese and I sat in the worn leather chair facing the desk and waited. The office was a large panelled room hung with pictures of Strode Orient ships that had long since gone to the breaker’s yard. Models of two of them stood under glass cases in the window recesses. The room looked dusty and neglected. So did the frail, dried-up little man behind the desk. “I spoke with Mr. Chu Soong personally,” he said as he put the phone down. “He is manager of the Tai Wan Shipping Company. He assured me that Mr. Legrand is not a passenger on the ship. There are no passengers on board.”
“He may be on board as a guest of the captain,” I suggested.
The sallow face seemed to reflect a momentary glint of humour; it flickered for an instant in the brown eyes, touched the corners of his colourless lips, and then was gone. “Captain Deacon is not the sort of man to encourage guests,” he said, his voice expressionless.
I hesitated. There was only one other possibility. “He may have shipped as a member of the crew.”
The manager shook his head. “There is nobody of that name amongst the crew.”
“May I see the list please?” I should have asked him for it in the first place. Although there was no change in the impassivity of his features I sensed his reluctance to produce it. Finally he got to his feet and went to the filing cabinet in the corner. The list he produced showed the vessel to be manned on the usual scale for a British ship with a Chinese crew. His name did not appear among the twelve Europeans. But then it was unlikely he’d be qualified to ship as an officer. I glanced at the names of the Chinese crew and nearly missed it because I was looking for the name Legrand. He was down as an ordinary sailor—Strode, Peter Charles. I looked up at the manager. “You knew Mr. Strode was on board?”
He stared at me without any change of expression in his eyes. “One of my staff engaged the crew—in the presence of the Mercantile Marine Officer.”
“Of course. But you know very well who he engages.” The list here on his files and the name Strode—he must have known it was one of the family. I got to my feet. “I understand the ship is sailing direct to Gan and that the voyage takes about a week. Is that correct?”
He nodded.
“Exactly when is she due to arrive?”
“This evening.”
“And she leaves when?”
“That depends on the R.A.F.—how quickly they unload her.”
I thanked him and he rose from his chair and gave a little bow as I made for the door. “If there’s any message you’d like sent?”
“No, no message.” But I thought he’d send one all the same and I wondered what Strode would make of the information that I was inquiring about him. But the thing that really puzzled me was the reason for his visit to Addu Atoll. Why would a man who had been offered a large cash sum for his share in the family business suddenly go rushing off to a coral atoll in the middle of the Indian Ocean? I was thinking about this all the way out to Changi, the R.A.F. base. But thinking about it produced no obvious answer. That he’d been forced to use his own name because it was the name on his passport didn’t alter the fact that there was an element of secrecy about his movements. In fact, everything about the man had a curious twist to it, as though he were impelled by some strange inner urge. But at least I’d traced him and since I was still officially a serving officer I had access to a means of transportation which would enable me to catch up with him.
At Changi I saw the Senior Movements Officer. “Gan? Well, yes, I expect it could be arranged … We usually keep a certain number of seats open for men getting on there. But I’ll have to contact the C.O. at Gan. How long do you want to stay?”
“Two days, that’s all.”
“And then home to the U.K.?”
“If that’s possible.”
He nodded. “It’ll be an indulgence passage, of course, and on a space available basis. I’ll give you a buzz to-morrow morning. Okay?”
I gave him the Symingtons’ telephone number and drove back to their house for lunch. There was the business then of clearing up my personal affairs. The bank, lawyers, Naval H.Q.—it wasn’t until after dinner that I could settle down to the most important job of the lot—explaining it all to the children. Those two letters were just about the most difficult I had ever had to write and it was almost midnight before I had finished. Alec gave me a drink then. He also gave me my first briefing on Addu Atoll. I had never been there. All I knew of it was a description given me by one of the Britannia pilots—“Like a huge aircraft carrier stranded on a coral reef.” But that was jus
t the island of Gan, not the whole atoll. Alec, on the other hand, had been on a destroyer that had refuelled there during the war when it was known as Port “T.” “It’s the finest natural harbour I’ve ever seen—a hundred square miles of water entirely protected by reefs and only four navigable channels between them.” He hadn’t been there since, but without my asking he had borrowed from a destroyer the Admiralty Pilot for the West Coast of India which includes the Maldives. He had also borrowed charts 2898 and 2067—the first a general chart of the whole 500-mile chain of islands, the second a large-scale chart of Addu Atoll itself.
These I took up to bed with me and since it might be the last opportunity I had of studying them I worked at them for almost an hour. The charts were like no charts I had ever seen before, for the Maldives are not islands in the normal sense, but groups of coral growth forming lace-like fringes around shallow seas dotted with islets. There were altogether nineteen groups extending from Addu Atoll, which was almost on the equator, 470 miles north to a position west of Ceylon. Some of these groups were over a hundred miles in circumference. It was a great barrier reef with only a few deep-water channels through it—the Equatorial Channel, the One and a Half Degree Channel, the Eight Degree Channel.
But neither the charts nor the Pilot, which as usual went into considerable detail about the topography and inhabitants of the islands, gave me the slightest clue to Peter Strode’s interest in the area. The Adduans were described as “great navigators and traders,” but the only things they exported were dried fish and cowrie shells, their existence dependent on what they harvested from the sea and from the soil of pitifully small islands that were nowhere more than five or six feet above sea level. There was nothing there to attract the attention of a trading concern like Guthrie’s—the islands were far too poor, far too remote. And if he had been going there for purely scientific reasons why ship as crew in circumstances that suggested a desire for secrecy?
The Strode Venturer Page 6