He drove fast but decorously to the longshoreman's cottage, and had barely pulled on his brakes when the door opened and the sergeant bounced out.
"Is that you, Mr. Amberley?" he demanded. "Lor' sir, I've been getting nervous. It's almost an hour since you made off. Did you catch the boat? Where've sir?"
"In a pub," said Amberley, himself again.
The sergeant shrugged with his emotions. "In a - in a - oh, you have, have you, sir? And very nice too, I daresay."
"Very," agreed Amberley. "Did you get him?"
"No," said the sergeant bitterly. "I didn't. And why? Because this perishing fool here hadn't thought to put any petrol in his motorboat." He realised suddenly that the bleak look had gone from Mr. Amberley's face. "Good Lord, sir, you're never going to tell me you've got her?"
"Oh yes, I've got her," Amberley replied. "She's at the pub I told you about."
"Alive, sir?" said the sergeant incredulously.
"Just. I'm waiting to hear her story."
The sergeant was moved to wring his hand. "Well, I don't know when I've been more glad of anything, Mr. Amberley. You're a wonder, sir, that's what you are — a blinking wonder!"
Amberley laughed. "Spare my blushes, Gubbins. What happened to you?"
An expression of disgust succeeded the sergeant's cheerful grin. "Yes, you may well ask, sir. A motorboat waiting! Oh, it was waiting all right — bone dry! When you went off sudden-like, I got hold of this here Peabody and told him to look lively. So off we sets, the two of us, up the creek to where he said he'd got this boat moored. Well that was all right; he had. What's more, he'd got a little rowboat all handy to get out to it. I don't like them rickety little boats, they weren't made for men of my size, but I knows my duty and in I got. Well, Peabody rowed out to the motorboat, and a nice work he made of it, besides passing an uncalled-for remark about fat men which I'm not accustomed to and won't put up with. However, that's neither here nor there. We got out to the motorboat and come up alongside. And I'm bothered if that fat-headed chump didn't let me get into it before he remembered he hadn't filled up with petrol. Yes, you can laugh, sir. I've no doubt there's nothing you like better than clambering out of one boat into another, with the thing bobbing up and down and kind of slipping away from under your feet all on account of a born fool that can't keep it steady for half a minute."
"I'm afraid Peabody has been having a little game with you, Sergeant."
"If I thought that," said the sergeant, fulminating, "well, I don't hardly know what I'd do, though I'd be tempted, sir. Very tempted, I'd be. Well, he went and remembered about the petrol, like I said, and out I had to get again. I don't know which was the worst, getting out of that little cockle-shell or getting back into it. However, I done it, and I told this Peabody to look slippy and row for that landing-stage. Which was the best I could do, sir, seeing as the motorboat was no use and I'd got to get across the creek somehow. I won't repeat what that Peabody said, because it don't bear repeating, but…"
"I said," interrupted a voice with relish, "I said I 'adn't been 'fired to row an 'ippd across the creek, and no more I 'ad."
The sergeant swung round and perceived Mr. Peabody in the doorway. "That'll do!" he said. "We don't want you hanging about here. And let me tell you, if I have any of your impudence it'll be the worse for you. Impeded the law, that's what you done."
Mr. Peabody withdrew, quelled by this dark implication. The sergeant turned back to Amberley. "Don't you pay any attention to him, sir."
"What I want to know," said Amberley, "is whether you saw anyone rowing back to that landing-stage."
"I'm coming to that," answered the sergeant. "I did and I didn't, in a manner of speaking. I got this Peabody to row for the other side of the creek, but the trouble was, we was so far up the blinking thing that it took him I don't know how long to get to the landing-stage. We'd just got in sight of it when I see a shadow climbing out of a rowboat like the one I was in and tying it up to one of the posts. Now, sir, perhaps you're going to blame me, because I'd got my torch in my pocket and it's a powerful one. But what I thought was: This cove hasn't seen our boat and consequent don't know he's being followed. If I was to switch the torch on to him so as to try and get a look at his face, he will know and he'll be off like a streak of lightning before I can get to land. No, I says to myself, the best thing for me to do is to keep quiet and get this chap Peabody to row for all he's worth. Which I done, sir. But we'd no sooner reached the landing-stage when I heard a car start up somewhere behind the bungalow, and a minute later I seen the headlights going off up the road that Peabody says leads to Lowchester."
"I see, Amberley said. "A pity. But on the whole, Sergeant, I think you were right."
"I'm sure that's a weight off my mind, sir," said the sergeant, relieved. "And if the young lady's alive, she'll be able to identify our man fast enough. Not but what we know who he is, eh, Mr. Amberley?"
"Do we, Sergeant?"
"Come, come, sir!" said the sergeant indulgently. "Don't you forget what I said to you when Albert Collins was shot!"
"No, I haven't forgotten. Anything else?"
"Yes, sir. One footprint, one tyreprint. And the sooner I get to the police station here the better, because we want them taken. A large footprint it is, larger than what I'd have expected."
"Sergeant, you're invaluable," said Amberley. "You shall be taken to the police station at once. Hop in."
Much gratified, the sergeant climbed into the car. "Well, I done all I could, and I only hope it's going to mean an arrest."
"You'll make your arrest all right," promised Amberley. "I'm not sure you don't deserve promotion for this case. I wish I'd seen you getting into the motorboat."
"Yes, I've no doubt you do, sir. But p'r'aps instead of keeping on about me and the motorboat you'll tell me who I been chasing all this time?"
"But I thought you knew that," said Mr. Amberley, raising his brows.
"I got my doubts," confessed the sergeant. "When I said to you what I did say about that Baker - what I meant was…'
"Don't spoil it, Sergeant. You said he was my man." The sergeant said cautiously: "Suppose I did?"
"You were quite right," said Mr. Amberley. "He is my man."
The sergeant swallowed hard, but recovered immediately and said brazenly: "That's what I was saying if you hadn't gone and interrupted me. Spotted him at once, I did."
Mr. Amberley grinned. "Yes? Just as you spotted the real criminal?"
"Look here, sir!" said the sergeant. "If it ain't Baker there's only one other man it can be, so far as I can see, and that's Mr. Fountain."
"At last!" said Amberley. "Of course it was Fountain."
"Yes, that's all very well," said the sergeant, "but why should he want to go and murder the young lady?"
"Because she's his cousin," replied Amberley.
"Oh!" said the sergeant. "Because she's his cousin. Of course that explains everything, don't it, sir?"
"It ought to," said Amberley, "if you can put two and two together."
The sergeant was still trying to work out this simple sum when the car drew up at the police station. Mr. Amberley set him down there and drove on to the inn on the quay.
The golden-haired landlady greeted him with comfortable tidings: the poor young lady was nicely warmed up and drinking a cup of hot soup. He might go upstairs to see her if he liked.
Shirley, looking very slight in the landlady's dressing gown and a great many shawls, was sitting on the floor in front of a huge fire sipping a cup of hot soup and drying her short, curly hair. She knew that decided knock and said, "Come in," rather shyly.
Mr. Amberley entered and shut the door behind him.