From having been half asleep, Gregory’s brain instantly began to turn over as fast as a dynamo. He could not altogether blame Ribaud for having done this to him. The General’s first duty lay not to an old friend, whatever trouble he might be in, but to France. Had Gregory been responsible for keeping a British secret of equal importance he felt he would have done the same. Short of having him and James shot, this was the only way in which Ribaud could make absolutely certain of ensuring their silence. That Gregory might have escaped from a fortress in New Caledonia he had accepted, but to escape from the Russians on Yuloga was a very different matter. As he had done so once, they would make certain that he was given no chance to do so a second time. And the first time had been difficult enough.
There flashed through Gregory’s mind the many nights which they had spent laboriously working with the steel half-shoe-heel on the screws that held in place the gratings of their cells, the scores of hours spent cautiously exploring the island, the nerve-racking delay while the Melanesians repaired the sail of the big canoe, then the desperate risk they had taken of being shot to pieces before they cleared the reef and reached the open sea.
By now those gratings would have been made permanent fixtures and there would be surprise visits by the guards to the prisoners’ cells, some time each night. Gone for good was any chance of carrying out midnight reconnaissances and, even if one could, there would be little point in them, for it was quite certain that the Russians would have scoured the island for any other abandoned canoes and would have destroyed them. All this made the possibilty of another escape about as remote as had been the chances of getting away from Devil’s Island in the Victorian era.
The future, then, held the awful prospect of imprisonment for an indefinite period—certainly for many months, perhaps for several years—with no hope of a reduction of sentence or reprieve. Perhaps even worse. On finding that no fewer than six of their prisoners had escaped and got clean away from the island, the Russians must have been furious. Now that two of those escapers were being returned to them they might well take strong measures.
Gregory suddenly had an awful vision of himself and James tied to stakes in the courtyard of the prison while a firing squad lined up to shoot them—just as an example to the other prisoners of what might happen to them should they give any trouble. The Russians were a law unto themselves. No-one could call them to account for such an execution or, the odds were, would even hear about it. If Ribaud chanced to do so he would probably consider Gregory fortunate not to have met such a fate much earlier in life, drink an extra glass of cognac after dinner to the memory of an ace secret agent, then forget the incident.
All these thoughts rushed through Gregory’s mind in a matter of seconds. Looking down again, he saw that they had passed over the rocket-launching site and that the aircraft was slowly circling to come down in another valley in which rows of lights showed there to be an airstrip. The fact that they were on was a clear indication that Ribaud had sent a signal to the Russian Commandant, telling him to expect the aircraft.
Gregory knew that there was only one thing for it. James, beside him, and the Major, in front of him, were still dozing. With his right elbow he gave James a fierce dig in the ribs. Throwing himself forward he flung his left arm round the Major’s neck and jerked his head violently backwards. At the same moment his right hand descended on the pistol holster at the officer’s side, wrenched it open and grasped the weapon.
Within seconds of Gregory’s first move, entirely unaware of what he was about to do, the pilot cried, ‘We’ll be landing in a few minutes. Fasten your safety belts.’
At the unexpected sound of threshing limbs beside him, he turned. By then Gregory had pulled the pistol from the holster, struck the Major a sharp blow on the side of the head with the butt and had the weapon pointing at the pilot.
‘Up!’ he snapped. ‘Up, or I’ll put a bullet through your head! We are not landing, and if you won’t fly this plane I will.’
The aircraft was down to a thousand feet. The pilot, his eyes staring, did as he was bade and pulled back his joystick, but at so sharp an angle that the aircraft shot up as though about to loop the loop. The manœuvre came near to giving back the mastery of the situation to Ribaud’s men. Gregory and James, who had half risen, were flung violently back into their seats, and the gun was jerked from Gregory’s hand. But, as he had already knocked the Major unconscious, the odds remained two to one against the pilot.
Grimly endeavouring to carry out his mission, the pilot brought the aircraft down again in a steep dive.
‘Half choke him!’ Gregory cried urgently, and as he stooped to grope about the floor for the pistol, James’s great hands closed round the pilot’s neck from behind. As the pressure increased, he let go of the controls and began to claw frantically at James’s fingers. Still the aircraft descended.
