might get the plans and so recover the diamonds another way, killing two birds with one stone. I tell you, Farnholme was brilliant. He had the most diabolically ill luck.'
'It didn't work out that way,' Findhorn objected. 'Why did they sink the Kerry Dancer!'
'The Japanese didn't know he was aboard at the time,' Van Effen explained. 'But Siran did ? he always did. He was after the diamonds, I suspect, because some renegade Dutch official double-crossed his own people and gave Siran the information in return for a promised share of the profits when Siran laid hands on the stones. He would never have seen a single guilder or stone. Neither would the Japanese.'
'A clever attempt to discredit me.' It was Siran speaking for the first time, his voice smooth and controlled. 'The stones would have gone to our good friends and allies, the Japanese. That was our intention. My two men here will bear me out.'
'It will be difficult to prove otherwise,' Van Effen said indifferently. 'Your betrayal this night is worth something. No doubt your masters will throw the jackal a bone.' He paused, then went on: 'Farnholme never suspected who I was ? not, at least, until after we had been several days in the lifeboat. But I had known him all along, cultivated him, drunk with him. Siran here saw us together several times and must have thought that Farnholme and I were more than friends, a mistake anyone might make. That, I think, is why he rescued me ? or rather didn't chuck me overboard when the Kerry Dancer went down. He thought I either knew where the diamonds were or would find out from Farnholme.'
'Another mistake,' Siran admitted coldly. 'I should have let you drown.'
'You should. Then you might have got the whole two million to yourself.' Van Effen paused for a moment's recollection, then looked at the Japanese officer. 'Tell me, Captain Yamata, has there been any unusual British naval activity in the neighbourhood recently?'
Captain Yamata looked at him in quick surprise. 'How do you know?'
'Destroyers, possibly?' Van Effen had ignored the question. 'Moving in close at night?'
'Exactly.' Yamata was astonished. 'They come close in to Java Head each night, not eighty miles from here, then retire before dawn, before our planes can come near. But how??-'
'It is easily explained. On the dawn of the day the Kerry Dancer was sunk, Farnholme spent over an hour in the radio room. Almost certainly he told them of his escape hopes ? south from the Java Sea. No allied ship dare move north of Indonesia ? it would be a quick form of suicide. So they're patrolling the south, moving close in at nights. My guess is that they'll have another vessel patrolling near Bali. You have made no effort to deal with this intruder, Captain Yamata?'
'Hardly.' Yamata's tone was dry. 'The only vessel we have here is our commander's, Colonel Kiseki's. It is fast enough, but too small ? just a launch, really only a mobile radio station. Communications are very difficult in these parts.'
'I see.' Van Effen looked at Nicolson. 'The rest is obvious. Farnholme came to the conclusion that it was no longer safe for him to carry the diamonds round with him any longer ? nor the plans. The plans, I think, he gave to Miss Plenderleith aboard the Viroma, the diamonds on the island ? he emptied his own bag and filled it with grenades… I have never known a braver man.'
Van Effen was silent for a few moments, then continued. 'The poor renegade Muslim priest was just that and no more: Farnholme's story, told on the spur of the moment, was completely untrue, but typical of the audacity of the man ? to accuse someone else of what he was doing himself… And just one final thing ? my apologies to Mr. Walters here.' Van Effen smiled faintly. 'Farnholme wasn't the only one who was wandering into strange cabins that night. I spent over an hour in Mr. Walters's radio room. Mr. Walters slept well. I carry things with me that ensure that people will sleep well.'
Walters stared at him, then glanced at Nicolson, remembering how he had felt that next morning, and Nicolson remembered how the radio operator had looked, white, strained and sick. Van Effen caught Walters's slow nod of understanding.
'I apologise, Mr. Walters. But I had to do it, I had to send out a message. I am a skilled operator, but it took me a long time. Each time I heard footsteps in the passage outside, I died a thousand deaths. But I got my message through.'
'Course, speed and position, eh?' Nicolson said grimly.
'Plus a request not to bomb the oil cargo tanks. You just wanted the ship stopped, isn't that it?'
