Bagley, Desmond - The Golden Keel

by The Golden Keel

  Coertze and Walker brought Sanford to the yard in the late afternoon and Palmerini's sons got busy slipping her and unstepping the mast. Coertze said, "We were followed by a fast launch."

  "So they know we are here?"

  "Ja," he said. "But we made them uncomfortable."

  Walker said, "We took her out, and they had to follow us because they thought we were leaving. There was a bit of a lop outside the harbour and they were sea-sick -- all three of them." He grinned. "So was Coertze."

  "Did they do much damage to Sanford when they broke in?"

  "Not much," replied Coertze. "They turned everything out of the lockers, but the police had cleaned up after the pigs."

  "The furnaces?"

  "All right; those w ere the first things I checked."

  That was a relief. The furnaces were now the king-pins of the plan and if they had gone the whole of our labour would have been wasted. There would have been no time to replace them and still meet the deadline at Tangier. As it was, we would have to work fast.

  Coertze got busy getting the furnaces out of Sanford. It wasn't a long job and soon he was assembling them on a bench in the corner of the shed. Piero looked at them uncomprehendingly but said nothing.

  I realised it would be pointless to try to conceal our plan from him and Francesca -- it just couldn't be done. And in any case, I was getting a bit tired of the shroud of suspicion with which I had cloaked myself. The Italians had played fair with us so far and we were entirely at their mercy, anyway; they could take the lot any time they wanted if they felt so inclined.

  I said, "We're going to cast a new keel for Sanford."

  Piero said, "Why? What is wrong with that one?"

  "Nothing, except it's made of lead. I'm a particular man -- I want a keel of gold."

  His face lit up in a delighted smile. "I wondered how you were going to get the gold out of the country. I thought about it and could see no way, but you seemed so sure."

  "Well, that's how we're going to do it," I said, and went over to Coertze. "Look," I said. "I'm not going to be good for any heavy work over the next few days. I'll assemble these gadgets -- it's a sitting job -- you'd better be doing something else. What about the mould?"

  "I'll get started on that," he said. "Palmerini has plenty of moulding sand."

  I unfastened my belt and, from the hidden pocket, I took the plan of the new keel I had designed many months previously. I said, "I had Harry make the alterations to the keelson to go with the new keel. He thought I was nuts. All you've got to do is to cast the keel to this pattern and it'll fit sweetly."

  He took the drawing and went off to see Palmerini. I started to assemble the furnaces -- it wasn't a long job and I finished that night.

  II

  I suppose that few people have had occasion to cut up gold ingots with a hacksaw. It's a devilish job because the metal is soft and the teeth of the saw blades soon become clogged. Walker said it was like sawing through treacle.

  It had to be done because we could only melt a couple of pounds of gold at a time, and it was Walker's job to cut up the ingots into nice handy pieces. The gold dust was a problem which I solved by sending out for a small vacuum cleaner which Walker used assiduously, sucking up every particle of gold he could find.

  And when hie had finished sawing for the day he would sweep round his bench and wash the dust in a pan just like an old-time prospector. Even with all those precautions I reckon we must have wasted several pounds of gold in the sawing operation.

  We all gathered round to watch the first melt. Coertze dropped the small piece of gold on to the graphite mat and switched on the machine. There was an intense white flare as the mat went incandescent and the gold drooped and flowed and, within seconds, was ready for pouring into the mould.

  The three furnaces worked perfectly but as they were only laboratory instruments after all, and could only take a small amount at a time, it was going to be a long job. Inside the mould we put a tangle of wires which was to hold the gold together. Coertze was dubious about the method of pouring so little at a time and several times he stopped and removed gold already poured.

  "This keel will be so full of faults and cracks I don't think it'll hold," he said.

  So we put in more and more wires and poured the gold round them, hoping they would bind the mass together.

  I was stiff and sore and to bend was an agony, so there was not much I could do to help effectively. I discussed this with Coertze, and said, "You know, one of us had better show his face in Rapallo. Metcalfe knows we're here and it'll look odd if we all stay in this shed and never come out. He'll know we're up to something."

