“O.K.,” said Emmy. “I’ll do what I can.”
It proved quite difficult to get a message through to Dr. Venables in the Emergency Room, but fortunately the stream of casualties was beginning to thin out, and after half an hour or so of waiting in the corridor along with the walking-wounded, Emmy was rewarded by the appearance of Dr. Vanduren, wearing a white coat rather too small for him over his own clothes. Emmy explained her predicament, and the doctor’s first reaction was, not unnaturally, a question.
“What is it that he’s remembered?”
“Almost everything,” Emmy said. “I can’t possibly explain here and now. In essence, it’s that your so-called masters have a horrifying and very ambitious plan for these islands. To engineer independence and then, in fact, to take over the islands.”
Dr. Vanduren gave a small and unamused laugh. “They could do it, too,” he said. “Your husband thinks he can stop them?”
“He hopes so, if he can act fast enough. In the meantime, he has to have some clothes.”
“Clothes? How do you mean?”
Emmy said, “He wants to leave the hospital, and all he has is a pair of green silk pajamas. O.K., go ahead and laugh, but really it’s not funny.”
“Nice to have something to laugh at for a change,” said the doctor. “Well, now, I don’t know what I can… I suppose I could get him something from the hospital orderlies’ cupboard in the way of white pants and a white jacket…no, that might be a bit conspicuous, all dressed up in hospital gear. No, say, I’ve had an idea… ”
So it was that Dr. Vanduren alias Venables finished his morning’s work in the Emergency Room with nothing but his trousers under his white hospital coat, which he kept on for his jeep ride back to the hotel at lunchtime; and Henry Tibbett, strictly unofficially, discharged himself from his ward and went out into the streets of St. Mark’s in white hospital trousers topped by a holiday-bright cotton shirt several sizes too large for him, bearing the label of a Miami Beach men’s shop.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
IT WAS MIDDAY before Henry and Emmy, on foot, made it to Bob Harrison’s yard. The weather by then had definitely improved. The rain had stopped, and although the sun could not penetrate the dense cloud layer above, there was a feeling of warmth and recovery in the air. The gate of the yard was open, and the Tibbetts could see Bob making the rounds of his property and inspecting it for damage.
Considering all things, the yard had been lucky. Only one boat had been blown off its cradle, and the damage was minimal. A few mooring lines had parted, causing some boats to damage themselves by crashing against the pontoons, but Bob looked reasonably cheerful as he waved in greeting.
“Glad to see you up and around, Mr. Tibbett,” he remarked. “Heard you had a bad time in Windflower. Haven’t been able to get her off the beach as yet—what’s left of her. Never fear, she’s well insured.”
Emmy noticed, with gratitude and relief, that Bob seemed to accept Henry’s reappearance in the normal world without comment. She said, “Yes, we’ve all been lucky. How’s the Katie-Lou?”
“The Carstairs’ boat? Now, there’s a funny thing. You’ll not believe, but I had Herbert Ingham down here this morning, searching her for contraband. Beats me. Didn’t find anything, of course.”
Henry said, “When d’you expect the Carstairs to come and pick her up?”
Bob shrugged. “Depends on the weather. Be several days before anyone would want to put to sea, in my view. But, of course, if they’re really anxious to get back to the States… ”
“I gather,” Henry said, “that Anderson is going to provision her for them.”
“That’s right. He does it for a lot of charter boats.”
“Any news of the airport?” Henry asked.
“Pretty good, so I hear. Runways are being cleared now, and they hope to get flights operating again tomorrow.”
Henry said, “My wife and I are staying at the Harbour Prospect. We’re friends of the Carstairs. We’d be very grateful if you’d let us know when they are expected—that is, if you can get a message through.”
“No trouble there. The telephone’s working already. They tell me they hope to get the power on by this evening.”
“Life goes on,” said Henry, and Bob nodded in cheerful agreement.
