Joby took a newspaper called the Jamestown Gleaner and Island Gazette. There was nothing in it concerning the discovery of a sunken boat and five dead men, and there had been no report on the radio; so it looked as though the police were keeping it quiet.
He remarked on this fact to Joby. “Why should they do that?”
“Don’t ask me,” Joby said.
“You’d have thought they’d have given the press a news handout. Why would they want to keep it a secret?”
“Mebbe for the same reason they warned you not to shoot your mouth off about it. Mebbe ’cause they don’t want people to know.”
That was certainly the usual reason for keeping a secret, but it still provided no explanation as to why the police should not want people to know.
“There’s something very fishy about this. It has a smell to it.”
“You don’t need to tell me,” Joby said.
There was another thing: if the police intended going out to the scene of the sinking it might have been expected that they would take Joby and Fletcher along to point out the exact position where the boat was lying. But they had not done so; Colonel Vincent had made no suggestion that either Joby or Fletcher might give them any more assistance with their inquiries; he had simply said that the matter was to be left to them. It could be, of course, that they already knew precisely where the wreck of the ship was situated and could find their way to it without help from anyone else, but to Fletcher’s way of thinking it would have been more natural to enlist the aid of the men who had discovered the boat. Still, if this was the way Colonel Vincent liked to work things, he had a right to use his own methods.
Joby had an engagement to take a party of elderly Americans on a trip to Mariana Bay, a holiday resort on the west coast of the island. He expected to be away until the evening. Fletcher idled away the best part of the morning, trying to convince himself that he was doing some work on the projected book, but coming up with nothing more to the point than a lot of unremarkable doodling. He wandered out into the garden and was immediately drawn into a game of pretend by Willie and Millie, whose importunities he always found it difficult to resist. In the afternoon he decided to go over to Jamestown on the ferry.
The ferry was just an open boat with seats along the sides, rather broad in the beam and equipped with a smelly diesel engine. The passengers were mostly women going to Jamestown to shop or visit relatives. They kept up a ceaseless chatter all the way across and dispersed on leaving the boat like a herd of animals suddenly released from a pen.
Now that he had arrived in Jamestown Fletcher had no particular purpose in mind. He wandered aimlessly around the streets, feeling hot and beginning to wonder whether the idle life was not after all somewhat over-rated. The plain fact was — and he might as well admit it — that he was bored. Jamestown was not like London or New York or Paris; it did not have an infinite variety of interest; you could very soon run out of alternative things to do to pass the time, and all that remained then was to go and have a drink — preferably a long and cooling one.
Fletcher was sitting at a table having his long, cooling drink in a place that, for some reason he had never bothered to investigate, was called Scotland House, when the two Americans strolled over and sat down on two vacant chairs at the same table. He was not sure they were Americans until they started talking, but he guessed so; there was an American look about them. And more than half the white people you saw in Jamestown were American anyway.
One of them said: “Do you mind?” He was a lean, desiccated sort of man with brown hair cut shorter than was the current fashion. He looked the kind who would not give a bent nickel for current fashion.
“No,” Fletcher said; “I don’t mind. Help yourselves.”
The other man was not quite so lean; he had a round face and steel-rimmed glasses and he was starting to go bald. He was young enough to let it bother him and he brushed his hair carefully over the bare places, but he was not fooling anybody that way; you could see it was walking out on him and not all the hair-restorers in the world would hold it back.
“What’s that you’re drinking?” he asked.
“It’s something they make here,” Fletcher told him. “It’s got some rum in it, and the juice of fresh limes and a few other things and ice, and it’s very cooling. They call it a Caribbean Special.”
“Sounds great,” the man said. He beckoned a waiter across and ordered three Caribbean Specials. Fletcher made a slight protest, but it was waved aside. “Forget it. This one’s on me. My name’s Hutchins — Frank Hutchins. This is Dale Brogan.”
“I’m John Fletcher.”
“Pleased to meet you, John.”
They insisted on shaking hands. They had strong, firm grips. Fletcher would have said they probably made quite a thing of keeping themselves physically fit.
“Are you here on holiday?”
“No,” Brogan said; “I don’t think you could say that. It’s not a holiday; not really.”
The waiter brought the drinks and Hutchins paid. Fletcher was faintly amused to see that he made a note of the amount in a small pocket-book. A careful man with money, apparently.
Brogan sipped his Caribbean Special. “Yes, very pleasant, very pleasant.” He set the glass down and looked at Fletcher. “No,” he said, “we’re not on holiday any more than you are.”
Fletcher was startled. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well now, you’re writing a book, aren’t you? That’s the way we heard it.”
“Where did you hear it? Who told you?”
“Oh,” Hutchins said, “let’s not bother about who told us. Let’s just say we heard. Like we heard you made a certain rather interesting discovery yesterday.”
Fletcher gave the two men a closer look. “So you knew who I was? You knew before you came and sat down.”
“Yes; we knew.”
“You were looking for me?”
“In a way, yes.”
“Why? What do you want with me?”
“We want to give you a piece of advice,” Brogan said.
“More of that? I seem to be getting a lot of advice these days.”
“This would be worth taking.”
“What is it?”
“Forget all about what you found yesterday.”
“Now that’s an interesting suggestion,” Fletcher said. “Do you mind telling me why I should forget it?”
“Because it would be better that way — for everybody.”
“And do you think the police are going to forget it as well?”
“Never mind the police. What they do is no concern of yours.”
“And if I decide not to forget it? What then?”
“That would be very foolish. You could be making a lot of unnecessary trouble for yourself.”
“Maybe I could, but what’s it got to do with you anyway? Who the hell are you?”
Hutchins took a long drink of the Caribbean Special and smacked his lips. “Yes, pretty good. Like you said, John, it’s cooling. Now don’t bother yourself with who we are. Just regard us as friends, huh? Just take it that we’re looking after your best interests.”
“Out of the goodness of your hearts?” Fletcher said. “That’s nice; that’s really nice. It’s not often I get total strangers looking after my best interests. It’s something for the record.”
“Now don’t get ruffled,” Brogan said. “You may think we’re interfering in something that’s none of our business—”
“You’re damn right, I may.”
“But, believe me, it is our business. Yes indeed, very much so.”
“I don’t quite see that.”
“Well now, you’ll just have to take our word for it.”
“And you’re telling me to forget about it?”