‘That was force of circumstances,’ Smith put in.
‘What circumstances?’
‘Look,’ Rains said. ‘Suppose we put you in the picture?’
‘Go ahead. I’m listening.’
‘Smithie and I don’t work in ships any more. We’ve left that game. We’re partners now.’
‘Partners?’
‘That’s right,’ Smith said. ‘Seemed like the logical thing after what we’d been through together.’
‘Partners in what?’ Keeton asked.
Rains grinned, but the grin was shifty. Keeton would not have trusted Rains further than he could see him.
‘All sorts of things. Any venture that brings in the dough is for us — if the dough is heavy and the work is light. Lately we’ve been in South America; in fact we’ve been there quite a while. That’s how we missed your homecoming. We didn’t hear a word about you until we got back to England last month. Even then we had quite a job running you down.’
‘How did you hear about me?’ Keeton asked. The more he saw of these two men the less he was inclined to believe that they simply wished to talk. They had some purpose in seeking him out, and he waited to hear what that purpose might be.
Rains said: ‘A friend of Smithie’s kept the paper he read about it in. He thought Smithie might be interested. You were in the news for a time, Keeton. A proper nine days’ wonder.’
‘The nine days were finished long ago,’ Keeton said.
‘So they were. You slipped out of the limelight. Maybe you wanted it that way.’
‘Maybe I did.’
‘But you wouldn’t want to be hiding away from your old pals, would you?’
‘You’re not my old pals,’ Keeton said.
Rains glanced at him sharply, and Smith’s bright, bird-like eyes were staring too. He saw the blunder even as he made it, but it was too late to stop the words.
Rains spoke softly. ‘So we’re not old pals, eh? Now how would you know that? You with no memory.’
Keeton hurried to cover up the slip. ‘I was a gunner. You were the mate and Smith was a steward. How could I be a friend of yours?’
‘Stranger things have happened. But we’ll let it pass.’
‘If it comes to that,’ Smith said, ‘you might think a ship’s officer wouldn’t team up with the likes of me. But he has. Now we’re like that.’ He crossed two fingers and gave a wink. ‘Brothers.’
‘What do you want?’ Keeton asked.
Rains allowed the last of his beer to drain away down his throat; then he put down the empty mug and said to Smith: ‘Get some more.’
Smith got up and walked to the bar.
‘I asked what you wanted,’ Keeton said.
Rains gave his shifty grin, but his eyes were stony. ‘You don’t believe things easy, do you, pal?’
‘I don’t believe a pair like you and Smith would come down here simply for the pleasure of seeing my face.’
‘And you’re right, pal. We wouldn’t. Not that it isn’t a presentable enough face. But it wouldn’t bring us all this way, no.’
‘What, then?’
Smith came back with the replenished mugs and sat down.
‘We want information,’ Rains said.
‘What sort of information?’
‘About the Valparaiso, for instance.’
‘I can’t tell you anything about the Valparaiso you don’t already know.’
‘Because of the lost memory? Well, that’s just too bad. But, you know, me and Smithie, we’re a proper pair of doubting Thomases, and we’re not altogether convinced about that business. We think you may be putting on an act.’
‘Presackly,’ Smith said. He closed one eye and slowly opened it again.
Keeton said coldly: ‘I don’t give a damn what you think.’
Rains ignored the remark. ‘You see, Keeton, I happen to know something that nobody else knows — barring Smithie here and yourself. I know that number one lifeboat of the steamship Valparaiso wasn’t in any condition to float two yards when the ship was abandoned. Yet, what happens? Nine months later a man is picked up from that very life boat and the said lifeboat has been patched up.’
‘So?’
‘So I ask myself: how did that happen? Who was it who patched the boat up and when was it done? The answer to the first question is pretty obvious. The man who patched the boat must surely have been the man who was found in it; none other than Mr Charles Keeton. The answer to the second question is pretty easy too when you come to think about it. If the boat couldn’t float until it was patched up, then it must have been patched up before it left the ship. You follow me thus far, Mr Keeton?’
‘I follow you.’
‘All right then. So we’ve established the fact that the boat was patched up while it was still on board the Valparaiso. Now, what follows from that?’
‘You tell me,’ Keeton said.
‘You don’t need Sherlock Holmes to work that one out,’ Rains said. ‘The answer is that the Valparaiso couldn’t have sunk when we thought she did. She must have stayed afloat some considerable time after we abandoned her. You couldn’t have made that boat seaworthy in just a couple of minutes. I know. I had a look at it before we launched the other two. Quite apart from the fact that it could never have been launched from the starboard side with the ship listing to port like she was.’
Keeton took out a cigarette and lit it. He did not offer the packet to Rains or Smith.
‘So this is your theory?’
‘Unless you have a better one.’
‘It wouldn’t put you in a very good light if it were true, would it? You gave the order to abandon.’
Rains shrugged. ‘I’m not worried about the light. I’m not a ship’s officer any more.’
Smith was getting impatient. ‘Tell him the rest. Let’s have the rest of it for Chrisake.’
‘What is the rest of it?’ Keeton asked.
Rains took a drink and wiped the froth off his lip with the back of his hand. ‘There’s some more to the theory. We believe there’s nothing wrong with your memory. We believe you can remember things just as well as we can. Things like a cargo of gold worth a million sweet and lovely pounds.’
‘A million!’
‘Don’t sound so surprised. Didn’t you know it was worth that much? Didn’t you count it up?’
‘Get on,’ Smith said.
Rains gave a wave of the hand. ‘Plenty of time. Now, Mr Keeton, we come to the last bit of the theory. We’ve got the fact that the Valparaiso didn’t sink at once. Now, suppose she didn’t sink at all. Mr Charles Keeton must have been living somewhere during those nine lost months, and it wasn’t in an open boat. So here’s what Smithie and I worked out. Suppose the Valparaiso went aground somewhere, on one of those uninhabited islands for example; suppose Mr Keeton repaired the boat and after he’d got fed up with waiting to be rescued he decided to take a chance on his own. Then suppose he said to himself, “there’s a fortune in gold waiting to be picked up and why shouldn’t I be the boy that does the picking”? But then it occurs to Mr Keeton that he’ll have to cook up some story to explain where he’s been all those nine long months, and that story mustn’t give away any information about the Valparaiso. And after that he asks himself, “What better story than no story at all? I’ll lose my memory and that’ll fox ’em; I just won’t remember a damned thing further back than the time I’m fished out of the lifeboat”. How’s that?’
Rains sat back and grinned at Keeton, showing a fine set of white teeth that looked genuine. ‘How’s that for a rough outline of the way it happened?’
‘You’re mad,’ Keeton said.
Rains shook his head. ‘Oh, no, I’m not. And I don’t think you’re mad either.’ He leaned across the table and brought his mottled face close to Keeton’s. ‘I’ll tell you something, Keeton; I admire you, and that’s the truth. You’re no miserable little bank robber. When you think about robbery you think big. I like that.’