Complete Works of Nevil Shute

by Nevil Shute

  “A Congreve clock?” Captain Petersen was puzzled.

  “It’s a clock that keeps time by a steel ball running on a zigzag track down an inclined plane,” Keith told him. “Only it doesn’t keep very good time. It takes thirty seconds for the ball to run down one way — then the plane tilts and it runs back again. It’s quite fascinating to watch. Look — there’s a picture of it, here. That’s the one I made.”

  Captain Petersen examined it with interest. “You make these things, and then write about them, telling other people how to do it?”

  “That’s right.”

  The captain glanced at the date of the issue; it was only six weeks old. “Does this come weekly?” he asked.

  Keith nodded.

  “Does it circulate in the United States?”

  “I don’t think you can buy it on the book stalls,” Keith told him. “A good many copies, thousands, I believe, go to the States by post to subscribers.”

  The captain sat in thought. Two days before he had left home in Midlake to come upon this cruise, Yvonne had brought Pete Horner into supper. Sometime in the evening Pete had mentioned that Sol Hirzhorn had started to build some kind of a clock; there had been an order for planished brass sheet five-thirty-seconds thick that he had had to chase all round Seattle for, and take out to Wauna.

  He raised his head and looked at Keith. “Say,” he remarked, “would you by any chance know a man called Sol Hirzhorn?”

  In the hot cabin of the Mary Belle, with the strong scent of vanilla all around them and copra beetles everywhere, Keith’s mind went back to Ealing nearly ten thousand miles away, to the long hours spent after Katie had gone to bed, answering the correspondence in his “dirty” workshop in the basement, with Janice sleeping in the room next door converted from a scullery. “I’ve had some letters from a Solomon P. Hirzhorn,” he said thoughtfully. “Lives somewhere in Washington. That’s the capital, isn’t it? Somewhere south of New York?”

  “That’s Washington, D.C.,” the captain told him. “Sol Hirzhorn lives in the State of Washington, in the Northwest. I live there myself. Do you know anything about Sol Hirzhorn?”

  Keith smiled. “He’s got a secretary with an electric typewriter,” he said. “I should imagine he dictates to her from the length of his letters. He’s building one of my Congreve clocks following the serial, and he’s not very experienced so he writes me a lot of letters, all of which need answering.”

  “You answer them?” the captain asked.

  “Oh yes. If people can’t understand the serial and take the trouble to write to me about it, I always send them an answer.”

  “You must have quite a correspondence,” said the captain.

  “I have,” said Keith with feeling.

  Captain Petersen sat in silence for a moment. “I see I’ll have to start and tell you things,” he said at last. “The first is this. Sol Hirzhorn might be one of the wealthiest men in the United States. I wouldn’t know about that. What I do know is that he’s the biggest noise around our parts.”

  Keith stared at him. “What does he do?”

  “Lumber,” said the captain. “He’s the biggest lumberman on the West Coast. He started off from scratch, working in the woods like any other guy. I’d say he’s close on seventy years old now, and his sons have taken over the executive side of the business. It’s a family concern. God knows how many mills they have, or how many forests they control. I’d simply be guessing if I tried to tell you how many hands they employ in Washington and Oregon, but it’s an awful lot. They’re quite a family.”

  “The old man, Solomon P. Hirzhorn — he’s the one that’s making my clock?”

  “That’s right. He thinks an awful lot of you, Mr. Stewart. He got all het up about the risk that you were taking sailing from Honolulu to Tahiti in a fishing boat.”

  Keith’s jaw dropped. “How on earth did he hear about me being here at all?”

  The captain smiled. “I wouldn’t know. He wants you to go visit with him for a day or so on your way back to England, ‘n help him with his clock, I suppose. Anyway, he wants to meet you.”

  “I’d be very glad to meet him,” said the engineer. “That clock’s quite a tricky piece of work for somebody who’s not very experienced. But how did he know I was here?”

