declares that this is a
“I have, yes, and wondered at them,” said I.
“Well,” said Sir John, ”they’re there as signals-to other ships or to those on the shore.”
“What do the signals say?”
“Whatever they might like them to say,” said he quite expansively. ”It would all be worked out in advance between those in the ship and those on the shore.”
“Now I begin to understand, sir. You and Mr. Bilbo have worked out a code between you, have you not? But how did you know when Mr. Bilbo would be here?”
“That was according to his estimate,” said Sir John. ”I could in no wise dictate to him the time of his arrival. He did say, however, that if all were ready he would sail by Deal morning and afternoon. There’s little of the morning left, but he’s a man of his word, and we must look for him during the rest of the day. I cannot see him, and so you must be my eyes in this. Do you recall the general look of his ship?”
“I do, yes,” said I. ”It’s called a sloop, is it not? I’ve seen others like it.”
“Very good. Now, what you must do, Jeremy, is to go out there to the beach and keep an eye open for Mr. Bilbo’s sloop. Now, as you’ve said, you’ve seen others like it. That is both good and bad, for while it should make it easier for you to recognize his as a sloop, it may make it possible for you to confuse his sloop with another. And so keep in mind that Mr. Bilbo’s ship is, as I understand, varnished in a lighter shade than most. Had you noticed that?”
“Now that you mention it, sir, I suppose I had. I remember it as a sort of golden brown.”
“That is no doubt correct,” said he, ”but another point to aid identification-he will be flying the Union Jack. And a third point, which is the most important, he will be flying green and white flags from his rigging. Have you got all that?”
“Yes, Sir John-lighter shade, Union Jack, green and white flags.”
“Right you are.” He gave a crisp nod of approval.
“But what was this about creating the wrong impression?”
“Ah yes, that,” said he. ”Well, what would you think if you were to walk the strand and you saw a young man, such as yourself, staring out at the sea quite intently. And then you returned some hours later, and the young man was still there on the beach in the same place, still staring just as intent out to sea?”
“What would I think? Why, I would think that rather odd, I suppose.”
“I’ve no doubt of it. And that is the wrong sort of impression. I wish you to be virtually invisible there on the beach, just a part of the larger picture.”
“And how do you hope to accomplish that?”
“Well, Jeremy, I know not how it is today, but when I was a lad about your age, it was a common enough sight when down on the seashore to see a young man in the company of a young lady. Whether in conversation or not, either seated in the sand or strolling the waterline-it mattered little what they did, so long as they did it together. Is that not how it is still today?”
“I suppose it is.” With each word I hesitated a bit. I was suspicious of the direction in which he seemed to be taking me.
“That being the case,” said Sir John, ”I have asked Clarissa to keep you company whilst you search the horizon for Black Jack Bilbo’s sloop.”
I raised no objection. It would have availed me little to complain. Besides, if this were truly to take an entire afternoon of waiting and looking, I should be glad for someone to pass the time with.
Thus it was that we were there together on Goodwin Sands for a number of hours that day. As Sir John had supposed, we sat for a time, then walked, sat again, then walked again. It was a perfect day for such. The sun shone down bright upon us. It was-in my memory, at least-the brightest and sunniest day we had known since our arrival in Deal. I recalled that when Clarissa and I first visited this place, it presented to us what seemed then to be a somewhat sinister aspect; I carried with me the image of that shipwreck beneath a brooding, gray sky. So was it then; yet on this day, Goodwin Sands seemed a different place altogether: the sky was blue and without a cloud (truly so: I looked and looked and saw not a one); the reflecting sea shone with the same deep blue, except in those places where it caught the sun and glinted silver. It was a day on which to enjoy the generous gifts of nature. And we were indeed not the only couple out on the beach on that afternoon.
Not forgetting why we had come, we paid much closer attention than the rest to the ships and boats out there on the Channel. Most of them were far too small to have taken our attention for more than a moment-fishing boats, most of them, and the largest of them single-masted. A Royal Navy frigate did glide by on its way to Portsmouth, impressive in its graceful bearing. Then finally there came a host of small cargo ships which passed our vantage, homely in appearance and ungainly in passage. Some were large as sloops but had not their style or shape. Clarissa remarked that she had never truly been aware just what a crowd of ships was out there between England and France. I replied that they were thick as coaches in the Strand on a Monday morn-and she agreed.
We talked of a great many things during those hours upon the beach. I remember well that she had heard that I had been something of a hero in last night’s battle at the crossroads. What pleased me most was the realization that she could only have heard such from Sir John. ”Hero” would not have been his word, but hers. Even so, to think that he had been sufficiently impressed to remark upon it to Clarissa elevated my spirits to a point higher than they had been since first we came to Deal. Still and again, it was a bit embarrassing to be told this by her-yes, but at the same time oddly pleasurable, too.
This led to a discussion of her visit with Sir John to Deal Castle, which provided her first exposure to his quotidian labors, save for an occasional visit to his court. She had seen him in action, so to speak.
“He is terribly impressive when asking questions, don’t you think?” said she.
“I have heard it said that he is the most able interrogator in all of Britain,” I replied. ”He seems to sniff an untruth and hear the lie in the liar’s voice. All he lacks-”
“Is the power of sight,” said she, interrupting, as she quite frequently did.
“True enough, but more often than not he seems to see better with his blind eyes than the rest of us can with our own, no matter how perfectly they may work. He takes special pleasure in explaining to all who may ask that if a man lacks one of his senses, then he must compensate by strengthening the other four. There. I have heard him say it so many times that I am sure that I have quoted him exact.”
She thought about this for some time. This was during one of our walking bits, and together we covered quite a stretch there along the water before she chose to speak again.
“I can certainly understand, Jeremy, how you happened to choose the law for your career. I believe that if I were a man, I should be a lawyer, too. Perhaps someday there will be a place for women in the law, too, yet I shall not see it in my day, I’m sure.”
While I did not scoff at this remark of hers, I thought it too fanciful to be taken seriously. That, of course, was just the trouble in considering women in such responsible fields as the law. They are creatures of fancy (and none more so than Clarissa), and the law, the discovery and punishment of crime, matters of guilt and innocence- these are areas in which cold logic must rule. Yet of course I said nothing.
“Nevertheless,” she continued, ”it would do me well to learn a bit of Sir John’s work, and the nature of legal procedures, et cetera, so that I might use a bit of this information in some future romance of mine. I can think of nothing better than one which would combine romance with the drama of murder. Perhaps I might write a tale of murder in which the reader must seek to guess the identity of the murderer before him whose role it is to do so in the narrative. How does that seem to you, Jeremy? To my knowledge, it has never been done before.”
“How does it seem to me?” It was a clever idea; I gave the question serious consideration. At last I said to her: ”I do not think it would please readers.”
“You don’t? But why?”
“Let us consider the common temper of the readers of romances. Why do they read them?”
“Why, for entertainment, for amusement.”
“Exactly, but you would admit, I’m sure, that it is entertainment of an idle sort that they seek. They would not wish to do the sort of mental work that you propose. They expect the author of the romance to do that for them. And so, what am I to say? I do not believe that your idea, clever though it may be, would please readers, for
