The setback we experienced the following morning cost us a great deal more time than that, for we woke up to discover that the launch was gone.
Chapter Thirty-Three
A SNAKE IN OUR MIDST
“I tied up properly, I swear,” said Suarez, scratching his head in perplexity and dismay. “You must believe me, señores. Never would I be so careless that I would fail to secure the rope. I am skilled in knots. This is terrible. Where is it? Where is my boat?”
“Some way downstream, I should imagine,” said Holmes. “How far it has gone depends on when it broke loose from its mooring and floated off, and also on the strength of the current, which in this stretch of the river is considerable.”
“We’re stranded,” said a despondent Mortimer. “Stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no means of transport. What a deuced disaster.”
“Not nowhere, señor,” said Suarez. “There is a village some three miles along the river from here.”
“Three miles?” said Sir Henry. “That’s hardly any distance at all. Let’s get going, shall we?”
Suarez shook his head. “Three miles through the forest is not the same as three miles in civilisation, across fields or along roads. It will take us most of the day. And it does not bring my boat back.”
“Your boat will fetch up at the bank somewhere, Suarez,” said Holmes reassuringly. “It will snag on a tree or beach itself in the lee of a meander.”
“And if for some reason you never recover it, I will buy you a new one,” said Sir Henry. “All I ask is that we carry on our journey. I have been as patient as I can, but every minute we delay is a minute that my son gets further away.”
“Si, señor. I understand. You are speaking the truth that you will buy me a new boat?”
“You have my word on it.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
As we folded the tents and gathered up our belongings, Holmes wandered over to the tree trunk around which Suarez had lashed the launch’s painter the previous evening. He spent a while examining it, before returning to join us again.
“Take only what you can carry,” Suarez advised. “We will leave everything else and come back for it later. Of course, los indios might steal it in the meantime. The Tayní and Cabécar tribes both call this territory their own, and they consider that whatever they find in the forest belongs to them. But there is nothing we can do about that.”
“It is just possessions,” said Sir Henry. “Nothing of real importance.”
Weighed down by makeshift backpacks, we began our trek. We followed alongside the Banano, with Suarez leading the way and the rest of us straggling behind. Suarez hacked through the undergrowth with a machete, but it was a laborious process. The forest was dense, and vines and bromeliads flourished in profusion, forming great thicketed tangles, while huge tree roots interwove across the ground. A troop of howler monkeys accompanied us some of the way, shrieking uproariously from the branches overhead and pelting us with fruit. Evidently we were trespassing in their domain.
After a while Suarez became exhausted. We stopped to rest, then Grier commandeered the machete and took the lead, with the Costa Rican following behind, guiding him. Dr Mortimer and Sir Henry were next in line, while Holmes and I had the rear. With a gentle tap on my shoulder, Holmes invited me to slow down and fall back. Soon he and I were separated from the others by some twenty yards.
“You have your revolver, of course, Watson,” Holmes whispered.
I nodded. I had brought the pistol from London to Devon, on his instruction, and thence all the way from England to here, secreted among my belongings.
“That is good. I fear now is the time when we finally may need it.”
“In case we meet these tribesmen Suarez mentioned,” I said. “Is that what you mean? So that I may deter them with a few well-placed gunshots.”
“No, it is not them I am worried about.”
“Wild animals, then.”
“Not them either,” said Holmes. “Not exactly. Although there is a snake in our midst.”
I glanced around, suddenly alarmed. I thought he was referring to an actual serpent which he expected me to shoot dead.
There was no snake to be seen, and it was only then that I realised he was speaking metaphorically.
“You’re saying that one of us…”
He put a finger to his lips, enjoining me to silence.
We picked up our pace, closing the distance between us and our colleagues.
Holmes’s revelation, while disturbing, made a dreadful kind of sense. I recalled how the motor launch’s engine had been faulty, and how the boat had leaked, and now – the latest and worst in this litany of hindrances – how we were in the position of no longer having a boat at all. Someone had tampered with the engine workings. Someone had put a hole in the hull. Someone had untied the painter. Each of these events had occurred overnight. The person responsible could easily have stolen out of his tent and done the sabotaging by moonlight while the rest of us slumbered.
But who was it? Which of us was the saboteur? And what was his motive?
Could it be Sir Henry? I thought not. He was desperate to find Harry. It was his overriding imperative and his sole one. That said, I could not ignore the fact that he had attacked Grier viciously aboard the Aegean. Even if now sober, could he have some twisted, unknowable motivation for wishing to impede us? There was hereditary madness in the Baskerville bloodline. It had manifested in Jack Stapleton. Was it now manifesting in Sir Henry as well?
What about Dr Mortimer? The young physician was hating every moment of the journey. He had been out of sorts since we left Limón and had been getting ever more sulky and refractory the further upriver we went. He surely wished for Harry’s safe return as much as anyone, but the process by which we were achieving that goal was not sitting well with him. Did he so resent the arduousness of the journey and the deprivations we were experiencing that he would arrange things so that we had no choice but to turn back?
