Chapter 5
With a sudden movement Winterbotham shut off the engines. The boathook fell clattering on the bottom boards.
"Oh, my God!" Gerald Boynton cried.
He turned to Violet. Violet was standing up by his side and her hand was on his shoulder.
"Did you see?" he said in a harsh voice. "Did you see who it was?"
"Yes, I saw." She swayed for a moment as the boat rocked a little, and his arm went around her.
"Steady, steady, Miss Milton! Sit down on the stern-sheets. Oh, this is awful!"
They had overshot the body by some ten yards. The bows of the motorboat were pointed towards the creek from which they had come. The body was floating out beyond their stern into the full tideway.
This being so, Violet and Boynton saw it drifting behind them, so to speak. Winterbotham was standing by the engines, holding the lamp high and still focusing it on the retreating horror.
Then they saw a strange thing.
The light was focused on the drowned face, with its staring eyes and hideous grin, and then the face sank beneath the water. There was a little oily swirl and the body itself sank far out of sight.
As it did so, Winterbotham's voice came harshly to them. "He's gone for many days. It's always so. A man that's been drowned, or knocked on the head, maybe, and put into t'river, has a certain amount of air in his lungs. Mister Fanshawe couldn't have been long dead, which was the reason for him floating. Us coming along so fast disturbed the equilibrium. T'poor chap's gone down below. Nobody won't see him again for a fortnight. I've known them washed up unrecognizable at Hoylake or West Kirby. On the other hand, the currents may take them up to Southport, or, again, they've been known to turn up at Ellesmere and the Ship Canal."
There was a little slap against the bows of the motorboat. Some spray and a pint or two of water came over the side.
The stars spangled the great black-velvet arc of heaven. The fresh salt breezes moaned round them. The swell of the black waters seemed to be increasing. It was immeasurably vast and splendid -- and the little motorboat was turning, twisting and drifting in the strong currents of the Mersey.
"How awful! How incredibly awful!" Boynton heard Violet say. He sat down beside her. "Put that lamp back in the bows, Winterbotham," he said in crisp, commanding tones. "Get your engines started. We have only lost five minutes. We have got to get to the Sea Gull as quickly as possible."
As she heard the ringing voice of command, Violet made a great effort to pull herself together. As if in a dream she saw the little mechanic bending over the engine hatchway and pulling aside the shutter. He crouched over the central hump like a grotesque dwarf. Again there was a sound like a revolver fired rapidly, and then the rising hum and the swish of the boat as it turned its nose once more to the central river, and the cold air of its passage blew across her face.
They raced at full speed into the fairway, passed the promontory of New Brighton and into the stream. Boynton was crouching over the tiller. Violet felt his warm, ungloved hand upon hers.
"You understand," he whispered, "you understand we must go on and see this thing through. Are you frightened?"
Instinctively she moved closer to him until there was only the tiller between them. She liked his hand on hers. "No, I am not frightened. I know now that we must go on, Mr. Boynton. But it was terrible, terrible!"
"Try and keep your spirits up. It was more awful than I could ever have thought. But you see what has happened?"
"He ... he has been murdered?"
"Unquestionably. Fanshawe dead. Oh, how brilliant he was in his work! I have always revered him for that. Fanshawe has served the purpose of those who have employed him. They have paid an enormous sum for the work he has done. Then, in order that he could never betray them, he has been cast away like this. Poor fellow, poor fellow!"
"I disliked him intensely when I met him first," Violet said in a low, vibrating voice. "When I knew more, and was caught up into this secret business, I hated and feared him. Now I have no feeling but utter sorrow."
"May he find rest," the young man answered. "I see now that he was a mere pawn in some stupendous game. But, Miss Milton, this has just occurred to me: as far as you are concerned, the matter is over. Shall we not return, even now?"
"I do not know whether you are testing me, Mr. Boynton," she answered, "but I tell you this: nothing will stop me now! I am in the dark -- we are both in utter darkness -- but we have set our hands to the plough. This has not all come by chance. Let us go on to the very end."
Her low, vibrating voice had hardly ceased when the young man's hand left hers and he stood up in the stern-sheets. "The Sea Gull!" he cried. "The tug! She is not three hundred yards away."
