Читать книгу Mystery in the Channel - Freeman Wills Crofts - Страница 4

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In spite of Mackintosh’s horse sense, he found he could no more refrain from speculations as to the cause of the tragedy than he could keep his heart from beating. Slowly he paced up and down the unstained portion of the deck, drawing ruminatively at his pipe, and by force of habit casting a mechanical glance round the horizon at every turn.

He was more intrigued by the disappearance of the crew, if there had been a crew, than by any other feature of the affair. Such a yacht might well have carried a couple of hands, one to steer and look after the motors—there was a complete set of controls from the wheel-house to the motor—the other a cook-steward, who would also clean up and do odd jobs. At the same time, the boat was small enough to be run by the owner and his friends, should their tastes lie in that direction. There was really nothing to show what had obtained. The fact that neither of the bunks in the store appeared to have been occupied suggested that no crew had been carried. On the other hand, the deceased men did not look like sailors, at least if one was to judge by their clothes.

Their clothes indeed were rather a puzzle. Mackintosh had never seen the occupants of a small pleasure yacht so garbed, at all events, certainly not on a yacht in mid-Channel. There must have been something quite unusual about the trip from the very start. These men were dressed neither for yachting nor travelling. They looked, indeed, as if they had stepped aboard from some formal business conference in London. Surely, therefore, they must have been passengers, and unintentional passengers at that?

Mackintosh was proceeding to follow up this idea when another and more personal side of the affair struck him. He was, he believed, about to find himself famous. This case, no matter who the dead men were, would arouse enormous interest. The mere circumstance of a pleasure yacht being found floating alone in the middle of the English Channel and bearing such a terrible freight, was in itself dramatic. The story would have an instant appeal. Editors would push it for all it was worth. Mackintosh saw his name in heavily leaded type on the principal page of the leading dailies. And there was a certain young lady who would see it too.

As he chewed the cud of this entrancing idea, he noticed that the motor launch, which had been making a beeline for the Nymph, had swung round towards the west and was now heading as if to pass across the yacht’s bows. It occurred to Mackintosh that their paths were now converging and that in a couple of miles they should be close together. Idly he once more picked up the high-powered binoculars and focused them on her. She was a small motor launch with a deck cabin stretching from the bows for about two-thirds of the way aft. She was running about the same speed as the Nymph or a little faster. Mackintosh could see only one man aboard her, standing at the tiny wheel in her well.

While he was watching, the man picked up something, evidently glasses, and gazed through them at the Nymph. Immediately, probably as he saw that he was being observed, he dropped the wheel and began gesticulating and waving a small flag.

It was obvious that he wanted to speak to the Nymph, and Mackintosh, thinking that for once he was not running to schedule, gave the order to stop. It would only take fifteen minutes to see what was wanted, and another fifteen minutes delay in reaching Newhaven would make but little difference.

He signalled what he was doing, and as the Nymph lost way, the launch again shifted her course to head straight for her. Smith, learning that his motor would not be required for a few minutes, came on deck and in low tones discussed the situation with Wilcox in the wheel-house. Mackintosh paced slowly to and fro, still glancing automatically round the misty horizon, but save for the rapidly approaching launch, they were alone on the sea.

The launch was steering to slightly behind their stern, but as she came close her helm went over and she bore round, coming at last to rest parallel to the Nymph and some thirty feet from her. Mackintosh now saw that she was built like a small-sized navy launch, some two or three and twenty feet long, with of course the cabin added. A great model they were, these navy launches, with their double diagonal sheeting, their square sterns, their deep draught and their propeller shafts inclined to one side so as to leave the sternpost uncut. No fliers of course, no more than was this small sister, but they were a fine job, roomy and steady and safe in any sea. Money apparently had not been considered in her construction. She seemed quite as well found as the Nymph, and her spotless paint and shining brasswork showed that she also received the best of attention.

So far only one man had appeared, and Mackintosh now saw that he was of medium height and build, thin and dark as to face and intelligent as to expression. A rather large nose and a strong chin showed distinction of character and determination. An able and efficient man, thought Mackintosh, who prided himself on the rapidity of his character reading.

“Yacht Nymph,” the man shouted. “Is Mr. Moxon aboard?” and in his voice and manner Mackintosh recognised a puzzled bewilderment.