Then there was Grier. I had come to like the man a lot, but now that I thought about it, how well did I know him? The answer was: not that well. It was Grier, moreover, to whom Holmes had entrusted the responsibility for keeping Sir Henry and Harry safe, in which endeavour he had been only half successful. Could he secretly be in league with Beryl Stapleton? Was his visit to Baskerville Hall all part of some piece of sophisticated chicanery cooked up between the two of them? I hated to think this, but now that Holmes had planted the worm of doubt in my mind, I was very concerned that Grier had been misleading us all along. How had he described himself when he first came to us at Baker Street? He had likened himself favourably to a buffalo, “docile unless provoked, dangerous when it is”. The “dangerous” part of that phrase might be the pertinent one now. It was not beyond the realms of possibility that he had set up the whole business with the hook block on the Aegean, injuring himself with it and planting the cufflink in the winch in order to redirect elsewhere any suspicions one might have about him.
Gilberto Suarez likewise was an unknown quantity. Could he and his cousin Juan have colluded together? What if Beryl Stapleton and Harry were not even aboard this Ramón person’s steamboat? We only had Juan’s word for it. Suarez might knowingly be leading us on a wild goose chase, not caring that he was deceiving us, caring only that he got paid at his daily rate. Hence he had been sabotaging his motor launch to waylay us and make it even less likely we would ever find the steamboat. He might even have gone to the lengths of unloosing the launch and letting it float away so as to eke out a few more days of business from his rich customers. If he knew the Banano as well as he claimed then he could have picked a spot where he was confident the river would carry the launch and deposit it safely somewhere downstream.
My thoughts were in turmoil, and they remained in turmoil even as, after several hours of hard going, we stepped out into a clearing. Here a score of mean, shabby houses huddled, inhabited by people of Spanish descent and indios who had
adopted European ways. Chickens roamed the packed-dirt spaces between the hovels, and a couple of rag-clad mestizo children peeped shyly out at us from a doorway as we trudged towards the centre of the village.
We must have looked a sight – filthy, bedraggled, footsore, sodden with sweat – but the village headman, who was known to Suarez, welcomed us as though we were royalty. We were fed stew and yams. I was reluctant to ask which animal had provided the flesh for the stew, afraid it might be some form of bush meat, monkey perhaps, or caiman. It tasted gamey and had a stringy texture that meant I was picking bits of it out from between my teeth for some while afterwards. Yet it filled my rumbling belly, which, as far as I was concerned, counted for more than its provenance. We were also served a strong, very sweet cane liquor known as guaro, and this helped soothe our various aches and pains.
It looked likely that we would have to spend the night at the village. However, just as the sun was beginning to set, there came the blare of a steam horn from the river.
Not long after that, a mid-sized steamboat hoved into view, butting its way downstream. As we converged on the rickety wooden pier that served as a landing, Suarez let out a surprised, triumphant cry.
“Señores!” said he. “There it is. What you are looking for. That is Ramón’s boat!”
Chapter Thirty-Four
MORAL ELASTICITY
Suarez flagged down the steamboat.
“Ramón! Ramón! It is I, Gilberto Suarez,” he called out in Spanish.
A man leaned out from the wheelhouse. He was youngish, with a trim build and thick black eyebrows. He waved to his fellow river pilot with apparent pleasure.
Suarez beckoned to him. “Come. Put in. We must talk.”
“Suarez,” said Holmes in a low voice, “take care. Do not tell him who we are. Continue to smile and wave, as though nothing is amiss.”
Suarez, however, did not hear. He was in a transport of delight, evidently glad that in spite of all the reversals and complications he had delivered to us the thing we sought.
“Ramón, these gentlemen have been looking for you,” he said. “They wish to know about your passengers, the woman and the boy.”
Ramón had already turned his attention from Suarez to us, and I could see his brow furrow and his expression darken. He spun the helm, and the steamboat began to veer away from the landing. Doubtless Mrs Stapleton had instructed him to steer clear of gringos and perhaps had taken the precaution of furnishing him with descriptions of Holmes, Sir Henry and myself, the three of us who she knew were likely to be chasing her.
“Ramón?” said a puzzled Suarez. “You are avoiding us?”
“Watson,” said Holmes. “Your revolver. A warning shot or two, if you please.”
I drew the gun and took aim. The first bullet missed the boat’s prow by inches, literally a shot across the bow. The second shattered one of the wheelhouse’s side windows. I had meant to hit the woodwork, but at a range of ten yards and in dwindling daylight, accuracy was at a premium.
“There are more where those came from,” Holmes shouted to Ramón in Spanish. “Unless you pull in, my friend will ensure that the next bullet goes into you.”
Ramón cowered behind the helm binnacle. The wheelhouse, with its large windows, one of them now lacking glass, afforded scant protection. I imagined he was weighing his alternatives.
“I shall give you to the count of three,” said Holmes. “One. Two.”
The steamboat decelerated and began gliding towards the landing again. Ramón had made up his mind.
Sir Henry was aboard the vessel even before it had come to a full stop. “Where is he?” the baronet demanded of its pilot. “My son. Where is Harry?” He dived into the wheelhouse and dragged Ramón out by the scruff of his neck. “You dog. Show me to him now, or it’ll be your hide.”