At that angle Gregory could see ahead out of the forward window. The plane was plunging straight to earth. The flares on the runway seemed to be leaping up to meet them. Forcing his head and shoulders between the unconscious Major and the pilot, he grabbed the joystick and pulled it back. The aircraft shot up again at such a steep angle that he feared it must stall. But it was now flying at an altitude of no more than five hundred feet. Then, to his horror, he saw that it was hurtling direct at a rocky peak that rose up from the centre of the island.
By then the pilot, half strangled, had had enough. His eyes starting from his head, he stopped clawing ineffectually at James’ hands and let his own fall, then rammed down his left foot on the rudder bar. The plane banked steeply.
At that moment the stunned Major came round. Unaware of the acute danger, he gave a groan, turned sideways in his seat and grabbed Gregory by the shoulders, wrenching him away from the controls. James let go of the pilot’s neck to come to Gregory’s assistance. The back of his fist smashed into the side of the Major’s face. With another groan, he fell back in his seat. The pilot gasped in breath, then, panting wildly, seized the joystick. The plane zoomed up. It was touch and go. They missed the side of the rocky peak by no more than twenty feet.
Seeing that for the moment disaster had been averted and that the pilot had come to heel, Gregory again groped on the floor until his hand closed on the pistol. Picking it up, he jabbed the barrel into the pilot’s ribs and snarled, ‘Now, damn you! Do as I tell you or I’ll put a bullet through your guts. Take her up to two thousand and head due east.’
The man had no more fight left in him. Rapidly the aircraft gained height, banked again and came round on the given course. A few minutes later the island of Yuloga was fading away into the night behind them.
Blood was trickling from the side of the Major’s mouth where James had struck him. His kepi had fallen off and he was sitting hunched up with his head lolling forward, but his eyes were open, showing that he was still conscious. To make certain that he would give no further trouble, Gregory handed the pistol to James, then, with his left hand, grabbed the man by the hair, pulling his head back, and with his right undid his tie. Thrusting him forward again he pulled his arms behind his back and used the tie to secure his wrists firmly together.
Turning to the pilot, Gregory said, ‘You will now fly us to Tujoa.’
‘Fly her yourself,’ the man replied truculently. ‘I’m not going to risk facing a court martial for having helped two dangerous criminals to escape from justice.’
Gregory had many times parachuted from an aircraft and knew a considerable amount about them, but; in spite of what he had implied when first threatening the pilot, he was not a trained airman; so he snapped back, ‘I could fly her, but I’d probably crash her on landing. Like it or not, unless you want to risk being burned to a cinder, you’ll do the job for us. You’ve got your orders and you’ll bring us down at Tujoa.’
The pilot gave a harsh laugh. ‘Like hell I will! I haven’t enough petrol to get her half that distance.’
‘You’re lying. Tujoa is quite a bit closer to Yuloga than Yuloga is to Noumea, and you would have had to make the return hop.’
‘That’s so, but I would have taken on fuel at Yuloga.’
Gregory swore under his breath. The petrol gauge told him nothing, because he did not know if the pilot was already using the reserve tank or if it was still full. He might be bluffing. On the other hand, if he was telling the truth this was a really nasty one.
After a moment’s thought Gregory said, ‘The ocean in these parts is peppered with small islands. You are to keep going for Tujoa as long as you can. If you do find the petrol getting low you are to bring us down on the nearest island. But I’d like you to be clear about one thing. Should you do that and when we have landed I find that there is more than one gallon of petrol in the tank I’ll blow your brains out.’
‘If you’d ever tried to land an aircarft on a coral atoll you’d not be such a fool as to ask me to,’ the pilot replied in a surly voice. ‘She’d rip her bottom to pieces and we’d end up like strawberry jam.’
‘Then bring her down in a lagoon, or near enough for us to swim ashore.’
‘You’re crazy. Force me to do that and we’ll either drown or the sharks will get us. I know you’ll be clapped into jail if we land at Yuloga, but surely that’s better than killing yourself and us as well? For God’s sake let me turn back to Yuloga.’
