“Aw, to hell!” roared Simon, and then grinned. “All right, all right!” he said. “You win. I apologize.”
Dikon blinked. “Well,” he said sedately, “I call that very handsome of you. I also apologize. And now, do tell me the latest news of Questing. I swear I shan’t boggle at sabotage, homicide, espionage, or incendiarism. What, if anything, have you discovered?”
Simon rose and shut the door. He then shoved a packet of cigarettes at Dikon, leant back with his elbows on his desk and, with his own cigarette jutting out of the corner of his mouth, embarked on his story.
“Wednesday night,” he said, “was a wash-out. He went into Harpoon and had tea at the pub. You call it ‘dinnah.’ The pub keeper’s a cobber of his. Bert Smith was in town and he says Questing was there all right. He gave Bert a lift home. Bert was half-shickered or he’d have been too windy to take it. He’s on the booze again after that show at the crossing. It was then Questing put it up to him he could stay on after we’d got the boot. Yes, Wednesday night’s out of it. But last night’s different. I suppose he got his tea in town, all right, but he went over to the Peak. About seven o’clock I biked down to the level crossing — and, by the way, that light’s working O.K. I hid up in the scrub. Three hours later, along comes Mr. Questing in his bus. Where he gets the juice is just nobody’s business. He steams off up the Peak road. I lit off to a possie I’d taped out beforehand. It’s a bit of a bluff that sticks out on the other side of the inlet. Opposite the Peak, sort of. At the end of a rocky spit. I had to wade the last bit. The Peak’s at the end of a long neck, you know. The seaward side’s all cliff, but you can climb up a fence line. But the near face is easy going. There’s still a trace of a track the Maori people used when they buried their dead in the old crater. About half-way up it twists and you could strike out from there to the seaward face. There’s a bit of a shelf above the cliff. You can’t see it from most places, but you can from where I was. I picked that was where he’d go. From my possie you look across the harbour to it, see? It was a pretty solid bike ride, but I reckoned I’d make it quicker than Questing’d climb the Peak track. He’s flabby. I had to crawl up the rock to get where I wanted. Wet to the middle, I was. Did I get cold! I’ll say. And soon after I’d got there she blew up wet from the sea. It was lovely.”
“You don’t mean to say you bicycled to that headland beyond Harpoon? It must be seven miles.”
“Yeh, that’s right. I beat Questing hands down, too. I sat on that ruddy bluff I till I just about froze to the rock, and I’ll bet you anything you like I never took me eyes off the Peak. I looked right across the harbour. There’s a big ship in and she was loading in the blackout. Gee, I’d like to know what she was loading. I bet Bert Smith knows. He’s cobbers with some of the wharfies, him and Eru Saul. Eru and Bert get shickered with the wharfies. They were shickered last night, Bert says. I don’t think it’s so hot going round with — ”
“The Peak and Mr. Questing,” Dikon reminded him.
“O.K. Well, just when I thought I’d been had for a mug, it started. A little point of light right where I told you on the seaward face. Popping in and out.”
“Could you read it?”
“Neow!” said Simon angrily in his broadest twang. “If it was Morse it was some code. Just a lot of t’s and i’s and s’s. He wouldn’t use plain language. You bet he wouldn’t. There’d be a system of signals. A long flash repeated three times at intervals of a minute. ‘Come in. I’m talking to you.’ Then the message. Say five short flashes: ‘Ship in port.’ That’d be repeated three times. Then the day when she sails. One long flash: ‘To-night.’ Two short flashes: ‘To-morrow.’ Three short flashes: ‘To-morrow night.’ Repeat. Then a long interval, and the whole show all over again. What I reckon,” Simon concluded, and inhaled a prodigious draught of smoke.
“But did you, in fact, see the sequence you’ve described?”
With maddening deliberation Simon ground out his cigarette, made several small backward movements of his head which invested him with an extraordinary air of complacency, and said: “Six times at fifteen-minute intervals. The end signal was three flashes each time.”
“Was it, by George!” Dikon murmured.
“ ’Course I haven’t got the reading O.K. May be something quite different.”
“Of course.” They stared at each other, a sense of companionship weaving between them.
“But I’d like to know what that ship’s loading,” Simon said.
“Was there any answering flash out at sea? I couldn’t know less about such things.”
“I didn’t pick it. But I don’t reckon she’d do anything. If it’s a raider I reckon she’d come in close on the north side of the Peak, so’s to keep it between herself and Harpoon, and wait to see. There’s nothing but bays and rough stuff up the coast north of the Peak.”
“How long did you stay?”
“Till there was no more signalling. The tide was in by then. By heck, I didn’t much enjoy wading back. He beat me to it coming home. Me blinking tyre had gone flat on me and I had to pump up three times. His bus was in the garage. By cripey he’s a beaut. Wait till I get him. That’ll be the day.”
“What will you do about it?”
“Bike into town and go to the police station.”
“I’ll ask for the car.”
“Heck, no. I’ll bike. Here, you’d better not say anything to him.”
“Who?”
Simon jerked his head.
“Gaunt? I can’t promise not to do that. You see we’ve discussed Questing so much, and Colly talks to Gaunt and you’ve talked to Colly. And anyway,” said Dikon, “I can’t suddenly begin keeping him in the dark about things. You’ve got a fantastic idea of Gaunt. He’s — dear me, how embarrassing the word still is — he’s a patriot. He gave the entire profit of the last three weeks’ Shakespearean season in Melbourne to the war effort.”
“Huh,” Simon grunted. “Money.”
“It’s what’s wanted. And I’d like to talk to him about last night for another reason. He took the car out after dinner. Once in a blue moon he gets a sudden idea he wants to drive. He may have noticed a light out to sea. He said he’d go up the coast road to the north.”
“And what he’s done to the car is nobody’s business. It’s a terrible road. Have you looked at her? Covered in mud and scratched all over the wings. It’s not his fault he didn’t bust up the back axle in a pot-hole. He’s a shocking driver.”
Dikon decided to ignore this. “What about Dr. Ackrington?” he said. “After all he was the first to suspect something. Oughtn’t you to take his advice before you make a move?”
“Uncle James doesn’t see things my way,” said Simon aggressively, “and I don’t see things his way. He thinks I’m crude and I think he’s a nark and a dug-out.”
“Nevertheless I think I should tell him.”
“I dunno where he’s got to.”
“He’s returning to-morrow, isn’t he? Wait till he comes before you do anything.”
A motor horn sounded on the main road.
“Is that the mail?” cried Dikon.
“That’s right. What about it?”
Dikon looked out of the window. “It’s beginning to rain again.”
“What of it?”
“Nothing, nothing,” said Dikon in a hurry.
It was Barbara, after all, who went first to get the mail. Dikon saw her run out of the house with her mackintosh over her shoulders, and heard Mrs. Claire call out something about the rain spoiling the bread. Of course. It was the day for the bread, thought Dikon, who had reached the secondary stage of occupation when the routine of a household is becoming familiar. With an extraordinary sensation of approaching disaster he watched Barbara go haring up the hill in the rain. “But it’s ridiculous,” he told himself, “to treat a mere incident as if it was an epic. What the devil has come upon me that I can do nothing but fidget like an old woman over this damn’ girl’s clothes? Blast her clothes. Either she refuses or she accepts them. Either she guesses who sent for them or she doesn’t. The affair will merely become an anecdote, amusing or dull. To hell with it.”