  "You'd better wander round town then," said Coertze. "You can't do much here."

  So after Francesca had rebandaged my back, I went into town and up to the Yacht Club. The secretary commiserated with me on the fact that Sanford had been broken into and hoped that nothing had been stolen. "It cannot have been done by. men of Rapallo," he said. "We are very strict about that here."

  He also looked at my battered face in mute inquiry, so I smiled and said, "Your Italian mountains seem to be made of harder rock than those in South Africa."

  "Ah, you've been climbing?"

  "Trying to," I said. "Allow me to buy you a drink."

  He declined, so I went into the bar and ordered a Scotch, taking it to the table by the window where I could look over the yacht basin. There was a new boat in, a large motor yacht of about a hundred tons. You see many of those in the Mediterranean -- the luxury boats of the wealthy. They put to sea in the calmest of weather and the large paid crews have the life of Reilly -- hardly any work and plenty of shore time. Idly, I focused the club binoculars on her. Her name was Calabria.

  When I left the club I spotted my watchers and took delight in leading them to innocent places which any tourist might have visited. If I had been fitter I would have walked their legs off, but I compromised by taking a taxi. Their staff-work was good, because I noticed a cruising car come up from nowhere and pick them up smoothly.

  I went back and reported to Francesca. She said, "Torloni has sent more men into Rapallo."

  That sounded bad. "How many?"

  "Three more -- that makes eight. We think that he wants enough men to follow each of you, even if you split up. Besides, they must sleep sometimes, too."

  "Where's Metcalfe?"

  "Still in Genoa. His boat was put into the water this morning."

  "Thanks, Francesca, you're doing all right," I said.

  "I will be glad when this business is finished," she said sombrely. "I wish I had never started it."

  "Getting cold feet?"

  "I do not understand what you mean by that; but I am afraid there will be much violence soon."

  "I don't like it, either," I said candidly. "But the thing is under way; we can't stop now. You Italians have a phrase for it -- che sera, sera."

  She sighed. "Yes, in a matter like this there is no turning back once you have begun."

  I left her sitting in the caravan, thinking that she was beginning to realise that this was no light-hearted adventure she had embarked upon. This was deadly serious, a game for high stakes in which a few murders would, not be boggled at, at least, not by the opposition -- and I wasn't too sure about Coertze.

  The keel seemed to be going well. Coertze and Piero were sweating over the hot furnaces, looking demoniacal in the sudden bursts of light. Coertze pushed up his goggles and said, "How many graphite mats did we have?"

  "Why?"

  "They don't last long. I'm not getting more than four melts out of each, then they burn out. We might run out of mats before the job's finished."

  "I'll check on it," I said, and went to figure with pencil and paper. After checking my calculations and recounting the stock of mats I went back to Coertze. "Can you squeeze five melts out of a mat?"

  He grunted. "We'll have to be careful about it, which means we'll be slower. Can we afford the time?"

  "If
we burn out the mats before the job's done then the time won't matter -- it'll be wasted anyway. We'll have to afford the time. How many melts a day can you do at five melts to a mat?"

  He thought about that. "It'll cut us down to twelve melts an hour, no more than that."

  I went away to do some more figuring. Taking the gold at 9000 pounds, that meant 4,500 melts of which Coertze had already done 500. Twelve melts an hour meant 340 working hours -- at twelve hours a day, twenty-eight days.

  Too long -- start again.

  Three hundred and forty hours working at sixteen hours a day -- twenty-one days. But could he work sixteen hours a day? I cursed my lacerated back which kept me from helping, but if anything happened and it got worse then I was sure the plan would be torpedoed. Somebody had to take Sanford out and I had an increasing distrust of Walker, who had grown silent and secretive.

  I went back to Coertze, walking stiffly because my back was hurting like hell. "You'll have to work long hours," I said. "Time's running out."