It was a simple question, but Mackintosh couldn’t answer it.

“There’s been an accident aboard here,” he called back. “I’m third officer of the Southern Company’s Chichester and I’m in charge. May I ask your name and what you want?”

“My name’s Nolan, though I don’t suppose that’s any help to you,” the stranger called. “And I’m wanting to see Mr. Moxon, my partner in business, if he’s there.”

“Best come aboard, Mr. Nolan. Come alongside and make fast.”

“Right you are.” The newcomer backed his launch, then came forward again, bringing up skilfully against the Nymph. Mackintosh held out a fender, while Smith and Wilcox made fast the bow and stern ropes which Nolan threw over. Side by side the two little vessels rolled placidly on the short swell. Nolan climbed energetically aboard.

“Holy saints!” he cried as his eyes fell on the bloodstains and ran along them to the blue ensign. “What’s been happening here?”

“Something pretty like murder, I’m thinking, Mr. Nolan. Better come and have a look.”

Nolan stared at him, a great wonder in his eyes.

“What’s that you’re saying? Murder? You’re not serious?”

“Look for yourself.”

At a sign from Mackintosh the two men raised the ensign. An oath burst from Nolan’s lips as he stood gazing down at the still figure.

“Holy saints!” he cried again. “Deeping!” He stared helplessly, then swung round on Mackintosh. “Deeping dead! And you’re telling me he was murdered! Good God! Surely not!”

“I’m feared it doesna look like an accident.”

“But this is terrible altogether. Poor old Deeping!”

“You knew him then?”

“Knew him? Of course I knew him. Sure wasn’t he another of my partners in the business? I was talking to him only last night, and he was as well then as I was myself.” He paused, shook his head, then went on in tones of growing amazement, “And he never said a word about going out in the yacht! Never a blessed word! That was in the middle of last night and he never so much as mentioned the subject. I can’t understand it at all.”

At another sign the flag was replaced and Mackintosh pointed to the companion.

“That’s not the whole of it, Mr. Nolan. There’s more trouble below. Come down and have a look.”

When Nolan saw the second body his emotions nearly overcame him. The sight of the man he had called Deeping had awakened horror and surprise, but not such horror and surprise as he now exhibited. Moreover to these feelings was added another, an evident sense of personal loss. The man he recognised at once. It was that Moxon for whom he had first asked. Moxon, he said, was his partner and friend. He had talked with him also on the previous evening. Both he and Deeping were then well and strong and obviously looking forward to many years of life. And now their lives, such as they had made of them, were over and done with. Both dead! Nolan could scarcely realise it.

But besides the horror and the shock, the man’s amazement at the tragic happening seemed only to increase. “Why,” he declared, “this beats me altogether! Only last night, practically this morning, Moxon told me he couldn’t make this trip! In fact, it was he asked me to make it for him: that’s why I’m here.”

Mackintosh was silent. All this seemed only to add to the mystery. He would have liked to have questioned Nolan, but his thoughts returned to his own position and responsibilities. He realised that they were wasting time.

“You’ll find there’s a reason for it all right,” he said with a rough attempt at sympathy. “But, Mr. Nolan, we can’t stay here all afternoon. I’m putting into Newhaven and I must get her going. Come up on deck. We can talk there.”

Nolan nodded, and with another shrinking glance at the tragic figure on the floor, he followed the third officer.

“We’ll go ahead with our motor in the meantime. That launch of yours will be all right where she is.”

Again Nolan nodded absently, his mind evidently too full of the tragedy to be interested in anything else. Smith and Wilcox took up their respective stations and the Nymph was restarted. The other two men fell to pacing the deck, while Mackintosh recounted the sighting of the yacht and the discovery of the tragedy aboard.

“They were a pair of the best,” said Nolan when the story came to an end, “right good fellows as you would wish to meet. Moxon has been a good friend to me and an old one, too. For the matter of that, so has Deeping, though I haven’t known him so long. And now they’re gone, and gone in this terrible way. My God, but it’s awful to think about!”

“You havena any theory of what might have happened?” Mackintosh put in.

