by Sapper
The yacht itself was a miniature floating palace. It had a swimming pool and a gymnasium: it had listening-in sets and an electric piano encrusted in precious stones – or almost. There was gold plate for use at dinner, and the plebeian silver for lunch. In fact it was the supreme essence of blatant vulgarity.
In addition to the guests there were the Wallaby Coon Quartette, the Captain, the wireless operator, four maids, the chef and the writer of The Three Hundred Best Cocktails as barman. The crew numbered sixteen.
So that when the Hermione steamed slowly down Southampton Water there were in all forty souls on board. The sea was like a mill-pond; the date was August 2nd. On August 4th a marconigram was received in London by the firm of Bremmer and Bremmer. It was from Mr Miller, and is of interest merely because it is the last recorded message received from the Hermione. From that moment she completely disappeared with every soul on board.
At first no one worried. When the Hermione failed to arrive at the Azores, which was originally intended, it was assumed that Mr Miller and his guests had changed their route. But when, on August 10th, Bremmer and Bremmer having obtained the information required by Mr Miller proceeded to wireless it to the Hermione, no response whatever was received from her. The sea was still beautifully calm: no report of any storms had been received from the Atlantic. And somewhere in the Atlantic the Hermione must be, since it was definitely certain she had not passed Gibraltar and entered the Mediterranean.
By August 12th the whole Press – English and American – was seething with it.
“Mysterious Disappearance of Multi-Millionaire’s Yacht.”
“Cosmo A Miller beats it with Wallaby Quartette.”
“SY Hermione refuses wireless calls,” etc., etc. Still no one took it seriously. The yacht was fitted with a Marconi installation: the sea was still like glass. The general opinion was that there had been a break-down in the engines, and that for some obscure reason the wireless was out of action.
But by August 20th, when the silence was still unbroken, the tone of the Press began to change. Once again I will refer to my file of cuttings, and quote from the Morning Herald of that date.
“The mysterious silence of the SY Hermione has now become inexplicable. The last communication from her was received more than a fortnight ago. Since then nothing further has been heard, though Mr Cosmo Miller, her owner, has been repeatedly called up on important business matters. It is impossible to avoid a feeling of grave anxiety that all is not well.”
But what could have happened? The wireless operator was known to be a first-class man, and it seemed impossible that such damage could have happened to his instruments, in a perfectly calm sea, that he would be unable to effect a temporary cure.
Then some bright specimen had an idea which held the field for quite a while. It was just an advertisement – an elaborate publicity stunt. They were receiving all these messages, and taking no notice of them merely in order to keep the eyes of the world focused on them. Such a thing, it was argued, was quite in keeping with at any rate Mrs Miller’s outlook on life. And it wasn’t until August 25th came and went that one of the officials at Southampton Docks shattered that theory. The Hermione’s bunkers only held sufficient coal for the fortnight, and that only when steaming at her economic speed. And it was now twenty-four days since she had sailed.
By this tune the public on both sides of the Atlantic were very gravely perturbed. The wildest rumours were flying round: from pirates to sea serpents all sorts of suggestions were put forward.
Both the British and American navies despatched light cruisers to discover what they could; and it may be remembered that when Mr Wilmot’s patriotic offer to place his airship at the disposal of the authorities was refused, he himself, at his own expense, went far out into the Atlantic to see if he could find out anything.
Nothing was ever discovered; no trace was found of the yacht. And no trace ever will be; for she sank with every soul on board.
Now for the first time I will put down what happened, and show the connection between the two chains of events – the big and the so-called little between the disappearance of the Hermione and Robin Gaunt’s cry over the telephone. I will tell of the death of Mr Wilmot, and of what happened to the man called Helias in that lonely spot in Cornwall. And, perhaps, most important of all, certainly most interesting, I will set down word for word the last statement of Robin Gaunt.
