Mystery in the Channel E-Book

Freeman Wills Crofts

• Herausgeber: Reading Essentials
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

The cross-channel steamer Chichester stops half way to France. A motionless yacht lies in her path. When a party clambers aboard they find a trail of blood and two dead men. Chief Constable Turnbill has to call on Inspector French for help in solving the mystery of the Nymph.

Leseprobe

Mystery in the Channel

by Freeman Wills Crofts

First published in 1931

This edition published by Reading Essentials

Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Mystery in the Channel

Contents

Chapter

Page

I

Death on the High Seas

5

II

Mackintosh Receives a Visitor

19

III

Enter the Law

31

IV

Scotland Yard

42

V

Newhaven

59

VI

The Crash

73

VII

What Nolan Had to Tell

88

VIII

The Start of the Launch

100

IX

Distance Over Time Equals Speed

110

X

The Man with the Suit-Cases

124

XI

M. Fiquet of Dieppe

135

XII

The F711

142

XIII

A Well-Marked Trail

152

XIV

A Change of Venue

162

XV

Clear Currency

173

XVI

The “Goldenfinch’s” Fireman

182

XVII

The Exploits of Willis

199

XVIII

The Secret of the Dinghy

213

XIX

The Two Depressions

228

XX

The Riddle of the Stars

242

XXI

The Last Lap

254

Chapter IDeath on the High Seas

The captain lowered his six-diameter prism binoculars.

“Not moving, is she, Mr. Hands?”

“Doesn’t seem to be, sir,” said the second officer, who was also the officer in charge.

The steamer was the Southern Railway Company’s Chichester and she was half-way to France on her usual day trip from Newhaven to Dieppe. A fine boat she was, the Company’s newest for that route, and she was doing her steady three and twenty knots with scarcely a quiver to indicate the enormous power that was being unleashed in the cavernous holds far down below her decks.

It was a pleasant afternoon towards the end of June. The sea was like the proverbial glass, well burnished, and with a broad track of dazzling sparkles where the sun caught the tiny wavelets. A slight haze filled the air, not enough to be called a fog, but enough to blot out the horizon and everything above two or three miles distant. Hot it was; indeed, but for the breeze caused by the steamer’s motion, it would have been grilling. It was just the day for luxuriating with closed eyes in a deck chair, and the rows of recumbent figures which covered every scrap of clear space on the decks showed that the passengers fully realised the fact.

There was quite a crowd on board. It was well into the holiday season and besides the ordinary passengers the members of more than one conducted tour were making the crossing. The labels on their suit-cases sorted them into sheep and goats. Here was a party on the way to spend a week in lovely Lucerne, there a group bound for the castles of the Loire, while still others were contenting themselves with a long week-end in Paris.

The object which had attracted the attention of the ship’s officers was a small pleasure yacht which lay right ahead. As she was heading across their bows, they thought at first she would have pulled clear of their track long before they came up. But a few seconds’ inspection showed that she was lying motionless. A shift of helm to pass behind her stern was therefore necessary, and the second officer crossed to the wheel-house and called sharply, “Starb’rd two degrees!” to the quartermaster at the wheel. As he returned, the captain again lowered his glasses.

“A fifty-foot petrol launch, British built, I should say,” he observed. “Can’t see her flag. Can you?”

“No, sir,” the second officer answered, gazing in his turn. “Nor can I see any one on deck.”

“Navigating from the wheel-house,” the captain rejoined, “if that hump forward is a wheel-house and not merely sidelight screens.”

“A wheel-house, I fancy, sir. But I can’t see any one in it.”

“Scarcely close enough yet.”

With this the second officer dutifully agreed. There was silence for a moment and then Mr. Hands went on, “She must be broken down, sir, surely. Else why should she lie there?”

“Not asking for help at all events,” Captain Hewitt replied. He paused, searching the yacht with his glasses. “That is a wheel-house,” he went on. “I can see the wheel. There’s no one there.”

“Too high and mighty to keep a look out, I suppose,” the second officer said disgustedly. “And then they’re surprised if anything goes wrong. Of course if it does, it’s the other fellow’s fault.”

The captain did not reply. He was still fixedly examining the tiny vessel, which they were now rapidly approaching. She was obviously a pleasure yacht, well kept, from the brilliant flashes which leaped from her brasswork and the dazzling white of her paint. Every moment she grew in size, while objects aboard took on form and definition. Her deserted decks could now be seen with the naked eye. Soon they would be up with her.