  "I'd work twenty-four hours a day if I could," he said. "But I can't, so I'll work till I drop."

  I thought maybe I'd better go at it at different way, so I stood back and watched how Coertze and Piero were going about the job. Soon I had ideas about speeding it up.

  The next morning I took charge. I told Coertze to do nothing but pour gold; he must not have anything to do with loading the furnaces or cleaning mats -- all he had to do was pour gold. Piero I assigned to melting the gold and to passing the furnace with the molten gold to Coertze. The furnaces were light enough to be moved about so I arranged a table so that they could move bodily along it.

  Walker had sawn plenty of gold, so I pulled him from his bench. He had to take a furnace from Coertze, replace the mat with a new one and put a chunk of gold on it ready for melting. Myself I set to the task of cleaning the used mats ready for re-use -- this I could do sitting down.

  All in all, it was a simple problem in time and motion study and assembly line technique. By the end of the day we were doing sixteen melts an hour without too many burnt-out mats.

  So the days went by. We started by working sixteen hours a day but we could not keep it up and gradually our daily output dropped in spite of the increase in the hourly output. .Mistakes were made in increasing numbers and the percentage of burnt-out mats went up sharply. Working in those sudden bursts o f heat from the furnaces was hellish; we all lost weight and our thirst was unquenchable.

  When the output dropped below 150 melts a day with another 2000 to go I began to get really worried. I wanted a clear three weeks to sail to Tangier and it looked as though I was not going to get them.

  Obviously something had to be done.

  That evening, when we were eating supper after finishing work for the day, and before we turned exhaustedly into our berths, I said, "Look, we're too tired. We're going to have a day off, to-morrow. We do nothing at all -- we just laze about."

  I was taking a chance, gambling that the increased output by refreshed men would more than offset the loss of a day. But Coertze said bluntly. "No, we work. We haven't the time to waste."

  Coertze was a good man if a bit bull-headed. I said, "I've been right up to now, haven't I?"

  He grudgingly assented to that.

  "The output will go up if we have a rest," I said. "I promise you."

  He grumbled a little, but didn't press it -- he was too tired to fight. The others agreed lacklustrely, and we turned in that night knowing that the next day would be a day of rest.

  III

  At breakfast, next morning, I asked Francesca, "What's the enemy doing?"

  "Still watching."

  "Any reinforcements?"

  She shook her head, "No, there's just the eight of them. They take it in turns."

  I said, "We might as well give them some exercise. We'll split up and run them about town, or even outside it. They've been having it too easy lately."

  I looked at Coertze. "But don't touch them -- we're not ready to force a showdown yet, and the later it comes the better for us. We can't afford for any one of us to be put out of action now; if that happens we're sunk. It'll take all our time to cast the keel and meet the deadline as it is."

  To Walker I said, "And you keep off the booze. You might be tempted, but don't do it Remember what I said in Tangier?"

  He nodded sullenly and looked down at his plate. He had been too quiet lately to suit me and I wondered what he was thinking.

  I said to Francesca, "I thought you were getting a jeweller to appraise the gems."

  "'I will see him to-day," she said. "He will probably come to-morrow."

  "Well, when he comes, it must be in disguise or something. Once Torloni's men know that there are jewels involved there may be no holding them."

  Piero said, "Palmerini will bring him hidden in a lorry."

  "Good enough." I got up from the table and stretched. "Now to confuse the issue and the enemy. We'll all leave in different directions. Piero, you and Francesca had better leave later; we don't want any connection to be made between us. Will this place be safe with us all gone?"

  Francesca said, "There'll be ten of our men in the yard all day."

  "That's fine," I said. "Tell them not to be too conspicuous."

  I felt fine as I walked into town. My back was healing and my face no longer looked like a battlefield. I was exhilarated at the prospect of a day off work and Coertze must have been feeling even better, I thought. He had not left Palmerini's yard since he had brought Sanford in, while I had had several visits to town.