It was a terrible decision to have to take; but knowing the Russians were not given to showing mercy to escaped prisoners who were recaptured, Gregory thought it more likely that if he and James did land at Yuloga they would be shot out of hand. Again he remained silent for a few moments, then he said:
‘No I prefer to risk the sharks and a chance of freedom to the certainty of prison and the possibility of having to face a firing squad. Just let me know when the petrol looks like running out and I’ll tell you what to do. Given a little luck we may be near a fair-sized island with a beach that we could land on.’
His decision was followed by a period of agonising suspense. Now and then they flew within sight of islands, but they were further apart than Gregory had expected, and nearly all were composed of cruel coral reefs, against which the surf was breaking in great swathes of white foam. Only two were large enough to have risked a landing, but even on them groups of palm trees would have made an attempt to land highly dangerous. Leaning forward across the semi-conscious Major, Gregory kept his eyes fixed on the petrol gauge with steadily mounting anxiety.
After twenty minutes it showed the tank to be nearly empty. As another patch of white waves crashing on land came into sight ahead, he grimly made up his mind that they must now risk their necks by coming down in it. Gruffly he said to the pilot:
‘Down you go. I’m sorry that I’ve let you in for this. But if you can manage to save our necks and we can get back to civilisation you’ll not regret it. As I happen to be a rich man, I’ll give you a year’s pay. Now, circle that island, then do your best for us all.’
The pilot gave a harsh laugh. ‘Thanks for the offer, but you’d never live to pay up or I to receive the money. We’re not going down. You win, damn you!’
As he spoke, he leaned forward and pressed a switch. The needle of the petrol gauge began to lift. The reserve tank had been full and he had switched it on.
James gave a great sigh and laid a hand on Gregory’s back. ‘That was the worst twenty minutes I’ve ever lived through. But thank God you called his bluff. After the way we made fools of those Russians I’d have bet any money they would have shot us.’
While the aircraft droned on through the night they were now able to relax and savour to the full aa d wonderful relief at not having had to crash-land among the great waves pounding on what, as they passed over it, they saw to be no more than a crescent of barren rocks.
When they sighted Tujoa the sky was lightening in the east. Except for a once-weekly service and an occasional private plane no aircraft came down on the island, so it had no more than an airstrip, and that was manned only when information had been received that a plane was to be expected. But James was able to direct the pilot and by that time, with the suddenness usual in the tropics, full dawn had come. Having circled over the airstrip twice, the pilot made a good landing.
Pleased as Gregory was to have reached Tujoa, he needed no telling that he and James were as yet far from out of the wood; for the Tujoa group was French territory and they were wanted by the French authorities. Having double-crossed them, Ribaud must realise that Gregory would no longer feel bound to keep his promise to remain silent about the Russian rockets on Yuloga; so, as soon as he learned that they had escaped, he would do his utmost to have them rearrested. There was also the question of what was to be done with the Major and the pilot. In no circumstances should they be given a chance to communicate with the French Resident or his gendarmerie, otherwise the fat would be in the fire right away.
Keeping the two Frenchmen covered with the pistol, Gregory looked quickly about him. At the far end of the airstrip there were a small one-storey building and two medium-sized hangars. Turning to James he asked:
‘Are those hangars likely to be occupied?’
James shook his fuzzy head. ‘I doubt it. No-one on the island owns an aircraft. They are used only by visitors who come here in private planes, and that doesn’t happen often. I take it you are thinking of hiding the aircraft?’
‘That’s it. You go and open one of them up; or, rather, both of them, if both are empty.’
Squeezing past the Major, James jumped down and ran along to the hangar. As soon as he had it open, Gregory made the pilot taxi the aircraft into it. Ordering the two Frenchmen out, he got out himself, then made them walk in front of him into the other hangar, where he told James to free the Major’s wrists.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘I fear that for a day or two you will have to suffer some discomfort. I’ll treat you no worse than I have to; but until I have made certain arrangements you must remain prisoners. What are your names?’