Suddenly the captain’s regard grew more intense.

“What do you make of that dark thing near the companion?” he asked sharply.

Mr. Hands also stared intently.

“Uncommonly like a man, sir. By Jove, yes, it is a man! Lying in a heap on the deck. Good God, sir! He must be either ill or dead!”

“It doesn’t look too well.” Captain Hewitt glanced down at his passengers. “Pity to wake up all these sleeping beauties,” he went on, “but I’m afraid there’s no help for it. Give her a call, Mr. Hands.”

An ear-splitting roar went out from the foghorn. As a breeze ruffles the surface of a cornfield, so a little movement passed over the deck as the occupants of the chairs opened their eyes, sat up, glanced round, muttered imprecations, and once more resigned themselves to sleep.

But the blast awakened no answer from the yacht.

“There doesn’t seem to be any one else on board,” the captain went on. “It looks like something badly wrong. I don’t like the way that figure is lying bunched up in a heap. And what’s that dark mark beside it? Seems very like blood to me. Give them another call, Mr. Hands.”

Two more raucous blasts roared out, reawakening the deck chair enthusiasts and even sending some of the more energetic to the rail in search of the cause of so unwonted an outrage.

Still there was no response from the yacht. The man on the deck made no movement nor did any one else appear. The shining brass wheel could now be plainly seen in its tiny wheel-house, deserted.

“It’s blood, that mark is, as sure as we’re alive,” said Hands. “A pretty bad wound to have bled like that.”

The yacht was now close by. The powerful glasses reduced the distance to a few yards.

“Yes, it’s blood right enough,” the captain agreed after another look. “Damn it, we’ll have to stop. Chap may not be dead, and in any case we can’t leave that outfit bobbing around to put a hole in somebody’s bows. Ring down, Mr. Hands.”

While the second officer rang his engines to “Stop!” and then a few seconds later to “Full Speed Astern!” the captain turned to the able seaman in attendance.

“Tell Mr. Mackintosh I want him here at once. And get the chief steward to find out if there’s a doctor on board and send him here also.”

For a moment all was ordered confusion. Whistles resounded, bells rang, figures hurried to and fro. A slight continuous tremor ran through the ship as if overwhelming activities were in progress below. From the safety valve pipes on the funnels came an appalling roar of escaping steam. Quickly men approached one of the starboard lifeboats, politely moved the passengers back, and uncoiled ropes and knocked out wedges. The canvas boat cover vanished with incredible speed, the chocks fell aside, and the patent davits moved forwards. In a few seconds the boat, already manned, was swinging motionless over the sea.

By this time the passengers were awake to a man, or rather to a woman, and were pressing to the rail to see the fun. A little buzz of talk had broken out. Jokes were cracked, while those behind pushed forward, clamouring for information from those in front. Glasses and cameras were brought out and hopes of a thrill were expressed. Then as the yacht with its sinister burden floated into view, voices were hushed and all stood silent, overawed by the presence of tragedy.

There was indeed something dramatic in the situation which stirred the imagination of even the most prosaic. The little yacht, with its fine lines and finish, its white deck and gleaming brasswork, its fresh paint and brightly coloured club flag, looked what it so obviously was, a rich man’s toy, a craft given over to pleasure. On such the tragic and the sordid were out of place. Yet now they reigned supreme. The space which should fittingly have resounded with the laughs of pretty women and the voices of immaculately clad men, was empty, empty save for that hunched figure and that sinister stain with its hideous suggestion.

Such thoughts, however, were far from the minds of the ship’s officers. With ordered haste they carried on. Discreet inquiries among the men in the smoking-room had found a doctor, and he had been hurried to the bridge. The third officer, Mr. Mackintosh, had just preceded him.

“Dr. Oates?” the captain was saying. “Very good of you to help us. Mr. Mackintosh, I want you to board that yacht and see what’s the matter. If the man is alive, send him across with the doctor. If not, let him stay. If there’s no one else there keep a couple of men and work her to Newhaven. Take a megaphone and let me know how things are and, if necessary, I’ll send you help from Dieppe. And for the Lord’s sake look sharp. We’re late already.”

In a few moments the boat had been lowered to the water, the falls cast off, and Mr. Mackintosh and his party were slowly rising and falling beside the Chichester’s towering side. “Give way, lads,” invited Mackintosh, and the Chichester with its rows of staring faces began to fall slowly back.

“Not often a cross-Channel boat halts in mid-career like this,” Dr. Oates essayed, when they were fairly under way.