With his left hand upon the tiller he stretched out his right arm to where something like an enormous black porkpie lay sullen on the water. There was an arrangement of two green lights, a red light and then another green upon the side.
There was a swish and a snarl as the motorboat described a curve and shot off at an angle towards the lights. At the same time Winterbotham put a whistle to his lips and a shrill call shivered over the intervening space.
It was answered by a roaring voice coming to them through a megaphone. In two minutes the motorboat was at rest and its crew was going up the accommodation ladder, which slanted from the high side of the tug.
"Where's the lady?" came in a hoarse growl as Violet climbed up to the tug.
"Miss Milton is here, skipper," she heard Gerald's voice, and then she found her hand enclosed in a huge paw and shaken vigorously.
"This is Captain Harrop, Miss Milton," Boynton said.
"And very much at your service, miss. You have rented me and the Sea Gull till further orders, and you are queen of the tug! This way. I think you will say we've done you pretty."
Violet was too excited and upset to realize quite what she was doing. One thing she knew -- that was the guiding arm of Gerald Boynton -- and then she found herself in the cabin of the boat.
"We've done our best, Miss Milton," said Captain Harrop, filling up the doorway. "At least, Mr. Boynton has. I hope you'll be comfortable."
Violet looked at the skipper and smiled mechanically. She saw an extraordinary personality. The man was not five feet two in height, and he was nearly as broad. He had a great, clean-shaven face as big as a ham. Below his peaked cap little black eyes sparkled at the end of two lanes of flesh. The nose was like a piece of coral, the mouth enormous, irresistibly genial and strong. This pantomime mask grinned, nodded and disappeared. As the cabin door slid closed, there was a bellow and a whistle, the sharp ting-ting of the engine room gong and a deep-writhing throb.
"I have done my best, Miss Milton," Gerald Boynton was saying. "I hope you will find this quite comfortable."
Violet looked around with a little exclamation of pleasure and surprise. The portholes were covered with curtains of bright chintz -- she saw at once that there had been no time to hem them. A Turkish rug covered the stained oilcloth on the floor. The captain's bunk was full of white pillows and fragrant linen sheets. The table in the middle of the cabin was covered with an embroidered cloth, and a copper bowl full of nodding daffodils stood in the centre. The whole place had a mingled odour of strong tobacco, rum and lavender water. Under the bunk Violet's quick eyes discerned a battered tin bowl with three or four nasty-looking pipes in it, an immense pair of sea boots and a square bottle -- doubtless containing the skipper's accustomed solace.
The cabin door slid open again and Winterbotham brought in Violet's bags.
"We are off now, Miss Milton," Boynton said, going towards the door and losing all his usual confidence. "I do hope it is all right in here."
She saw him look round swiftly with a worried face, and then he was gone, and she was alone.
Violet sat down upon the plush seat opposite the bunk on the starboard side and began to laugh hysterically. Her hand discovered a large bottle of lavender water and a scent-spray shoved under
the cushion on which she sat.
"Oh, you dear!" she cried. "You funny dear! This wonderful improvization! The chintz curtains with all the ragged ends hanging down at the bottom, and the captain's boots and rum all under my bed."
She held up the bottle of lavender water and smelt the strong fragrance of it, the stronger fragrance of rum, and the all-permeating odour of ships' tobacco. And then she saw again the wide-open, staring eyes and dog's grin of the drowned Fanshawe, and she wrestled with her hysteria, gripping the edge of the table, until it seemed that the whole ship vibrated with her.
Indeed, it was vibrating. The immensely powerful engines of the tug were full at work. The cabin was aft. The drone of the propeller shaft in the thrust-blocks was immediately below the floor on which she stood. There was a slight swaying movement of the cabin and a curious impression of swiftness. She knew that the boat was kicking its way out to the open sea and going at full speed.
The hunt had begun.
Half an hour afterwards there was a knock at the cabin door and Boynton and Winterbotham entered, the latter carrying a bowl of soup.
"Do you think you could hold a council of war, Miss Milton?" Boynton asked. "But first of all I beg you to drink this. It will do you good."