Chapter 8
In which we come to Black Mine
But before I go on to pick up the thread of my story, I wish again to reiterate one thing. On September 5th, when Drummond rang me up at my office asking me to go round to his house at once, there was no inkling in my mind that there was any connection. Nor was there in his. The events I have just recorded were as irrelevant to us as they appear to be on these pages. In fact the last thing known to us which was connected in any way with Robin Gaunt in our minds was the discovery of Miss Simpson’s body at Paignton.
So it was with a considerable feeling of surprise that I listened to what Drummond had to say over the telephone.
“Found out something that may be of value: can you come round at once?”
I went, to find, to my amazement, a man with him whom I had never expected to see again. It was little rat face, who had been put to watch Toby Sinclair and whom we had saved from hanging in Number 10. He was sitting on the edge of his chair, plucking nervously at a greasy hat in the intervals of getting outside a quart of Drummond’s beer.
“You remember Mr Perton, don’t you, old boy?” said Drummond, winking at me. “I happened to meet him this morning, and reminded him that there was a little matter of a fiver due to him.”
“Well, gentlemen,” said Mr Perton nervously, “I don’t know as ’ow I can call it due, for I didn’t do wot you told me to. But I couldn’t, sir: I ’ad a dreadful time. You won’t believe wot them devils did to me. They ’ung me.”
“Did they indeed?” said Drummond quietly. “They don’t seem to have done it very well.”
“Gawd knows ’ow I escaped, guv’nor. They ’ung me, the swine – and left me swinging. I lost consciousness, I did – and then when I come to again, I was laying on the floor in the room alone. You bet yer life I didn’t ’alf do a bolt.”
“A very sound move, Mr Perton. Have some more beer? Now do you know why they hanged you?”
“Strite I don’t, guv’nor. They said to me, they said – ‘You’re bait, my man: just bait.’ They’d got me gagged, the swine: and they was a-peering out of the window. ‘Here they come,’ says one of ’em: ‘trice ’im up!’ So they triced me up, and then they give me a push to start me swinging. Then they does a bunk into the next ’ouse.”
‘How do you know they bunked into the next house?” said Drummond.
“Well, guv’nor, there was a secret door, there was – and they’d brought me from the next house.”
He looked at us nervously, as if afraid of the reception of his story.
“How long had you been in the next house, Mr Perton,” asked Drummond reassuringly, “before they brought you through the secret door to hang you?”
“Three or four hours, sir: bound and gagged. Thrown in the corner like a ruddy sack of pertaters. Just as I told you, sir.”
“I know, Mr Perton; but I want my friend to hear what you have to say also. During those three or four hours whilst you were thrown in the corner, you heard them talking, didn’t you?”
“Well, I didn’t pay much attention, sir,” said Mr Perton apologetically. “I was a-wondering wot was going to ’appen to me too ’ard. But there was a great black-bearded swine, who was swearing something awful. And two others wot was sitting at a table drinking whisky. They seemed to be fair wild about something. Then the other bloke come in – the bloke wot had been in Clarges Street that morning, and the one wot had brought me from the Three Cows to the ’ouse. They shut up swearing, though you could see they was still wild.
“‘You know wot to do,’ says the new man
, ‘with regard to that thing.’ He points to me, and I listened ’ard.
“‘We knows wot to do,’ says the black-bearded swab, ‘but it’s damned tomfoolery.’
“‘That’s for me to decide,’ snaps the new bloke. ‘I’ll get the others next door, and I’ll do the necessary once they’re there.’ They didn’t say nothing then abaht making me swing, you see, so…
“Quite, Mr Perton,” interrupted Drummond. “But they did say something else, didn’t they?”
“Wot, that there bit about Land’s Hend? Wot was it ’e said, now – old black beard? Yus – I know. ‘We’ll all be in ’ell’s end,’ he said, ‘not Land’s Hend if we goes on like this.’ And then someone cursed ’im for a ruddy fool.”
“You’re sure of that, Mr Perton, aren’t you? I could hear the excitement in Drummond’s voice. “I mean the bit about Land’s End?”