“I only mind it happening once before,” Mackintosh admitted. “That was when we sighted the Josephine. You didna see about her in the papers? She was a tr-r-ramp, an eight-hundred-ton coaster, from Grimsby to Havre with oils and paints. My wor-rd, she was a sight! We saw the smoke of her ten miles off, going up like a volcano.”

“Burnt out?”

“Burnt out? Aye, I think she was burnt out. I never saw, before nor since, flames rising like yon. You’d ha’ thought they were a mile high. The paint, you know.”

“Any one lost?”

“No. They were in the boats and we picked them up. Say, doctor, that’s a tidy enough yacht. The Nymph, Folkestone,” he read. “What do you make her? A bit under fifty feet, I’d say. A good sea boat, but old-fashioned. She’s twenty years old, if she’s a day. Nowadays they give them higher bows and lower sterns. Eight to ten knots, I reckon. Likely a new motor; she’d be built for steam.”

“Strong, but not comely, she looks to me.”

Mackintosh nodded. “I reckon you’re no so far wrong, though, mind you, she’s well finished. Now, doctor, we’ll see what we shall see.” The yacht swung up alongside. “Easy on there. Easy does it.”

A man bow and stern grappled with boathooks and in a moment the two craft lay together, rising and falling easily on the swell. Mackintosh stood up, unhooked the gangway section of the yacht’s rail, and swung himself aboard. Dr. Oates followed more circumspectly.

A moment’s glance showed that the deck really was deserted save for the sinister figure near the companion. Closer inspection only confirmed the previous impression of the taste and wealth which had gone to the furnishing of the little vessel. The deck was broken only by the wheel-house, two skylights, two masts, and the companion, leaving an extraordinarily large promenading area for the size of the boat. The wheel-house was well forward, about eight feet from the bows. Then came a skylight, the saloon from its size, then the companion, and lastly a smaller skylight, apparently a cabin. Round the deck was a railing of polished teak on dazzlingly white supports, from which hung four lifebuoys, bearing the words, “M.Y. Nymph, Folkestone,” in neat black letters. The deck was holy-stoned to the palest sand colour, and everything that could be polished glittered like gold.

But it was not on these things that the gaze of the two men lingered. There were more evidences of tragedy than they had realised. At the step at their feet was a little pool of blood, and from it, running across the deck to the prone figure lay a trail of drops, as if the man, desperately wounded at the side of the yacht, had yet halted there for a moment and then staggered forward to where he had fallen. Quickly the newcomers noted the marks, then hurried forward to the body, for something in the attitude told them that they had come too late to be of service.

It was that of a tall man of spare build. He was dressed, not in yachting clothes, but in a dark grey lounge suit of expensive looking cloth, as far as they could see, well cut. On his feet were dark grey silk socks and neat black shoes. His thin left hand, like the claw of some great bird, was stretched out, hooked, as if attempting to grasp at the deck. He was lying hunched up on his face with his right arm underneath him. His hat had disappeared. His head was bald, surrounded by a fringe of thin grey hair, and the gold hook of a pair of spectacles showed round his ear. He was wearing a double collar, but except that he was clean shaven, his face could not be seen. Spreading out from his head was that ominous stain of dark red.

The doctor knelt beside him.

“I wouldna touch him unless you canna help,” Mackintosh advised.

“I want to lift the head.” Dr. Oates did so and drew in his breath sharply. “Shot,” he said as he gently lowered it again. “Quite dead. I can do nothing.”

“Shot, is he? Bless us all! Is it long since, doctor?”

“Quite a short time. There’s no appreciable cooling. Probably within an hour or so.”

“Is that a fact? Tell me, can you see the right hand? Is there a gun in it?”

The doctor shook his head. “I can’t see and I’ll not move him. It’ll be a job for the police. You’re going to take him back to Newhaven?”

“I reckon I’ll have to. Well, let’s have a look below and then you can get back aboard.”

He plunged down the companion steps and instantly gave a cry. “Good God, doctor, hell’s been loose here!” Oates followed and the two men stood staring blankly.

The companion led into a good-sized cabin about ten feet long and occupying the whole width of the yacht. Along the right side was a folding table, spread with some portion of a meal and with a seat-locker behind it. A seat-locker also stretched along the left side, while directly opposite was another door and an electric fireplace. On the walls were bookshelves, a clock, an aneroid and some rolled up charts in a rack. The place was brilliantly lit by the reflection of the sun from the waves and ceiling.

