by Wilbur Smith
“I can’t risk you rushing out and telling anybody else.”
I hadn’t slept the night before and suddenly I was exhausted. I felt as though I did not have the strength to climb the stairs to the bedroom - but I had one question still to ask.
“Why did Jimmy come to St. Marys! What was he looking for?” I asked. “Do you know who he was working with, who they were?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head, and I knew it was the truth.
She wouldn’t lie to me now, not after I had placed such trust in her.
“Will you help me find out? Will you help me find them?”
“Yes, I’ll help you,” she said, and stood up from the table.
“We’ll talk again in the morning.”
Jimmy’s room was under the eaves, the pitch of the roof giving it an irregular shape. The walls were lined with photographs and packed bookshelves, silver sporting trophies and the treasured brica-brac of boyhood.
“Me bed was high and the mattress soft.
I went to fetch my bag from the Chrysler while Sherry put clean sheets upon the bed. Then she showed me the bathroom and left me.
I lay and listened to the rain on the roof for only a few minutes before I slept. I woke in the night and heard the soft whisper of her voice somewhere in the quiet house.
Barefooted and in my underpants I opened the bedroom door and crept silently down the passage to the stairs. I looked down into the hall. There was a light burning and Sherry North stood at the wall-hung telephone. She was speaking so quietly into the receiver, cupping her hands to her mouth, that I could not catch the words. The light was behind her. She wore. a flimsy nightdress, and her body showed through the thin stuff as though she was naked.
I found myself staring like a peeping Tom. The lamps light glowed on the ivory sheen of her skin, and there were intriguing secret hollows and shadows beneath the transparent cloth.
With an effort I pulled my eyes off her and went back to my bed.
I thought about Sherry’s telephone call and felt a vague disquiet, but soon sleep overtook me once more.
In the morning the rain had stopped but the ground was slushy and the grass heavy and wet when I went out for a breath of cold morning air.
I expected to feel awkward with Sherry after the previous night’s outpourings of the soul, but it was not so. We talked easily at breakfast, and afterwards she said, “I promised I’d help you; what can I do?”
“Answer a few questions.”
“All right, ask me.”
Jimmy North had been very secretive, she did not know he was going to St. Mary’s. He had told her he had a contract to install some electronic underwater equipment at the Cabora-Bossa. Dam in Portuguese Mozambique. She had taken him up to the airport with all his equipment. As far as she knew he was travelling alone. The police had come to the shop in Brighton to tell her of his murder. She had read the newspaper reports, and that was all.
“No letters from Jimmy?”
“No, nothing.” I nodded, the wolf pack must have intercepted his mail. The letter I had been shown by Sherry’s impostor was certainly genuine.
“I don’t understand anything about this. Am I being stupid?”
No.” I took out a cheroot, and almost lit it before I stopped myself. Okay if I smoke one of these?”
“It doesn’t bother me,” she said, and I was glad, for it would have been hell giving them up. I lit it and drew in the fragrant smoke.
“It looks as though Jimmy stumbled on something big. He needed backing and he went to the wrong people. As soon as they thought they knew where it was, they killed him and tried to kill me. When that didn’t work they sent out someone impersonating you. When she thought she knew the location of this object, she set a trap for me and went home. Their next move will be a return to the area off Big Gull Island, where they are due for another disappointment.”
She refilled the coffee cups, and I noticed that she had applied make-up this morning - but so lightly that the freckles still showed. I reconsidered the previous night’s judgement - and confirmed that she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever met, even in the early morning.
She was frowning thoughtfully, staring into her coffee cup and I wanted to touch one of her slim strong-looking hands that lay on the tablecloth near my own.
“What were they after, Harry? And who are these people who killed him? she asked at Last.
“Two excellent questions. I have leads to both - but we will tackle the questions in the order you asked them. Firstly, what was Jimmy after? When we know that we can go after his murderers.”
