Island Gold/Chapter 14

back view, head sunk forward, shoulders humped up, gave, I believe, a convincing picture of utter abasement as I slowly retraced my steps down the ravine. But the moment I was out of sight of that ill-favoured group about the rock, I darted into the thickest part of the jungle and, after dragging myself painfully through the undergrowth for about a hundred yards, sank down hot and breathless.

I did not care whether I was followed or not.

I wanted to be alone to compose my thoughts to think. My brain was still reeling beneath the shock of my stupendous good fortune. Five minutes since I would scarcely have given a sixpence for my chances of life. Yet here I had regained my freedom of action, had lulled old Clubfoot, by giving him an easy victory, into a false sense of security and, at the same time, had obtained the solution of the knottiest point of the whole cipher message. At the thought that it was Grundt himself who had given me the clue which, till then, I had vainly sought, I leant back and laughed.

“After the Somme and the Hindenburg Line,” he had said, “our brave 'eighty-fivers' dislike you British even as much as our sailormen do..

“Unsere braven Fünf-und-Achtziger!”... he had used the German phrase and in a flash brought back to my mind a bit of German naval slang which I had heard so long ago that I had for gotten it! “Die Fünf-und-Achtziger!” What memories of pre-war days the phrase awakened! Dinner at Kiel in the ward-room of the German flagship, the tables ablaze with blue and gold uniforms sparkling with decorations—guest night in the mess of the Kaiser Franz Hussars at Stettin—and always army and navy “shop” the staple theme of our table talk. To the Imperial Navy the German Army was (slightly superciliously, for the rivalry between the two was intense) “die Fünf-und-Achtziger” because the 85th Infantry Regiment composed the garrison of Kiel, Germany's premier war harbour.

The garrison of Kiel! Clubfoot, like all his master's entourage, was in closest touch with the Fleet, the Kaiser's own creation. That scrap of navy slang came naturally to his lips and, in uttering it, he had sent with a flash the cipher to my mind.

The garrison of Kiel represented the figure “85.” How, then, did the cipher run en clair?

Eighty-five, I realized at once, was the angle for the heliograph. The message, therefore, read:

“Turn the heliograph at an angle of 85 degrees [i.e., from the horizontal, since it had been wired so as only to be raised or lowered] on a compass bearing of 27 degrees...”

The weight of the little mirror in my jacket pocket heartened me immensely. Clubfoot, I knew, would see the figure “85” in the allusion to the Kiel garrison. But the mirror was the starting-point for the whole cipher. And he had never known that a mirror was on the grave! The mirror, fixed in position as I had found it, made the first half of the message as clear as day. Without this essential pointer the cipher itself would be useless to Clubfoot. Even if his remarkably astute brain should divine the allusion to a heliograph in that first line, he would not have the mirror...

In any case, his investigations would be delayed. And I was playing for time. Six days must elapse, I reflected, before the yacht could return. For how many of these should I continue to enjoy my liberty? For as soon as Clubfoot realized that he had been fooled, I knew that he would once again stretch out that long arm of his to seize me. I should have to find a secure hiding-place—I thought of the high ground of the island, somewhere among those lofty volcanic peaks, in this connection—but the present need was for action. In the light of the fresh clue I had obtained, I must push on with my investigations at the grave itself and that with out a moment's delay. For the rest of the cipher, notably those baffling bars of music, which were firmly fixed in my mind—well, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof!

I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes past eleven. “Mittag”—noon—the message was dated, clearly an indication of the time at which the experiment with the heliograph was to be made. If I were to act, I must act at once. Fortunately the grave could not be far from where I lay. But what of Clubfoot?

The sound of voices came as if in answer to my query:—of voices close at hand. Parting the foliage in front of me I saw a file of men winding their way through the forest not twenty paces away. They appeared to be following some kind of path; for they marched steadily, one behind the other.

I pressed myself flat behind my protecting bush, only my head raised to observe the men as they went by. Now scraps of German came to my ears. There was talk of some one they called “Red Itzig,” a Jew who was to read the cipher to them. Itzig was apparently ill, for there was some chaff about the Jew being cured as soon as he should hear that the treasure was within their grasp.