The Major, who had remained sullenly silent ever since James had knocked him half senseless, now burst into a furious spate of words. Cursing Gregory and James for a pair of villainous crooks, he went on to say that if they thought they had got away they had better think again. The fact that the aircraft had not landed the prisoners on Yuloga would have been reported to General Ribaud. By now the General would have sent a signal to the Resident on Tujoa and as soon as they showed their faces they would be arrested. Then he flatly refused to give his name or co-operate in any way.
‘You may be right, but not necessarily,’ Gregory replied. ‘The General cannot know that we overpowered you. Even if he suspects it, we might have doubled back to the Loyalties, or made for any one of a dozen uninhabited islands. But he will probably believe that the plane got out of control, came down in the sea and that we were all drowned. As to your name, I expect you have papers on you which will give it to me. About that we will soon know, for you are now going to strip. Get your clothes off.’
Indignantly the officer refused; whereupon Gregory turned to James, who was standing in the doorway of the hangar, and said, ‘Would you oblige me by persuading this fellow to do as he is told.’
With a grin, the huge James advanced on the Major. Sudden fear showed in his eyes. Putting up one hand as though to fend James off, he began to unbutton his tunic. Two minutes later, with a hangdog expression he was standing there naked.
‘Now you,’ Gregory said to the pilot. Realising that it was futile to refuse, he, too, stripped to the buff. Meanwhile James had been going through the Major’s pockets. In one there were a couple of letters and he read out from an envelope, ‘Comandante Andorache Fournier.’ He then picked up the pilot’s jacket, fished a pocketbook from it and announced, ‘Lieutenant Jules Joubert.’
Gregory smiled and said, ‘Messieurs Fournier and Joubert, I am happy to think that, in this delightful climate, being deprived of your clothes for a while will cause you no inconvenience, apart, perhaps, from a few mosquito bites. We will now leave you to contemplate the eternal verities; or, if you prefer, how extremely displeased with you General Ribaud will be when you try to explain to him how it came about that you failed to carry out his orders.’
James collected the clothes, carried them into the other hangar and dumped them in the aircraft, then locked the doors of both hangars. As they turned away, Gregory said, ‘Naked and without shoes, I don’t think there is much chance of their breaking out; but we daren’t leave them there for long, in case someone comes out here and finds them. Do you know of a place where we could hide them safely for a few days?’
After a moment’s thought, James replied, ‘There are some caves a few miles away up in the hills. No-one would come upon them there, and some of my men could be relied on to guard them.’
‘Good. I’m afraid, though, that Fournier was right. The erratic flight of the aircraft over Yuloga will have suggested to the Russians that a fight was taking place on board. Ribaud will be informed of that, and he is no fool. He is almost certain to assume that if we did get control of the plane we would make for your own island. Probably the best chance of keeping our freedom would be for us to retire to those caves ourselves, anyway for the time being.’
‘Oh, we certainly need not do that.’ James’ voice had taken on a new note of authority. ‘Commandant Elbœuf, the Resident, is a spineless old creature and there are no troops stationed on the island, only a Sergeant and six gendarmes. My people would never allow them to arrest us and the police would not dare force the issue. My bure is only about a mile away, on this side of the town. We will go there first and I’ll send a reliable man down to find out if anything unusual is happening at the gendarmes’ barracks. But I’m still in the dark about much that has been going on. What exactly did take place between you and General Ribaud?’
‘Of course you are.’ Gregory smiled. ‘I had no chance to tell you while we were in prison, and I couldn’t talk about it while we were in the plane with those two Frenchmen.’ As they walked quickly along an upward-sloping dirt road through the jungle, Gregory then related to James how he had blackmailed Ribaud and what had come of it. When he had done he added:
‘I ought to have foreseen that, although we were old friends, he might consider it his duty to trick me, and he darned near did. Unfortunately, too, we are far from having finished with him yet. Once he knows for certain that we are here he can fly troops in to get us. Even if we refuelled the aircraft, and forced Joubert to fly us on to Fiji, we’d still not be in the clear. There is a charge of attempted murder pending against you and he could apply for a warrant of extradition. You could go into hiding for a while, but not indefinitely; because to do so would mean your having to abandon everything. To do that would ruin your whole life; so, somehow or other, we’ve got to do a deal with him.’
