by Vernon Loder
They went down, and dragged and searched, but without coming on any sign of the missing bit of timber. Then they tried the grapnel again in the under-water shaft, and this time it fixed for good, and was broken off, and lost, in an attempt to get it free.
Mr. Rigby exclaimed profanely: “That is the only other grapnel, and I’m not sure anyway that it is the most satisfactory thing to use. The trouble is that none of us knows what that shaft ends in. It may meet another fissure at right angles. We can’t see down from above, and I’m hanged if we can look from below. The water is all boiling white there, and I don’t think a dive would be safe.”
“You couldn’t do it, sir,” said Davis, upon whom he had turned his eyes hopefully. “There’s ten to fifteen feet of water in parts, and even if you could keep down long enough, and didn’t get your head broken on a rock, you wouldn’t know if you were facing up or downstream.”
“Resources of civilisation exhausted, eh? Looks like it, but I’m disinclined to give it up, if that was the log that fouled your gaff you hooked just now.”
They sat down for a discussion, and considered ways and means. Parfitt spoke last.
“That last grapnel got it before, and may have broken off in it now. I think we ought to send back to Cwyll for some more, half a dozen if necessary.”
“Why not get a diver?” asked Joan.
They looked at her with surprise.
“Davis says that’s impossible,” replied Rigby. “You have a look at the place again, Miss Powis.”
“I meant a real diver,” said Joan, while Wint smiled approval. “We saw one working in the estuary at Cwyll.”
Parfitt jumped to his feet enthusiastically. “That’s an idea, Miss! He might do it. After all, he goes down in pretty strong tides, and he’s got weights on his feet, and so on. That would save all this poking and hauling, that may miss the very thing we want in the end.”
“It does sound good,” agreed Rigby, looking approvingly at Joan. “By Jove! we may have a shot at it. But what about visibility? He wouldn’t see much at the head of the pool here.”
“A diver does a lot of work by feeling, sir,” said one of the constables, “and, as he stands on his feet, he could crawl about the rocks under the water, and poke into all the cracks.”
It was ill-put, but his meaning was clear enough, and turned the scales in favour of the suggestion. A diver in working-dress might even be able to explore the lower end of the shaft in the rocks, and would be able to remain down long enough to exhaust every possibility.
“That was a brain-wave, Miss Powis,” said the Chief Constable, and turned to a constable. “Here, run like blazes to the hotel, telephone to the port people, and get the diver sent up at once, with all his kit. If they make any bones about it, refer them to me.”
I’m glad you’re going to try it, sir,” said Davis quietly, when the policeman had dashed off. “I believe I had it on the grapnel, look you. If it’s here, the diver’ll get it.”
They waited excitedly for the return of the constable. He came back presently, shaking his head.
“They say, sir, that something’s gone wrong with the air-pump, and they’ve stopped work, and the diver gone home. It may be mended by to-morrow.”
Rigby swore again. “Rotten luck! Here. We’ll go back, and I’ll have a talk with them. If they hustled, they might make the repair in an hour or two.”
Work was suspended, and the party trooped back to Pengellert; the constables to the police-station, the others to the hotel, where Rigby rang up on the telephone, and had his worst fears confirmed. He returned to Joan, Parfitt, and Wint, who had now been joined in the smoking room by young Hoad, and told them.
“Nothing doing to-day. By the time they have it ready it would be too late. But they have promised to have the diver up here with his equipment by six tomorrow morning. I’m going to wire to Gwynwth to ask if they have a spare air-pump there, in case ours goes wonky again.”
He went out, and did not return. Hoad looked anxiously at Wint.
“Why does he want a diver, Mr. Wint?”
“To relieve your mind, Hoad,” said Wint slowly. “Joking apart, I may say that we are not looking for more bodies, only for the missing gaff. Do try to look a bit more cheerful! You made an ass of yourself, but it isn’t a crime. Don’t flatter yourself that what you did killed that poor girl. It was a bigger power than either of us did that.”
