Altogether we wasted about an hour wandering round Penzance, but eventually we ran a big Bentley roadster to earth. We hired it from a back-street garage proprietor and found the owner in dingy lodgings down by the harbour. Neither of us had any doubt about the position. The man was the chauffeur and master was away. David was not scrupulous, however, and when the fellow suggested a pound a day, he said, ‘Ten bob — for yourself.’ The man took the hint, and we left Penzance in style.
The mist had lifted a bit and turned into a downpour, which hit the Bentley in a flurry of wind as soon as we reached open country. We kept to the Land’s End road as far as Lower Hendra, where David turned off to St Buryan. Penzance to Porthgwarra is not more than nine miles, but as soon as we were off the main road, the way became windy and the going slow. Barely two miles short of Land’s End, we turned sharp left into a narrow lane up which the Bentley shouldered its way between reeking hedgerows. We climbed steadily and, breasting a hill by a farm, we suddenly came upon moorland and looked through the driving curtain of rain to the dismal grey of the sea mottled with white-caps.
David slowed the car up as we bore round the shoulder of the hill and took the descent into Porthgwarra. And then simultaneously we cried out and pointed across the valley. Against the rain-drenched background of the hill opposite, the iron cones stood out, sombre and foreboding. They looked like a pair of giant pierrot’s hats, one red and the other a black check, set down carelessly upon the headland. And yet they seemed to have grown out of the ground like dragon’s teeth rather than to have been set down in that desolate spot.
The valley, into which we were descending, ran practically parallel to the coastline, snaking out into the natural inlet of Porthgwarra at the finish. The seaward side of the valley rose steep and bare to the coastguards’ houses and the Board of Trade look-out on the top. Beyond it were the cliffs. They presented an almost solid front stretching to Land’s End. These cliffs are regarded by those who know their Cornwall as the grimmest natural battlements in the country.
As we slid quietly round the bend and into the valley, we lost the wind and the sudden stillness was almost eerie. Porthgwarra had scarcely the right to be called a village. It is just a cluster of cottages huddled together for shelter close by the shore. David drew up at the local shop. We got out and stood for a moment, looking at the heaving mass of water that jostled in the inlet. Behind the regular beat and hiss of the waves on the foreshore we heard the dull roar of the Atlantic out beyond the headland. And behind all this cacophony of sound the mournful groan of the Runnel buoy was borne in on the howling wind.
I led the way into the shop. The sharp note of the bell over the door brought an elderly body from the back parlour. ‘I’m a solicitor,’ I said. ‘I’m looking for a young lady who has recently come to live in these parts.’
‘Ar,’ she said, and looked me over. ‘What would ’er name be?’
I said, ‘Well, that’s the trouble. I’m not quite sure. She used to be a Mrs Freya Williams, but since she divorced her husband I believe she has returned to her maiden name.’ It was a gross libel on the girl, but I could think of no other satisfactory reason for not being able to give her name.
‘Ar, well now, there’s Miss Dassent over to Roskestal.’
‘When did she arrive?’
‘That’ll be two winters ago now.’
‘Then that’s not the one,’ I said. ‘The young lady I want to get in touch with must have arrived only a few months back.’
‘Ar, well then, it’ll be Miss Stephens down at the studio you’re wanting mebbe.’ She thought for a moment, and then turned to the back parlour and called out, ‘Joe!’ A grey-haired man with a dark weather-beaten face and a seaman’s jersey emerged. ‘There’s two gentlemen here looking for-’
‘Ar, I heard. It’ll be Miss Stephens arl right that you’ll be looking for,’ he said to me. ‘She came here with ’er boat at the end of the tourist season. She’s got the studio down afore the beach. Might you be a friend of hers?’
‘I have some business to discuss with her,’ I said.
‘Ar, but you’m a lawyer fellow, like?’ I nodded, and he spat accurately into the corner behind the counter. ‘Then it do look as though the Lord ’as sent you. The lass be over in the little cove with two naval men. They want to take her boat, and she’m mighty fond of that boat. You’ll mebbe know the rights of the matter. When I left them five minutes back they were still arguing it out and she were getting mighty sore.’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll go down and see what I can do.’ When we were outside, I said, ‘Looks as though you were right, David, about the Cones of Runnel.’
‘What makes you so sure all of a sudden?’
I laughed. ‘Everything fits so snugly into place,’ I said, as we went down the road to the beach. ‘The tripper season ended about the time that Schmidt got that engine away from Llewellin’s works. And here is this Miss Stephens with a boat. Don’t you see — Swansea is on the coast. What better way of hiding a diesel engine than by putting it into a small yacht.’
David added thoughtfully, ‘The reasoning is sound. But what about this requisitioning party? Don’t tell me that we’ve arrived just in the nick of time to save the heroine from having the secret engine stolen from her by her father’s enemies.’
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a thriller mentality, David. But stranger coincidences happen in real life. What is more likely is that we have arrived just in time to see the boat requisitioned by the naval authorities. A lot of these small craft are being called in for patrol work just now.’
We had reached the beach, but there was no sign of the girl. The foreshore was narrow and the slope to it was paved. On this paved slope lay a few small boats. The studio itself backed on to the shore. The road curved round and finished against a shoulder of rock, and in this rock gaped the mouth of a cave with daylight visible at the other end. I went over to it and entered. It sloped sharply to another beach, and fishermen’s nets and other gear were stored against the walls of it.
We went down it and emerged on to the second and smaller beach. Here were more boats and among them, a motor-cruiser painted white with the name Sea Spray in black on the stern. She was a forty-footer, fast-looking, but broad enough in the beam to be handy in a seaway. From beyond the boat came the sound of voices raised in altercation.
We moved nearer. ‘Look, I’ve said I’m sorry,’ came a man’s voice. ‘I’m not responsible for the requisition order I have. I’m merely acting on instructions.’
‘What if the boat isn’t mine?’ This was a woman’s voice, clear and firm.
‘That doesn’t make any difference. I’ve explained that. All I’m concerned about is the boat, not its ownership. Anyway, if the boat isn’t yours, what are you worrying about?’
‘Well, the boat is mine, but the engine isn’t. It’s a very costly kind of engine and the person who lent it to me would be most upset if it passed out of my hands with the boat. You’ll have to let your order stand over until I’ve had the engine removed.’
There was no doubt in my mind now. I nodded to David and we rounded the stern of the boat to find a young naval lieutenant in the act of clambering on to the yacht. ‘I’m afraid legally an engine is part of a boat,’ he was saying. ‘It wouldn’t be much good to us without one, anyway.’