That must be reckoned with…
Slowly he came up to the surface. The easterly wind was sending in a good many white-flecked waves now and he hoped that his head would be quite invisible. There was a muffled glare of light in one place in the galley and a subdued light aft. He could just make out the dinghy rocking rather violently about ten yards from the stern. It was towards this he directed his very cautious movements. His sense of distance was accurate enough, for when again he came up he was within a few feet of the dinghy. He turned on his back, listened intently and watched. There was a man on deck seated by the companionway, obviously the man on guard. He seemed almost formless but he was smoking a cigarette, the thin end of which was a point in the gloom. Hamer swam on a few more strokes until he could clutch the bows of the dinghy He rested there for a moment to take breath, then very slowly he hoisted himself into the boat He had made no sound and the man on deck had apparently heard nothing. The point of light from his cigarette was still obliquely turned away. Hamer leaned forward and scrutinised the lights on the plage. They were all very vague and indistinct from this distance but there was a gramophone going and plenty of people moving about. Nothing was to be seen on the stretch of sea between him and the plage. There was no sound of cars which might have indicated approaching danger. Slowly he began to paddle with his hands, first with one, swinging the dinghy round to the reverse side on which the lookout man was seated and afterwards paddling very slowly, moving her only a foot or so at a time until she came in touch with the Bird of Paradise herself. He caught hold of the chains and pulled himself stealthily, along. As soon as he was exactly behind the man seated on the other side he pulled himself up by the chains and, with absolute noiselessness, reached the deck. Arrived there he crouched down for a moment behind the small water reservoir. The man on the other side continued to smoke. From down in the galley there came the sound of voices—eager, staccato voices which might well have belonged to men engaged upon a desperate search. He peeped in through one of the portholes. The door leading from the galley into the little salon was closed and the salon in darkness. That in itself was an immense relief. Once down the companionway he could enter his bedroom and barricade himself in. He felt around until he found what he sought—an iron spanner which was used to unscrew the orifices which permitted the entrance of fresh water. He balanced it in his hand—perhaps just heavy enough. He had instinctively a hatred of bloodshed but he was nerved at that moment for a great enterprise and nothing else intervened. He crawled a step backwards until he was exactly behind the dozing man. He raised himself on his knees. He crept inch by inch a little nearer, then with his left hand he gripped the boom. With his right he raised and brought down the spanner he was carrying with the whole of his strength on to the head of the dozing man.
For the first time Hamer abandoned then those stealthy movements which had been a continual strain upon him. His victim had slithered sideways and the cry which burst through his lips in momentary agony died away in a sort of gurgle, so that it was doubtful whether anyone below could hear him. Hamer sprang down the companionway in one leap, slipped through the entrance into his own cabin, locked and bolted the door.
Even then he was not sate, for a revolver through any of the portholes would follow him wherever he went. He closed all these and screwed them up there was still no noticeable sound. He tore out a jersey and a pair of trousers, slipped one revolver into his hip pocket and rapidly loaded the heavier one of army type which he kept in a drawer below his wardrobe. Then he sat down on the edge of his bunk. It appeared to him that the time had arrived for a little further reflection. Scarcely half a dozen breathless seconds had passed, however, before he leaped to his feet with a cold shiver—not perhaps of fear but born of some sense of impending danger. Something on the bed had moved. On his first entrance he had seen a little mound of clothes and forgotten it. He caught hold of the counterpane with his left hand, holding his gun tightly in his right. Again, what he saw nearly forced an interjection from his lips. Auguste, bound hand and foot, with a gag in his mouth and a nasty cut under his right eye, was lying there breathing faintly—unshaven and dishevelled, J a ghastly sight on the blood stained bedclothes. There was life enough in the man, however, for him to shake his head as though in warning.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Table of Contents
Hamer always afterwards believed that his actions in that brief hour or two were governed by some automatic function as well as by the quick working of his brain. He had made no sound at Auguste’s touch, he uttered no exclamation when he saw him. In half a dozen seconds his clasp knife was working at the leather thongs which secured the gags. In less than a minute Auguste was a free man. It was the latter then who broke the spell. With the urge for silence instinctively forced upon both of them, he permitted himself the slightest of groans as he tried to swing himself on to his feet.
“How did Monsieur arrive here?” he asked. “Swam from the château rocks,” Hamer whispered. “I had to smash a fellow’s head in who was on deck. He’s lying still enough. How many of the others are there?”
“Seven.” Auguste answered. “They came in Crestner’s old longboat. Seven of them—bad men all. Knives as well as guns.”
“What are they doing now?”
“Tinkering with the mast. They are looking for hidden records.”
“Mademoiselle has not been round?” Hamer asked anxiously.
“Late this afternoon. She went away when she found you were not here.”
“Where’s Jean?”
“Went after the water two hours ago. I expect they knocked him on the head.”
Hamer paused for a moment. There was a sound forward as though of sawing wood, a mumble of voices.
“Why aren’t the searchlights playing from the Fidélité?” Hamer demanded. “What’s happened to them all?”
“Mutiny,” was the brief response. “There’s been fighting on deck for an hour. Some of these men who are on board here brought pals from Toulon. They got amongst the sailors.”
