He waited until the beam from the flashlight vanished, presumably behind a house, before venturing down the road.
Just as he reached the two cars, the clouds parted and a shaft of moonlight showed him a plank bridge. He crossed it as quietly as possible, followed a muddy path and climbed the steps to the front door. Just his luck! It was boarded up, as were the windows on either side. By this time the moon had disappeared again, and he had to feel his way back down the stairs, cursing under his breath, and work his way toward the corner of the house. As he rounded the corner, he could see that there were lights on inside, and he was halfway up the stairs leading to a glassed-in porch when he heard the yells of rage coming from above.
“There’s no way she could escape!”
“Didn’t you tie her up?”
“No, but the door was locked, and . . .”
Nat didn’t wait to hear any more. Grinning, he ran down the stairs and ducked into a tool shed he saw nearby. Moments later, Mahaffy and the other man came running out of the house, heading for their cars. Nat waited until all was quiet again before he emerged and in the utter blackness of the night made his way back around the side of the house and sprinted for the road. In his haste, he had forgotten that the plank bridge was narrow and slimy. The ditch he landed in was half full with muddy water from the recent rainstorm. The air was blue with his muttered curses as, soaking wet from his knees down, he had to haul himself out by clinging to the course clumps of weeds and grass that grew on the bank.
Half an hour later, Nat’s car was parked outside Maggie’s house and he was opening the front door with his key. Maggie and Nancy were seated at the kitchen table with drinks in front of them. Without a word, he picked up the bottle of cognac and poured himself a liberal drink.
“You’re all wet,” Maggie said, rising in alarm. Nat was sodden from the waist down.
“I fell in the bloody ditch,” he said before knocking back half of his drink.
“You’d better go upstairs and change,” Maggie commented. “You’ll find your clean shirt in my closet. I’ll put some hot coffee on.”
“That’s cosy,” Nancy said, raising her eyebrows as she watched Nat ascend up the stairs.
On his return, Nat immediately pulled up a chair and turned to his very bedraggled ex-wife.
“Okay! Fill me in.”
After their individual night’s experiences had been discussed, Maggie asked the most important question. “What do we do now?” She glanced at the dishevelled Nancy. “I think you should take Nancy home so that she can get some clothes and her car.”
“What if they’re waiting for me there?” Nancy whimpered.
“There’s a chance they won’t think you’d go back to your own place,” Maggie answered. “But you should go right away and get your stuff as quickly as you can. Have you a friend you can go to?”
“I could stay at your place, Nat.”
“That’s the first place those thugs will look,” Maggie said, thinking that Nat was welcome to his ex-wife, but there was absolutely no way the woman was going to stay with her.
“What about that aunt of yours . . . the one who lives in New Westminster?” Nat asked.
“Aunt Marian? But it’s too late to call her now.”
“Try,” Maggie snapped, pointing to the phone. “Tell her the power’s off at your place or something.”
Nancy reluctantly took the phone and dialed. The conversation was short, but the aunt agreed that her niece could stay until the power was restored. “She said that she was just about to go to bed,” Nancy said as she replaced the receiver, “but she’d leave the door unlocked.”
“Okay. So let’s get going,” Nat said, getting out of his chair.
“You can borrow one of my coats.” Maggie reached into the hall closet and pulled out a grey wool coat with a hood. “Nat can bring it back later.” She opened the front door and watched the two get into Nat’s car and pull away from the curb.
Quickly rinsing the cups and glasses, she shooed Oscar and Emily out and waited apprehensively for them to return. After they were safely in again, she made sure that all the doors and windows were firmly locked before climbing the stairs to find comfort in her own warm bed. She hoped they made it before Mahaffy and friends decided to go back to Nancy’s house to check. And then another thought came as she snuggled down.
Should we have called George in on this?
But she was beyond worrying anymore. She’d talk to Nat about that in the morning. She hoped that Henny had managed to think up a good excuse for being home so late, but she wasn’t too worried, as Henny seemed to run the Vandermeer household, her husband Dirk, and her two sons exactly the same way as she did the agency office.
The telephone woke her. She turned on the light and checked the time. Two thirty. Nat’s voice, a pleasant interruption to her dreams.
“Thought you’d like to know she is safely stowed with her aunt. See you in the morning and sweet dreams—if that’s at all possible.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It had forgotten to rain, and Maggie awoke to a bright, sunny Saturday morning. As she lay on her back and stretched her arms above her head, the previous night’s adventures came rushing back to her. Nat said there was another man at the farmhouse with Mahaffy and that he was the one doing the shouting. But he didn’t recognize the man’s voice. So that lets out Henry Smith with his Cockney accent. And the same goes for Bakhash. Could’ve been Edgeworthy, I suppose . . . but I can’t see him as the head honcho.
When the phone rang, she contemplated not answering it, but on the third ring, she gently pushed the sleeping Emily over to the other side of the bed and swung her feet to the floor. It was Nat to say that he’d filled George in on last night’s episode and he wanted to meet with them in a couple of hour’s time.