“I have no idea at all what it could be.” She looked up at me.
The blue of, her eyes was lighter than it had been last night, it was the colour of a good sapphire. “What clues have you?”
“The ship’s bell. The design upon it.”
“What does it signify?”
“I don’t know, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find out. I could no longer resist the temptation. I placed my hand over hers. It felt as firm and strong as it looked and her flesh was warm “But first I should like to - check the shop in Brighton and Jimmy’s room here. There might, be something we can use.”
She had not withdrawn her hand. “All right, shall we go to the shop first! The police have already been through it all, but they might have overlooked something. “Fine. I’ll buy you lunch.” I squeezed her hand, and she turned it in my grasp and squeezed back.
I’ll take you up on that,” she said. and I was too astonished by my own reaction to her grip to find a light reply. My throat was dry and my pulse beat as though I’d run a mile. Gently she removed her hand and stood up.
“Let’s do the breakfast dishes.”
If the girls of St. Mary’s could only have seen Mister Harry drying dishes, my reputation would have shattered into a thousand pieces.
She let us into the shop the back way, through a tiny enclosed yard which was almost filled with unusual objects, all of them associated with diving and the underwater world - discarded air bottles and a portable compressor, brass portholes and other salvage from wrecked ships, even the jawbone of a killer whale with all its teeth intact.
“I haven’t been in for a long time,” Sherry apologized as she unlocked the back door of the shop. “Without Jimmy-” she shrugged and then went on, ” - I must really get down to selling up all this junk and closing the shop down. I could re-sell the lease, I suppose.”
“I’m going to look round, okay?”
“Fine, I’ll get the kettle going.”
I started in the yard, searching quickly but thoroughly through the piles of junk. There was nothing that had significance as far as I could see. I went into the shop and poked around amongst the seashells and sharks” teeth on the shelves and in the display case. Finally I saw a desk in the corner and began going through the drawers.
Sherry brought me a cup of tea and perched on the corner of the desk while I piled old invoices, rubber bands and paper clips on the top. I read every scrap of paper and even rifled through the ready reckoner.
Nothing?” Sherry asked.
Nothing,” I agreed and glanced at my watch. “Lunchtime,” I told her.
She locked up the shop and by good fortune we stumbled on English’s restaurant. They gave us a secluded table in the back room and I ordered a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse to go with the lobster. Once I recovered from the shock of the price, we laughed a lot during the meal, and it wasn’t just the wine. The feeling between us was good and growing stronger.
After lunch we drove back to Seaview and we went up to Jimmy’s room.
“This is our best bet,” I guessed. “If he was keeping secrets, this is where they would be.” But I knew I had a long job ahead of me. There were hundreds of books and piles of magazines - mostly American Argosy, Trident, The Diver and other diving publications. There was also a complete shelf of springback files at the foot of the bed.
“I’ll leave you to i
t,” Sherry said, and went.
I took down the contents of a shelf, sat at the reading table and began to skim through the publications. immediately I saw it was an even bigger task than I had thought. Jimmy had been one of those people who read with a pencil in one hand. There were notes pencilled in the margin, comments, queries and exclamation marks, and anything that interested him was underlined.
I read doggedly, looking for something that could remotely be linked to St. Mary’s.
Around eight o’clock I began on the shelf that held the springback files. The first two were filled with newspaper clippings on shipwrecks or other marine phenomena. The third of them had an un-labelled, black imitation leather cover. It held a thin sheaf of papers, and I saw immediately that they were out of the ordinary.
They were a series of letters filed with their envelopes and stamps still attached. There were sixteen of them in all, addressed to Messrs Parker and Wilton in Fenchurch Street.
Every letter was in a different hand, but all were executed in the elegant penmanship of the last century.
The envelopes were sent from different parts of the old Empire - Canada, South Africa, India - and the nineteenth century postage stamps alone must have been of considerable value.
