Faintley Speaking

heaviest sleeper, if he were on board. She was about to feel her way on deck again… for it was uncomfortably eerie on the dredger… when she bit her tongue in nervous astonishment as a voice in the darkness said:

‘Polypodium Vulgare, dammit! Polypodium Vulgare, dammit! Polypodium Vulgare, curse your silly eyes!’

‘Good Lord!’ said Laura, recovering her nerve. ‘Captain Flint in person! All right, Polly! Pretty Polly, then!’

‘Lastrea Filix-Mas! Lastrea Filix-Mas! Filix-Mas! Filix-Mas! Filix-Mas!’ screamed the parrot. Laura wasted no more time on blandishments. She crawled up on deck and called over the side to the occupant of the dinghy:

‘Nobody here but a parrot saying… get it, quick, while I remember… Polypodium Vulgare, dammit and Lastrea Filix-Mas. Doesn’t mean a thing to me, unless it’s some more of those ferns. Shall I risk putting on a light in the cabin, do you think?’

‘No. Come half-way down the rope-ladder and I’ll give you my torch. Are your hands dry?’

‘Yes. I’ve rubbed them dry groping about up here. Wasn’t I an ass to fall in? I’m squelching water all over the place!’

The torch changed hands at the third attempt, and Laura, taking the ends of the large handkerchief (in which Mrs Bradley had cradled and tied the small torch) between her teeth, climbed aboard again.

With the torch to aid her, a search of the interior of the dredger was simple but unrewarding. The parrot had turned either sulky or sleepy, and did not utter again except to give an indignant squeal as the tiny beam of light invaded its cage. Except for an empty wine-bottle and the remains of a loaf of bread on a wooden platter with a knife beside it on the cabin table, there was no indication (but for the presence of the parrot) that any human being had set foot on board until Laura’s own arrival, and she was about to return to the deck and so to the dinghy when she said aloud:

‘Grass idiot! Think, woman, think!’

Having thus addressed herself, she put Mrs Bradley’s torch with some difficulty into the sopping-wet pocket of her slacks, picked up the knife by the tip of the blade and, folding the bottle-neck in Mrs Bradley’s handkerchief, she essayed the companion-way once more. Risking every moment being precipitated backwards by the motion of the anchored vessel, which, although not heavy, was more than a little noticeable to a person with both hands full, Laura managed to get up on deck.

‘I say!’ she called over the side. ‘I’ve impounded two fingerprinted objects. Do you suppose they’re any good?’

‘The police, no doubt, will think so, but if you bring them away with you the persons who have charge of this vessel will know that someone has been on board. I think we might risk that, though.’

‘They’d know, anyway. I’ve dripped everywhere. I’ve got a wine-bottle and a bread-knife. Only thing is, I don’t know how to get them down to the dinghy. If only it was an iron ladder instead of rope! How can we manage? I can bring the knife down between my teeth, I suppose, but I don’t know what to do about the bottle.’

‘Is it empty?’

‘Yes, and it’s got the cork in it.’

‘Drop it overboard into a patch of moonlight and I’ll retrieve it if I can. The sea won’t wash off fingerprints if they are reasonably oily, and, fortunately, most of them are!’

With their treasure trove, as Laura deprecatingly and jokingly called it, they returned straightway to the cruiser, and Laura changed her clothes.

‘And now for old Trench’s tip, and the Damp House… funny name!… at Bridbay,’ said Laura, starting up her engine. ‘Hope we don’t run into our returning sand-dredgers going round the next point!’

They ran into nothing except the moonlight, and in less than half an hour were between the leading-beacons at the entrance to Bridbay Harbour. As they passed the beacons and were rounding the bend between the lighted buoys which showed the way to the anchorage, the clock on a nearby church struck the witching hour.

‘Midnight, and all well,’ murmured Laura, as the anchor went in. ‘Now where’s the dump we’re after, I wonder?’

‘We must wait for dawn,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘For one thing, we’d better have some sleep, and, for another, we can’t go looking for the house at this time of night.’

‘I’m hungry, too,’ said Laura. ‘We’ve had nothing except that biscuit and cheese and beer at Keyhaven since we had our lunch.’

‘Quite so. You will turn in while I get some soup and sandwiches ready.’

‘Don’t trouble about sandwiches for me! A thick slice or two of tinned tongue and a couple of wedges of bread and butter will do me fine. You haven’t told me yet what you make of the parrot’s Latin or whatever it was.’

‘I am extremely interested in the parrot’s conversation, and extremely grateful to the parrot,’ Mrs Bradley responded. ‘Polypodium Vulgare is the Common Polypody, and stands, possibly, in the fern code, for Our Men, or something of that sort. I deduced this from the parrot’s habit of following up the repetition of the name with the irritable “dammit”. This indicates, of course, that some stupid or uneducated person was being given a password which would reveal that he was a member of the gang to other members. The parrot’s second repetition, Lastrea Filix-Mas, the Male Fern, is, just possibly, the code name by which the leader of the gang is known. There is a certain arrogance about the choice of this name which causes me to think it may be —’

‘The boss’s signature-tune? Sounds all right. Of course, we’ve nothing to go on.’

‘Except Asplenium Septentrionale, the Forked Spleenwort, indicating, I think, that two attempts at something are to be made. But I admit this is all so much guesswork, and my reading of the fern- code is possibly ludicrously wrong. Here is your soup, and I have added baked beans from a tin.’

Just as the cruiser’s portholes began to turn grey, Laura, who throve and flourished on an average of three hours sleep a night, rose from her bunk and went on deck. The harbour water was a sea of mist and near the Canto Five lay yachts and cruisers of all sizes and many designs, but she could not see far enough to know whether the rusty cruiser which had taken stores from the dredger was in the harbour or not.