Here again, however, it was not to these details that the men’s attention was directed. In the middle of the floor, as if having risen from the meal, lay another man. This time there was no doubt of his condition. He lay sprawled on his face, but his forehead could be seen, and on that forehead was the deadly round hole where a bullet had entered. He seemed a younger man than the other, of medium height and rather stout build. His hair was plentiful, and though naturally dark, it was now greying. He also was dressed in town rather than yachting clothes, a dark brown tweed lounge suit, brown shoes and a wing collar, all very neat and expensive. Both arms were thrown out as if in an attempt to ward off some attack. This time there was but little blood.

Mackintosh swore, then pulled himself together.

“You canna do anything, doctor?”

Oates briefly examined the body.

“Nothing. It was instantaneous. And quite recent, like the other.”

The vision of Captain Hewitt, impatient on the bridge of the Chichester, was evidently in the third officer’s mind, for he hurried Oates on.

“We’ll have a run through the rest of her and then you can get away.”

A door aft from the cabin led to a small two-berth cabin in the stern. Forward of the saloon were a tiny pantry-kitchen, a lavatory and bathroom, the motor-room beneath the wheel-house, and right up in the bows, a store with two bunks. The two men spent no time looking round. Simply they made sure that no other person, alive or dead, remained on board. But even in that short survey they could not help being impressed not only with the luxurious appointments, but also with the extraordinarily clean and efficient way in which everything was kept.

Though they had not lost a moment, they were not quick enough for the captain of the Chichester. Scarcely had they completed their survey when a couple of stentorian blasts came rolling across the sea. Mackintosh smothered an imprecation.

“For the love of Mike, doctor,” he cried, “look alive. We mustna keep the old man waiting.” He leaped to the deck. “Smith and Wilcox,” he shouted, “lay aboard here at once. Snelgrove take charge and get away back to the ship. Hold a sec, the doctor’s going. Right, doctor? You’ll tell the old man? Away you go, then! Put your backs into it, lads!”

The lads put their backs into it and the water frothed from the boat’s stern. Mackintosh turned to his two helpers.

“Get below, you two,” he said sharply, disregarding the wondering looks they bent on the dead man. “Start up that engine and find out how much petrol there is. Look alive now. I want it done before that boat gets picked up.”

He leaned on the tiny engine-room hatch, watching the efforts of his men below. Smith, he knew, had been a motor mechanic before he started sailoring. His presence in the boat had been a piece of luck which the third officer had not been slow to take advantage of. Now almost caressingly the man’s hands passed over the machine, turning taps, making adjustments, moving levers. Then he gave a sharp tug and with a hesitating little cough the motor gave a jerky rotation and then settled down into a merry chuffing. Another minute and Smith called up that there was plenty of petrol in the tank.

“Enough to get us forty miles?”

“Twice that, sir.”

The men in the boat were just grabbing at the swinging falls as Mackintosh stood up and raised his megaphone.

“Am staying to work her to Newhaven,” he roared. “I dinna require any help.”

The captain waved his arm. As the boat rose dripping from the water the Chichester began to move. Quickly she regained speed, and soon her rails with their rows of white faces vanished and she became a rapidly diminishing smudge in the thick air.

The need for immediate action over, Mackintosh called his crew together.

“Stop that engine of yours, Smith, till we get this body covered. Any flags in the locker?”

They searched the little vessel, at last finding the flags beneath the cabin seat. From the bundle they extracted a blue ensign—the only large flag there was—while they lowered their voices with rough reverence for the cabin’s other occupant. On reaching the deck Mackintosh shut the companion door.

“We’ll no need to go down there again,” he declared. “Get some weights, Wilcox, to keep this ensign down. Here, Smith, help me spread it.”

Carefully the prone figure was covered and spare parts from the engine-room laid along the edges of the flag. It was the only way in which they could pay their tribute to the dead. Mackintosh automatically recording the hour, ten minutes to two o’clock, turned away to consider the situation.

It was a police affair, this that he had got mixed up in, and the police would expect evidence. He was the first man on the scene and they would want to know what he had found. Was there anything that he should do or note, he wondered, before setting off to Newhaven?

That the affair was either murder or suicide was obvious. Mackintosh was inclined to the murder theory, as in his hurried glance over the saloon he had seen no weapon. Though in a way it was not his business, he felt it was a point which he would like to settle. Breaking through his own regulation, he climbed once more down the companion steps and entered the saloon. No, there was no weapon. There was no place in which it could have fallen and lain hid. The affair was therefore murder.