“Por favor! Por favor!” Ramón cried out, his hands held out in self-defence.
“They are below decks, aren’t they?” Sir Henry persisted, shaking the fellow roughly. “Down that companionway. Yes? No?”
Ramón continued to protest in a babble of Spanish. Sir Henry either did not understand what he was saying or did not care. He raised a fist, with every intent of belabouring the Costa Rican.
Suarez clutched the brim of his hat against the sides of his face with both hands. “Dios mío!” he wailed in horror. “He will kill Ramón.”
“At the very least beat him black and blue,” Mortimer said.
“Holmes,” I said, “we must do something.”
My friend, however, was already moving. He sprang agilely over the gunwale of the steamboat as its hull scraped alongside the pier. With a couple of dextrous, balletic baritsu manoeuvres, he was able to wrest Ramón from Sir Henry’s clutches and at the same time deposit the baronet harmlessly on his backside.
Meanwhile Grier seized the steamboat’s transom and arrested its progress by main force before inertia could send it drifting past the pier. He clambered aboard and tossed the mooring rope out to Mortimer, who looped it around one of the pier’s uprights to secure the vessel.
“Let me have the blackguard, Holmes,” Sir Henry growled, picking himself up. “I promise to show him mercy, although I cannot guarantee how much.”
“Far be it from me to come between a man and his satisfaction, Sir Henry,” Holmes said, “but let us think about things logically. This fellow here – Ramón – is travelling downriver. If he has been transporting Mrs Stapleton and your son upriver from Puerto Limón, then it stands to reason that he has deposited them somewhere further up the Banano from here and is making the return journey. In other words, they are no longer aboard.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, but it is a reasonable enough inference. Besides, Ramón does not deserve our censure. As far as he is aware, all he has done is convey a woman and her child to their destination. He is not wittingly complicit in any crime. He has been carrying out the work from which he makes an honest living, that is all.”
“He must have realised something was up. He would have seen that Harry was unhappy – maybe even terrified – and had some notion that the woman claiming to be Harry’s mother was an impostor. He would have been able to put two and two together.”
“If so, then he is guilty of moral elasticity, but you could say the same of any man with a business to run. You wish to take out on him an anger that rightfully should be directed elsewhere.”
“At the very least he can tell us where he dropped Harry and that woman off,” Sir Henry grumbled. “And if I have to pound the information out of him, I will.”
“I am sure Ramón will be helpful,” Holmes said. He turned to the steamboat pilot, who was sitting slumped against the wheelhouse, looking ruffled and mulish. Addressing him in Spanish, he said, “You may not realise it, señor, but you have lately assisted in a criminal enterprise, a kidnapping. You have one chance, and one chance only, to atone. The woman and child – where did you leave them?”
Ramón shook his head. “I cannot say.”
“I expect you have been rewarded handsomely for your services, and the fee, in part, was meant to buy your silence. Your discretion is laudable. It is also misplaced. This gentleman here who has just ill-treated you would be quite happy to continue doing so, with even greater roughness, in order to extract the truth from you. By the same token, he would be willing to pay you for what you know, and pay you well. How much do you make in a year on average? A hundred colóns? A hundred and twenty? He will give you double that figure.”
The baronet looked on, his brows knitted. He was unaware that Holmes was being so free with his money. Had he been thinking clearly, however, and not allowed his rage to consume him, he might have seen that bribery was a more effective tool than fists.
“Give him what he is asking for, Ramón,” Suarez said from the pier. “These are good people. They are also,” he added with emphasis, “wealthy people.”
Ramón seemed to make a mental calculation. “One hundred and f
ifty colóns, señor,” he said to Holmes, “and I will tell you where I left them.”
“Two hundred, and you will take us there in your boat.”
“Two hundred and fifty.”
Holmes gave Sir Henry a brief précis of the negotiations. “Two hundred and fifty colóns,” he said. “Is that an acceptable sum?”
“I begrudge paying the rascal a single copper penny,” said Sir Henry. He sighed. “But yes. If we must, we must.”
Holmes nodded to Ramón, who nodded back.
“Very well,” Ramón said. “There is an old estate, about a day’s journey from here. It has been long abandoned.”
“I know the one,” said Suarez. “A mansion. It was once owned by a tobacco baron. A very bad man. Cruel. Garcia was his name. He died, and the place fell into rack and ruin.”
“Garcia,” I said. “As in Beryl Garcia?”
“I have heard you señores speak of a Beryl Stapleton. Is she also Beryl Garcia?”
“That was her maiden name. She must be a relative of this tobacco baron.”
Suarez shrugged his shoulders. “Garcia is a very common name in Costa Rica.”
“Nonetheless, it is possible that this mansion is her ancestral home.”
“And that is why she has gone to ground there,” said Grier, “like a fox returning to its lair.”
“Can you navigate at night?” Holmes asked Ramón.
“It is not recommended. The river has its ways, and they are not always kind.”
“I can do it,” said Suarez. “If the skies stay clear, the moon and stars will be bright enough to see by.”
Sherlock Holmes and the Beast of the Stapletons Page 22