The Golden Reef (1969)

by Pattinson, James

  Rains sighed gustily. ‘You do, boy, you do. Why do we have to go through this make-believe? It gets none of us anywhere.’

  Ferguson drank whisky and his prominent Adam’s apple floated up and down. Keeton wondered just how much Rains and Smith had told the reporter. Rains was not guarding his tongue; therefore it looked as though Ferguson had been allowed in on the deal. Perhaps the three of them had formed a syndicate.

  Smith lit a cigarette and blew smoke through his pointed nose; it came out in twin jets.

  ‘We heard you’ve teamed up with a skin diver, a joker named Ben Dring. We heard you was learning the business yourself. It made us interested. We wondered why you’d be troubling to do that.’

  ‘You’ll have to wonder.’

  ‘We heard something else. We heard there was a nice blonde sister too. A fortune in gold bars and a luscious blonde would be very pleasant, wouldn’t it, Charlie?’

  ‘We could maybe get to work on the blonde,’ Rains said musingly. ‘She might know something.’

  Keeton said sharply: ‘You stay away from that girl.’

  Rains seemed amused. ‘You’re getting hot under the collar, boy. All right then, we’ll keep away from the girl. Just so long as you tell us what we want to know.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Smith said. ‘You tell us where the Valparaiso is and we’ll go away and never trouble you no more.’

  ‘I’ll tell you where the Valparaiso is,’ Keeton said. ‘She’s lying on the bottom of the sea.’

  Rains sighed again. It was the sigh of a man who feels that he has been very patient, but whose patience is at last exhausted. He got to his feet.

  ‘You make it hard for yourself, boy. We didn’t want it this way, but you don’t give us a choice. OK, Smithie.’

  They moved quickly then. Keeton had not expected them to use violence on board the yawl and he was unprepared. The weight of Rains and Smith together flung him down on the settee. They gripped his arms and he could feel Rains’s whisky-laden breath fanning his face.

  Smith was yelling for the newspaperman to give some help. ‘Come on, Ferg. Grab him, can’t you?’

  Ferguson muttered nervously: ‘I don’t like this. I didn’t bargain for this sort of thing.’ But he overcame his qualms and took a grip on Keeton’s left arm.

  He writhed and twisted, but could not free himself; the odds were too great. They dragged him on to the table, sweeping the glasses to the deck. He heard the tinkle of breaking glass, and then he was lying flat on his back with his legs dangling over the end of the table. Smith slipped a cord round his ankles and a leg of the table, drew it viciously tight and knotted it. Keeton began to yell in the hope of attracting the attention of someone on another yacht, but Smith stuffed a dirty rag in his mouth and tied it there.

  ‘You keep quiet, Charles. We don’t want to alarm the neighbours.’

  With Rains holding one arm and Ferguson the other, Keeton could move nothing but his head. He could see that Ferguson was scared; the eyelid fluttered more than ever; but the man was in too deep now to draw back. Smith took a clasp-knife from his pocket and opened it. The blade looked sharp and cruel.

  ‘Do you want to talk now?’ Rains asked. ‘Wink if you do.’

  Keeton made no sign. He watched the knife.

  ‘You ought to be sensible. Smithie knows how to carve. You should have seen him operate on a man named Juan Gonzales down in Venezuela. He refused to talk at first, but he changed his mind.’

  Ferguson licked his lips. ‘Does it have to be the knife? I didn’t bargain for this.’

  Rains sneered at him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re soft. I thought all you Aussies were as tough as rawhide.’

  ‘But suppose he’s telling the truth. Suppose he doesn’t know where the Valparaiso is?’

  ‘Just too bad for him. But he knows. We let him slip away once. We don’t mean to risk that again. This time he talks.’

  With a swift movement Smith ripped Keeton’s shirt open to the waist. He rested the point of the knife lightly on the left-hand side of the chest, and Keeton could feel it pricking into his flesh.

  ‘Ready to talk now?’ Rains asked.

  Keeton stared back at Rains with hatred in his eyes. The rag in his mouth made him want to vomit.

  ‘OK, Smithie,’ Rains said. ‘Get started.’