The Tibbetts made their way back to the Harbour Prospect by the shortest route for those on foot—through the discotheque which had an entrance on Main Street. Normally it would have been closed at lunchtime, but on this unusual post-hurricane day the bar was open and doing a good trade. Henry and Emmy made their way up the now-familiar staircase at the back and through the devastated gardens to the hotel.
The dining room was open for lunch and was doing a brisk business. The level of chatter was high—everybody had a near-miss story to tell. The general verdict was that the Seawards had been extraordinarily lucky, and the atmosphere was full of the same cheerful camaraderie that prevailed during the Second World War among the survivors of an air raid. Well, we’re still here. Did you hear about Mr. Harrigan’s roof? I believe the Barkers lost their dinghy…roof’s off the North End Yacht Club…can’t drive to Turtle Bay, road’s completely blocked…yes, old man, I tried this morning, and I can tell you… It was all comforting.
Henry and Emmy were just finishing lunch when Dr. Vanduren came in. He looked very tired, but his face lit up with a smile when he saw the Tibbetts. Emmy was glad to see that he had been able to change into another shirt.
He pulled a chair up to their table, sat down, and said, “Well?”
“Well what?” “Emmy asked.
“Dr. Harlow is very put out,” said Vanduren. “Says you had no business discharging yourself from the hospital just yet. However, he’s too busy to make a big fuss. What have you found out?”
Henry was looking at Vanduren in amazement. He said, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Didn’t Emmy tell you?”
Quickly, Emmy said, “I told Henry there was a doctor here who could help us. I didn’t mention your name because we couldn’t be sure of not being overheard.”
“And the name, please, is Venables,” said Vanduren. “All right, then. Let’s have it. Emmy tells me—”
Henry turned to Emmy. “What have you been telling this man?”
Emmy said, “Darling, somebody has to trust somebody, or we can’t get anywhere. It’s taken the doctor and me a long time to come to trust each other. Right, Doctor?”
“Right, Emmy.”
Henry still looked unconvinced. Emmy went on, “The doctor is here to try to find his daughter. He was mixed up in the sinister side of all this, but no longer. Henry, you have to trust him because he’s the only person who can identify Janet—until that photograph arrives, which will be too late.”
Henry said, “Have you had lunch, Doctor?”
“Sure. At the hospital.”
“Then let’s go up to our room—my wife’s room, that is. We need to talk.”
Henry made sure that Dr. Vanduren talked first. Allowing no interruptions or explanations from Emmy, he listened as the doctor told his story, from his daughter’s presumed death to his blackmail by the Mafia to his final decision to come to the Caribbean and make an end to it all.
“And I have been trying to tell Emmy—Mrs. Tibbett—that she is too trusting, Chief Superintendent. This Governor—what do you know of him? What do you know of the Chief of Police? Maybe all these people were honest once, but with so much money at stake… ”
Henry said, “All right. We’ll trust each other. I don’t like it, but there it is. How much has Emmy told you?”
“Nothing more than I’ve said.”
“Here goes then,” said Henry. He stood up and began pacing the room as he told his story. “This is what I have remembered. There may be more, but this is what we have to go on so far.” He paused. “It’s difficult to get this across, but you’ve had dealings with these people, so perhaps you won’t find it so hard to believe. I ove
rheard all this on Windflower, when they thought I was completely stupefied. Had I been normal, of course, I’d just have said nothing. But I was stoned and I had to make a big scene. They just laughed—they were high themselves, of course—and said that if I did tell anyone, I’d never be believed. After that, either they stepped up the dosage or I got a concussion because I simply don’t remember any more.”
“Well?” said Vanduren.
“The plan,” Henry said, “is a takeover of these islands, no less. They’ve been used for some time as a staging-post for transporting drugs from Colombia to the United States, but that’s small-time stuff. Your masters, as you call them, have been on the lookout for some time for a sovereign state of their own, and they plan to have it here.”
“A sovereign state?”