Then he saw that he was wrong. This conclusion did not follow. The thing might have been a suicide pact. If there was a weapon in the hand of the man on the deck, he might well have shot first his companion and then himself.

“Job for the police; let them worry it out,” thought Mackintosh, looking carefully round.

At once he noticed something that he had missed on his first inspection. The dead man wore a wrist watch, and the glass was cracked, evidently from striking the floor. The watch had stopped at 12.33.

If this were the hour of the tragedy, it worked in well enough with what the doctor had said. Mackintosh wondered if he could get any other corroboration.

He moved to the engine-room and felt the cylinder jacketing.

“How long do you reckon she was stopped?” he asked the expert, Smith.

Smith said he had felt her all over when he came down first, before he had started her up, and he would guess that she had been stopped about an hour. Mackintosh nodded.

“I want you to mark everything,” he said. “Petrol-paraffin set, isn’t she? Well, mark the level of the petrol and the paraffin. Also there is lubricating oil. Mark it too. Let’s see you do it. We may both have to swear that it’s right.”

The record was carefully made. There was nothing else, so far as Mackintosh could see, of immediate importance. He turned back to the men.

“It’s two o’clock,” he observed. “We’d best get away for Newhaven. Start her up again, Smith, and let’s see what she’ll do.”

Wilcox was installed helmsman at the little brass wheel, while Mackintosh stood watching the water slip slowly past. As he had imagined, the speed was low; less than ten knots, he reckoned. They should get in about six.

The air had cleared somewhat, but it was still thick enough to require a constant look out. When they had got under way they were alone on the sea, but almost at once a tiny craft had crept into view from the nor’-nor’-east, coming up on the Nymph’s starboard beam. Mackintosh had a look at it with a pair of glasses which he found in the wheel-house. It was still too far away to see its details, but he thought it was a small petrol launch. It was heading straight for the Nymph, and from the little specks of white at its stern, seemed to be coming at a fair speed. No fear, he thought, of a collision with that, as he slowly filled his pipe, an unwonted luxury while on duty.

Though Mackintosh was no chicken and had seen War service, he felt a trifle overwhelmed by the horror of this tragedy with which he had been brought so closely in contact. Up to the present he had had no time to think about it, but now that there was nothing more to be done than this mechanical job of keeping a look out, his mind naturally became filled with it. Who were these men and how had they come to meet so terrible a fate? Was there a revolver in the hidden right hand of the figure on deck, and had he murdered the other and then committed suicide? If so, where was the crew, for both the deceased were evidently landsmen? Or had both been murdered by some third party, who in some way had left the yacht?

The third officer had no leanings towards detective work, though his natural curiosity tempted him to make a further detailed examination of the deceased, in the hope of finding an answer to some at least of his questions. But he refrained from doing so.

The little he knew about police methods made him quite certain that his duty was to touch nothing and even to keep away from the actual position of the bodies, lest his movements might obliterate some trace left by the murderer.

“A shoemaker shouldna leave his last,” he said to himself with the common sense of the hard-headed practical man. “My job is to get this outfit to Newhaven, and no to make a story about how the damage happened.”

But in spite of this laudable conclusion, he was to have more to think of than navigation before he reached port.

Chapter IIMackintosh Receives a Visitor

In spite of Mackintosh’s horse sense, he found he could no more refrain from speculations as to the cause of the tragedy than he could keep his heart from beating. Slowly he paced up and down the unstained portion of the deck, drawing ruminatively at his pipe, and by force of habit casting a mechanical glance round the horizon at every turn.

He was more intrigued by the disappearance of the crew, if there had been a crew, than by any other feature of the affair. Such a yacht might well have carried a couple of hands, one to steer and look after the motors—there was a complete set of controls from the wheel-house to the motor—the other a cook-steward, who would also clean up and do odd jobs. At the same time, the boat was small enough to be run by the owner and his friends, should their tastes lie in that direction. There was really nothing to show what had obtained. The fact that neither of the bunks in the store appeared to have been occupied suggested that no crew had been carried. On the other hand, the deceased men did not look like sailors, at least if one was to judge by their clothes.

Their clothes indeed were rather a puzzle. Mackintosh had never seen the occupants of a small pleasure yacht so garbed, at all events, certainly not on a yacht in mid-Channel. There must have been something quite unusual about the trip from the very start. These men were dressed neither for yachting nor travelling. They looked, indeed, as if they had stepped aboard from some formal business conference in London. Surely, therefore, they must have been passengers, and unintentional passengers at that?

