Island Gold/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
THE VICE-CONSUL'S WARNING
The Naomi was fitted out with the greatest luxury imaginable. She was not a large vessel; but she was so well designed that every inch of space was utilized. The cabin allotted to me was small, but beautifully compact and tastefully furnished. There was a proper brass bedstead, not a bunk; pile carpet, silk curtains, silver-plated toilet fittings, and an electric fan. My traps had been unpacked and my clothes stowed away in a cunningly contrived wardrobe. Carstairs, Garth's man, showed me where everything was. He was a nice, fresh-faced young fellow of smart military appearance. He told me he had served in the war with the Royal Engineers.
Luncheon ended, Marjorie Garth left us to go and write letters to be sent ashore in the launch for posting. I repaired to my cabin to snatch a little sleep in the siesta hour; for I was very tired after our disturbed night. But though the gently whirring fan kept the atmosphere nicely cool and my bed invited repose, I could not sleep. Now that I was alone again, I found my thoughts continually recurring to the slip of oil-skin with its enigmatic message.
I have always found that short commons of sleep is an excellent tonic. Though I was physically worn out, my brain was alive and active, and, pulling from my pocket the dead man's message (for so I designated it to myself), I fell to studying it with renewed zest.
I had it already by heart even to the bars of music (though for music I have little ear): but I read it over again. What absolute rot it sounded!
Noon. 18-11-18.
I considered the date for an instant. Why, by November 18, 1918, the war was over! The Armistice had been signed at Spa seven days earlier. And at once a light dawned on me. The dead man, I had surmised, had an appointment with some one at Cock Island, probably with El Cojo's gang. Realizing that he was about to die, the Unknown had left this message for his friends; but, probably knowing that an occasional ship touched at the island, he had coded his instructions lest they should fall into the wrong hands. The date of the message seemed to give the clue as to why his friends had failed to keep their appointment, so that the message had remained on the grave until it was found months later by Adams. The Armistice had been signed: Germany was beaten; and consequently the services of such obliging “neutrals” as El Cojo and Co. had abruptly ceased.
With growing excitement, for I felt certain that, this time, my deductions were not at fault, I read on:
Flash, flash, much
The garrison of Kiel
This absolutely defeated me and I passed on.
With the compass is best
Think of the Feast of Orders
Den Ordensfest! Unconsciously, as I repeated the words to myself, the clean white panels of the cabin melted away, and there rose before my mind a dim picture, a study in grey, an outdoor scene across which swept a wintry wind with biting blast.... A leaden sky, grey buildings, their roofs deep-thatched with snow, and grey-clad troops, masses of them, set about a vast square. It was a blurred picture with, here and there, a detail clear: rime glistening on an officer's pélisse, the plume of a helmet blown out in the icy breeze.... Ah! I had it! Berlin.... The Feast of Orders, with the annual ceremony of the so-called nailing of the colours. I had seen it once, that famous winter parade, as a boy when my brother Francis and I had been on a visit to a cousin of ours, who was a secretary at the Berlin Embassy....
But what did it mean in this connection? What had the Feast of Orders, the annual bestowal on the old Prussian bureaucracy of thousands of crosses and stars and medals, as an economical substitute for increases of salary—what had it to do with a compass?
Then it came to me with a flash.... A compass argued a compass bearing, and this bearing was there concealed in this phrase! “Den Ordensfesten!” Stay! The date. What was the date? And that came back to me, too.... January 27th, “Kaisers Geburtstag,” the Emperor's birthday.
By Jove! At last a beam of light was piercing the darkness.
Those two lines meant indubitably: “Take a compass bearing of 27 degrees!”
The next two lines:
Past the Sugar-Loaf
You'll see the Lorelei
obviously referred to those “peaks” of which the “Sailing Directions” had spoken.
“If you desire the sweetheart.”
Schätzchen was the German word. But, ye gods, Schatz of which Schätzchen is the diminutive, properly speaking, means “treasure.” By what form of physical and mental blindness had I been smitten to have failed to see this direct reference to treasure in the cipher?
The four bars of music brought me up with a jerk. I hummed the tune which I had strummed out on John Bard's piano. It seemed, as I said, vaguely familiar as a German ditty of the popular sort, but what or where ... I...
On this I must have fallen asleep. I awoke with a start, as one does from an afternoon nap, and stared round blankly, trying to recollect where I was. There was a little sidelong motion in the cabin as the yacht rose and fell at anchor to the swell and the electric fan purred gently as it revolved. Some one was tapping at the door.
“Come in!” I cried, and Carstairs put his face in.
“Sir Alexander begs pardon for disturbing you, sir,” the man said, “but could you make it convenient to go to him at once in his cabin? He said as how it was urgent...”
“Of course. Tell Sir Alexander I'll be with him immediately...”
Garth had a little suite at the far end of the saloon, consisting of a small stateroom, very handsomely furnished, with sleeping-apartment and bath off it. I found him seated in a swivel-chair at his desk in conversation with a dark young man, his face yellowed from the tropics, in a creased white duck suit.