After I had read the first two letters, it was clear that Messrs Parker and Wilton were agents and factors, and they had acted for a number of distinguished clients in the service of Queen Victoria. The letters were instructions to deal with estates, moneys and securities.
All the letters were dated during the period from August 1857 to July 1858 and must have been offered by a dealer or an antique auctioneer as a lot.
I glanced through them quickly, but the contents were really very dull. However, something on the single page of the tenth letter caught my eye and I felt my nerves jump.
Two words had been underlined in pencil and in the margin was a notation in Jimmy North’s handwriting.
B. Muse.6914(8).”
However, it was the words themselves that held me. “Dawn Light.”
I had heard those words before. I wasn’t sure when, but they were significant.
Quickly I began at the top of the page. The sender’s address was Ia laconic
“Bombay’, and it was dated 16th Sept.
1857.
My Dear Wilton, I charge you most strictly with the proper care and safe storage of five pieces of luggage consigned in my name to your London address aboard the Han. Company’s ship Daurn Light. Due out of this port before the 25th instant and bound for the Company’s wharf in the Port of London.
Please acknowledge safe receipt of same with all despatch.
I remain yours faithfully, Colonel Sir Roger Goodchild. Officer Commanding 101st Regiment Queens Own India Rifles.
Delivery by kind favour of Captain commanding Her Majesty’s Frigate Pandier.
The paper rustled and I realized that my hand was shaking with excitement. I knew I was on to it now. This was the key. I laid the letter carefully on the reading table and Placed a silver paper-knife upon it to weight it down.
I began to read it again slowly, but there was a distraction. I heard the engine noise of an automobile coming down the lane from the gate. Headlights flashed across the window and then rounded the corner of the house.
I sat up straight, listening. The engine noise died, and car doors slammed shut.
There was a long silence then before I heard the murmur and growl of voices - men’s voices. I began to stand up from the table.
Then sherry screamed. it rang clearly through the old house, and cut into my brain like a lance. It aroused in me a protective instinct so fierce that I was down the stairs and into the hall before I realized I had moved.
The door to the kitchen was open and I paused in the doorway.
There were two men with Sherry. The heavier and elder of the two wore a beige camelliair topcoat and a tweed cap. He had a greyish, heavy lined face and deepsunk eyes. His lips were thin and colourless.
He had Sherry’s left hand twisted up between her shoulder-blades, and was holding her jammed against the wall beside the gas stove.
The other man was Younger, and he was slim and pale, bare-headed with long straw-yellow hair falling to the shoulders of his leather jacket. He was grinning gleefully as he held Sherry’s other hand over the blue flames of the gas ring, bringing it down slowly.
She was struggling desperately, but they held her and her hair had come loose as she fought.
“Slowly, lad,” the man in the cap spoke in a thick strangled voice. “Give her time to think about it.”
Sherry screamed again as her fingers were forced down remorselessly towards the hissing blue flames.
“Go ahead, luv, shout your head off,” laughed the blond. “There isn’t anybody to hear you.” “Only me,” I said, and they spun to face me, with expressions of comical amazement.
“Who,” asked the blond, releasing Sherry’s arm and reaching quickly for his back pocket.
I hit him twice, left in the body and right in the head, and although neither shot pleased me particularly - there was not the right solidness at impact - the man went down, falling heavily over a chair and crashing into the cupboard. I had no more time for him, and I went for the one in the cloth cap.
He was still holding Sherry in front of him, and as I started forward he hurled her at me. It took me off-balance and I was forced to grab her, to save both of us from falling.
The man turned and darted out of the door behind him. It took me a few seconds to disentangle myself from Sherry and cross the kitchen. As I barged out into the yard he was halfway to an elderly Triumph sports car, and he glanced over his shoulder.
I could almost see him make the calculation. He wasn’t going to be able to get into the car and turn it to face the lane before I caught him. He swerved to the - left and sprinted into the dark mouth of the lane with the skirts of the camel-hair coat billowing behind him. I raced after him.