“Any fight left in you?”
“I’m still giddy, sir, but I’ll do my best,” Auguste promised, sitting up.
Hamer handed him the smaller gun.
“Don’t use it unless we are hard pressed,” he enjoined. “I don’t understand why the Crestners haven’t sent somebody out to see what’s on.”
Auguste snorted.
“The young woman who’s giving the party there and brought all this gang down is her old friend,” he said. “She knew all of these stage women.”
“So it is Mademoiselle Tanya, then?”
“That’s her name,” Auguste assented. “She ordered supper for a hundred to-night and they’re all here, too, and a few over. If we could have got word to the General on the hill,” he concluded wistfully, “there is the man who would have swept this lot up.”
Hamer suddenly stiffened.
“Be careful, Auguste,” he warned him. “They’ve opened the galley door.”
A babel of excited voices reached their ears. Hamer slipped back the bolt. His gun was still clutched firmly in his right hand, but he swung round towards Auguste.
“Look here Auguste,” he said. “We can’t fight in here; we should just be like rats in a trap. I’m going to open the door. If these fellows have found what they wanted perhaps they will go away quietly. If they haven’t, we may as well have it out with them face to face.”
There was no time for consultation. Hamer threw open the door. He stood in the small space with the open door of the salon in front of him, the steps on to the deck on his left, the small toilet room on his right. His right hand gripping his revolver was outstretched, but the barrel pointed downwards. He had a lightning-like impression of four men seated at the table, one on the threshold of the galley, another fidgeting about behind. One of the men at the table was busy with a corkscrew and a bottle of champagne.
“Help yourselves, gentlemen,” Hamer invited. “Anything I have here
on board is at your service, but if your hands go down to your pockets there’s going to be trouble.”
They all turned their faces towards him—an evil-looking crowd, most of them of the sleek desperado type. One, the furthest from him, wearing a pince-nez, might have been a clerk in some public office. The lapel of his coat was torn as though some button had been removed for the occasion. Still holding his hands above his head, he rose to his feet and addressed a few rapid words to his companions. The man in the galley, whose hand had been stealing downwards, paused. He kept his eyes on Hamer, though, and very wicked eyes they were.
“How did you get here?” he demanded.
“This is my own boat, anyway,” was the swift reply. “What I should like to know is what you others are doing here.”
The man with the pince-nez evidently had some authority. He swept aside a chorus of blasphemous rejoinders.
“If you are Wildburn,” he said, “I will answer your question. We came here to find a message left for us upon this boat. We have the plan of the place. You may have bought the boat, but you never bought the message. We came to search for it, to take it—by force if necessary. The message is gone. The hiding-places are empty.”
“Nothing to do with me,” Hamer disclaimed. “I know nothing of any hiding places on this boat, nor anyone who has left messages for you or anyone else. I bought the yacht from an agent in Marseilles.”
“Listen,” the man of the pince-nez went on, “You can almost see from where you stand. Your foremast is in sections. There are seventeen of them altogether, in number one, three, seven, nine, fourteen, and two other numbers there were records concealed. In case of disaster to our comrade they were to be used on his behalf. Our comrade was murdered. We came to find those records and the places where they were are empty.”
“Who are you?” Hamer asked.
“There is no necessity for me to answer your question,” was the sneering retort. “We are here. We hold the bay as we hold your ship. Those papers have gone. It is you who must have removed them. You might have time to shoot a couple of us before we got to work, but there are five more left on board, and a hundred on the plage, besides a few comrades over there on the gunboat. You have not one chance in a thousand of getting out of this alive, unless you tell us where to find those records. Make up your mind quick.”
“Yes, you are quite light to tell me to hurry,” Wildburn scoffed. “You will see your hundred men on the plage legging it for their holes in a few minutes, and you will feel the handcuffs on your wrists in less if you don’t clear out of this. There’s a gentlemen on the hill there who knows something about you fellows. He will be here when he’s ready.”
Hamer’s words carried conviction. Two of the men half-rose to their feet.
“Get at it, Laporte,” one of them shouted. “Cut your words short. The records or a bullet.”
“My comrades are impatient, you see,” their spokesman went on, “have you those records?”
“I have not. I know nothing about them. I have never seen them.”
“Who are your crew?”
“One named Jean went for water two or three hours ago. He is still on the plage.”
“Right,” the other replied. “He is locked up. Who else?”
“Auguste, my matelot, whom you seem to have disposed of pretty well.”
“Is he the man who can neither read nor write?”
“You have been correctly informed,” Wildburn answered. “He can neither read nor write. He would not know what your records were if he saw them, and he happens to be an honest fellow. If he found anything on this ship which had been secreted, he would bring it to me.”
“Whom have you allowed to search this ship?”
“I have allowed no one,” Wildburn declared. “It seems to me that you have been fooled. The agents must have known all about these hiding places. They probably took care to empty them before they sold the boat.”
The man with the pince-nez bit his nails furiously. He looked over the tops of his fingers at Hamer, and all the malice in the world was in that look.