Hoad stared. “What do you mean by a bigger power, Mr. Wint?”
“Love—if we must be sentimental,” said Wint. “Now, if you don’t mind, I want to have a talk with Miss Powis.”
Hoad went out, looking both resentful and relieved.
“I had to insult him,” said Wint, when he had gone. “A slap on the amour propre is as good for the morbid as a slap on the face to the hysterical. It’ll do him all the good in the world.”
Edward Bow turned up at eleven that night. He had driven furiously all the way from London, and was both surprised and grateful when he heard what Joan and her friend had achieved.
“It does sound hopeful,” he admitted, when he had heard their account of that day’s doings. “There was evidently a log sunk and stuck in that shaft, and it may be the right one. Even if the gaff was prised loose from it, it wouldn’t matter. The gaff could be found on the bottom by the diver. But I think it would be wiser if the police concentrated particularly on that pool more than the others.”
“Why particularly?” she asked.
“Well, as you say it was suggested, a shaft in the rock where that shaft is most likely meets another at right angles. An underwater tunnel of that kind is more likely to stop drifting stuff than the rocks at the bottom of an open channel.”
“And there may be a dead end in it, out of the pull of the water,” Wint agreed. “Look at the regular cups that are cut by pebbles here. I came on one the other day eighteen inches deep. By the way, Bow, what did you do in town? I assume you went to see a lawyer.”
Bow nodded. “We’ve got Tregaskin in case the affair gets as far as the Assizes, as I presume it will now. Fortunately, and most unusually, I was able to see him. He is very hopeful.”
“On what grounds?”
“The old ones, as far as he is concerned. You may know that he is the greatest destroyer of circumstantial evidence we have. I don’t mean he actually destroys it, but he generally manages to make the jury believe that it is a terrible thing to convict on, which is the main point. Then he plays cunningly on the sentimental chord. He told me there was only one woman client he had failed to pull off, and she would insist on going into the box, where she made hay of all his defence.”
“Don’t you believe in circumstantial evidence being valuable?” Joan asked.
“When it’s logical, I do; most thoroughly, Miss Powis. Only in this case, I know Caroline. Mrs. Hayes didn’t do it. Anyway, I am most awfully grateful to you. I hope the diver justifies you tomorrow.”
Chapter XXVI
A Gaff is Found
JOAN POWIS hardly slept that night. By five o’clock she was up, pulling aside the curtains, and watching the golden sheen of the sun creeping up the sky behind the mountains.
Someone was moving about in the room next to hers. She dressed hurriedly, and by the half-hour was standing in the hall below, with the Boots, and Miss Pole, both too excited to stay abed.
Then Wint joined her, shortly followed by Bow, and they opened the front door, and stood watching the road.
Bow, this morning, looked more anxious and haggard than before. He was trembling a little, too, a rare thing for a man of his physique and temperament. Both saw that the reaction had told on him. He lit, and threw away, several cigarettes, and presently, with a muttered apology, left them and walked fast up the road.
“The poor beggar’s in for a nasty time if our theory is a dud,” said Wint. “I am rather sorry we laid so much stress on it.”
“He’ll feel better when he sees the police come up with the diver,” she said wisel
y. “It’s the waiting about that has got on his nerves.”
As Bow did not return in a quarter of an hour, Wint followed him down the road, and presently ran back to explain that the police had arrived, left the lorry which had brought the diver and his equipment opposite the meadow beside the Churn Pool, and did not intend to call at the hotel at all.
“I expect Bow followed them down,” he added, as Joan accompanied him towards the river. “The poor chap’s too excited to worry about us.”
The police had begun work early to avoid a crowd from the village. Only Bow and Davis were with them when Joan and her companion reached the party, and a solitary labourer had paused curiously on the road above, on his way to work.
They greeted the Chief Constable and Parfitt who, with Bow a little behind them, were watching men fitting up the air-pump and the pipes connected with it. The diver, a grizzled man of indeterminate age, was scanning the pool below where Hayes’s body had been found, and making his plans for a descent into it.
