‘Won’t those naval boys realise they’ve got hold of something unusual when they take her out?’ David asked.
‘No. Whilst I’ve been here, I have incorporated a little switch valve of which I have the key. The valve, which is now regulating the fuel supply, will keep the engine down to a performance very little different from that of an ordinary diesel. But a firm like Calboyds will soon discover what is checking the performance and put in a new valve.’
‘How long will that take?’ I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders and poured out some more tea. ‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘A day — perhaps more.’
‘And how long to analyse the alloy?’
She looked up quickly and there was something in her eyes that I did not for the moment understand. ‘Ah, I see what it is,’ she said. ‘You are thinking of your country.’
‘And yours, too,’ I said. ‘You were born before the 1915 Act.’
‘Yes, mine, too,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I always think of myself as an Austrian. But now — They might take a week or a month to analyse it — who knows. But if I were in their position, I should take a piece of metal from the engine for analysis, make rough drawings of the design and then try and smuggle the engine itself through to Germany. It would be surprising if both methods failed.’
‘Agreed,’ I said. ‘I think that’s what they’ll try to do. And that is what we’ve got to prevent at all costs.’
‘How?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘The police must be told everything,’ she said, after a moment’s pause. ‘Do you know anyone in the police force?’
‘I do,’ I said. ‘But it would be folly to try and tell the police at this stage that one of the biggest industrial firms in the country is under Nazi control. Calboyd is a public figure — philanthropist and all that. The police would just laugh at us.’
‘I don’t mind. I must find Franzie. Don’t you understand,’ she cried, turning her big eyes on me appealingly, ‘these men are fiends. They may be torturing him. Literally torturing him, I mean. You English never can be made to understand that on the Continent people are tortured.’
I leaned forward, looking down into her eyes. ‘Don’t you understand, Freya, that you’re putting the life of one man before the lives of thousands? If Calboyds are not exposed and this engine gets to Germany, then we lose our superiority in quality as well as in numbers, and if we do that, we lose the war. Will you risk that, even to save your father from torture? He wouldn’t. He knew the danger he faced, but he was not prepared to yield that engine, though the offers made him were reasonably good considering the probable alternative.’
She put her hands to her eyes. ‘I can’t bear it,’ she said. ‘I love him. He’s all I’ve got. Oh, why should I have been given such a choice?’ She spoke quietly, as though dulled by the uncertainty.
‘There is no choice,’ I said. ‘You know that. Would you set the police to hunt down your father before you’ve fashioned the means to prove him innocent? Do you want him to hang?’ It was a brutal argument, but it was no time for gentle persuasion.
She took it as though it were a challenge, for she raised her head and said, ‘Yes, of course, you’re right. But what can we do? You can’t stop them taking the boat, can you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘That’s where Calboyds have the advantage of us. Until we have sufficient evidence they have the law on their side. And at the same time, their agents will not hesitate, I fancy, to go outside the law.’
David laughed. ‘It seems we get the worst of both worlds,’ he said. ‘What do we do about the boat?’
I rose to my feet. Freya’s talk of the police had given me an idea. ‘Where can I phone?’ I asked.
‘There’s a phone over at the shop,’ Freya said.
‘Good! I’ll ring Crisham at the Yard and tell him to hold the boat when it arrives at Calboyds’ yard.’
‘But will he?’ Freya asked.
‘I think so,’ I said, ‘when he hears whose boat it is. I’ll also tell him about the engine and Calboyds. He won’t believe it, of course, but it’ll give him something to chew over.’ I let myself out and went over to the shop.
The telephone was in the back parlour. I lifted the receiver and waited. But there was no sound from the exchange. I joggled the rest up and down, but the line was completely dead. ‘Your telephone seems out of order,’ I told them.
‘That it can’t be,’ replied the old man. ‘I were only using it this morning to ring to Penzance to get the doctor to Mrs Teale. She’s near ’er time, she is.’ Then he tried, but he got no answer. In the end I went up the road to a little house owned by a young writer, but his phone was also out of order.
I went back to the studio in a very thoughtful frame of mind. And as I walked down the road, the soft chugging of an engine sounded through the noise of the gale, and the Sea Spray came into view, battling her way out of the inlet, the naval dinghy trailing at her stern. I could not help admiring the way in which the young lieutenant handled her, for the sea was running very high and he had to take her close in to the rocks. And as she passed out of sight round the eastern headland, I wondered whether or not we should ever see her again. It seemed strange that that little craft should mean so much to two countries in the throes of war. And then I fell to wondering about the phone again. It seemed curious that the line should go out of order just as the boat had been requisitioned.
David turned as I entered the studio. ‘Did you get him?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I said, and explained to them what had happened.
‘Funny,’ said David. He lit a pipe and tossed the match into the fire with a frown on his face. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘if I were on the other side, it might occur to me that the person from whom the boat was requisitioned would make some such move.’
‘Yes, but we could go into another village,’ I pointed out.
‘Maybe,’ he said.
‘I could walk up to Roskestal or along the cliffs,’ Freya pointed out.
‘The way I look at it is this,’ David said. ‘Bona fide naval scouts may have seen the boat and may have got her requisitioned just as they would any other fast craft along the coast, in that case, we have little to fear. On the other hand, the people who want this engine may suddenly have woken up to the fact that Llewellin owned a boat at Swansea and that it was no longer there. They’d have been some time working round the coast, looking for her. When they did find her, what better way of getting her away quietly than by giving the navy the job. And I think the last of these two possibilities is the right one.’