“Sure as I’m sitting ’ere, sir.”
He took a large gulp of beer, and Drummond rose to his feet.
“Well, I’m much obliged to you, Mr Perton. I have your address in case I want it, and since you had such a rotten time, I must make that fiver a tenner.” He thrust two notes into the little man’s hand, rushed him through the door, and bawled for Denny to let him out. Then he came back, and his face was triumphant.
“Worth it, Stockton: worth day after day, night after night searching London for that man. Heavens! the amount of liquor I’ve consumed in the Three Cows.”
“Great Scott!” I cried, “is that what you’ve been doing?”
“That – and nothing else. And then I ran into him this morning by accident outside your rooms in Clarges Street. Still, it’s been worth it: we’ve got a clue at last.”
“You mean?” I said, a little bewildered.
“Land’s End, man: Land’s End,” he cried. “I nearly kicked the desk over when he said it first. Then I sent for you: I wanted him to repeat his story for confirmation. He did – word for word. The fog is lifting a little, old boy: one loose end is accounted for at any rate. I always thought they hanged the poor little swine in order to get a sitting shot at us. As they told him – bait. But, anyway, that is all past, and a trifle. He’s got a tenner in his pocket and two quarts of beer in his stomach – and we can let him pass out of the picture. We, on the contrary, I hope and trust, are just going to pass into it again.”
“You really think,” I said a little doubtfully, “that we’re likely to find out anything at Land’s End?”
“I’m going to have a damned good try, Stockton,” he said quietly. “On his own showing the little man was listening with all his ears at that time, and it seems incredible to me that he would invent a thing like that. We know that the rest of his story was true – the part that he would think us least likely to believe. Very well, then: assuming that black beard did make that remark it must have had some meaning. And what meaning can it have had except the obvious one? – namely, that the gang was going to Land’s End. Why they went to Land’s End, Heaven alone knows. But what this child knows is that we’re going there too. I’ve warned in the boys: Toby, Peter and Ted are coming with us. Algy is stopping behind here to guard the fort.”
“What about MacIver?” I asked. Drummond grinned.
“Mac hates leaving London,” he remarked.
“And if by any chance we do run into gorse bush, I feel MacIver would rather cramp my style. When can you start?”
“Well,” I said doubtfully. “After lunch?”
“I’ve got a rather important brief.”
“Damn your brief.”
I did, and after lunch we started. We went in the Hispano, and spent the night in Exeter.
“Tourists, old lads,” remarked Drummond. That’s what we are. Visiting Penzance. Let’s make that our headquarters.”
And so at four o’clock on the 6th September five tourists arrived at Penzance and took rooms at an hotel. But should any doubting reader who dwells in that charming West Country town search the various hotel registers I can tell him in advance that he will find no record of our names. Further, I may say that mine host at Exeter would have been hard put to it to recognise the five men who got out of the Hispano in Penzance. There was no point in handicapping ourselves unnecessarily, and Drummond and I at any rate would be certainly recognised by the gang, even if the others weren’t.
The next day we split up. The plan of action we had decided on was to search the whole of the ground west of a line drawn from St Ives to Mount’s Bay. We split it into five approximately equal parts with the help of a large-scale ordnance map, and each part worked out at about ten square miles.
“To do it properly should take three or perhaps four days,” said Drummond. “It’s hilly going, and the north coast is full of caves. If anybody discovers anything, report to the hotel at once. Further, in order to be on the safe side we’d better all return here every night.”
We drew lots for our beats, and I got the centre strip terminating to the north in the stretch of coast on each side of Gurnard’s Head. Having a very mild sketching ability I decided that I would pose as an artist. So I purchased the necessary gear, slung a pair of Zeiss field-glasses over my shoulder and started off. I had determined to work my strip from north to south, since I felt sure that if the gang was there at all they would have chosen the desolate country in the north or centre rather than the comparatively populous part near Penzance itself.