“Likely there’s more run and bubble on the top, sir,” he said to Rigby, when he came back. “It’s worse in a tide-rip among rocks than this at any time. Happen I won’t see much, but my hands’ll see for me. They’re used to it.”
“Good!” said Rigby. “Don’t think you’ll need any more weight to keep you down, do you?”
The grizzled man shook his head. “No, I don’t. All that bobble and fuss looks worse than it is, sir. Might be dangerous in a flood, likely enough, but it’s nothing to speak of now.”
He was quite right. A swimmer has not much chance in a rushing river, but the experienced and heavily weighted diver thought nothing of a couple of fathoms of river-water.
When the other men had nearly finished fitting up the pump and connecting the pipes and lines, he sat down on a rock, and was fitted into his diving-suit, from which his long head and thin neck at last only appeared; giving him the air of a superannuated tortoise thrusting its head from its carapace to look around.
Then the metal headpiece was taken up and screwed on, and the cumbersome, goggled man took a few heavy steps down to the river bank, where a short ladder had been let down into the water in an oily backwater of the pool.
“All set, eh?” asked Mr. Rigby to the men who nodded, and began to turn away at the handle of the pump. “Right!”
Bow and Wint and Joan stood close to the bank, watching the rising air-bubbles that at first followed the line of the diver’s underwater progress, until they were swallowed up and invisible in the rush of foam at the head of the pool.
“I suppose he’ll be all right,” said Joan anxiously. “It looks a beastly place to me.”
“He won’t find any octopuses at any rate,” said Mr. Rigby with a smile. “I think you needn’t worry, Miss Powis.”
But, if Joan was reassured and worried no longer, Edward Bow remained in a state of pitiable anxiety and suspense, staring at the rushing water long after the progress of the diver could no longer be traced, as if by straining his eyes he could see what was going on below.
Joan eyed him sympathetically. A man who had remained faithful to one woman for more than twenty-five years could not help exciting the sympathy of another woman, the more so that he had apparently kept away from Mrs. Hayes since her marriage. That he was deeply in love with the latter still could not be doubted, and her fate had put this normally self-contained and rather cynical man in a state of nervous anxiety and fear, which was visible to anyone who watched him.
Joan could not help thinking of the dreadful shock he would get if the gaff was not found in the pool. While its finding would not be a certain proof that Mrs. Hayes was innocent, failure to find it would tell against her.
After a long time, the diver came to the bank again for a rest. He did not remain up very long, but it seemed ages to those who stood on the bank. So far he had not reached as far as the bottom of the rock shaft through which the water rushed from the pool above. He had had instructions to search every inch of the bottom, and, unable to see for the foam, that was a tedious job.
“But could you make out where the water came in through that tunnel?” Rigby asked, before the helmet was screwed on again. “That is the spot we want to get at.”
The man nodded. “Aye, there was a right push of water I could feel. I’ll have a rod with me this time. I can stand to the side of it, but couldn’t go up the shaft. I’d be like a cork in a bottle, sir.”
“You’d be shot out like a cork,” said Rigby, smiling, “but take your time and make sure of everything. This job has to be done very thoroughly.”
The diver descended again and the trail of bubbles rose to the surface, and broke, until he was once more in the boil.
Bow had not said a word all this time. But now he went down to the tail of the pool, and stared at the slow eddy with eyes that suddenly lit up.
“I suppose this isn’t the log, Inspector?” he shouted to Parfitt. “There’s a bit of timber swimming round and round here.”
Rigby and Parfitt made a rush to join him, so unguardedly that the Chief Constable tripped on a rock, and just missed going headlong into the pool. When he recovered himself, he was passed by Parfitt, going up to get something to hook the floating wood from the water.
“I believe that’s it,” said Davis, who was now staring, too, at the eddy. “Just looks like the shape and size of it, indeed.”