'More or less,' Van Effen admitted. 'I didn't expect them to make quite so thorough a job of stopping the ship, though. On the other hand, don't forget that if I hadn't sent the message, telling them the diamonds were on board, they would probably have blown the ship sky-high.'
'So we all owe our lives to you,' Nicolson said bitterly. 'Thank you very much.' He looked at him bleakly for a long, tense moment, then swung his gaze away, his eyes so obviously unseeing that no one thought to follow his gaze. But his eyes were very far indeed from unseeing, and there could be no doubt about it now. McKinnon had moved, and moved six inches, perhaps nearer nine, in the past few minutes, not in the uncontrolled, jerky twitchings of an unconscious man in deep-reaching pain, but in the stealthy, smoothly coordinated movements of a fully conscious person concentrating on inching silently across the ground, so silently, so soundlessly, with such imperceptible speed that only a man with his nerves strung up to a pitch of hyper-sensitivity could have seen it at all. But Nicolson saw it, knew there could be no mistake at all. Where originally there had been head, shoulders and arms lying in the bar of light that streamed out through the door, now there was only the back of the black head and one tanned forearm. Slowly, unconcernedly, his face an empty, expressionless mask, Nicolson let his gaze wander back to the company. Van Effen was speaking again, watching him with speculative curiosity.
'As you will have guessed by now, Mr. Nicolson, Farnholme remained safely in the pantry during the fight because he was sitting with two million pounds in his lap and wasn't going to risk any of it for any old-fashioned virtue of courage and honour and decency. I remained in the dining-saloon because I wasn't going to fire on my allies ? and you will recall that the only time I did ? at the sailor in the conning-tower of the submarine ? I missed. A very convincing miss, I've always thought. After the initial attack no Japanese 'plane attacked us on the Viroma, when we were clearing the boat ? or afterwards: I had signalled with a torch from the top of the wheelhouse.
'Similarly the submarine did not sink us ? the captain wouldn't have been very popular had he returned to base and reported that he had sent two million pounds worth of diamonds to the bottom of the South China Sea.' He smiled, again without mirth. 'You may remember that I wished to surrender to that submarine ? you adopted a rather hostile view-point about that.'
'Then why did that 'plane attack us?'
'Who knows?' Van Effen shrugged his shoulders. 'Getting desperate, I suppose. And don't forget that it had a seaplane in attendance ? it could have picked up one or two selected survivors.'
'Such as yourself?'
'Such as myself,' Van Effen admitted. 'Shortly after this Siran found out that I hadn't the diamonds ? he searched my bag during one of the nights we were becalmed: I saw him do it and I let him do it, and there was nothing in it anyway. And it always lessened my chances of being stabbed in the back ? which happened to his next suspect, the unfortunate Ahmed. Again he chose wrongly.' He looked at Siran with unconcealed distaste. 'I suppose Ahmed woke up while you were rifling his bag?'
'An unfortunate accident.' Siran waved an airy hand. 'My knife slipped.'
'You have very little time to live, Siran.' There was something curiously prophetic about the tone of Van Effen's voice, and the contemptuous smile drained slowly from Siran's face. 'You are too evil to live.'
'Superstitious nonsense!' The smile was back, the upper lip curled over the even white teeth.
'We shall see, we shall see.' Van Effen transferred his gaze to Nicolson. 'That's all, Mr. Nicolson. You'll have guessed why Farnholme hit me over the head when the torpedo boat came alongside. He had to, if he was to save your lives. A very, very gallant man ? and a fast thinker.' He turned and looked at Miss Plenderleith. 'And you gave me quite a fright, too, when you said Farnholme had left all his stuff on the island. Then I realised right away that he couldn't have done that, because he'd never have a chance of going back there again. So I knew you must have it.' He looked at her compassionately. 'You are a very courageous lady, Miss Plenderleith. You deserved better than this.'
He finished speaking, and again the deep, heavy silence fell over the council house. Now and again the little boy whimpered in his uneasy sleep, a small frightened sound, but Gudrun rocked and soothed him in her arms and by and by he lay still. Yamata was staring down at the stones, the thin aquiline face dark and brooding, seemingly in