The weather was glorious, and since I happen to love walking I foresaw a very pleasant holiday in store. I admit frankly that I did not share the optimism of the others. It struck me that, considering over four months had elapsed, we were building altogether too much on a chance remark.
This is not a guide-book, so I won’t bore my readers with rhapsodies over the scenery. The granite cliffs carved and indented into fantastic shapes by countless centuries of erosion: the wild rugged tors rising from the high moorland – it is all too well known to need any further description from my pen. And the desolation of it! Here and there a deserted mine shaft – tin, I supposed, or copper. No longer a paying proposition: not even worth the labour of dismantling the rusty machinery.
I stopped for a few moments to light my pipe, and a passing shepherd touched his cap.
“Going sketching, sir,” he said in his delightful West Country burr. “There certainly do be some fine views round these parts.”
I walked with him for a while, listening absent mindedly to his views on men and matters. And, in common with a large number of people in many walks of life, he was of the opinion that things were not what they were. The good old days! Those were the times.
I remember, sir, when each one of them was a working concern.” He paused and pointed to a derelict mine below us. “That was Damar Mine – that was, and two hundred men used to work there.”
“Bad luck on them,” I said, “but I think as far as the scenery is concerned it’s better as it is. Didn’t pay, I suppose?”
“That’s it, sir: didn’t pay. Though they do say as how the men that are working Black Mine are going to make it pay. A rare lot of money they’re putting into it, so Peter Tregerthen told me. He be one of the foremen.”
“Where is Black Mine?” I asked perfunctorily.
“Just over this hill, sir, and you’ll see it. Only started in May, they did. Queer people too.”
I stared at him: it was impossible, of course – just a coincidence…
“How do you mean – queer people?” I asked.
“Peter Tregerthen he tells me as how they’ve got queer ideas,” he answered. “Scientific mining they’re a-going for: carrying out lots of experiments secretly – things which the boss says will revolutionise the industry. But so far nothing seems to have come of them: they just goes on mining in the old way. There it is, sir: that’s Black Mine.”
We had reached the top of the tor, and below us, a quarter of a mile away, lay the road from Land’s End to St Ives. On the other side, half-way between the road and the edge of the cliffs
, stood the works, and for a moment or two a sudden uncontrollable excitement took hold of me. Was it possible that our search was ended almost before it had begun? And then I took a pull at myself: I was jumping ahead with a vengeance. To base such an idea on a mere coincidence in dates and a Cornish miner’s statement that the owners were queer people was ridiculous. And anything less nefarious than the peaceful appearance of Black Mine would have been hard to imagine. Smoke drifted lazily up from the tall chimney, and lines of trucks drawn by horses passed and repassed.
“How many men are employed there?” I asked my companion.
“Not many, sir, yet,” he answered. “It’s up in that wooden building yonder on the edge of the cliffs that they be experimenting as I told you. No one aren’t allowed near at all. In fact Peter Tregerthen he did tell me that one day he went up and there was a terrible scene. He wanted for to ask the boss something or t’other, and the boss very nigh sacked him. Well, sir, I reckons I must be a-going on. Be you waiting here?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I’ll stop here a bit. Good-morning to you.”
I watched him go down the hill and strike the road : then, moved by a sudden impulse, I retraced my steps to the reverse slope of the tor, and lying down behind a rock I focused my field-glasses on the wooden building which was so very private in its owners’ estimation. It seemed a perfectly ordinary erection, though considerably larger than I had thought when I saw it with the naked eye. I could see now that it stretched back some distance from the edge of the cliff, though, being foreshortened, it was hard to guess any dimensions.
Of signs of life in it I could see none. No one entered or left, and on the land-side – the only one I could observe properly – there were no windows as far as I could make out. And then a sudden glint, such as the sun makes when its light strikes something shining, came from up near the roof. It was not repeated, though I kept my glasses glued on the spot for ten minutes.