Did this mean that they were going back to their camp? And that the coast was clear for the pressing work I had to do? Five minutes, I calculated, would suffice for my purpose.

I kept a sharp eye open for Clubfoot. Here he came, the eighth in the party, hobbling along in the rear, with set face, grim and silent. The line halted for a moment. The man in front of Clubfoot, a small, dark man, doffed his Panama to sponge his face. To my amazement it was Custrin ... Custrin, whom I had last seen, at the side of Marjorie Garth, standing at the head of the Naomi's ladder waving us farewell as the launch took us ashore...

Now I had the solution of something that had greatly puzzled me—Clubfoot's exact knowledge of where I kept the cipher message, his allusion to my “government survey work” on Cock Island. Then Custrin was one of El Cojo's spies! With a little shiver I thought of that hocussed drink. What would have been my fate that night but for the merciful intervention of Providence? I could make a pretty shrewd guess. They would have found me dead in my berth in the morning and Custrin gone—in one of the ship's boats. I wondered vaguely what had become of the doctor whose papers he must have appropriated...

The voices had died away now, and Clubfoot, the last of the line, had disappeared from my sight. I had counted eight in the party. All, therefore, seemed to have passed. Softly I began to wriggle myself forward...

I reached the path which the party had followed. It was a well-marked track through the forest. The trees were not so dense here, and above my head I caught at intervals a glimpse of dazzlingly blue sky. The sun was very hot.

Quietly and quickly I went down the track, heading for the direction from which Clubfoot and his men had come. I went wearily, bitterly conscious of my defenseless state. But I met no one, and presently I stood on the edge of the clearing, the grave of the Unknown below me.

The clearing was all a-quiver with heat; gorgeous-hued butterflies danced from bush to bush amid flaming flowers: the drone of insects was in the air. I skirted the edge of the basin, then silently dropped down to the grave.

I took out the little mirror and gave it a good rub-up with my handkerchief. Then, going down on my knees, I laid it on the grave as I had originally found it—face upwards with the holes in the frame aligned with the holes in the timber baulk beneath. With my compass I took my bearing of twenty-seven degrees, adjusted the mirror's position to the line it gave, and then raised the glass on its base until it stood, as far as one might reckon by the eye, at an angle of eighty-five degrees from the horizontal.

I looked at my watch. It marked five minutes to twelve.

A gleaming speck of light flamed on the mirror's polished surface as it caught the sun, danced on fern and bush and boulder as I raised the glass, and then, as I steadied it, came tremulously to rest on the topmost pinnacle of the terraced rock which Garth and I had climbed on the previous afternoon.

From where I stood I could see the edges of the three shelves which had been cut out by some forgotten generation of cave-dwellers out of the friable volcanic rock. The speck of light trembled on the crag on a level with the topmost terrace. It rested on a tall flat stone which stood out from the rest of the weather-beaten face of the rock because its surface was smooth while all the rest was rugged and serrated. Only the upper part of this pillar-like stone was visible to me; for the projecting edge of the terrace cut off the rest from my sight. As far as I could judge, the pillar must have been hewn out of the face of the rock on the highest shelf.

The stone was easy to identify. I felt a little thrill of excitement. What should I find on scaling the rock? From the first terrace on which Garth and I had rested before the thunder-storm there had been, I now recalled, a little winding path leading aloft. What did the cipher say?

I quoted to myself, and realized, with a pang, that I was still without the key of the riddle of those four bars of music. Well, the next thing to do was to climb to that topmost shelf...

Suddenly Garth and Carstairs came into my mind. With a little twinge of conscience I became aware that, in the excitement of the morning's events, I had completely forgotten them. I was sorely tempted to push on with my quest. But I thrust the temptation aside. My encounter with Clubfoot had put an entirely new complexion on the situation. I should have to consider seriously with my companions what we were going to do. After all, it was I who had brought Garth into this business.... With a last regretful glance at that terraced crag where all my hopes were centred, I turned my back on the grave and set my face for the shore. When I emerged at the top of the beach, the first thing I saw was the Naomi's launch drawn up on the shining white sand.