“We have reason to believe,” he said, “that the records were here in their places not a week ago. If they had been disturbed, all France would have been disturbed. There are some secrets that could never be kept, and the finding of these records would have been one of them.”
Two of the fiercest-looking of the men at the table rose and shouted one against the other.
“Thirty seconds,” the one with the louder voice yelled. “Give him 30 seconds, Laporte. It is enough. We will tear the truth out of him. One of us may get a bullet. Who cares? We will have his tongue out of his head. There are seven of us and plenty more to come. It is for The Cause, you others! He is lying to us, this man. Thirty seconds! No more.”
The man with the pince-nez looked deprecatingly across at Hamer. He appeared, as he was, the perfect hypocrite.
“I regret, monsieur,” he said. “Mine would have been the gentler way but I am over-ruled. You may pay with your life if you cannot tell us anything more about those records. I shall begin to count. One—”
Hamer held out his hand.
“One second,” he begged. “On my word of honour I will make no movement. I ask you—all of you or any one of you who likes. Get on your knees. Look through those portholes. When you have seen what I can see perhaps you may reflect. They would not think much of hanging seven men for one murder so long as those men came from Marseilles.”
Somehow or other they believed him. The sight they saw was alarming enough. From the narrow point where the road curved to Antibes right past the rival restaurant along the road to Crestner’s there seemed to be one tangle of flashing lights. Vehicles of some sort were streaming down from the hill. Their lights flared through the closely-grown pine woods. Everywhere was an orgy of illumination, and even while they looked there was a clear sonorous voice from immediately below.
“Bird of Paradise ahoy! Commander Berard from the Fidélité.”
“Get any men?” Hamer shouted.
“Twenty—and thirty coming. We have had trouble but it is over. We are coming on board.”
“Put out to sea,” the most desperate of the men demanded, watching the others struggling into the galley. “Never mind whether you have time or not. Gino, start the engine!”
Hamer laughed at him.
“Look out of the porthole, you fool,” he said. “Can’t you feel the sea beneath your feet? If the anchors hold we are safe here, but it would take you half an hour to get them up. We are on a corps mort. There is no harbour on this coast you could get the Bird of Paradise into when you had them up.”
There was the sound outside of the men jumping into the cutter in which they had arrived. Only the man of the pince-nez remained in his place. He sat at the table with folded arms.
“I am in charge of the political side of this visit,” he declared. “I am not armed. I have nothing to do with those threats. We were here merely to recover our stolen property.”
There was the sound of firing outside. Berard sprang over the side and came crashing down the stairs. There were a dozen marines behind him.
“Thank Heaven you’re safe, Wildburn!” he exclaimed. “Who is this?”
“I have not been presented,” Hamer replied. “I found him on board the ship. He was the leader of the boarding party who are just making for the plage.”
Berard signed to two of the marines behind him.
“I am Deputy Laporte.” the little man said with stuttering dignity. No true Frenchman will lay a hand upon me.”
“We will see about that,” the commander answered tersely. “There are several true Frenchmen of the type you talk about already in irons, and one or two of them shot.”
The deputy shivered.
“I have not broken the law,” he complained. “I am here to search for the property of a comrade.”
The commander smiled, rather a ferocious looking effort at mirth.
“You
are one of the men,” he said sternly, “who was distributing those secret pamphlets, one of which I found on the Fidélité. It was you who brought a handful of them to the marines I had placed on guard here. You know the penalty for doing that, I suppose, to sailors or soldiers in uniform?”
The little man was ghastly white, but he bluffed once more.
“When the day comes,” he threatened, “officers of the French army or navy with a black mark against their names will be the first to suffer. In a few minutes my bodyguard will be here. We have a hundred men in the plage.”
“Take him on board and lock him up,” Berard ordered, “then come back and fetch me. Have a look at your hundred men if your eyes are good enough,” he advised Laporte. “There are four hundred soldiers from the barracks at Antibes on the plage, and more streaming in—and pretty well all the gendarmes in the neighbourhood. They will have to open the old military prison at Antibes to hold your lot to-night.”
The little man shrunk back in his corner.
“You can’t arrest me!” he expostulated. “I have already told you that I am a deputy—Deputy Laporte of the Rhone Department.”
“Well, if you are, so much the worse for you,” Berard replied. “Sergeant, my idea is changed,” he went on, turning to his man. “Take him ashore. Hand him over to the officer in command of the chasseurs. Tell them who he is. I won’t have him on my ship. He will be safer in Antibes prison. Tell them he was in command of the expedition here, and is taking the responsibility for it.”
Laporte made a show of dignity.
“There will come a time,” he prophesied, as he rose to his feet, “when you will listen to another sort of command.”
Berard laughed scornfully.
“I doubt whether you will be there to hear it, my little friend,” he said, waving the man away.
“Any casualties?” the commander asked, as he seated himself opposite to Hamer Wildburn, a bottle of Scotch whisky and a syphon between them.
“Only my matelot here a trifle knocked about,” Hamer replied, pouring some whisky into a tumbler and passing it to him. “Then there’s a man I hit on the head with a spanner lying on the deck. Auguste, just have a look round behind and report. I’m afraid they’ve made a mess of your galley.”
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