“Involved?”
“We believe these men have come to England and we are now trying to trace them through our good friends at Scotland Yard. They may have other names and false passports, but they will be just as dangerous. Be warned.” He wagged a finger roguishly and smiled. Then the smile went out. “And now, Doctor, I think we should go over your Brussels statement line by line. You may recall something fresh; an omission, perhaps, or a valuable thought.” “I’ve told you of all that happened,” Andrew protested. “I’ve given you the Coach Guide. There’s a clue for you.”
“What makes you think it is a clue?”
“Why should Kusitch have hidden it under the carpet if it were not important to him?”
Sergeant Stock reached across the coffee table for the Coach Guide, studied it as if he were intent on getting somewhere, then put it back on the table.
“It has come within my observation,” said the Inspector pompously, “that the mind of the secret agent acts in peculiar ways. Possibly Kusitch was used to hiding things under carpets. He did not wish to carry the Guide with him, so…” He shrugged. “A timetable with an address, the catalogue number of a work of art, a pretty young girl, a secretive Yugoslav!” The Inspector was tolerant of human frailty. “Kusitch may have been jealous of you, Dr. Maclaren. He wished to retain the lady’s address for his own use.”
“I tell you the thing is important,” Andrew retorted. “It means something.”
“My dear Dr. Maclaren!” He was jocular now. “I yield place to no man in my admiration of your great Sherlock Holmes. I enjoy the exploits of your many justly famous private investigators, but you, as a man of science, should realise the weakness of intuitive reasoning.” He looked to Detective-Sergeant Stock for approval, and received a nod. “No, Dr. Maclaren. In police work we need facts, not fancies. A man has been murdered. I have in my possession the bullet with which he was slain. Find me the pistol from which that bullet came, and then we may be near to the hand that pulled the trigger. Meanwhile let us consider again your deposition.”
It was after three before it was over. Jordaens said: “I am afraid Detective-Sergeant Stock is growing tired. You look rather weary yourself, Dr. Maclaren. If there is anything else, we will communicate. Meanwhile, you had better get some sleep.”
The advice was not difficult to follow. As soon as they had gone he got into bed and was asleep before he could stretch out. Then, in a few minutes it seemed, the sun was streaming in and the doorbell was ringing. He cursed and turned over, but the doorbell was persistent. He got into his dressing gown, expecting a telegram or registered letter. It was neither. It was Charley Botten.
“Sleeping late?” Charley asked. “Or am I so early? Sorry if I’ve disturbed you, but I thought I’d look in on my way to the office. I had a brain wave about your riddle when I got home to the flat.”
Interest was slow to revive. “Come in,” Andrew said. “I’ll put on some coffee.”
“I should have recognised from the start that those symbols were the registration number of a fishing craft,” Charley said. “Perhaps it was just too simple.”
Andrew came fully awake. His jerking hand spilled ground coffee on the gas stove.
“Fishing craft!” he exclaimed.
“I had to do with them during the war,” Charley said. “I remembered that SS stood for St. Ives, so I telephoned to a man in Cornwall. I got quite a lot of information, and it ties up with Dubrovnik.”
Andrew forgot the coffee. Mr. Botten produced a page from a telephone pad on which he had made some notes.
“This friend in Cornwall called me back first thing this morning,” he explained. “The registration number tallies with a local craft, thirty foot long with a nine-foot beam. Her first owner was a man named Gurley and he bought her in the early twenties. Apparently she was quite well known round St. Ives as the Mary Isabella, a nice little job with a handy yawl rig and an auxiliary engine. Gurley did very well out of her for some years. Then things went wrong and finally he had to sell up everything he had. The yawl was in pretty bad shape by that time, and a couple of Falmouth youngsters-Jim and Dan Pascoe-bought her for a very small figure.”
“What’s the link with Dubrovnik?” Andrew demanded.
“I’m coming to that. It happened that my friend remembered the craft. He got Dan Pascoe on the phone and heard the rest of it. The boys bought the tub in 1938. They spent all the winter repairing her and fitting her out for a cruise, and next spring and summer they took her round Spain, through the Mediterranean to the Adriatic, and along the Dalmatian Coast.”
“Yugoslavia!” Andrew was conscious of the coffee percolator spouting behind him, but ignored it.
“Getting hot, isn’t it?” Charley Botten grinned. “The Pascoes ended their cruise at a place called Zavrana. That’s a few miles up the coast from Dubrovnik, if I know my geography. They had storm damage. They were afraid to tackle the return voyage without proper repairs. They gave the job to a small yard at Zavrana. Then it looked as if the war was going to break at any minute, and they wanted to get home as they were on the reserve. There was a motor yacht in the port, owned by a crazy Englishman with money to burn. The Pascoes got acquainted with him and sold him the yawl. It seems he had some cockeyed idea of using it as a tender for his yacht. Mad as a bandicoot. Wouldn’t hear of war. Had just bought a palace up in the hills behind Zavrana. The Pascoes came home by air. That’s the end of the story. They don’t know what happened to the yawl.”
Andrew was pacing the floor.
“Did your friend get the name of the Englishman, the fellow who bought the yawl?” he asked.
“Meriden,” Charley answered. “John Quayle Meriden. What’s the matter now?”
Andrew had the sensation of something bumping inside him. He didn’t like it. It was all very unprofessional, and the worst of it was he couldn’t control himself.
“There’s nothing the matter,” he answered. “I was just wondering why Kusitch had the number of this yawl.”
“Do you know Meriden? You jumped at the mention of him.”
“Just a coincidence.” Andrew struggled to give an appearance of nonchalance. “Someone of the same name. Couldn’t possibly be related. After all, it’s quite a common name.”
“Sure,” Charley agreed. “There’s this fellow with the yacht, and then there’s a place called Meriden in Connecticut. I went to all the trouble and expense of calling Dan Pascoe myself to find out if this John Quayle had given him any address. He had. I’ll let you have two guesses.”
“Cheriton Shawe.”
“You don’t need the second one. Your coffee’s boiling over.”
“I’ll get you a cup.”
“Thanks, I’ve had some. I have to be on my way.”
“Do you mind letting me have your notes on the yawl?”
“Not at all, if you can forgive the doodling.” He handed over the page from the pad. “Now that your puzzle is solved, Maclaren, you’d better forget all about it. Kusitch obviously had some business to transact over the yawl. He’ll turn up all right.”
“Kusitch is dead, murdered.”
Botten stared and asked questions. Andrew supplied the facts. Botten looked grave. “Keep your nose out of it,” he said. “Murder is a job for the police. They don’t take kindly to amateur interference. Neither do ex-SS men. You drink your coffee and forget about it.”
When he was alone Andrew examined the sheet from the telephone pad. It read:
SS 729-Mary Isabella-yawl 30 x 9 Gurley early twenties Gurley early Gurley auxiliary yes yes yes. NO!!! Sold Fal Pascoes Jimdan sailed Dubrovnik Zavrana. Bought for tender Englishman Jno. Quail Meriden-Quayle-to motor yacht. Repairs, war, last heard. Pascoes air-flighted home. War, war, war-God knows.
It was all there if you knew how to translate it. Andrew read it a second time as he prepared to shave. Then he thrust the scrap of paper into a pocket of his dressing gown.
The advice to keep his nose out of it was undoubtedly sound, and Jordaens would agree that the job was exclusively for the police, but leave it to Jordaens and it would never be done. The man was an ass. Imagine his reaction if he were now told about the yawl-rigged fishing craft that had been sailed down to Zavrana and there sold to John Quayle Meriden! Another ponderous homily on private investigators, no doubt.