“These islands,” Henry said, “are ideal for the growing of cannabis. Why smuggle something which you can so easily raise on your own doorstep? Of course, the British Authorities wouldn’t like it. So the British Authorities must go.”
Vanduren said, “But that’s—”
“Preposterous? Not at all. Look how many small islands have become independent recently.”
“Yes, but the new government would also object to—”
“Not,” said Henry, “if the new government was just a collection of puppets manipulated by organized crime.”
“All right,” said Vanduren. “I’ll go so far as to agree that such a plan might be possible. But there are such things as elections, you know, and people are not—”
Henry said, “The people of these islands—especially the young people—are being carefully groomed, Doctor. The drug problem is very difficult to control here because the stuff is virtually being given away. It is being handed round and smoked so openly that the police are forced to make big raids—like the one at the fish fry the other night—and to arrest a lot of young people. Many of them are the children of prominent local families. The pattern is being set for a revolt against police brutality.”
“Brutality? Are the police brutal?”
“No, of course not. But there will be plenty of youngsters ready to swear they are, when the big event happens.”
“What big event?”
Henry said, “It would have happened already, except for several things. The first was Miss Elizabeth Sprague, God bless her. By her intelligent and courageous behavior, she set me in action. I was a bother. I was too prominent an official just to be disposed of in the usual manner. So—very cleverly—they decided to draw my fangs by destroying my credibility. I was fed PCP and kept in a state of light intoxication for a period of several days, during which I behaved with typical PCP reactions—that is, I became euphoric, irresponsible, aggressive, and apparently crazy. I was then given larger doses to produce amnesia, but by a chance that nobody could have foreseen, I was saved. Saved from death at sea in Hurricane Alfred, which I still don’t understand, and saved from forgetfulness by Hurricane Beatrice. The hurricanes also played their part by knocking the Mafia’s time schedule to hell. As I said, the big event would have taken place by now.”
“The big event being—?”
“The brutal murder by the police of two nice young visitors, whose only crime was to smoke a little grass.”
Vanduren said, “I don’t understand. I thought you said the police weren’t brutal.”
“They’re not. This was a very careful and cleverly planned operation, and we happened to walk into the middle of it. First, there was the fish fry. The police were virtually dragooned into taking action by an anonymous tipoff, and anything so openly lawless had to be investigated. As many young people as possible were set up to be arrested. They were busted for smoking pot and taking other drugs, questioned, and released on bail. Many, if not all of them, in the forthcoming atmosphere of hysteria, will swear that they were mistreated by the police.”
“All right. What about step number two?”
“That didn’t go according to plan,” Henry said, “thanks to the intervention of Miss Betsy Sprague. To go back a little, the Chermar—crewed by your daughter and her friend posing as the late Mr. and Mrs. Ross—had brought a cargo of drugs to St. Mark’s, much of it for distribution at the fish fry. They were preparing to depart and scuttle the ship as usual, when Betsy turned up and identified Janet. That meant that she had to be disposed of. The obvious thing was to kill her and let her go down with the boat—but her absence would soon have been noticed, and that might have triggered off police actions and suspicions just when they weren’t wanted—at the start of step two, in fact. So, using PCP, they put her into a state of amnesia for a couple of days and then sent her home. If Betsy hadn’t made that telephone call to me—and if Miss Pelling’s niece hadn’t been allergic to cats—that would have been that. But as it was, I came into the picture.”
“And put a spanner in the works?”
“Not really,” said Henry, with regret. “I wish I had. I turned up, nosing around after Betsy and getting myself officially appointed to investigate her disappearance. Too bad. That was really annoying for the masters. So they decided not only to put me out of action and beyond the bounds of credibility, but actually to use me in their scheme.” Henry paused. “I must say, they are very ingenious.”
“I can think of a harsher word,” said Dr. Vanduren. “Go on.”
