‘I don’t mind things being rough. I wasn’t raised in cotton wool. I can make out.’
‘Not on this trip.’
She said no more about it. She sat in the sunlight with her hair tangled and the water drying on her golden skin. It occurred to Keeton that she was like some nymph born of the sea. He tried to avoid looking at her, but his gaze moved back in defiance of his will; her body was like a magnet drawing his eyes towards it, holding them. And she stirred emotions in him that he did not wish to have stirred.
With a muffled curse he turned to Dring. ‘All right, Ben. We’ll be getting back.’
Chapter Six
Boarders
Keeton was reading a book in the cabin one evening some four days later when he heard the puttering of an outboard engine. He thought nothing of it; it was a common enough sound in the bay. The engine came nearer, then cut out. He felt something bump gently against the side of the yawl.
A voice shouted: ‘Ahoy there! Anyone on board?’
Keeton knew that voice; it was thick and hoarse. It was the voice of Mr Stephen Rains.
And then another, sharper voice said: ‘Maybe he’s asleep.’
Keeton flung the book down and went up the companionway to the cockpit. Already Rains was climbing aboard, and in the boat with the now silent outboard engine were Smith and the Sydney newspaperman Ferguson.
Rains said with assumed heartiness: ‘Well, well, well, here he is again. Mr Keeton as ever was.’ He gave a laugh. ‘You didn’t get far with your round-the-world voyage. You don’t mind if my friends come on board too? You have met them, I believe.’
Smith made the boat fast and climbed on board also. Ferguson followed.
Smith said: ‘Long time no see. Not as long as it might have been though.’
‘How did you know I was here?’ Keeton asked.
Rains grinned. ‘News leaks down the coast, and men have ears; especially newsmen.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Just a talk,’ Rains said. ‘How about us all going below where we can be more comfortable? We brought our entrance fee.’ He dragged a square bottle of whisky from his pocket. ‘We’re the right sort of guests. Bring our own refreshment.’
Keeton gave a shrug. Let them talk if they wanted to; it would do them little good. ‘All right, if that’s your idea of a jolly evening.’
He led the way into the cabin and fetched four glasses from the galley. They all sat down, Rains and Ferguson on one side of the screwed-down table with its hinged flaps, Keeton and Smith on the other. Rains opened the whisky bottle and poured drinks. Nobody asked for water.
‘Here’s to us all,’ he said, drained his glass and refilled it.
‘What do you want?’ Keeton asked again.
‘We’re curious.’
‘About what?’
‘Why you came back.’
Keeton saw Ferguson’s eyelid fluttering. Ferguson said ‘That’s so. You told me you were going to sail across the Pacific; a one-way voyage. I printed it in the paper. But you came back, chum. Why?’
‘I please myself. I see no reason why I should explain my movements to you.’
Smith chuckled. He seemed to be finding amusement in his own thoughts. His little beady eyes watched Keeton, not missing a move.
‘It couldn’t be you came back with a cargo, could it?’ Rains said.
It was Keeton’s turn to laugh. So they thought he might have the gold concealed on board. They were in for a disappointment.
‘What sort of cargo would I carry?’
‘Shall we say a very valuable cargo?’
‘Look,’ Keeton said; ‘if you think I’ve got a cargo you’re welcome to search the ship. Go ahead.’
Rains stared at him thoughtfully for a while; then he said: ‘I won’t trouble. I didn’t think you had it anyway; not low enough in the water. You must have hit a snag.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Rains sighed gustily. ‘You do, boy, you do. Why do we have to go through this make-believe? It gets none of us anywhere.’
Ferguson drank whisky and his prominent Adam’s apple floated up and down. Keeton wondered just how much Rains and Smith had told the reporter. Rains was not guarding his tongue; therefore it looked as though Ferguson had been allowed in on the deal. Perhaps the three of them had formed a syndicate.
Smith lit a cigarette and blew smoke through his pointed nose; it came out in twin jets.
‘We heard you’ve teamed up with a skin diver, a joker named Ben Dring. We heard you was learning the business yourself. It made us interested. We wondered why you’d be troubling to do that.’
‘You’ll have to wonder.’
‘We heard something else. We heard there was a nice blonde sister too. A fortune in gold bars and a luscious blonde would be very pleasant, wouldn’t it, Charlie?’
‘We could maybe get to work on the blonde,’ Rains said musingly. ‘She might know something.’
Keeton said sharply: ‘You stay away from that girl.’
Rains seemed amused. ‘You’re getting hot under the collar, boy. All right then, we’ll keep away from the girl. Just so long as you tell us what we want to know.’
‘That’s right,’ Smith said. ‘You tell us where the Valparaiso is and we’ll go away and never trouble you no more.’
‘I’ll tell you where the Valparaiso is,’ Keeton said. ‘She’s lying on the bottom of the sea.’
Rains sighed again. It was the sigh of a man who feels that he has been very patient, but whose patience is at last exhausted. He got to his feet.
‘You make it hard for yourself, boy. We didn’t want it this way, but you don’t give us a choice. OK, Smithie.’
They moved quickly then. Keeton had not expected them to use violence on board the yawl and he was unprepared. The weight of Rains and Smith together flung him down on the settee. They gripped his arms and he could feel Rains’s whisky-laden breath fanning his face.
Smith was yelling for the newspaperman to give some help. ‘Come on, Ferg. Grab him, can’t you?’
Ferguson muttered nervously: ‘I don’t like this. I didn’t bargain for this sort of thing.’ But he overcame his qualms and took a grip on Keeton’s left arm.
He writhed and twisted, but could not free himself; the odds were too great. They dragged him on to the table, sweeping the glasses to the deck. He heard the tinkle of breaking glass, and then he was lying flat on his back with his legs dangling over the end of the table. Smith slipped a cord round his ankles and a leg of the table, drew it viciously tight and knotted it. Keeton began to yell in the hope of attracting the attention of someone on another yacht, but Smith stuffed a dirty rag in his mouth and tied it there.
‘You keep quiet, Charles. We don’t want to alarm the neighbours.’
With Rains holding one arm and Ferguson the other, Keeton could move nothing but his head. He could see that Ferguson was scared; the eyelid fluttered more than ever; but the man was in too deep now to draw back. Smith took a clasp-knife from his pocket and opened it. The blade looked sharp and cruel.
‘Do you want to talk now?’ Rains asked. ‘Wink if you do.’
Keeton made no sign. He watched the knife.
‘You ought to be sensible. Smithie knows how to carve. You should have seen him operate on a man named Juan Gonzales down in Venezuela. He refused to talk at first, but he changed his mind.’
Ferguson licked his lips. ‘Does it have to be the knife? I didn’t bargain for this.’
Rains sneered at him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re soft. I thought all you Aussies were as tough as rawhide.’
‘But suppose he’s telling the truth. Suppose he doesn’t know where the Valparaiso is?’
‘Just too bad for him. But he knows. We let him slip away once. We don’t mean to risk that again. This time he talks.’