Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 32

“Care to come up to Wester Voe with us now?” Colin inquired.

If he could keep Northfleet there until Jean went to bed, then he might be able to extract something.

“I’m afraid I can’t come at this moment,” Northfleet said, after a brief pause for consideration. “I’ve something I must do. But if I may drop in on you, later on in the evening——”

“Right!” Colin agreed. “Come as soon as you can, will you? We’ll go up there now. Come along, Jean.”

They left Northfleet on the pier, staring out into the night in the direction of the yacht.

Colin expected an awkward interview with Jean when they reached Wester Voe; but, rather to his surprise, she seemed much less disturbed than he had anticipated.

“Do you understand all this business, Colin?” she began. “I can’t make head or tail of it. Why should these men threaten us with pistols just because we came alongside? It’s like an American gangster film, it is, really, Colin. Of course, Mr. Northfleet’s quite right; they mistook us for somebody else. You saw how polite they turned when they found out their mistake.”

“Positively greasy,” Colin agreed heartily. “For two pins that fellow would have wept on my shoulder, by the sound of him.”

“Well, anyhow, it was plain enough that they meant no harm to us, wasn’t it? And Mr. Northfleet said the same.”

“Oh, so he’s the last word in oracles, is he?” Colin inquired, as though none too well pleased by this.

A little opposition at this stage, he thought, would confirm Jean in her attitude, which was the very one he wanted her to adopt.

“Jealous, Colin?” she asked, teasingly. “No, it’s just that he somehow gives me a feeling that one can depend on him and that he wouldn’t let one down.”

“Strong, silent man, and all that? I know. Heard ’em often on the talkies.”

“Really, Colin, one would think you’d some sort of down on him, by the way you talk. You haven’t, have you? Because I like him, and I hope you won’t drop him when we get back to town.”

“Good Lord, no! I’ve got nothing against him,” Colin protested, fearing that he had overdone his effect. “And what are we going to do now. Wireless? Or just sit here?”

Jean considered for a moment.

“I’ve got a lot of letters that I ought to write,” she said doubtfully. “I hate wasting any of the daylight on that. Would you mind, Colin, if I wrote some of them now? You could amuse yourself with the wireless, couldn’t you? And you’ll let me know when Mr. Northfleet comes in?”

“Answers to inquiries,” said Colin, “No. 1, ‘No.’ To No. 2, ‘Yes.’ To No. 3, ditto. You write ’em in here and I’ll let the wireless loose in the lounge.”

Then, as he was leaving the room, a fresh thought struck him and he turned back.

“Bit stuffy, this evening. I’m going into the garden to smoke a pipe. If you want me, just call through the window. I won’t go far away.” Jean made no objection to this, and Colin wandered out of doors, congratulating himself on a neat stroke of diplomacy which would enable him to intercept and question Northfleet before they interrupted Jean in her correspondence.

His visitor kept him waiting rather longer than he had expected; but when he appeared Colin was able to attract his attention quietly and lead him off down one of the paths just out of earshot of the drawing-room windows.

“Seen anything more?” Colin demanded. “What’s it all about, anyway?”

Northfleet took out his case and lit a cigarette before answering.

“The easiest thing is to tell you what I’ve seen and leave you to draw what conclusions you can,” he decided. “You may be able to see further into it than I do.”

“All right; Are ahead,” Colin agreed, overlooking some of the latent possibilities in Northfleet’s suggestion.

“Very well, then,” Northfleet began, with apparent frankness. “I happened to be on the moor when I noticed two men fixing up electric torches on the headland yonder.”

“Sailing-marks for the yacht,” Colin interjected.

“So it seems,” Northfleet concurred. “After that, out of curiosity, I went down to the beach. It was deep dusk by that time. By and by old Arrow and another man came down the path from Heather Lodge, carrying what I took to be petrol tins.”

An idea struck Colin, and he interrupted with a question.

“What’s old Arrow like—in appearance, I mean?”

Northfleet considered for a moment.

“Arrow? Oh, tall, rather thin, if anything, big beak of a nose, cutaway chin, grey-haired, clean-shaven, walks rather like the hind legs of an elephant. That’s how I recognised him in the dusk. His gait’s unmistakable.”

He paused, as though to give Colin a chance to say something, then continued :

“They had quite a pile of these petrol tins on the beach and they began loading some of them into the rowing-boat.”

Colin was not the man to shrink from voicing an inference merely because it was self-evident.

“Re-fuelling the yacht, most likely,” he suggested. “She’s got an auxiliary motor.”

Northfleet accepted this contribution politely, but without comment.

“Shortly after that,” he continued, “the second man left the beach and climbed up on the headland. Then I saw the mast and rigging of the yacht against the sky and heard her let go her anchor.”

“Ah, I expect the second bloke went up to dowse the lights,” Colin said, with another step forward in the obvious.

“Very likely,” Northfleet agreed. “The next thing I heard was the sound of your exhaust as you came in. The second man turned up again, and he and Arrow pushed off the rowing-boat and went off into the dark”

“You didn’t speak to them?”

“Not I. I’ve never spoken to old Arrow in my life, and it didn’t seem a propitious moment to make his acquaintance when he had a job on his hands. I strolled over to the pier, and the next thing was your descent on me.”

“And what happened after we left you?”

“Nothing more exciting than what went before.