The surface was greasy with wet clay, and he was making heavy going of it. He slid and almost fell, and I was right behind him, coming up swiftly when he turned and I heard the snap of the knife and saw the flash of the blade as it jumped out. He dropped into a crouch with the knife extended and I ran straight in without a check.
He didn’t expect that, the glint of steel will stop most men dead.
He went for my belly, a low underhand stroke, but he was shaky and breathless and it lacked fire. I blocked on the wrist and at the same time hit the pressure point in his forearm. The knife dropped out of his hand and I threw him over my hip. He fell heavily on his back, and although the mud softened the impact I dropped on one knee into his belly. it had two hundred and ten pounds of body weight behind it and it drove the air out of his lungs in a loud whoosh. He doubled up like a foetus in the womb, wheezing for breath, and I flipped him over on to his face. The cloth cap fell off his head and I found that he had a thick shock of dark hair shot through with strands of silver. I took a good handful of it sat on his shoulders and pushed his face deep into the Yellow mud.
“I don’t like little boys who bully girls I told him conversationally, and behind me the engine of the Triumph roared into life. The headlights blazed out and then swung in a wide arc until they burned directly up the narrow lane.
I knew I hadn’t taken the blond out properly, it had been a hurried botchy job. I left the man in the mud and ran back down the lane. The wheels of the Triumph spun On “the Paving of the barnyard and, with its headlights blazing dazzlingly into my eyes, it jumped forward, slewing and skidding as it left the Paving and entered the muddy lane. The driver met the skid and came straight at me.
I fell flat and rolled into the cold ooze of a narrow open drain that carried run-off water through the tall hedge.
The Triumph hit the side a glancing blow and the hedge pushed it slightly off its line. The “nearside wheels spun viciously on the edge of the stone coping of the drain inches from my face, and mud and a shower of twigs fell
on me. Then it was past.
it checked as it came level with the man in the muddy camel-hair coat. He was kneeling on the verge of the road and now he dragged himself into the Passenger seat of the Triumph. Just as I crawled out of the drain and ran up behind the sports car it pulled away again, mud spraying from the spinning rear wheels. In vain I raced after it, but it gathered speed and tore away up the slope. I gave up, turned and ran back down the lane, groping for the keys of the Chrysler in my sodden trouser pockets, and realized I had left them on the table in Jimmy’s room.
Sherry was leaning in the open doorway of the kitchen. She held her burned hand to her chest and her hair was in tangled disarray. The sleeve of her jersey was torn loose from the shoulder.
“I couldn’t stop him, Harry,“she gasped. “I tried.” “How bad -is it?” I asked her, abandoning all thought of chasing the sports car when I saw her distress.
“Slightly singed.”
“I’ll take you to a doctor.”
“No. It doesn’t need it,” but her smile was lopsided with pain.
I went up to Jimmy’s room and from my travelling medicine kit I took a Doloxene for the pain and Mogadon to let her sleep.
“I don’t need it, she protested.
“Do I have to hold your now and force them down?” I asked, and she grinned, shook her head and swallowed them. “You’d better take a bath,” she said, “you are soaked,” and suddenly I realized I was sodden and cold. When I came back to the kitchen, glowing from the bath, she was already whoozy with the pills, but she had made coffee for us and strengthened it with a tot of whisky. We drank it sitting opposite each other.
“What did they want? I asked. “What did they say? “They thought I knew why Jimmy had gone to St. Mary’s. They wanted to know.” I thought about that. Something didn’t make sense, it worried me.
“I think-” Sherry’s voice was unsteady and she staggered slightly as she tried to stand. “Wow! What did you give me?” I picked her up and she protested weakly, but I carried her up to her room. It was chintzy and girlish, with rosepatterned wallpaper. I laid her on the bed, pulled off her shoes and covered her with the quilt.