Violet was glad of the soup and drank it in silence.
"It is good of you to have thought of it," she said at length. "I was more unnerved than I knew. That poor, poor man!"
"I never liked the man," said Boynton gravely, "but whatever his faults he has paid terribly for them."
"Then you do not think it might possibly have been an accident?
"It weren't no accident, miss," said Winterbotham. "I saw more than ye did. Mister Fanshawe was knocked over the head and thrown into t'water."
"You are quite sure he was murdered?"
"That's what they call it, miss," said the little man dryly.
"You see the extreme significance of it, don't you?" Boynton interrupted. "Quite putting any sentimental considerations on one side. You will remember what I said to you in the motorboat?"
"I remember everything."
"Well, I have learnt a great deal since I left you this afternoon. The plot thickens -- oh, the plot thickens!" he said with a dramatic gesture, so unlike him that Violet started. She saw the brown eyes were suddenly flecked with little gold sparkles. The strong mouth tightened.
Violet leant forward on the table. Her elbows were upon it and her head was in her hands. "Go on," she said.
"About the yacht, Miss Milton, the mysterious yacht. She is not mysterious any longer. She was the Shamrock of Bray, just outside Dublin. Captain Harrop knows her quite well. The Sea Gull often goes to Dublin. Only a month ago she was bought, and now she turns up at Liverpool as the Mabinogion. She is a fast turbine boat of six hundred tons, and she was bought by Mr. Conway Flint."
"And who may that be, Mister Boynton?" Winterbotham asked.
"No one you would be likely to know, Winterbotham. Very few people in Liverpool have heard of him, but I know him."
He turned to Violet. "I think I told you," he said, "that I am a Welshman and that our family estate is at Moell. I am of the soil. My people were minor chiefs of the mountains in the past. Now my brother is a Welsh squire of good repute. Though I have broken away from all that and have become a scientist, yet I know what goes on in Wales. Conway Flint is an extraordinary person. He is of good Welsh blood, but he has been mixed up in various scandals. For the last five years -- since his estates were sold under his feet -- he has been the right-hand man of Lord Llandrylas. He lives with the earl at Ynad -- the huge fortress-palace up in the clouds of the Pendrylas Range. It must be what we thought yesterday when we saw Lord Llandrylas at the Midland Hotel. Llandrylas is the sinister influence behind it all."
"Yesterday!" Violet cried. "Was it only yesterday! I seem to have lived a hundred years since then. Yesterday," she went on with gathering passion, "I saw Mr. Fanshawe walking through the palm court of the hotel -- with the man whose face was like the face of Lucifer. Tonight I have seen that poor man dead and drowned in the sea. What does it mean, what does it all mean?"
"Who can say, who can tell?" Boynton rejoined. "But I think it means something very horrible. And I think, too, that you, Miss Milton, Winterbotham and myself are destined to get to the bottom of it all."
There was a sharp rap and the door of the cabin slid back. A gust of cool, ozone-laden air flooded in, and the light fell upon the great face of Captain Harrop, which seemed hanging there like a Japanese lantern without visible support.
"Had your little talk with missy?" said the skipper. "If so, I comes along as ordered."
He proceeded to worm himself into the cabin, smiling extensively, and Violet detected a quick glance towards the space underneath her bunk. She thought she knew what Captain Harrop had come for and she rose to the occasion.
"Well, since you ask me, missy," said the captain, "I did leave my little drop of comfort under the bunk, though you've quick eyes to notice it. Thank you kindly. The Mabinogion -- the Shamrock, that was -- is just about three miles ahead of us upon the port bow. Her lights are quite plain."
"And where are we, Captain?" Winterbotham asked.
"Off Rhyl," the skipper answered. "We shall be abreast of Colwyn Bay in an hour. Then we turn north past Llandudno and make the Great Orme at dawn."
"Then it is as you suspected, Captain Harrop?" Boynton asked.
"I'm pretty sure of it," Harrop answered. "The yacht is going to Pendrylas Harbour."
"And what is Pendrylas Harbour, Captain?" Violet asked.