  Smith worked with the delicacy of a surgeon. The knife blade drew a line of fire across Keeton’s chest. Sweat broke out on his forehead, and he saw Rains’s mottled face peering down at him, a black stubble of beard on the bulging chin.

  ‘Now will you talk?’

  Keeton gave no sign.

  ‘This is only a start,’ Rains said. ‘I’m warning you. Why make it bad for yourself? You’ll talk in the end, so why not now? That Juan Gonzales was tough too, but he talked. One hundred and nine cuts on the chest he took; I counted them. And after the chest there’s always the face. You wouldn’t want to be scarred for life. Think of the blonde. Be sensible, boy. Talk.’

  Keeton lay on the table and did not move. The breath came hard through his nostrils, clearly audible in the silence of the cabin.

  ‘OK, Smithie,’ Rains said.

  Again the line of fire seared Keeton’s chest. Smith was grinning; he seemed to be enjoying his work.

  ‘Suppose he tells about this,’ Ferguson suggested nervously. ‘What if he goes to the police?’ Ferguson’s hands were damp.

  ‘He won’t,’ Rains said. ‘He’s got reasons for not calling the coppers. Go ahead, Smithie.’

  Smith laid the knife on Keeton’s chest again; then took it away.

  ‘Listen!’

  They all listened. There was a sound of splashing in the water near the yawl.

  Ferguson began to speak and Rains hissed at him savagely: ‘Stow it!’

  The splashing came nearer. A voice called: ‘Hello there! Anyone aboard? Are you there, Charlie?’

  ‘It’s the girl,’ Smith said.

  She called again: ‘Charlie! Are you there?’

  Rains’s voice grated in Keeton’s ear. ‘Tell her to go away. When we take the gag out you tell her she can’t come on board. Play any tricks and you get the knife, see?’ He nodded to Smith. ‘Let him talk.’

  Smith held the knife with its point resting on Keeton’s chest just below the rib cage. With his free hand he released the gag.

  ‘Now,’ Rains hissed. ‘Tell her.’

  Keeton shouted at the top of his voice: ‘I’m in the cabin, Val. Come on board.’

  Rains lashed him with the back of his hand across the mouth, but the words were out. He felt the knife begin to prick, but Smith did not thrust it home.

  ‘All right then,’ Rains said. ‘If you want to play it that way, so be it. We’re friends, see? Just friends. Else it may be the worse for her. Cut him loose, Smithie.’

  Smith bent down and cut the cord, and Keeton heard the girl’s voice again.

  ‘You’ll have to give me a hand up. I’m in the water.’

  ‘She swam out,’ Rains said softly. ‘She must be sweet on you, boy. Button your shirt; you don’t want to shock the lady.’

  Keeton buttoned his shirt across the cuts on his chest and climbed up to the cockpit. The others followed him.

  ‘Play it cool, boy,’ Rains whispered threateningly.

  Valerie Dring was hanging on to the gunwale of Rains’s boat. Keeton leaned over and hauled her up on to the deck of the yawl. The white one-piece swimsuit was like a part of her body, and there was frank admiration in Smith’s eyes. She looked at the three men standing in the cockpit and then again at Keeton.

  ‘I didn’t know you had visitors.’

  ‘They’re just going,’ Keeton said. ‘We’ve had a talk.’

  He looked meaningly at Rains. Rains stared back at him for a moment, then shrugged.

  ‘We’ll have another talk some other time. Don’t go away without letting your pals know.’ He made a mock bow to the girl. ‘Mr Keeton forgot his manners; he didn’t introduce us. Miss Drin
g, I believe. My name’s Rains.’ He jerked his thumb at the other two. ‘Smith and Ferguson. Maybe we could give you a lift back to the shore.’

  ‘There’s no need. I can swim.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be any trouble,’ Rains said, and sounded as if he meant it. ‘But please yourself.’

  He climbed over the side and lowered himself into the boat. The others joined him. He started the outboard motor, Smith cast off and they were away. Keeton and the girl watched them go.

  ‘You’d better come below,’ Keeton said. ‘I’ll get you a towel.’

  ‘So you’re going to be hospitable.’

  ‘It’s visiting day.’