Garth, followed by Carstairs, tumbled out of the cave at my approach.

“Okewood,” cried the baronet, and his face was very grave, “what does this mean?”

He pointed at the launch.

“It means,” said I, “that Dr. Custrin fooled us. Sir Alexander. You say he presented letters of recommendation?”

“Certainly. From my New York manager!”

“Well, they were stolen. I have just seen Custrin in the forest. He obviously stole the yacht's launch to come ashore and join his employer...”

“His employer?”

“El Cojo!”

Then I told him about my meeting with Grundt and of the previous history of the man, of Custrin's attempts to get me to show him the message and of the opiate he had put in my drink. Garth listened without interruption, but his eyes began to bulge and his cheeks to redden in an ominous way.

“Dang it!” he burst out at length, and the northern burr crept into his speech as it did when he got angry, “I'll see this club-footed man and learn him to send his spies on to my yacht. A German, too! I'll talk to him. I'll...”

I observed that they were fourteen to three.

“It will be at least six days before the Naomi calls for us,” I pointed out, “and for that time we are practically at their mercy...”

“And to think that those damned doctors wouldn't let me have the wireless on the yacht!” exclaimed the baronet. “Wait till I get to a cable instrument. If I don't have a warship here within a week...”

“We've got to do something now, Sir Alexander!” I broke in. “If Grundt realizes that he has been tricked before we are out of his clutches, all a British warship can do is to give us a military funeral. Do you understand me? Now I had thought of withdrawing our guns and stores to the upper part of the island and trying to find a safe hiding-place there until the Naomi comes back. But the sight of the launch has given me a better idea than that. By the way, where did you find her?”

“About half a mile down the coast, under some branches she was!” said Carstairs. “I was having a bit of a look round and I came upon her. She'd had a rough time by the look of her. There was a lot of water in her afore I baled her out. I brought her round and beached her...”

“Is there any petrol in her?” I asked him.

“She always carries a reserve of forty gallons,” Garth replied. “And that's intact. And her tank's half full!”

“Then,” said I, broaching my idea, “why shouldn't you and Carstairs take her and fetch the Naomi back? Alcedo is only a matter of a hundred miles or so. You could be back here with the yacht to-morrow or the next day. You've got the chart, haven't you?”

“Aye,” rejoined Garth slowly, “I've got the chart and a compass. But we're not leaving you here?”

“Yes,” I said, “you are.”

“With luck,” I told him, “I may have twenty-four hours—not more—in which to work undisturbed on the clearing-up of the cipher. I have no right to throw this chance away. If I were to go with you and to find, on our return, that Clubfoot and his gang had stolen a march on us and found the treasure, I should never forgive myself.... And there's another thing! I've brought you into this mess, Garth, and, believe me, I take it very kindly of you that you have never once reproached me, as was your right, with my responsibility in the matter. Knowing that you are out of the island, I shall have my mind easy on that score. Besides, I shall be able to reckon on your being back within forty-eight hours and can lay plans accordingly!”

I had a lot of trouble to overcome his resistance; for he was a stout-hearted fellow. But my mind was made up. All my life I have played a lone hand, and I knew that I should face the future with greater confidence by myself. In the end I had my way and the three of us immediately set about filling up the launch with stores and water.

In half an hour all was ready. We pushed the launch down into the water and shook hands all round.

“If I don't show up when you land,” was my parting injunction to Garth, “occupy the beach here and wait for me. I shall always have the cave to come back to. And fire a gun, when you sight the island, to let me know you're here!”

With that Carstairs started the engine and, churning up the green water, the launch glided out into the harbour. I did not wait to see her fade out of sight in the spray of the surf-bar, for I had not a moment to lose. I made at once for the cave to collect a few provisions for my change of camp.

I had filled a knapsack and was strapping it when a sudden sound brought me hastily to the mouth of the cave. The launch had disappeared and the bay lay deserted before me.

Somewhere in the woods behind me I had heard a woman scream.