Tom Tiddler's Island, стр. 38

“‘Advise against landing chemicals till further notice.’ ” Colin read out. “They did land something, you said. But why all this fuss and secrecy about landing a few chemicals? That rather beats me. But perhaps they landed something else along with the chemicals. How’d that fit?”

“What else?” Northfleet demanded.

“Search me, and you’ll find nothing,” Colin admitted. “It was just a brain-flash.”

“Flash a little brighter next time,” Northfleet suggested. “It wants a good illumination to light up this business, let me tell you.”

Colin returned to the manuscript.

“ ‘Nothing seen of Nipasgal. Think of throwing them well off the scent by using another port next time.’ H’m! Nipasgal? Sounds like a patent medicine. Sure you haven’t slipped a cog in the deciphering there? No? Well, then, I suppose it must be a pet-name for some acquaintances of theirs. It’s plural, evidently, since it has ‘them’ as a relative. And I gather Nipasgal aren’t pals of this lot, since there’s talk of throwing them off the scent.”

He looked inquiringly at Northfleet.

“You don’t know who they are, by any chance?”

Northfleet shook his head.

“Can’t identify them. But it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to connect them with the need for these two guards at Heather Lodge.”

“As fierce as all that, you think?” Colin commented in a reflective tone. “Secret society, what? Or something in that line? Sounds a bit far-fetched. And yet, one can’t deny that old Arrow has these two sudden-death merchants on his premises. Unless he’s got a persecution-mania, there must be something behind it all. But what?”

He paused, evidently conning over possibilities in his mind.

“Here’s what I make of it. Something there’s big money in. Something that isn’t just too straight. Something that somebody else has tumbled to and begun to threaten unpleasantness.”

If he hoped to draw Northfleet by this, he failed. “What do you make of the reference to a fresh port?” the chemist asked, instead of following Colin’s line of thought.

“Nothing much,” Colin admitted ruefully. “Only one bay in Ruff a, so it doesn’t refer to this end. Must mean he wants to change the port that yacht comes from or goes to, eh?”

“And Nipasgal are trying to intercept something en route, evidently,” was Northfleet’s comment.

“Yes. Reads that way, certainly.”

“What do you make of the first sentence: ‘The final lot of the last three thousand was sent off on Thursday and got through safe’? Does that suggest anything to you, Trent?”

“It isn’t three thousand articles. They’re not running a factory at Heather Lodge,” Colin asserted. “Ever seen them send off a big cargo of any sort—a cartload of stuff, I mean?” Northfleet shook his head.

“Then it isn’t three thousand pounds,” Colin inferred, “for that would be over a ton weight.”

“There are pounds and pounds,” Northfleet pointed out with a satirical smile.

Colin sat up suddenly.

“Now that’s a notion I’d never struck. Forgery, what? Packets of bank-notes?”

“You can put that out of your head. It isn’t that.”

“Well, it must mean three thousand pounds of some sort. A tidy sum to handle in one transaction. And,” he added reflectively, “that fits in with the fact that both you and I know there’s gold at the back of this business, somewhere. Ruffa must be another name for Tom Tiddler’s Ground:

“Here I stand on Tom Tiddler’s Ground,

Picking up gold and silver.”

He broke off abruptly, struck by the accuracy of the parallel. He himself had stood on Tom Tiddler’s Ground picking up gold not so long ago—and it was no mere metaphor. There was the gold brick.

Northfleet also seemed to recognise an aptness in the nickname.

“Tom Tiddler’s Ground?” he echoed. “That’s not bad, Trent. I can tell you this much. The Heather Lodge lot are making money on Ruff a—big money. It’s Tom Tiddler’s Ground for them, at anyrate.”

An earlier speculation of his own flashed back into Colin’s mind.

“Placer mining!” he ejaculated.

Northfleet shook his head decidedly.

“That notion won’t wash,” he said bluntly. “In the first place, there isn’t a stream longer than half a mile in Ruffa. You’d never find placer deposits in them. Secondly, I’ve been over every inch of the island, bar the Heather Lodge grounds, and there’s no sign of any workings—no digging, no cradles, nothing. Thirdly, these fellows keep to Heather Lodge, except when they take the dog for a walk. I’d have seen them if they’d been working a deposit. No, you can dismiss that notion.”

Colin was downcast for a moment, but a fresh idea came to his aid.

“Hold on, though! Suppose an alluvial deposit got buried by a cave-in of the banks of an old river. The gold would be underground, then. What about that subterranean tunnel? Might be some stuff down there. I mean, we don’t know anything about it beyond the bricked-up part. The Heather Lodge lot may have found a deposit near their end and dug an adit into it from the tunnel. Then they could dig away as they pleased, underground, and you’d be no wiser.”

“The streams here are too short.”

Northfleet reiterated his objection in a slightly impatient tone. But Colin had an answer ready.

“Yes, if Ruffa had been an island from the Creation onwards. But it was part of the mainland once, I guess. The gold may have been laid down then, when there was plenty of room for a river. After that, the land round about may have submerged and left Ruffa sticking up.”

“I see you’re set on that explanation. Don’t let me disturb your mind,” Northfleet begged ironically. “Divert your attention for a moment and I’ll show you something. See that big white motor-launch in the offing yonder? She’s the Heather Lodge supply-boat. See! She’s coming up in our direction hand over fist.”

Colin followed Northfleet’s gesture and saw the white hull of the visitor cutting through the waves in the distance. For a moment the sun gleamed dazzlingly on the windows of the cabin as the vessel changed her course by a point or two.

“I’ve never seen her before,” Colin said, as he watched