  In the cabin the fug of tobacco smoke and whisky still hung in the air. There was broken glass underfoot and the half-empty bottle was lying on the port settee.

  ‘You seem to have had quite a party,’ Valerie said.

  ‘It got rowdy towards the end. I’d better fetch that towel.’

  He brought a duffel coat too. When she had dried her arms and legs she wrapped herself in the coat, her hands lost in the sleeves. Suddenly she stared at Keeton’s shirt.

  ‘Charlie! You’re bleeding.’

  He looked down at the shirt and saw that blood from the cuts was soaking through.

  ‘I scratched my chest. Don’t worry about it.’

  She moved to him at once and unbuttoned the shirt, and the scent of her damp hair caught at his nostrils, and his pulse quickened. She gave a low cry of concern when she saw the wounds.

  ‘These aren’t just scratches. These are cuts.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  She became firmly practical. ‘Have you got a first-aid box?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Where is it?’

  He told her. ‘But mind that broken glass. Put those shoes on.’

  She did so and went clumping into the galley where he kept the medicine chest. ‘You’d better take that shirt off and lie down.’

  He obeyed her; it seemed the easiest way. She dripped antiseptic into a bowl of water and washed the blood from his skin.

  ‘I’ll bet it stings.’

  ‘You win your bet,’ Keeton said.

  ‘The cuts aren’t deep.’ She sounded relieved. ‘You won’t die.’

  She dried his chest with the towel, then cut a piece of lint and fastened it with adhesive tape. Keeton sat up.

  ‘Thanks, Val. You’re pretty good at that.’

  She laughed. ‘Well, that’s something – a compliment from you. It’s the first you’ve ever paid me. You’d better soak that shirt if you want to get the stains out.’

  ‘I’ll hang it over the side.’

  She looked at him shrewdly. ‘You didn’t make those cuts yourself. It was your so-called friends, wasn’t it? That’s how the glass got broken. There was a struggle and you lost.’ She noticed the cord lying where Smith had dropped it. ‘They tied you up too.’

  Keeton said nothing. He found a packet of cigarettes and offered them to the girl. She shook her head and he lit one for himself.

  ‘What did they want from you?’

  ‘Information.’

  ‘Are you going to the police?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I had a feeling you wouldn’t.’

  She was silent for a while. Keeton smoked his cigarette and watched her. Then she said: ‘I’d like to come with you and Ben. Will you take me?’

  He could see that it was important to her, that she had really set her heart on going. But it was out of the question. ‘No, Val. It’s impossible.’

  ‘It’s not impossible. You just don’t want me to go. Why? What’s the secret?’

  ‘There’s no secret.’

  ‘Those men thought there was.’

  ‘Forget the men and forget the trip. You’re not coming and that’s final.’

  ‘Oh, very well,’ she said with a sudden flare of temper. ‘If that’s the way you feel I won’t plague you with my odious presence any longer. Perhaps I should have let you be carved up.’

  She slipped out of the duffel coat and the shoes and went quickly up the companionway. A moment later Keeton heard the splash as she hit the water.

  ‘Damn her!’ he muttered, but without conviction.

  Chapter Seven

  Full Crew

  When the girl had gone Keeton unlocked a drawer under the chart table and took out a Colt .45 revolver. He loaded the weapon and before turning in for the night he placed it within easy reach. There would be no more surgical work from Mr Smith.

  He awoke suddenly with the certainty that he was not alone in the cabin. Beyond the foot of his bunk he could see a thin pencil of light playing on the chart table and the shadowy outline of a man. He heard the faint rustle of paper and then a low exclamation.

  ‘Ah!’

  Keeton reached for the revolver and sat up with the butt gripped in his right hand and his finger curled round the trigger.

  ‘Stop right there,’ he said.

  The small electric torch that had been supplying the light went out immediately. Keeton heard the swift patter of bare feet and fired in the direction of the sound. There was no answering cry of pain to indicate that the shot had found its mark and the intruder was obviously no longer in the cabin.

  Keeton rolled off the bunk and stumbled to the companionway and up into the cockpit. He was just in time to catch a glimpse of a naked figure silhouetted against the night sky. He levelled the revolver, but before he could fire the target had gone. There was a splash; he rushed to the side and peered down into the water, but could see no one; whoever the visitor had been he must have been a good underwater swimmer. Neither Rains nor Smith seemed to fit that description, and that left only Ferguson as a likely candidate.