"It's a creek some way east of Conway, missy. There's a huge stone jetty built out. It's where the slate ships come. All the mountains beyond are full of slate quarries, which belong to Lord Llandrylas. Slate goes from there in his lordship's ships to all parts of the world. There's a biggish village behind the harbour."
"We must be absolutely certain," Boynton replied.
"Well, we shall steam past Pendrylas and watch the Mabinogion make the harbour," said the captain. "She can't have any idea we're following her if we go straight on."
"It would be much better if one of us could go ashore without attracting attention," said Boynton.
"Well, that's the difficulty," said the captain. "There are plenty of seafaring men in the port. If I put in there without a reason they would want to know why, and I take it that would defeat your purpose."
"You know what we are trying to find out, Captain. First, we want to be quite sure that the yacht does put in at Pendrylas. We already know that it must belong to Lord Llandrylas. But, as you are aware, there is something on board which has been taken from the works in Liverpool. We want to see what becomes of it."
The captain scratched his head. "If I were to drop anchor and you watched the shore with glasses you would not see very much, and that would be suspicious again. As there is some hanky-panky going on, they are sure to be on the lookout."
"They do not know either Winterbotham or myself," Boynton said. "Do they know you, Captain?"
"Aye, I've put in there once or twice. I remember I had an evening there with a skipper of a slate boat." The captain paused, as his eye fell upon Violet. "Well, we had a convivial evening, so to speak. Now I tell you what I could do. It has just occurred to me. I'll go ashore in the dingy and take Mr. Winterbotham with me. I can fit him up with a suit of slops and he can be the mate. We will go to the public house on the quay for an hour or two and keep our eyes open. And what's more, I can let out casually that there's an Argentine barque about due and I am cruising to meet her and take her in tow. How will that do, gentlemen?"
"That will do excellently," Boynton answered.
"Then if you will come along with me, Mr. Winterbotham," said the skipper, slipping the bottle of rum into his pocket with a wink, "I'll see you fitted out."
"Oughtn't you to try and get some sleep, Miss Milton?" said Boynton as the other two left the cabin. "You must be tired out."
Violet sho
ok her head. "I could not possibly sleep a wink. There will be time for that by and by. Let's go on deck. I want fresh air."
They went up the companion ladder and on to the deck, which trembled with the powerful engines below. Dawn was at hand. Ahead of them all was dark, though the low, black hump of Anglesea could be seen upon the horizon, and the powerful light between it and Puffin Island gleamed like a red eye. But astern it seemed as if glowing coals of crimson were being pushed up from the floor of the sea and a rosy light hovered and spread above them. The air was cool and life-giving, and so incredibly, marvellously pure.
"I will have a yacht of my own!" Violet said to Boynton. "I will buy a beautiful yacht. How perfect this is!"
She heard him sigh beside her and wondered why, though she said nothing.
"Look!" he said at length, leading her forward past the bridge. "You can just see her now."
Following the direction of his arm and straining her eyes through the rapidly dispersing dark, Violet saw the green port lights and the long, shadowy form of the white yacht two miles away on the starboard bow.
"There!" Boynton said with an almost dramatic gesture. "There goes the mystery. I have spent hours of concentrated thought in trying to imagine what that ghost ship has on board, and I am as far from the solution as ever. Whatever it is, it is evil, Miss Milton. I know that in my very soul. It has already cost the life of one man. Who knows what its future influence is to be!"
He spoke with some emotion and shuddered as he did so. Violet was again surprised -- these outbursts of passion were so curiously unlike him -- but she was influenced also, and stared out to the east with eyes that were sombre with thought.
And then a miracle. The sun heaved itself from the eastern waters and great spears of golden light stabbed the dark with their enormous glory.
Boynton led Violet to the port side of the vessel. "Look!" he said.
Range upon range of purple mountains rose out of the sea, height piled on height, till the eye was lost in the distant immensity of the Snowdon Range. The light spread out and up those mighty sides with incomparable grandeur, and a great skein of birds came clanging out to sea to welcome the dawn.
"It's there," Boynton said, "five miles away in the heart of the mountains, that the real mystery lies. Beyond that cone-shaped peak is the Castle Ynad, and over all these mountains Lord Llandrylas rules like a dark king!"