Mackintosh was proceeding to follow up this idea when another and more personal side of the affair struck him. He was, he believed, about to find himself famous. This case, no matter who the dead men were, would arouse enormous interest. The mere circumstance of a pleasure yacht being found floating alone in the middle of the English Channel and bearing such a terrible freight, was in itself dramatic. The story would have an instant appeal. Editors would push it for all it was worth. Mackintosh saw his name in heavily leaded type on the principal page of the leading dailies. And there was a certain young lady who would see it too.

As he chewed the cud of this entrancing idea, he noticed that the motor launch, which had been making a beeline for the Nymph, had swung round towards the west and was now heading as if to pass across the yacht’s bows. It occurred to Mackintosh that their paths were now converging and that in a couple of miles they should be close together. Idly he once more picked up the high-powered binoculars and focused them on her. She was a small motor launch with a deck cabin stretching from the bows for about two-thirds of the way aft. She was running about the same speed as the Nymph or a little faster. Mackintosh could see only one man aboard her, standing at the tiny wheel in her well.

While he was watching, the man picked up something, evidently glasses, and gazed through them at the Nymph. Immediately, probably as he saw that he was being observed, he dropped the wheel and began gesticulating and waving a small flag.

It was obvious that he wanted to speak to the Nymph, and Mackintosh, thinking that for once he was not running to schedule, gave the order to stop. It would only take fifteen minutes to see what was wanted, and another fifteen minutes delay in reaching Newhaven would make but little difference.

He signalled what he was doing, and as the Nymph lost way, the launch again shifted her course to head straight for her. Smith, learning that his motor would not be required for a few minutes, came on deck and in low tones discussed the situation with Wilcox in the wheel-house. Mackintosh paced slowly to and fro, still glancing automatically round the misty horizon, but save for the rapidly approaching launch, they were alone on the sea.

The launch was steering to slightly behind their stern, but as she came close her helm went over and she bore round, coming at last to rest parallel to the Nymph and some thirty feet from her. Mackintosh now saw that she was built like a small-sized navy launch, some two or three and twenty feet long, with of course the cabin added. A great model they were, these navy launches, with their double diagonal sheeting, their square sterns, their deep draught and their propeller shafts inclined to one side so as to leave the sternpost uncut. No fliers of course, no more than was this small sister, but they were a fine job, roomy and steady and safe in any sea. Money apparently had not been considered in her construction. She seemed quite as well found as the Nymph, and her spotless paint and shining brasswork showed that she also received the best of attention.

So far only one man had appeared, and Mackintosh now saw that he was of medium height and build, thin and dark as to face and intelligent as to expression. A rather large nose and a strong chin showed distinction of character and determination. An able and efficient man, thought Mackintosh, who prided himself on the rapidity of his character reading.

“Yacht Nymph,” the man shouted. “Is Mr. Moxon aboard?” and in his voice and manner Mackintosh recognised a puzzled bewilderment.

It was a simple question, but Mackintosh couldn’t answer it.

“There’s been an accident aboard here,” he called back. “I’m third officer of the Southern Company’s Chichester and I’m in charge. May I ask your name and what you want?”

“My name’s Nolan, though I don’t suppose that’s any help to you,” the stranger called. “And I’m wanting to see Mr. Moxon, my partner in business, if he’s there.”

“Best come aboard, Mr. Nolan. Come alongside and make fast.”

“Right you are.” The newcomer backed his launch, then came forward again, bringing up skilfully against the Nymph. Mackintosh held out a fender, while Smith and Wilcox made fast the bow and stern ropes which Nolan threw over. Side by side the two little vessels rolled placidly on the short swell. Nolan climbed energetically aboard.

“Holy saints!” he cried as his eyes fell on the bloodstains and ran along them to the blue ensign. “What’s been happening here?”

“Something pretty like murder, I’m thinking, Mr. Nolan. Better come and have a look.”

Nolan stared at him, a great wonder in his eyes.

“What’s that you’re saying? Murder? You’re not serious?”

“Look for yourself.”

At a sign from Mackintosh the two men raised the ensign. An oath burst from Nolan’s lips as he stood gazing down at the still figure.

“Holy saints!” he cried again. “Deeping!” He stared helplessly, then swung round on Mackintosh. “Deeping dead! And you’re telling me he was murdered! Good God! Surely not!”