  I spent the morning idling, doing a little tourist shopping in the Piazza Cavour where I found a shop selling English books. Then I had a lengthy stay at a boulevard cafe where I leisurely read a novel over innumerable cups of coffee, something I had not had time for for many months.

  Towards midday I went up to the Yacht Club for a drink. The bar seemed noisier than usual and I traced the disturbance to an argumentative and semi-drunken group at the far end of the room. Most members were pointedly ignoring this demonstration but there were raised eyebrows at the more raucous shouts. I ordered a Scotch from the steward and said, "Why the celebration?"

  He sneered towards the end of the bar. "No celebration, signor; just idle drunkenness."

  I wondered why the secretary didn't order the men from the club and said so. The steward lifted his shoulders helplessly. "What can one do, signor? There are some men who can break all rules -- and here is one such man."

  I didn't press it; it was no affair of mine and it wasn't my business to tell the Italians how to run the club in which I was their guest. But I did take my drink into the adjoining lounge where I settled down to finish the novel.

  It was an interesting book, but I never did get it finished, and I've often wondered how the hero got out of the predicament in which the author placed him. I had not read half a dozen pages when a steward came up and said, "There is a lady to see you, signor."

  I went into the foyer and saw Franceses. "What the devil are you doing here?" I demanded.

  "Torloni is in Rapallo," she said.

  I was going to speak when the club secretary came round the corner and saw us. I said, "You'd better come inside; it's too damn' conspicuous here."

  The secretary hurried over, saying, "Ah, Madame, we have not had the honour of a visit from you for a long time."

  I was a member of the club- -- if only honorary -- so I said, "Perhaps I could bring Madame into the club as my guest?"

  He looked unaccountably startled and said nervously, "Yes, yes, of course. No, there is no need for Madame to sign the book."

  As I escorted Francesca into the lounge I wondered what was agitating the secretary, but I had other things on my mind so I let it slide. I seated Francesca and said, "You'd better have a drink."

  "Campari," she said, and then quickly, "Torloni brought a lot of men with him."

  "Relax," I said, and ordered a Campari from the lounge steward. When he had left t
he table I said, "What about Metcalfe?"

  "The Fairmile left Genoa; we don't know where it is."

  "And Torloni? Where is he?"

  "He booked into a hotel on the Piazza Cavour an hour ago."

  That was when I had been sitting in the pavement cafe. I might even have seen him. I said, "You say he brought some men with him?"

  "There are eight men with him." » That was bad; it looked as though an attack was building up. Eight plus eight made sixteen, plus Torloni himself and possibly Metcalfe, Krupke, the Moroccan and what other crew the Fairmile might have. More than twenty men!

  She said, "We had to work quickly. There was a lot of reorganising to do -- that is why I came here myself, there was no one else."

  I said, "Just how many men have we got?"

  She furrowed her brow. "Twenty-five -- possibly more later. I cannot tell yet."

  That sounded better; the odds were still in our favour. But I wondered about Torloni's massing of force. He would not need so many men to tackle three presumably unsuspecting victims, therefore he must have got wind of our partisan allies, so perhaps we wouldn't have the advantage of surprise.

  The steward came with the Campari and as I paid him Francesca looked from the window over the yacht basin. When the steward had gone, she said, "What ship is that?"

  "Which one?"

  She indicated the motor yacht I had noticed on my earlier visit to the club. "Oh, that 1 It's just some rich man's floating brothel."

  Her voice was strained. "What is the name?"

  I hunted in my memory. "Er -- Calabria, I think."

  Her knuckles were clenched white as she gripped the arms of her chair. "It is Eduardo's boat," she said in a low voice.

  "Who is Eduardo?"

  "My husband."

  A light dawned on me. So that was why the secretary had been so startled. It is not very usual for a stranger to ask a lady to be his guest when the lady's husband is within easy reach and possibly in the club at that very moment. I chuckled and said, "I'll bet he's the chap who is kicking up such a shindy in the bar."