“Here?” Maggie asked, thinking that it would take more than an hour to tidy up her house for company.
“At the office.”
“I’ll be there as soon as possible.”
“Okay. I’m going to call Henny and ask her to come in, too.”
She pushed her rebellious thoughts away as she snuggled her feet into her slippers and walked downstairs to be greeted by Oscar. “I have to have my cuppa, Oscar, before I even think about a walk. Will the backyard do you?” What she really needed was a good hot shower and breakfast, she thought as she closed the back door on the dog. Her last meal had been a sandwich at her desk the day before.
• • •
NAT AND HENNY WERE waiting for her when she arrived at the office, and their Girl Friday didn’t look any the worse for the previous night’s activity. In fact, she was quite chirpy.
“Hope Dirk wasn’t mad at me for keeping you out so late?” Maggie asked, peeling off her coat.
“He was worried, but I told him you needed me.”
“And Pieter? Is he any better?”
“Ja! It is a bad cold. His brother, Bartel, has it now.” She marched toward Nat’s office, carrying two cups of coffee. “Mr. Nat ask me to bring your coffee in his office.”
“I hope I have time to drink it before George gets here,” Maggie said, taking one of the cups from Henny. But she had only taken a sip when the outer door opened and George arrived, accompanied by a tall, blond, moustached man. “So you’ve been up to your usual hijinks, have you, Henny?” he greeted her.
Maggie was amused to see Henny blush when George put his arm around her shoulders. “I’ve told my friend here all about your famous cookies.” He continued into Nat’s office and bent to give Maggie a hug. “Maggie, I’d like you to meet Quentin De Meyer.”
Maggie extended her hand to the familiar-looking man. His blue eyes twinkled as he gave her a slight bow.
“Pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Spencer.”
Where have I met him before?
“Hi, Nat,” George said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve asked Quentin to sit in.”
Nat, looking puzzled, reached across his desk to take the man
’s hand in his. “No. That’s fine.”
“Shall I bring coffee?” Henny asked.
“That would be great, Henny,” George answered.
“So what’s this all about?” Nat asked once they were all seated.
“Before I tell you, I want you and Maggie to fill us in on Nancy’s abduction.”
“And, before I tell you anything,” Nat said, turning to the other man sitting quietly by, “I want to know what your interest is in all of this, Mr. De Meyer?”
“Special Agent De Meyer,” George answered for him.“Quentin is with Interpol, and he’s been chasing an antiquities smuggling ring between Cairo and Vancouver.”
“Aha!” Nat said, and he and Maggie exchanged looks.
“So if you wouldn’t mind,” George prompted.
So Maggie explained, but just when she got to the part about breaking into the farmhouse in Richmond, Henny returned with coffee for George and Quentin, and interrupted Maggie’s story with, “I break the window glass.” She placed the cups in front of the two men and added with relish, “With an axe.”
Nat then explained how he had gone to look for Maggie at Twin Maples and his subsequent tailing of Mahaffy’s car.
“And you say you didn’t recognize the other man with Mahaffy?” George asked.
“I didn’t hang around long enough to get a close look at him. After I realized that Maggie had been there before me and helped Nancy fly the coop, I got out before they discovered me.”
“We think the smuggling started during the war,” De Meyers started to explain. “We’re sure that Mahaffy and Bakhash are in it, but we’ve yet to find the head of the ring. And catching them in the act is also paramount. That’s why we’ll need to keep Mrs. Southby’s kidnapping quiet for a while.”
“She calls herself Mrs. Gladstone—it’s her maiden name,” Nat said quietly.
“I take it that she somehow came into possession of some of Dubois’s Egyptian jewellery?”
“She insists it was a gift.”
“You said that Nancy is with her aunt?” George asked.
“In New Westminster.”
“I think we should get her into a safe house until this is over.”
“That would certainly relieve my mind,” Nat said.
“She’s had a very bad scare,” Maggie chimed in. “She was sure that Mahaffy was going to kill her.” Suddenly, she turned to George’s companion. “Where have I seen you before?”
“Yes,” Nat said, “I know I’ve seen you before, too.”
“The day you were in Arnold Schaefer’s office,” Quentin replied.
“Of course,” Maggie said. “You were waiting to have an interview with him. What happened to his previous employee?”
“We made sure he was suddenly offered employment elsewhere—with twice the pay—so Schaefer was desperate.”
“And you just happened to turn up with the right credentials,” Maggie replied.
“I can count on your discretion?”
“That’s part of our business,” Nat answered. “Discretion.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “You know, I’ve suddenly realized who the other man was at the farmhouse.” They all looked at him expectantly. “It was Schaefer!”
“That’s why I wanted the job there,” De Meyer said. “We thought he might be the brains behind this ring.”
“At least we know where they’ll all be next weekend,” George said as he stood to shrug into his overcoat.
“Where?” Nat asked.
“Quentin overheard Schaefer on the telephone. He’s arranged a getaway weekend at the same fishing lodge.”