“I’m feared it doesna look like an accident.”

“But this is terrible altogether. Poor old Deeping!”

“You knew him then?”

“Knew him? Of course I knew him. Sure wasn’t he another of my partners in the business? I was talking to him only last night, and he was as well then as I was myself.” He paused, shook his head, then went on in tones of growing amazement, “And he never said a word about going out in the yacht! Never a blessed word! That was in the middle of last night and he never so much as mentioned the subject. I can’t understand it at all.”

At another sign the flag was replaced and Mackintosh pointed to the companion.

“That’s not the whole of it, Mr. Nolan. There’s more trouble below. Come down and have a look.”

When Nolan saw the second body his emotions nearly overcame him. The sight of the man he had called Deeping had awakened horror and surprise, but not such horror and surprise as he now exhibited. Moreover to these feelings was added another, an evident sense of personal loss. The man he recognised at once. It was that Moxon for whom he had first asked. Moxon, he said, was his partner and friend. He had talked with him also on the previous evening. Both he and Deeping were then well and strong and obviously looking forward to many years of life. And now their lives, such as they had made of them, were over and done with. Both dead! Nolan could scarcely realise it.

But besides the horror and the shock, the man’s amazement at the tragic happening seemed only to increase. “Why,” he declared, “this beats me altogether! Only last night, practically this morning, Moxon told me he couldn’t make this trip! In fact, it was he asked me to make it for him: that’s why I’m here.”

Mackintosh was silent. All this seemed only to add to the mystery. He would have liked to have questioned Nolan, but his thoughts returned to his own position and responsibilities. He realised that they were wasting time.

“You’ll find there’s a reason for it all right,” he said with a rough attempt at sympathy. “But, Mr. Nolan, we can’t stay here all afternoon. I’m putting into Newhaven and I must get her going. Come up on deck. We can talk there.”

Nolan nodded, and with another shrinking glance at the tragic figure on the floor, he followed the third officer.

“We’ll go ahead with our motor in the meantime. That launch of yours will be all right where she is.”

Again Nolan nodded absently, his mind evidently too full of the tragedy to be interested in anything else. Smith and Wilcox took up their respective stations and the Nymph was restarted. The other two men fell to pacing the deck, while Mackintosh recounted the sighting of the yacht and the discovery of the tragedy aboard.

“They were a pair of the best,” said Nolan when the story came to an end, “right good fellows as you would wish to meet. Moxon has been a good friend to me and an old one, too. For the matter of that, so has Deeping, though I haven’t known him so long. And now they’re gone, and gone in this terrible way. My God, but it’s awful to think about!”

“You havena any theory of what might have happened?” Mackintosh put in.

“Theory?” Nolan made a helpless gesture. “No more than the babe unborn! The thing’s the most extraordinary mystery. I tell you I saw them late last night, indeed early this morning, and there wasn’t a word out of either of them about going on the Nymph. Moxon said definitely he wasn’t going. He had intended to, but he’d had bad news and changed his mind. What could have brought them here I can no more imagine than you can.”

“You say Mr. Moxon had asked you to go instead of him? Where was that to? You dinna feel disposed to give particulars?”

“Certainly, I’ll tell you. There’s no secret about it at all. These two were partners with me in Moxon’s General Securities. You’ve heard of it, of course; one of the biggest financial houses in the country. Moxon acted as chairman, Deeping as vice-chairman, and I was one of the supervising executives.”

“What did you deal in?” Mackintosh asked with an air of shrewdness.

“Money,” Nolan returned. “Investments and loans and so on.”

“In London?”

“In London, in Threadneedle Street. Well, there was a French financier, by name of Pasteur, that Moxon was wanting to meet. There had been negotiations going on between them for some time, and now Moxon was wanting a personal interview. This Pasteur was staying with friends at Fécamp. He was by way of being a yachtsman; fond of the sea anyway. Moxon thought he’d bring the Nymph across with him and take Pasteur out. It was business he had in mind, for he thought Pasteur would be pleased with the trip and would be easier to come to terms with.”

“Pr-ractical psychology,” Mackintosh suggested.

Nolan grunted. “Sure it was only business. Anyway, that’s what he did. He was to dine with Pasteur this evening and they were to go for their sail to-morrow. Well, that was all right, but there was a difficulty in the way. There was a dinner in London last night. It was a big financial affair and every one that was any one had to be there. He and Deeping and myself were there, as well as a couple more of our partners. Well, you can see that it didn’t leave much time for Moxon to get the Nymph over to Fécamp and dine with Pasteur at eight o’clock this evening.”