“Theory?” Nolan made a helpless gesture. “No more than the babe unborn! The thing’s the most extraordinary mystery. I tell you I saw them late last night, indeed early this morning, and there wasn’t a word out of either of them about going on the Nymph. Moxon said definitely he wasn’t going. He had intended to, but he’d had bad news and changed his mind. What could have brought them here I can no more imagine than you can.”

“You say Mr. Moxon had asked you to go instead of him? Where was that to? You dinna feel disposed to give particulars?”

“Certainly, I’ll tell you. There’s no secret about it at all. These two were partners with me in Moxon’s General Securities. You’ve heard of it, of course; one of the biggest financial houses in the country. Moxon acted as chairman, Deeping as vice-chairman, and I was one of the supervising executives.”

“What did you deal in?” Mackintosh asked with an air of shrewdness.

“Money,” Nolan returned. “Investments and loans and so on.”

“In London?”

“In London, in Threadneedle Street. Well, there was a French financier, by name of Pasteur, that Moxon was wanting to meet. There had been negotiations going on between them for some time, and now Moxon was wanting a personal interview. This Pasteur was staying with friends at Fécamp. He was by way of being a yachtsman; fond of the sea anyway. Moxon thought he’d bring the Nymph across with him and take Pasteur out. It was business he had in mind, for he thought Pasteur would be pleased with the trip and would be easier to come to terms with.”

“Pr-ractical psychology,” Mackintosh suggested.

Nolan grunted. “Sure it was only business. Anyway, that’s what he did. He was to dine with Pasteur this evening and they were to go for their sail to-morrow. Well, that was all right, but there was a difficulty in the way. There was a dinner in London last night. It was a big financial affair and every one that was any one had to be there. He and Deeping and myself were there, as well as a couple more of our partners. Well, you can see that it didn’t leave much time for Moxon to get the Nymph over to Fécamp and dine with Pasteur at eight o’clock this evening.”

Mackintosh admitted it would be pretty tight running.

“The way he intended to do it was this: He had brought his car to Hallam’s, where the dinner was, and he meant to leave immediately the dinner was over and run down to Folkestone, where the Nymph was lying, sleep on board, and start first thing this morning. I suppose, as a matter of fact, that’s what he did. But he told me he wasn’t going to, and that’s one of the things that make this whole business so queer.”

“He didna give a reason?”

“He did. Just after the dinner was over, when we were all getting ready to go home, he came up with a face as long as a horse’s and said he’d just had a phone call from his sister in Buxton. He told me his brother-in-law had been knocked down and killed on his way home from the theatre, and said he’d have to go to Buxton to look after things. So he said he couldn’t go to France and he asked me to go instead. He said I knew the whole business, and more than that, I was the only other that had a launch and could take Pasteur out. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘you’ll have Raymond with you.’

“This Raymond was another of the partners. I knew he had been going with Moxon, so it was right that he should come with me. He was a young man, the youngest of us, and he was going, partly because he was a good chap socially and would be useful for entertaining Pasteur, but also because he could write shorthand and type, and could so do confidential clerk if they got anywhere with their negotiations. Moxon didn’t want to take a stenographer for fear it would look as if he was trying to rush Pasteur. I asked Moxon how we would get word to Raymond, for he seemed to have gone home. Moxon said Raymond had not gone home, that he had gone to get Moxon’s car, and that he, Moxon, would fix things up with him. He said he would arrange for him to be at my rooms at whatever time I appointed, and I could take him down in my car to Dover, where my launch was lying. We settled that I would leave at four-thirty, so as to get away on the launch by seven-thirty. I thought I’d have to start by seven-thirty if I was to be in Fécamp in time to dine with the Frenchman.”

“What does she do?” Mackintosh inquired.

“Close on ten knots.”

“Aye, you ought to have got in about five or six o’clock.”

“Before that, I thought, but I wanted to allow a margin. Well, I hadn’t more than got home when Deeping rang up; that’s the poor chap—” Nolan made a gesture towards the ensign. “The last time I heard his voice! Well, he told me he had just seen Raymond and he had said he wanted his own car at Dover on our return, so he would go down by himself and meet me there in the morning. So that was all right.

“I should have explained that Moxon had given me the file of papers about the business. He seemed very grateful and all that about my going. But what could I do but agree?”

“What else?” Mackintosh agreed laconically. Then a professional point striking him, he added: “How did you get your launch ready in time?”