“Well,” said Henry, “to go back to step two. The idea was to alert the police that a private yacht was carrying a large cargo of marijuana from St. Mark’s to the United States.”
“To alert them? How?”
“By using a childishly simple radio code. By leaving obvious clues around.”
“How could they be sure the police would pick up the clues?”
“Because at least one member of the force,” Henry said, “is actively working for the Mafia. O.K. You have the picture so far. First, the bust at the fish fry. Then the chase at sea of the suspected yacht. What happens? Plenty happens. The police launch locates the boat and hails it. The boat does not respond. After repeated warnings, the launch draws up alongside the boat, and officers board her. They find an extraordinary situation—a sort of Marie Celeste. A certain amount of marijuana, but not very much.” To Emmy, Henry said, “I got that all wrong at first, darling. There’ll only be a little on the Katie-Lou.” He went on. “More importantly, they find the bodies of two young people, a man and a girl, beaten to death. The police try to radio a report back to St. Mark’s but find that their radio is out of action, as is the one on the boat they have boarded. All they can do is take the boat in tow and bring her back to St. Mark’s with her gruesome cargo. And tell their story.”
Vanduren snorted. “Which nobody will believe.”
“Exactly. Certain facts will be beyond dispute: that the Katie-Lou was suspected of carrying marijuana; that she was hailed and ignored police warnings, and so was arrested by force; that only a small quantity of marijuana was found; and that no radio report was made at the time. Also that the bodies of two American citizens, Katherine and Lewis Carstairs, were on board when the yacht was towed into St. Mark’s, and that they had been brutally assaulted and killed. The police launch carries three officers. The two who boarded the boat will have only each other’s word for what happened. The third officer, who remained on the launch, will have a different story to tell. This officer will report that the radio was never out of operation, that strange noises and cries came from the boarded yacht, that the other two officers spent the journey back concocting their story—you can imagine. There will be uproar—just the sort of situation to set off a revolution. There will be plenty of money and also weapons for the insurgents. The responsible politicians of the island will find it impossible to get their voices heard. When the dust clears, the islands will be independent and in the hands of the right people—from the Mafia’s point of view. After that, the rest will be easy and extremely difficult to undo.”
There was a long pause. Then Vanduren said, “Who will the dead couple actually be, do you k
now?”
“Katherine and Lewis Carstairs, of course,” said Henry. “Their families will naturally identify them.”
“But—”
“At the moment,” Henry said, “they are calling themselves Jill and Harvey Blackstone—fictitious names—having been induced by money or drugs or both to switch identities temporarily with a young couple who had been smuggled illegally onto the island. We have been given a picture of the Carstairs as thoroughly respectable. In fact, they are well-to-do, but disreputable and deeply into drugs. However, the point is that they are at this moment being held prisoner somewhere. They will not be killed, you see, until just the right moment—that is, when your daughter and her friend leave the boat, and before the police arrive.”
Quietly, Dr. Vanduren said, “Then we have to find them.”
“We have to find them, and we have to abort the whole scheme,” said Henry. “God, to think that we have all this information and not a soul will listen to us. The Governor and the Chief of Police have already strongly requested that Emmy and I leave the islands and never come back.”
Emmy said, “At least the Governor has read your notes.”
“Yes, and dismissed them as the ravings of a lunatic. I’m very lucky not to be in jail or a mental hospital. If it wasn’t for the hurricane, I daresay I would be.”
“Yes,” said Vanduren, “Beatrice was a blessing in disguise, wasn’t she?”
“In a way,” Henry said, “but she’s also tied up every police officer and other official on the islands. Anything we do, Doctor, we have to do on our own.”
Emmy said, “By the way, does anybody have any money?”
There was a blank silence. Then Henry said, “I certainly don’t. I don’t even own the clothes I’m wearing. I thought you—”
“I have nineteen dollars and twenty-five cents,” said Emmy, “and my bill here at the hotel must be well over a hundred already—not to mention the hospital and doctors’ fees and—”
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