“You mean the log that fouled your gaff?” asked Joan eagerly.
“Yes, Miss. It was a bit like that.”
Spare grapnels had been brought up this time, and very soon the bit of timber was caught and dragged to the bank to be examined.
While the Chief Constable, Bow, Parfitt and Wint, with Joan looking over their shoulders, knelt down to study the catch, even the stolid men still turning the handles of the air-pump watched with interest.
“What do you say, Davis?” asked Parfitt, making room for the man beside him. “Here’s a hole that looks as if it had been made by the hook of a gaff, and a bit of a splinter torn off too. And there are one or two deep scratches.”
Davis nodded. “Yes, sir, I am sure this is it. I could swear now it is the log I stuck my gaff in.”
“And that splinter is the one you tore out when the grapnel got into something yesterday.”
“Yes, sir. Seems to me the gaff and this bit must have been wedged in the tunnel, and the grapnel parted them. Then the log would carry down with the current.”
“The gaff wouldn’t, or not so far,” said Wint. “The heavy steel hook would tend to make it sink. Well, this is more hopeful. I wonder if the diver will bring it up this time.”
“He’d have signalled with his rope,” said Parfitt. “But very likely he is searching at the foot of the shaft, while the gaff is gone from it. Though the hook would keep it from following the log, the wooden handle would float up a little, and the water would carry it clear of the mouth, where the push is strongest.”
“We’ll have him up and give him fresh instructions,” said Rigby, leaving them and going over to the men at the pump.
When the diver came up again, they discovered that he had been closely examining the shaft with his rod, and was of opinion that it did not descend in a direct line from the pool above. There was a kink or elbow in it, nearer the top than the bottom, and the rock-sides were cracked and creviced in many places.
Joan was astonished to find that the man could give such a clear account of the formation of the underwater obstructions without the use of his eyes.
“It’s wonderful, but I’m sure you are right,” she commented. “We know the bit of wood has come down, so it must have been pushed out of the shaft when the grapnel caught it yesterday.”
“Very like, Miss,” said the diver stolidly.
Bow’s anxiety and eagerness had been increased rather than diminished by the nature of his find. He grudged every moment that the diver was on the bank. He gave an audible sigh of satisfaction again when he vanished by means of the ladder, and crep
t slowly towards the head of the pool.
But the suspense was not yet over. The man came up again, empty-handed, for a breather.
“No luck yet?” asked Rigby.
“No, sir, but another go ought to do it. “I’ve narrered it down to a small bit, only rather a chancy one, count of the bottom being rough. Lies over there to the left of that boil,” he added, pointing with his hand to a miniature whirlpool beyond the white water, and just under the lee of the undercut rock-bank.
“Why the devil didn’t he stay down, then, if the bit was so small?” Bow asked Wint in a ferocious whisper. “That’s what I want to know.”
“He knows his job. We don’t!” replied Wint. “We’ll hear pretty soon now if there is anything doing.”
Bow cast a look at the pool, shrugged impatiently and strode up the rocks, and away across the meadow, as if he could not bear to look at the spot. But he was back again, staring in a fascinated way at the pipe being paid out by the men at the pump when the diver entered the water once more.
All of them now realised that this was the last search in that pool, and even Rigby and Parfitt showed signs of excitement, while Joan could hardly keep still.
“How long shall we have to wait?” she asked presently.
“Don’t know,” said Wint, and then started as a man at the air-pipe gave a cry.
“He’s signalled he wants to come up, sir,” he called. “Gave two tugs just now.”
They crowded on the bank above the ladder, and soon the line of bubbles began moving inwards, and then the diver’s helmet appeared in the water below them. His shoulders were hardly above the water, when Bow saw that something gleamed in his hand, and sat down suddenly on a rock with his head in his hands.
No one spoke as the diver came out of the water, and tossed a gaff on the bank. Parfitt picked it up, glanced at it, and passed it to Davis.
“Yours?” he asked laconically.