  The captain leaned forward. “See here, Mr. Stewart,” he said. “Guys at the head of a big business with plenty of money and plenty of contacts all over the world, anything they want to get to know about they get to know. Now that’s a fact. I don’t know how Sol Hirzhorn got to know that you were here. But I do know this.” He paused. “He’s pretty well out of the business now. He only goes to the head office in Tacoma two or three times a week, they tell me. Other days he might fly out and visit one of the mills, or else fly in the helicopter to one of the clearings where they’re cutting. He don’t work much. Most of what work he does, he does at home. He’s got his grand-daughter working for him as a secretary, a girl called Julie Perlberg. But I tell you, Mr. Stewart — there’s not a cat kittens in the State of Washington but those two know about it.”

  Keith said weakly, “I never knew that he was anything like that. I thought he was the ordinary sort of man who makes models in the evenings — like a dentist or a bank manager.”

  Captain Petersen nodded. “I guess you did. You made yourself a good friend when you answered all his letters. He got real worried about you, coming down this way. Of course,” he remarked, “he knows why you came. He knows all about your sister and the wreck of the Shearwater.”

  “For God’s sake!” said Keith.

  “There’s one more thing I’ll have to tell you,” said Captain Petersen evenly, “and that’s why I’m here. My boss is Chuck Ferris, of Ferris Hydraulics, Cincinnati. Mr. Hirzhorn got so worried about you that he borrowed the Flying Cloud from Mr. Ferris to put her at your disposal. My instructions on leaving Honolulu were to find you wherever you were, and put the ship under your orders to take you to your sister’s grave on Marokota Island and anywhere else you want to go. After that, if you’re going back to England, Mr. Hirzhorn suggested I might take you to Seattle in the Flying Cloud in order that you might visit with him for a day or two and help him with his clock.” He paused. “I guess this is where I start to say sir when I speak to you, Mr. Stewart.”

  Keith stared at him, dazed. “But that’s fantastic!”

  “It may seem so to you. It did to me, at first,” Captain Petersen admitted. “But I’d say the way to look at it is this. You took a lot of trouble answering letters from a stranger, and maybe some of them were rather stupid questions. I wouldn’t know. The fact is that you made a friend, and now this friend’s going to a little bit of trouble to help you. That’s fair enough. Look at it that way.”

  Keith sat in silence for a minute. “Could you take me to Marokota?” he asked at last.

  “Sure. Take us about four days to get there. Spend as long there as you like.”

  “Would I get a permit from the Governor to go to Marakota? I mean, after all this trouble?”

  Captain Petersen said, “Forget it. We took the Governor to Bora-Bora one time. I’ve been to the Tuamotus six or seven times with the Flying Cloud. Romantic coral islands — that’s what a party always wants to see. Lousy, dangerous places — I wouldn’t want any part of them. You’ll see more grass skirts in Honolulu than ever you’ll see in the Tuamotus. But sure — we can go there.”

  “It wouldn’t be any danger to the ship?”

  The captain shook his head. “Not a bit. I’d take a pilot from here, somebody who knows the islands. There’s no lagoon at Marokota that would take the Flying Cloud. We’d have to lie off under the lee, and send you in with the launch. But there’s no difficulty about it.”

  “Is it inhabited?”

  “Probably not. It’s got a few palms on it — coconuts. I think they come over from Kautaiva in the copra season — gather the nuts. I don’t think anybody lives there permanently.”

  “D
o you think I could get a headstone for the grave made here, and take it with us?”

  “Why, yes. There’s a Chinese stonemason in the town, does that kind of work.”

  “Would that take long?”

  “A day, maybe. Suppose we get on shore before so long, and give the order tonight, he’d have it finished by tomorrow night.”

  “How much would that cost?”

  “I wouldn’t know. You’d have to argue that one out with Mr. Ferris and Mr. Hirzhorn.” He turned to Keith. “See here, Mr. Stewart, sir — I know the way you’re fixed. Mr. Hirzhorn knows that, too. I got a radio from Mr. Ferris that all expenses, of whatever nature, go on the ship. I’ll give you an account of what you might call personal expenses when you leave the ship, and you can settle it with them.” He paused reflectively. “You might have quite a job.”

  They went up on deck and he hailed the launch. “I got a cabin ready for you, Mr. Stewart,” he said. “When will you be moving in?”

