'I'll get some rope; plenty of that on a boat.' Sam plucked the knife from Kayles's belt and vanished for a moment.
Kayles was recovering his breath.
'You… you bastard!' he gasped, and heaved under me and nearly threw me off so I thumped him hard at the nape of the neck with my fist the classic rabbit punch and he went limp. I hoped I had not broken his neck.
Sam came with the rope and we tied Kayles's hands behind his back, and I knew Sam knew enough about seaman's knots to let him do it.
When we had Kayles secure he said, 'What do we do now?'
Bayliss had allowed his boat to drift off a little way in the gathering darkness. Now I heard his engine rev up and he came alongside again.
'What you doin' to that man?' he asked.
'I'm havin' nothin' to do with this.'
I said to Sam, 'Let's get him below, then you can talk to Bayliss.
Cool him down because we might need him again. '
We bundled Kayles below and stretched him on a bunk. He was breathing stertorously. Sam said, 'What do I tell Bayliss?'
I shrugged.
'Why not tell him the truth?'
Sam grinned.
'Who ever believes the truth? But I'll fix him.' He went into the cockpit and I looked around. Sam had been right about Kayles being a good seaman because it showed. Everything was neat and tidy and all the gear was stowed; a place for everything and everything in its place. Nothing betrays a bad seaman more than sloppiness, and if everything below was trim it would be the same on deck. That is the definition of shipshape. Given five minutes' notice Kayles could pull up the hook and sail for anywhere.
But a good seaman is not necessarily a good man; the history of piracy in the Bahamas shows that. I turned and looked at Kayles who was beginning to stir feebly, then switched on the cabin light to get a better look at him. I got a good sight of his face for the first time and was relieved to see that Sam had made no mistake this definitely was the man whose picture had been taken by Sue.
I sat at the chart table, switched on the gooseneck lamp, and began going through drawers. A good seaman keeps a log, an honest seaman keeps a log but would Kayles have kept a log? It would be useful to have a record of his movements in the past.
There was no log to be found so I started going through the charts.
In recording a yacht's course on a chart it is usual to use a fairly soft pencil so that in case of error it can be easily erased and corrected, or when the voyage is over the course line can be erased and the chart used again. Most yachtsmen I know tend to leave the course on the chart until it is needed for another voyage. A certain amount of bragging goes on amongst boat people and they like to sit around in a marina comparing voyages and swapping lies.
Kayles had charts covering the eastern seaboard of the Americas from the Canadian border right down to and including Guyana, which is pretty close to the equator, and they covered the Bahamas and the whole of the Caribbean. On many of them were course lines and dates.
It is normal to pencil in a date when you have established a position by a midday sun sight and you may add in the month, but no one I know puts in the year. So were these the records of old or recent voyages?
Sam came below and looked at Kayles.
'Still sleeping?' He went into the galley, undipped an aluminium pan, and filled it with water. He came back and dumped it in Kayles's face. Kayles moaned and moved his head from side to side, but his eyes did not open.
I said, 'Sam, take a look at these charts and tell me if they mean anything.' We changed places and I stood over Kayles. His eyes opened and he looked up at me, but there was no comprehension in them and I judged he was suffering from concussion. It would be some time before he would be able to talk so I went exploring.
What I was looking for I do not know but I looked anyway, opening lockers and boxes wherever I found them. Kayles's seamanship showed again in the way he had painted on the top of each food can a record of the contents. I found the cans stowed in lockers under the bunks and he had enough to last a long time. If water gets into the bilges labels are washed off cans, and Kayles had made sure that when he opened a can of beef he was not going to find peaches.
I opened his first-aid box and found it well-equipped with all the standard bandages and medications, including two throwaway syringes already loaded with morphine. Those vvere not so standard but some yachtsmen, especially single- handers, carry morphine by special permission. If so, the law requires that they should be carried in a locked box and these were not. There were also some unlabelled glass ampoules containing a yellowish, oily liquid. Unlike the morphine syringes they carried no description or maker's name.
I picked up one of them and examined it closely. The ampoule itself had an amateur look about it as though it was home-made, the ends being sealed as though held in a flame, and there was nothing etched in the glass to tell the nature of the contents. I thought that if Kayles was in the drug-running scene he could very well be an addict and this was his own supply of dope. The notion was reinforced by the finding of an ordinary reuseable hypodermic syringe. I left everything where it was and closed the box.
I went back to Sam who was still poring over the charts. He had come to much the same conclusion that I had, but he said, 'We might be able to tell when all this happened by relating it to weather reports.'
'We'll leave that to Perigord,' I said.
Sam frowned.
'Maybe we should have left it all to the Commissioner. I think we should have told him about this man before we left. Are we doing right, Tom?'
'Hell, I didn't know it was Kayles before we left. It was just a chance, wasn't it?'
'Even so, I think you should have told Perigord.'
I lost my temper a little.
'All right, don't drive it home, Sam. So I should have told Perigord. I didn't. Maybe I wasn't thinking straight. Everything has been going to hell in a handcart recently, from Legionnaires' disease at the Parkway to the fire at the Fun Palace. And we could do without those bloody street riots, too. Do you know what I was doing when you came to my office?'
'No what?'
'Straightening out a mess caused by the Airport Authority. Their baggage-handling machinery ripped a plane- load of suitcases into confetti and I had over 200 Americans in the lobby looking for blood.
Any more of this and we'll all go out of business. ' I swung around as Kayles said something behind me.
'What was that?'
'Who the hell are you?' Kayles's voice was stronger than I expected and I suspected he had been feigning unconsciousness for some time while working on his bonds. I did not worry about that I had seen the knots.
'You know me, Mr. Kayles,' said Sam, and Kayles's eyes widened as he heard his own name.
'You're carrying no riding lights. That's bad -you could be run down.' His voice was deceptively mild.
'Goddamn yacht-jackers!' said Kayles bitterly.
'Look, you guys have got me wrong. I can help you.'
'Do you know much about yacht-jacking?' I asked.
'I know it happens.' Kayles stared at me.
'Who are you?'
I did not answer him, but I held his eye. Sam said casually, 'Ever meet a man called Albury? Pete Albury?'
Kayles moistened his lips, and said hoarsely.
'For God's sake! Who are you?'
'You know Sam here,' I said.
'You've met him before. I'm Tom Mangan.
You might have heard of me I'm tolerably well-known in the Bahamas. '
Kayles flinched, but he mumbled, 'Never heard of you.'
'I think you have. In fact I think you met some of my family. My wife and daughter, for instance.'
'And I think you're nuts.'
