Fast fluent Morse started stuttering through the earphones. First the acknowledgment signal followed by: "U.S. Frigate 'Novair County': position: name?"
A U.S. Frigate! Maybe only a hundred miles away. God, it would be the answer to everything! A frigate. Guns, machine-guns, armed men, everything. Then my elation ebbed a
trifle. Position? Name? Of course, in a genuine S.O.S., position came first, always.
"150 miles south of Fiji," I tapped. "Vardu-"
"Lat. and long.?" the operator cut in. He was sending so fast that I could hardly pick it up.
"Uncertain."
"What ship?"
"No ship. Island. Island of Vardu-"
Again he overrode my transmission.
"Island?"
"Yes."
"Get off the air, you damn fool, and stay off it. This is a distress frequency." With that the transmission ended abruptly.
I could have kicked that damned transmitter all the way into the lagoon. I could have done the same with the duty operator on the 'Novair County'. I could have wept with frustration, but it was far too late for tears. Besides, I could hardly blame him. I sent again on the same frequency, but the operator on the 'Novair County'-it could have been no other-just leaned on his transmitting button and kept on leaning till I gave up. I twisted the selector dial again, but only a fraction. I'd learnt one invaluable thing: I was on the distress frequency. Keep burning, hut, I beseeched it silently, keep burning. For old Bentall's sake, please don't go out. Which was quite a lot to ask considering what I'd done to the hut
It kept burning and I kept transmitting. Within twenty seconds I got another reply, the acknowledgment, then: "S.S. Annandale. Position?"
"Australian registry?" I sent.
"Yes. Position, repeat position." Getting testy and understandably so: when a man's shouting for help he shouldn't first of all enquire into the pedigree of his rescuer. I hesitated for a second before sending, I had to make an immediate impact on the operator or I'd likely get as short shrift as I'd had from the U.S. Navy. The distress frequency is sacrosanct to all nations.
"Special British ^Government investigator John Bentall requesting immediate relay coded message via Portishead radio to Admiralty Whitehall London. Desperately urgent."
"Are you sinking?"
I waited for a few assorted blood vessels to burst but when none did I sent: "Yes." In the circumstances it seemed that it might save a great deal of misunderstanding. "Please prepare receive message." I was almost certain that the glare outside was beginning to die down: there wouldn't be much of the hut left by this time.
There was a long pause. Someone was taking time to make up his mind. Then came the single word "Priority." It was a question.
"Telegraphic address carries over-riding priority all signals to London."
That got him.
"Proceed with message."
I proceeded, forcing myself to tap it out slowly and accurately. The red glow was fading on the inside of the walls of the room. The fierce roar of flames had died away to a lazy crackling and I thought I could hear voices. My neck was stiff from glancing back over my shoulder through the window nearest the fire, but I didn't need my eyes to transmit with and I got the message through. I finished: "Please dispatch immediately."
There was a pause of maybe thirty seconds then he came through again. "Master authorises immediate transmission. Are you in danger?"
"Vessel approaching," I sent. That would keep them quiet. "O.K." A sudden thought occurred to me. "What is your position?"
"Two hundred miles due east Newcastle."
For all the help that was they might as well have been orbiting the earth in a satellite, so I sent: "Thank you very much." And signed off.
I replaced the transmitting key and headphones, closed up the doors and went to the window, poking a cautious head round the corner. I'd been wrong about the value of these big salt-water butts, where the workers' hut had been there remained now only a five-foot high pile of glowing red embers and ashes. I'd get no Oscars for counter-espionage but as an arsonist I was neck and neck with the best. At least I wasn't a complete failure. Hewell and the professor were standing together, presumably talking, as the Chinese dumped buckets of water on the smouldering remains, and as there didn't seem to be much that they would be able to do at this late stage they'd likely be along any minute. Time to be gone. I went along the centre passage, turned right to pass through the still lit kitchen and then halted in a way that would have made an observer think that I had run into an invisible brick wall.
What had brought me up so short was the sight of a pile of canned beer empties lying in a wicker basket. My God, the beer. Good old Bentall, never missed a thing, not if you held it six inches from his nose and beat him over the head with a club to attract his attention. I'd drained two full beer glasses back in the living-room there, and just left the empties standing: even with all the excitement neither the professor nor Hewell struck me as a man who would be liable to forget that he had left a full glass behind him-certainly the Chinese house-boy wouldn't-and they wouldn't put it down to evaporation from the heat of the fire either. I picked up another couple of cans from the crate on the floor, opened them in four seconds flat with the steel opener lying on the sink unit, ran back to the desk in the living-room and filled up the two glasses again, holding them at a shallow angle so that a head too suspiciously high wouldn't be formed on the beer. Back in the kitchen again I dropped the cans among the other empties-in the pile that had been consumed that night another two were liable to go unnoticed-and then left the house. I wasn't any too soon, for I could see the house-boy making for the front door, but I got back to our house unobserved.
I entered under the seaward screen and saw the outline of Marie against the front doorway where she was still watching what was left of the fire. I whispered her name and she came tome.
"Johnny!" She seemed glad to see me in a way that no one I could ever remember had been glad to see me before. "I've died about a hundred times since you left here."
"Is that all?" I put my good arm around her and squeezed and said: "I got the message through, Marie."
"The message?" I was pretty well worn out that night, mentally as well as physically, but even so it took a pretty slow type to miss the fact that he'd just been paid the biggest compliment of his life. But I missed it. "You-you got it through? How wonderful, Johnny!"
"Luck. A sensible sparks on an Aussie ship. Halfway to London by this time. And then things will happen. What, I don't know. If there are any British, American or French naval craft near, they'll be nearer still in a few hours. Or detachments of soldiers by flying boat, maybe from Sydney. I don't know. But what I do know is that they won't be here in time-"
"Sshh," she touched my lips with her finger. "Someone coming."
I heard the two voices, one quick and sharp, the other like a cement truck grinding up a grade in low gear. Witherspoon and Hewell. Maybe ten yards away, maybe not even that: through the interstices in the screen wall I could see the swinging of the lantern that one or other of them was carrying. I leapt for the bed, fumbled desperately for a pajama jacket, found one, shrugged into it and buttoned it up to the neck and dived under a blanket. I landed on the elbow of my injured arm and when I propped myself up on the other as a knock came and the two men entered without benefit of invitation, it was no difficulty at all to look sick and pale. Heaven knows I felt it.