  “I’ll stay here tonight,” said Keith. “I’ve got a lot of things to fix up with Jack. Would it be all right if I come on board tomorrow?”

  “Sure,” said the captain. “I’ll be moving into the quay tomorrow; we’ll need water, and top up with Diesel fuel. Come aboard any time you say.”

  The launch came alongside. He turned to Jack Donelly. “How would it be if we give you a pluck into the quay right now, Captain?”

  “Suits me,” said Jack. “Say, would there be any place where I could get a sack of cornmeal here? We’ve run out.”

  Captain Petersen thought for a minute. “Lim Hung Foo,” he said. “He’s your best chance. He’s a marine store, nearly opposite your berth, but he sells everything. I think he might have it.”

  Half an hour later the Mary Belle was berthed again stern on to the quay with the chef du port smiling all over his face, and Keith was walking up with Captain Petersen to see the Chinese stonemason. He printed the simple inscription on the back of an envelope; the old stonemason took it and read it carefully, letter by letter. “Understand,” he said, “parfaitement. Demain, le soir. Will be finished.”

  They walked back to the quay, and met Jack Donelly on the way to his ship carrying an enormous sack of cornmeal on his back as though it had been a feather. “Bit coarser’n the last sack,” he said. “I like it that way. And not a maggot in it!”

  “That’ll be a change,” said Keith.

  “Good thing we saved some maggots from the last sack,” Jack said practically. “Else we wouldn’t have no bait. A bit of fish goes good with cornmeal fritters.”

  Keith arranged with Captain Petersen that he would move into the Flying Cloud when she berthed in the mooring; the captain got into his launch and went off to the schooner, and Keith went on board the Mary Belle with Jack. After depositing the sack of cornmeal in the forecastle, Jack came and stood in the hatch looking at the big yacht at the mooring buoy. “Captain Petersen, he didn’t say nothing about that redhead coming ashore tonight, did he?”

  Keith laughed. “No, he didn’t. I don’t even know if she’s on board. She probably stayed in Honolulu.”

  “She’s on board,” said his captain positively. “I seen her.”

  Keith had expected him to have bought a bottle of whisky with the sack of cornmeal but he did not seem to have done so; alcohol was not his major weakness. To take his mind off other matters Keith went below and started up the little generator set, and with the noise of the engine Jack joined him at once, and sat looking at it entranced. “Smallest in the world,” he breathed. “Captain Petersen, he liked it fine. But then, he’s a seaman. He handled that schooner beautiful coming up to the buoy — just beautiful. I never seen it done better. Stands to reason that he knows a thing or two. He knows when something’s worth looking at. Smallest in the world!”

  Presently Keith said, “I’ll be leaving you tomorrow, Jack. You heard what he said? I’ll be moving into the Flying Cloud in the morning.”

  “Fine ship,” said Jack. “You make him learn you how to sail her, like I learned you how to sail the Mary Belle.”

  “I’ll be sorry to leave you,” Keith said. “Where will you go now?”

  “I guess I’ll head for Huahine. Over to the west, ain’t it? Shows on them charts of yours?”

  “That’s right. It’s only about a hundred miles away, a little bit west of northwest on the compass.” He paused. “I’ll leave you the charts. They might come in handy.”

  “Say, thanks.” The captain took them gingerly. “These things take a bit of understanding,” he remarked. “Just show me where it says Huahine.”

  “There.”

  “Oh, I see.” He pointed to the compass rose upon the chart. “Is that what tells you which way to go?”

  “That’s right. See, a little bit west of northwest.” He traced the course with his finger.

  “They don’t put that on the atlas,” Jack observed. “Wonderful the way they think of things, ain’t it? Something new each year.”

  He rolled up the charts presently and put them away. “There’s one more thing,” said Keith. “I’ll be moving out tomorrow. We’d better do some settling up.”

  “What’s that?” asked Jack.

  “You remember I was going to pay you a hundred dollars for the passage, when we talked about it in Honolulu? Well, then there was the cost of food.”

  “That’s right,” said his captain. “You bought all the chow except the cornmeal which was mostly maggots anyway, which didn’t cost me nothing. That squares it off.”

