Bond grinned at him. This was more like it. He had found an ally, and an intelligent one at that. "Well," he said seriously, "I'm here on the Strangways case. But first of all I want to ask you a question that may sound odd. Exactly how did you come to be looking at that other case of mine? You say you found the file lying about. How was that? Had someone asked for it? I don't want to be indiscreet, so don't answer if you don't want to. I'm just inquisitive."
Pleydell-Smith cocked an eye at him. "I suppose that's yoUr job." He reflected, gazing at the ceiling. "Well, now I come to think of it I saw it on my secretary's desk. She's a new girl. Said she was trying to get up to date with the files. Mark you," the Colonial Secretary hastened to exonerate his girl, "there were plenty of other files on her desk. It was just this one that caught my eye."
"Oh, I see," said Bond. "It was like that." He smiled apologetically. "Sorry, but various people seem to be rather interested in me being here. What I really wanted to talk to you about was Crab Key. Anything you know about the place. And about this Chinaman, Doctor No, who bought it. And anything you can tell me about his guano business. Rather a tall order, I'm afraid, but any scraps will help."
Pleydell-Smith laughed shortly through the stem of his pipe. He jerked the pipe out of his mouth and talked while he tamped down the burning tobacco with his matchbox. "Bitten off a bit more than you can chew on guano. Talk to you for hours about it. Started in the Consular before I transferred to the Colonial Office. First job was in Peru. Had a lot to do with their people who administer the whole trade—Compania Aministradora del Guano. Nice people." The pipe was going now and Pleydell-Smith threw his matchbox down on the table. "As for the rest, it's just a question of getting the file." He rang a bell. In a minute the door opened behind Bond. "Miss Taro, the file on Crab Key, please. The one on the sale of the place and the other one on that warden fellow who turned up before Christmas. Miss Longfellow will know where to find them."
A soft voice said, "Yes, sir." Bond heard the door close. "Now then, guano." Pleydell-Smith tilted his chair back. Bond prepared to be bored. "As you know, it's bird dung. Comes frorn the rear end of two birds, the masked booby and the guanay. So far as Crab Key is concerned, it's only the guanay, otherwise known as the green cormorant, same bird as you find in England. The guanay is a machine for converting fish into guano. They mostly eat anchovies. Just to show you how much fish they eat, they've found up to seventy anchovies inside one bird!" Pleydell-Smith took out his pipe and pointed it impressively at Bond. "The whole population of Peru eats four thousand tons of fish a year. The sea birds of the country eat five hundred thousand tons!"
Bond pursed his lips to show he was impressed. "Really."
"Well, now," continued the Colonial Secretary, "every day
each one of these hundreds of thousands of guanays eat a
pound or so of fish and deposit an ounce of guano on the
guanera—that's the guano island."
Bond interrupted, "Why don't they do it in the sea?"
"Don't know." Pleydell-Smith took the question and turned it over in his mind. "Never occurred to me. Anyway they don't. They do it on the land and they've been doing it since before Genesis. That makes the hell of a lot of bird dung—millions of tons of it on the Pescadores and the other guanera. Then, around 1850 someone discovered it was the greatest natural fertilizer in the world—stuffed with nitrates and phosphates and what have you. And the ships and the men came to the guaneras and simply ravaged them for twenty years or more.
It's a time known as the 'Saturnalia' in Peru. It was like the Klondyke. People fought over the muck, hi-jacked each other's ships, shot the workers, sold phoney maps of secret guano islands—anything you like. And people made fortunes out of the stuff."
"Where does Crab Key come in?" Bond wanted to get down to cases.
"That was the only worthwhile guanera so far north. It was worked too, God knows who by. But the stuff had a low nitrate content. Water's not as rich round here as it is down along the Humboldt Current. So the fish aren't so rich in chemicals. So the guano isn't so rich either. Crab Key got worked on and off when the price was high enough, but the whole industry went bust, with Crab Key and the other poor-quality deposits in the van, when the Germans invented artificial chemical manure. By this time Peru had realized that she had squandered a fantastic capital asset and she set about organizing the remains of the industry and protecting the guanera. She nationalized the industry and protected the birds, and slowly, very slowly, the supplies built up again. Then people found that there were snags about the German stuff, it impoverishes the soil, which guano doesn't do, and gradually the price of guano improved and the industry staggered back to its feet. Now it's going fine, except that Peru keeps most of the guano to herself, for her own agriculture. And that was where Crab Key came in again."
"Ah."
"Yes," said Pleydell-Smith, patting his pockets for the matches, finding them on the desk, shaking them against his ear, and starting his pipe-filling routine, "at the beginning of the war, this Chinaman, who must be a wily devil, by the way, got the idea that he could make a good thing out of the old guanera on Crab Key. The price was about fifty dollars a ton on this side of the Atlantic and he bought the island from us, for about ten thousand pounds as I recall it, brought in labour and got to work. Been working it ever since. Must have made a fortune. He ships direct to Europe, to Antwerp. They send him a ship once a month. He's installed the latest crushers and separators. Sweats his labour, I daresay. To make a decent profit, he'd have to. Particularly now. Last year I heard he was only getting about thirty-eight to forty dollars a ton c.i.f. Antwerp. God knows what he must pay his labour to make a profit at that price. I've never been able to find out. He runs that place like a fortress—sort of forced labour camp. No one ever gets off it. I've heard some funny rumours, but no one's ever complained. It's his island, of course, and he can do what he likes on it."
Bond hunted for clues. "Would it really be so valuable to him, this place? What do you suppose it's worth?"
'Pleydell-Smith said, "The guanay is the most valuable bird in the world. Each pair produces about two dollars' worth of guano in a year without any expense to the owner. Each female lays an-average of three eggs and raises two young. Two broods a year. Say they're worth fifteen dollars a pair, and say there are one hundred thousand birds on Crab Key, which is a reasonable guess on the old figures we have. That makes his birds worth a million and a half dollars. Pretty valuable property. Add the value of the installations, say another million, and you've got a small fortune on that hideous little place. Which reminds me," Pleydell-Smith pressed the bell, "what the hell has happened to those files? You'll find all the dope you want in them."