“Ah, Major,” said the baronet, “I'm sorry to have had to spoil your forty winks. But a rather curious thing has happened. They're getting a warrant out against you for murder. The British Vice-Consul here has been good enough to come off and give us the tip...”
“It's a most singular thing,” said the Vice-Consul. “Last night a poor white, a drunken Englishman who lived with a negress in the native quarter, had his throat cut. He was a worthless creature, called himself Adams; I knew him well. In fact, it's only about a fortnight ago that we threw him out of the Consulate. Well, an information has been laid against you by two citizens who swear that they saw you leave this man Adams's shack in the early hours of the morning.
“Now in the ordinary way nobody in Rodriguez makes any bones about a plain murder like this. But our friend Adams—or his black lady who, incidentally, was also killed—seems to have had some amazing political pull. The Procurator-General of the Republic in person came down to the office half an hour ago to see me about it. He seemed scared out of his life, told me he would certainly lose his job unless he could produce you for trial. Now”—the Vice-Consul cleared his throat and drew hard on the black cigar he was smoking—“I don't know anything about you, Major, or your business,” he looked sharply at me, “and I'm not enquiring. But I do know that, while straightforward murder in Rodriguez is scarcely a penal offence, dabbling in politics is a very serious matter. What I came off to tell you was to beat it while the going's good ... That's all!”
“It's extremely kind of you to have taken this trouble,” I replied, “and I highly appreciate your discretion in the matter. But surely, if the warrant is out, it will be served at once. After all, we're within the three-mile limit...”
The Vice-Consul waved his hand.
“In this illustrious Republic,” he remarked dryly, “no business of any description is ever done in the siesta hours. Even during our periodical revolutions there's a truce every day between noon and 4 p.m. But you'll want to hurry; for, as soon as it cools off, you'll have a bunch of coffee-coloured dons alongside in the harbourmaster's launch!”
“I'll see about getting under way at once!” said Garth, and hastened out.
The Vice-Consul picked up his Panama and approached me. He looked cautiously about him and lowered his voice as he spoke.
“I'm risking my job by doing this,” he said, “for the Consul's down with fever and I'm acting on my own responsibility. But Bard was telling us about you at the club, about your D.S.O. and that, in the war, and it's the least a fellow can do who didn't fight—I'm rotten through and through with malaria, you know—to help a chap who did. Now, listen! You're in great danger. You've run up against the biggest bunch of crooks in Central America...”
“You mean El Cojo and his gang?”
“Aye...”
“Who is this man, El Cojo?”
“No one knows. No one ever sees him. No one knows where he lives. Some say he is a Mexican. But his power is tremendous and his vengeance swift and terrible. I could tell you stories ... You should be safe on this yacht. But take my advice and don't leave it until you can go ashore under the American or the British flag!”
He gave me his hand.
“I shan't forget this service,” I said warmly, “if there's anything I can ever do in return...”
“Well,” he answered slowly, “I was recommended for the M.B.E. once. But the F. O. turned it down. If you had any influence...”
“If Sir Robert is still my friend,” I assured him, “you shall have it. And perhaps it might be an O.B.E. Write me down your name and address...”
As we emerged on the deck, the crew were busy getting the yacht ready for sea. There was a bit of commotion at the gangway. Garth and Captain Lawless stood at the head of the ladder in animated conversation with a very trim young man, beautifully dressed in spotless white drill.
“Hullo,” said the Vice-Consul, “it's Custrin, your new doctor!”
“It's no good,” Garth was saying as we approached the group, “we'll be away in ten minutes, Doctor, and there's so much work going forward on deck that your friends would only be in the way...”
“But, sir,” the young man urged, “they need only stay for a minute. As distinguished residents of Rodriguez, they wished to have the honour of meeting you, of showing you courtesy. They set great store by such things here and if you refuse, I'm very much afraid they'll take it amiss...”
I glanced over the side. In a rowboat at the foot of the ladder sat three swarthy gentlemen in frock-coats, their large dark eyes turned appealingly up to the deck of the Naomi.
“You'll tell your friends,” said the baronet, “how much I appreciate their great attention and how much I regret that circumstances prevent me from receiving their visit on board. Captain Lawless, the Vice-Consul's launch!”
Lawless gave an order, and while the doctor descended the ladder and spoke to his party in the boat, the Vice-Consul took his leave and boarded his launch.
Five minutes later the Naomi, curtseying to the long green swell, pointed her bows toward the fronded headlands which marked the entrance to the harbour. As we passed out between the bluffs, the dull report of a gun drifted out to us over the freshening breeze. At the same moment, in a smother of spray, a launch came tearing out of the port, a mere speck in the shimmering green sea far astern.
At my side on the bridge Garth laughed.
“Here comes the warrant!” he said. “Captain, is that launch back yonder going to overhaul us?”
Lawless took his freckled hand off the engine-room telegraph and looked back.
“Huh!” he grunted, “not on this side of hell. Or any other!”