  Keith said patiently, “The chow didn’t cost a hundred dollars. Most of it came from the Cathay Princess at English wholesale prices. There’s a good bit owing to you.”

  “Aw, forget it,” said his captain. “You sailed the ship half the time. I didn’t pay you no wages.”

  Keith stared at him helplessly; he knew better than to cross this man. “That’s not right,” he said. “We agreed I’d pay a hundred dollars for the passage. The food came to about forty dollars. There’s about sixty dollars due to you.”

  “I got plenty to be going on with,” said Jack. “I got forty, fifty dollars to get back out of that bank tomorrow.”

  “I’d like to pay you what we said,” said Keith. “Honestly I would.”

  “Okay,” said his captain amiably. “You pay me sixty dollars when the bank lets go of it. Then I pay you seaman’s wage, sixty dollars a month and keep. You give it me if you can get it from that bank, ‘n I give it back to you. Then we’ll be all square.”

  His mind was made up and there was no use arguing with him; Keith had had this before. “I tell you one thing,” he said presently. “I’ll leave the little generator set here, in the Mary Belle.”

  Jack stared at him. “Leave that here, with me?”

  “That’s right. This ship hasn’t got a motor. She ought to have one.”

  “Gee, Mr. Keats — I couldn’t take that!”

  “I won’t want it, Jack. I’d like you to have it.” He did not have much difficulty in persuading his captain to accept it. The big man held it reverently in his great hand. “Smallest in the world,” he breathed. “Say, I wonder what they’re going to think of this in Huahine!”

  Keith glanced at the bottle, which was practically empty. “I’ll get another bottle of petrol tomorrow sometime, and some lubricating oil, and a little oil can. Then you’ll be all fixed up.”

  They slept presently, and in the morning Keith spent a couple of hours cleaning up the ship, which certainly needed it. Then he went up to the bank with Jack Donelly and, somewhat to his surprise, they were both repaid their dollars in full; he was not to know that Captain Petersen had been active in the city before him. In the bank he went through the ceremony of paying Jack Donelly sixty dollars for his passage and Jack counted it out carefully and paid it back to him as wages. They then went back to the Mary Belle and Keith picked up his suitcase.

  “I’ll be back on board this afternoon,” he said. “I’ll bring that bottle
of petrol and the oil can.”

  He set off carrying his suitcase towards the Flying Cloud, now moored at the Grand Quai taking on water by a hose. A white-clad sailor from the yacht came hurrying to meet him, and took the suitcase from him.

  He walked down the gangway onto the deck of the Flying Cloud, an incongruous figure perspiring in his rather inexpensive blue suit purchased in Ealing and suitable for the English climate. Captain Petersen came out of the wheelhouse and welcomed him aboard. “I’ll show you your cabin,” he said. “It’s the one that Mr. Ferris uses normally, with a private bath. I think you’ll find it comfortable.”

  In the luxury of the cabin Keith said diffidently, “I think I’ll have to get something lighter to wear — tropical clothes of some kind. This suit’s too hot altogether, and I can’t go round this ship in a pair of bathing trunks, like I did with Jack Donelly.”

  “Lots of them do that,” remarked Captain Petersen. “You’d be surprised. Middle-aged women, too, in not much more.” He glanced at the blue suit. “That suit will be fine for Tacoma in the winter, and we’ll probably be there before long. Clothes are a problem on this kind of trip.” He opened the door of a big wardrobe. “Say, Mr. Ferris, he leaves quite a bit of stuff on board, and you’re much the same build. I’d pull out some of these suits, see if they will fit you before buying anything. It’s not worth it, just for a few days.”

  Keith glanced at the array of gleaming Dacron and silk tropical suits, the white neckties, the white shoes. “Are you sure that will be all right?” he asked.

  The captain nodded. “Sure. I’ll get everything washed and cleaned before he comes again. He’d want you to have the use of the things, and there’s no sense in buying anything.”

  He left Keith in the cabin. He had a very welcome shower, his first for a month, and dressed in the soft linen and the light hot-weather grey suit of a wealthy American. He went out a little self-consciously and up into the deck lounge, where he ran into the thirty year old red-headed woman that he knew as Mrs. Efstathios. She got up to welcome him.