I looked through the wheelhouse windows at the dark skies, the white-capped seas, the driving rain. "You picked a day for it."
"The rougher the better. No bravado. I like a mill-pond as well as any man. Just had new stabilisers fitted in the Clyde — we got back up here only two days ago -and it seems like a good day to try them out." He smiled suddenly and put out his hand. "Sorry to have barged in. Taken up far too much of your time. Seemed rude, I suppose. Some say I am. You and your colleague care to come aboard for a drink to-night? We eat early at sea. Eight o'clock, say? I'll send the tender." That meant we didn't rate an invitation to dinner, which would have made a change from Hunslett and his damned baked beans, but even an invitation like this would have given rise to envious tooth-gnashing in some of the stateliest homes in the land: it was no secret that the bluest blood in England, from Royalty downwards, regarded a holiday invitation to the island Skouras owned off the Albanian coast as the conferment of the social cachet of the year or any year. Skouras didn't wait for an answer and didn't seem to expect one. I didn't blame him. It would have been many years since Skouras had discovered that it was an immutable law of human nature, human nature being what it is, that no one ever turned down one of his invitations.
"You'll be coming to tell me about your smashed transmitter and asking me what the devil I intend to do about it," Sergeant MacDonald said tiredly. "Well, Mr. Petersen, I know all about it already. Sir Anthony Skouras was here half an hour ago. Sir Anthony had a lot to say. And Mr. Campbell, the owner of the Orion, has just left. He'd a lot to say, too."
"Not me, Sergeant. I'm a man of few words." I gave him what I hoped looked like a self-deprecatory smile. "Except, of course, when the police and customs drag me out of bed in the middle of the night. I take it our friends have left?"
"Just as soon as they'd put us ashore. Customs are just a damn nuisance." Like myself, he looked as if he could do with some hours' sleep. "Frankly, Mr, Petersen, I don't know what to do about the broken radio-transmitters. Why on earth — who on earth would want to do a daft vicious thing like that?"
"That's what I came to ask you."
"I can go aboard your boat," MacDonald said slowly. "I can take out my notebook, look around and see if I can't find any clues. I wouldn't know what to look for. Maybe if I knew something about fingerprinting and analysis and microscopy I might just find out something. But I don't. I'm an island policeman, not a one-man Flying Squad. This is C.I.D. work and we'd have to call in Glasgow. I doubt if they'd send a couple of detectives to investigate a few smashed radio valves."
"Old man Skouras draws a lot of water."
"Sir?"
"He's powerful. He has influence. If Skouras wanted action I'm damned sure he could get it. If the need arose and the mood struck him I'm sure he could be a very unpleasant character indeed."
"There's not a better man or a kinder man ever sailed into Torbay," MacDonald said warmly. That hard brown fact could conceal practically anything that MacDonald wanted it to conceal but this rime he was hiding nothing. "Maybe his ways aren't my ways. Maybe he's a hard, aye, a ruthless businessman. Maybe, as die papers hint, his private life wouldn't bear investigation. That's none of my business. But if you were to look for a man in Torbay to say a word against him, you'll have a busy time on your hands, Mr. Petersen."
"You've taken me up wrongly, Sergeant," I said mildly. "I don't even know the man."
"No. But we do. See that?" He pointed through the side window of the police station to a large Swedish-style timber building beyond the pier. "Our new village hall. Town hall, they call it. Sir Anthony gave us that. Those six wee chalets up the hill there? For old folks. Sir Anthony again — every penny from his own pocket. Who takes all the schoolchildren to the Oban Games — Sir Anthony on the Shangri-la, Contributes to every charity going and now he has plans to build a boatyard to give employment to the young men of Torbay — there's not much else going since the fishing-boats left."
"Well, good for old Skouras," I said. "He seems to have adopted the place. Lucky Torbay. I wish he'd buy me a new radio-transmitter."
"I'll keep my eyes and ears open, Mr, Petersen. I can't do more. If anything turns up I'll let you know at once."
I told him thanks, and left. I hadn't particularly wanted to go there, but it would have looked damned odd if I hadn't turned up to add my pennyworth to the chorus of bitter complaint.
I was very glad that I had turned up.
The midday reception from London was poor. This was due less 10 the fact that reception is always better after dark than to the fact that I couldn't use our telescopic radio mast: but it was fair enough and Uncle's voice was brisk and business-like and clear.
"Well, Caroline, we've found our missing friends," he said.
"How many?" I asked cautiously, "Uncle Arthur's ambiguous references weren't always as clear as Uncle Arthur imagined them to be.
"All twenty-five." That made it the former crew of the Nantesville, "Two of them are pretty badly hurt but they'll be all right." That accounted for the blood I had found in the captain's and one of the engineers' cabins.
"Where?" I asked.
He gave me a map reference. Just north of Wexford. The Nantesville had sailed from Bristol, she couldn't have been more than a few hours on her way before she'd run into trouble.
"Exactly the same procedure as on the previous occasions," Uncle Arthur was saying. "Held in a lonely farmhouse for a couple of nights. Plenty to eat and drink and blankets to keep the cold out. Then they woke up one morning and found their guards had gone."
"But a different procedure in stopping the — our friend?" I'd almost said Nantesville and Uncle Arthur wouldn't have liked that at all.
"As always. We must concede them a certain ingenuity, Caroline. After having smuggled men aboard in port, then using the sinking fishing-boat routine, the police launch routine and the yacht with the appendicitis case aboard, I thought they would be starting to repeat themselves. But this time they came up with a new one — possibly because it's the first time they've hi-jacked a ship during the hours of darkness. Carley rafts, this time, with about ten survivors aboard, dead ahead of the vessel. Oil all over the sea. A weak distress flare that couldn't have been seen a mile away and probably was designed that way. You know the rest."
"Yes, Annabelle." I knew the rest. After that the routine was always the same. The rescued survivors, displaying a marked lack of gratitude, would whip out pistols, round up the crew, tie black muslin bags over their heads so that they couldn't identify the vessel that would appear within the hour to take them off, march them on board the unknown vessel, land them on some lonely beach during the dark then march them again, often a very long way indeed, till they arrived at their prison. A deserted farmhouse. Always a deserted farm-house. And always in Ireland, three times in the north and now twice in the south. Meantime the prize crew sailed the hi-jacked vessel to God alone knew where and the first the world knew of the disappearance of the pirated vessel was when the original crew, released after two or three days' painless captivity, would turn up at some remote dwelling and start hollering for the nearest telephone.
"Betty and Dorothy," I said. "Were they still in safe concealment when the crew were taken off?"
"I imagine so. I don't know. Details are still coming in and I understand the doctors won't let anyone see the captain yet." Only the captain had known of the presence aboard of Baker and Delmont. "Forty-one hours now, Caroline. What have you done?"