Mackintosh admitted it would be pretty tight running.

“The way he intended to do it was this: He had brought his car to Hallam’s, where the dinner was, and he meant to leave immediately the dinner was over and run down to Folkestone, where the Nymph was lying, sleep on board, and start first thing this morning. I suppose, as a matter of fact, that’s what he did. But he told me he wasn’t going to, and that’s one of the things that make this whole business so queer.”

“He didna give a reason?”

“He did. Just after the dinner was over, when we were all getting ready to go home, he came up with a face as long as a horse’s and said he’d just had a phone call from his sister in Buxton. He told me his brother-in-law had been knocked down and killed on his way home from the theatre, and said he’d have to go to Buxton to look after things. So he said he couldn’t go to France and he asked me to go instead. He said I knew the whole business, and more than that, I was the only other that had a launch and could take Pasteur out. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘you’ll have Raymond with you.’

“This Raymond was another of the partners. I knew he had been going with Moxon, so it was right that he should come with me. He was a young man, the youngest of us, and he was going, partly because he was a good chap socially and would be useful for entertaining Pasteur, but also because he could write shorthand and type, and could so do confidential clerk if they got anywhere with their negotiations. Moxon didn’t want to take a stenographer for fear it would look as if he was trying to rush Pasteur. I asked Moxon how we would get word to Raymond, for he seemed to have gone home. Moxon said Raymond had not gone home, that he had gone to get Moxon’s car, and that he, Moxon, would fix things up with him. He said he would arrange for him to be at my rooms at whatever time I appointed, and I could take him down in my car to Dover, where my launch was lying. We settled that I would leave at four-thirty, so as to get away on the launch by seven-thirty. I thought I’d have to start by seven-thirty if I was to be in Fécamp in time to dine with the Frenchman.”

“What does she do?” Mackintosh inquired.

“Close on ten knots.”

“Aye, you ought to have got in about five or six o’clock.”

“Before that, I thought, but I wanted to allow a margin. Well, I hadn’t more than got home when Deeping rang up; that’s the poor chap—” Nolan made a gesture towards the ensign. “The last time I heard his voice! Well, he told me he had just seen Raymond and he had said he wanted his own car at Dover on our return, so he would go down by himself and meet me there in the morning. So that was all right.

“I should have explained that Moxon had given me the file of papers about the business. He seemed very grateful and all that about my going. But what could I do but agree?”

“What else?” Mackintosh agreed laconically. Then a professional point striking him, he added: “How did you get your launch ready in time?”

“When I got home to my flat at St. James’s I rang up the night porter at the Lord Warden at Dover, where I always stay, and asked if he’d send word at once to my caretaker that I’d want the launch to be ready for me to start at seven-thirty in the morning. You see, I was afraid of getting stuck by the tide. I keep the launch lying up in the Granville Basin, and if she wasn’t got out before the tide fell, the gates would be shut and I couldn’t get her till the next tide.”

“Aye, that’s a fact. I know the place well.”

“I told my own man what I wanted, and he set the alarm for four. While I was dressing and getting out the car he made me a bit of breakfast. I got away shortly after half-past four and went straight down to Dover. I was there by quarter past seven. The hotel porter had sent the message and the caretaker had got it in time. The launch was lying outside the gates alongside the Crosswall Quay, all ready to start.”

“A bit of luck, getting her out in time.”

Nolan smiled grimly.

“Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t,” he returned. “If he hadn’t got her out I wouldn’t have been here now.”

Mackintosh agreed shortly.

“Then occurred the first hitch,” continued Nolan. “There was no sign of Raymond. At half-past seven he hadn’t turned up. I waited and waited, but there was no sign of him, then I thought if I stayed any longer I’d be late at Fécamp. So at eight I put out alone. It was a confounded nuisance, but I couldn’t help it.”

“As it turned out, it didna matter,” Mackintosh remarked dryly. “So then you came on here?”

“I did, and you can guess my surprise when I saw the Nymph. First I saw a small boat heading across my bows; then I thought it wasn’t unlike the Nymph, but I never for a moment believed it was she. But when I came closer and saw the curve of that wheel-house I knew it must be. Moxon got that altered and I don’t suppose there’s another afloat just like it. I couldn’t make out what she was doing there.” He shook his head sadly. “But nothing I could have thought of would have been the equal of what has happened.”

For a few moments they paced in silence, then Nolan went on.