“You mean St. Clare’s Cove?” Maggie asked, surprised.
“He was very insistent that they all attend and bring their wives so it will look innocent—he stressed that it was a very important matter.”
“Oh! How I would love to be a fly on that wall,” Nat said.
• • •
IT WAS NEARLY ELEVEN thirty when Nat received a phone call from George. “Mission accomplished,” he said. “Nancy made a bit of fuss, but when we pointed out that her life was in danger, she agreed to the safe house.”
“I wonder what happened to that jewellery?” Maggie mused after Nat told her of George’s call. “Nancy insisted that she buried it in her back garden and I believe her. But she says that Mahaffy was equally insistent that his men dug where she told them, and it wasn’t there.”
“She’s not going to be safe until that stuff’s found,” Nat answered. “By the way, I hope it’s all right with you, but I’ve made reservations for us for next weekend, too.”
“How lovely! Where are we going?”
“The St. Clare Resort. We’re catching the Friday afternoon sailing from Horseshoe Bay to the Sunshine Coast.”
“But that’s like walking into the lion’s den,” she exclaimed. “What are they going to say when we turn up?”
“Not much they can say, is there? They don’t own the place.”
“Well, I know you said you’d love to be a fly on the wall when that lot gets together, but . . .”
“And this is almost as good. Come on, I’m taking you and Henny out for an early lunch.”
• • •
THE FOLLOWING WEEK WAS a quiet one for the Southby and Spencer Agency, and by Wednesday morning Nat was back in the Vancouver office of the Forests Ministry. Jake Houston, true to his word, had found a small cubbyhole for him to work in, and Nat was soon immersed in the masses of files and papers that had been piled onto a battered wooden desk. The only window overlooked part of English Bay, and at first he found it hard to concentrate when the weather was so lovely and he could see sailboats dotting the water between freighters lying at anchor, waiting for berths at the grain terminals. But after a while, he forgot the view and immersed himself in reading the many memos, letters and other documents, and it didn’t take him long to see how easy it was for unauthorized logging to go on unnoticed in remote parts of British Columbia. He began making notes.
At noon on Friday, Henny was still at her desk typing as Nat and Maggie prepared to leave for their weekend at the resort. “C’mon, Henny, time to go home!” Nat said.
“I will just finish this report, Mr. Nat, then I start Monday with a clean desk,” she said, waving them out the door. “I will lock up the office. Don’t you worry.”
Fifteen minutes later, she was just covering her typewriter when the office door opened and René Dubois entered.
“Is Mrs. Spencer in?”
“You have just missed her. She and Mr. Nat are gone away for the weekend.”
“Oh.” René sat down, looking despondent. “She told me to report if anything happened at Bakhash’s factory.”
Henny uncovered her typewriter again and rolled a sheet of paper into it. “And you have something to report?”
“I wanted to tell her that my boss is sure one of the staff touched his crates.”
Henny typed this information and then looked up expectantly. “So people are not happy with him . . .”
“Especially the men who usually unload the crates. One of them asked Bakhash if he was accusing him of stealing. He sorta backed down after that. So where has Mrs. Spencer gone?”
Henny didn’t look up from her typing. “To that fishing lodge.”
“You mean St. Clair Cove? What’s she doing there?”
“She is detecting,” Henny said.
“But that’s where Bakhash has gone, too,” René said slowly. “What’s going on up there?”
Suddenly, Henny remembered Maggie’s many admonitions about giving out information, and she was desperately trying to figure out how to take back what she had already said when the phone rang. “Southby and Spencer Agency. Henny speaking . . . Oh, it is you, Mr. George . . . No, they are gone for the weekend . . . What is that? . . . Oh dear! When did she . . . ?” She listened for a while and then said, “I’ll be sure to tell them if they call. Mr. Nat will be very upset . . . Oh, I hope it is not that . . .” After say
ing goodbye, she replaced the receiver and sat staring at it worriedly.
“Has something happened to Mrs. Spencer?”
“It is Mr. Nat’s old wife that is in trouble. Mr. George thinks the kidnappers have kidnapped her again . . .”
“Kidnappers?” René asked.
And once more Henny momentarily forgot Maggie’s admonitions. “Mr. Nat says it is all because she took that jewellery . . .” Then, realizing she had once more said too much, she quickly rose from her chair and rolled the sheet of paper from her typewriter. “I tell Mrs. Maggie you called, okay?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They hadn’t been on the Blackball ferry since the previous September, when they had to go to Gibsons to break the news to Johanna Evans’s parents that she had been brutally murdered. Maggie wondered how they were coping and if they had managed to put their lives back together. She shuddered as she leaned over the railing and watched the water flowing past, knowing that she would have been absolutely devastated if it had been one of her daughters. Nat, standing beside her, put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to him.
“I know exactly where your thoughts are, Maggie,” he said quietly, “but unfortunately in this business we do come up against the seamier side of life. Take a deep breath of this wonderful sea air and admire those magnificent mountains. See, there’s still a lot of snow on them.”
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