  ‘That damned scribe‚’ Keeton muttered. ‘It’s a pity I didn’t wing him.’

  He went back into the cabin and lit the oil lamp that was slung in gimbals on a bracket screwed to the bulkhead above the chart table. At once his eye was caught by the charts on the table. When he had gone to sleep they had been stowed away in a locked drawer. He looked at the drawer and saw that it had been forced; a thin steel lever lay on the table beside the charts. He turned his attention to the topmost chart, the one that Ferguson – if it had indeed been he – had been examining; it was the one on which the reef was marked. There was even a cross, which Keeton himself had drawn, at the spot where the Valparaiso lay. If the name of the ship had been written in the meaning of that cross it could not have been more evident to anyone who already knew as much as Ferguson did. The question now was, had he had time to read off and memorise the exact bearings or had he merely got a rough idea of the position of the reef? Even the latter might be enough for Rains, and it looked now as though the treasure hunt might develop into a race.

  Keeton lit a cigarette and came to the conclusion that there was no more time to waste.

  Dring came on board early in the morning, rowing himself out in a borrowed boat.

  ‘Val tells me you had visitors yesterday.’ He looked at the dressing on Keeton’s chest. ‘She didn’t think they were as friendly as they might have been.’

  ‘I gathered she had that idea‚’ Keeton said drily.

  ‘What’s the story?’

  There isn’t one. Will you be ready to start tomorrow?’

  Dring raised his eyebrows. ‘So you’re in a hurry now. Could that be because of what happened?’

  ‘Does it make any difference?’

  Dring sat down and scratched his chin. ‘I’m not saying it does make any difference, but I don’t think you’ve been altogether frank with me.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, sir. I think pearl fishing is just so much eyewash. I think there’s something else that’s driving you. And what’s more, I’d say it had some connection with three other gentlemen, a sliced-up chest and a sudden desire to get away fast. Am I right?’

  ‘If you were right, would it stop you coming? Would you be scared of those three jok
ers?’

  Dring laughed; he sounded genuinely amused. ‘Do I look the sort that scares easy?’

  Keeton gave him a long, cool, appraising stare. Then he said: ‘No, Ben; I’d say not.’

  ‘So that’s settled‚’ Dring said. ‘And if you don’t want to tell me what it’s all about, OK.’

  ‘You’ll find out soon enough.’

  ‘That’s so. And I’d come along just for that. I’m burned up with curiosity.’

  Keeton had half a mind to tell Dring the truth then and there, but he decided against it. If he told Dring that a million pounds’ worth of gold was involved the Australian might start to bargain; he might even demand a half-share as Rains had done. Or on the other hand he might insist on telling the Australian authorities where their gold had gone. It was wisest to keep him in the dark.

  ‘Do you think there’ll be any more trouble from the boyfriends?’ Dring asked.

  ‘I’ll be amazed if there isn’t.’

  ‘You got any armament?’

  Keeton showed him the Colt.

  ‘Useful‚’ Dring said approvingly. ‘I’ll bring my Luger as well.’

  By nightfall they had everything ready: the yawl was stocked with fresh water, provisions and fuel. The aqualungs were stowed in the forward cabin together with a lightweight compressor for replenishing the air cylinders. Dring himself had constructed it from a small two-stroke engine and tubular framing. It was easy to manhandle.

  ‘I heard something in town‚’ Dring said when he came on board in the evening. ‘Those three tough boys left early. Went away in a car, Ferguson driving. Seems we aren’t going to be troubled with them after all.’

  ‘Maybe‚’ Keeton said. ‘And maybe not.’

  Dring slept on board. They had decided to sail early in the morning.

  Keeton woke once during the night. The yawl was rolling very gently. He listened for a while to the sound of water lapping against the side, then went to sleep again.

  They left the anchorage under power, but once out to sea with the wind freshening they cut the engine and hoisted sail. Gradually Australia faded astern, and once again Keeton found himself heading for the reef and the treasure of the Valparaiso, the treasure which this time he would surely make his own.