“When I got home to my flat at St. James’s I rang up the night porter at the Lord Warden at Dover, where I always stay, and asked if he’d send word at once to my caretaker that I’d want the launch to be ready for me to start at seven-thirty in the morning. You see, I was afraid of getting stuck by the tide. I keep the launch lying up in the Granville Basin, and if she wasn’t got out before the tide fell, the gates would be shut and I couldn’t get her till the next tide.”

“Aye, that’s a fact. I know the place well.”

“I told my own man what I wanted, and he set the alarm for four. While I was dressing and getting out the car he made me a bit of breakfast. I got away shortly after half-past four and went straight down to Dover. I was there by quarter past seven. The hotel porter had sent the message and the caretaker had got it in time. The launch was lying outside the gates alongside the Crosswall Quay, all ready to start.”

“A bit of luck, getting her out in time.”

Nolan smiled grimly.

“Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t,” he returned. “If he hadn’t got her out I wouldn’t have been here now.”

Mackintosh agreed shortly.

“Then occurred the first hitch,” continued Nolan. “There was no sign of Raymond. At half-past seven he hadn’t turned up. I waited and waited, but there was no sign of him, then I thought if I stayed any longer I’d be late at Fécamp. So at eight I put out alone. It was a confounded nuisance, but I couldn’t help it.”

“As it turned out, it didna matter,” Mackintosh remarked dryly. “So then you came on here?”

“I did, and you can guess my surprise when I saw the Nymph. First I saw a small boat heading across my bows; then I thought it wasn’t unlike the Nymph, but I never for a moment believed it was she. But when I came closer and saw the curve of that wheel-house I knew it must be. Moxon got that altered and I don’t suppose there’s another afloat just like it. I couldn’t make out what she was doing there.” He shook his head sadly. “But nothing I could have thought of would have been the equal of what has happened.”

For a few moments they paced in silence, then Nolan went on.

“It’ll be a bad thing for poor Mrs. Moxon. It’ll just about kill her when she hears about it, and she ill herself. And Mrs. Deeping too and the family. Deeping’ll be missed. He had a boy just about through college. One blessing, they were both well off, those two. There’ll be no poverty to be met.”

Mackintosh agreed that this was an important alleviation, though his thoughts remained with the abstract problem rather than with its human effects. “Tell me,” he went on, recurring to his earlier difficulty, “they surely werena alone, these two on the Nymph?”

“I couldn’t tell you. Sure I know no more about it than you do yourself. But there wouldn’t be any crew. Moxon, though he doesn’t look like it in all those City clothes, was as good a seaman as ever put out of an English port. He never took any help. He had a man to look after the yacht in port and keep her clean and all that, but never anybody at sea.”

Mackintosh felt that the whole business was beyond him. It had been bad at first, but the coming of this Nolan had made it, if anything, more puzzling. Then he saw that an explanation for at least part of it was forthcoming.

“I’ll tell you what’s happened,” he suggested. “After Moxon had asked you to go to France he went home, and when he got there he found another phone from Buxton that there had been a mistake and his brother-in-law wasna hurt at all. He would then think, ‘Here I’ve sent Mr. Nolan away to France for no reason,’ and he would send you a message that he would go himself after all. Well, if by some mistake you didna get the message, there would be the whole thing. Would you no think so?”

Nolan was evidently impressed. He thought indeed that this might well be the truth. But, of course, it did not explain the tragedy.

“No, it doesna explain everything,” Mackintosh admitted in a voice which suggested that Nolan was hard to please, he, Mackintosh, having really done extraordinarily well. But he saw that it certainly didn’t explain the men’s death. However, thank goodness it was none of his business. He was a sailor, not a blinking policeman. He looked round at the sea.

“Well, I dinna know how it’ll be explained,” he concluded, as if dismissing the subject of the tragedy, “but I do know that as far as this trip’s concerned we’re no making much of it. She’s no tug, this Nymph. I’m thinking you’d be better back in your launch, Mr. Nolan, cast off and keeping us company under your own power. You’re coming to Newhaven, I suppose?”

“I am so. Sure what else could I do? Faith, I believe you’re right, Mr. Mackintosh. It’ll double our speed.”

The manoeuvre was carried out and at half-past six that evening both vessels passed slowly in behind the breakwater at Newhaven.