‘I don’t see how we can,’ James said gloomily.
‘Neither do I at the moment. And the devil of it is we have precious little time to think in. The signal from Yuloga will be to the effect, “Aircraft failed to land, appeared to be out of control,” so apparently only a mechanical fault, and Ribaud’s people wouldn’t wake him up in the middle of the night to give him a message of that kind. But it will be on his desk this morning; so at any time from nine o’clock on we can expect the sparks to fly.’
By this time they had mounted the rise and emerged from the jungle. Ahead of them, in a broad, open space, stood an exceptionally large and lofty bure with round about it a number of smaller ones. As they approached, a man appeared in the open doorway of the big bure. On seeing James, he gave a cry of delight, fell on his knees and bowed his head. His master greeted him kindly but, instead of moving for them to enter, he remained kneeling there. James turned aside, smiled at Gregory and said:
‘No High Chief ever enters his own or any other house by the back door; and no inferior may ever pass behind a High Chief when he is seated, even to serve him at table. In the islands there are many such customs as these. The people think them right and proper, so continue to observe them willingly.’
To one side of the bure there was an oval swimming pool, at the far end were shaded swing hammocks, basket chairs, tables and a small bar; while round about were hibiscus bushes, cannas and pepper plants in blossom, and frangipani trees, the creamy flowers of which filled the air with a heady scent.
As they came round to the front of the bure, Gregory found himself looking on one of the most beautiful panoramas he had ever seen, A spacious garden sloped away down the hillside. In the forefront there were carefully-tended beds of many-coloured flowers. Along the side slopes and lower down, so as not to obstruct the view, were splendid specimen trees: mangoes, breadfruit, magnolias and giant figs that bore only miniature fruit.
Below, shaped like a sickle moon, spread the long sweep of the bay. In the centre, looking so clear in the early-morning light that one might have thrown a stone on to a roof-top, nestled Revika, the island’s capital. The town consisted of no more than a few brick buildings and some half-hundred wooden ones; but on either side of it along the coast, half-hidden in groves of palm trees, there peeped out the thatched roofs of scores of bures. The beach on the extremity of the left horn of the bay was hidden by massed trees of vivid green, the right horn was a mile-long stretch of gleaming white sand.
In the little harbour of Revika there were several schooners and a number of small motor boats, the phut-phut-phutting of one of which could be heard clearly as it made its way towards the harbour mouth. Further out, half a dozen canoes, with outriggers and great red triangular sails, were already on their way to the fishing grounds, each leaving a rippling wake on the calm surface of the water inside the lagoon. Two miles out the waves broke in a thin, creaming line on the coral reef that protected it. Beyond the reef were two small islands that seemed to float between the deep blue of the sea and the paler blue of the cloudless sky. Both of them were thick with palms that, in the distance, looked like clusters of yellow-green feathers. Not far from the shore a patch of the mirror-like water suddenly danced and sparkled in the sunlight—it was a shoal of flying fish breaking surface.
‘What a wonderful situation you have here,’ Gregory remarked. ‘It must be one of the most beautiful views in the South Seas.’
‘It is,’ agreed James. ‘But down by the coast the scenery is not quite up to that in several other islands. The loveliest of all, I think, is Western Samoa. There is a stretch of forty miles there, where the road winds along within sight of the sea and for long distances only a hundred yards or so from it. You could not describe it as a built-up area, but for its whole length, instead of scattered villages, there are, at short intervals, houses with pretty gardens. They are mostly native bures, of course, and unlike those in Fiji or here, their thatched roofs are supported by poles between which are reed curtains that can be let down in times of bad weather. Normally the colourfully-clad people who live in them can be seen going about their daily tasks, and the interiors are always neat and clean. Against a back-drop of palms and jungle, which slope up to the heights behind them, they are enchanting.’
‘How about Eastern Samoa?’
‘That, too, is lovely; but in a different way. The coast road is a corniche, in most places a hundred or so feet above the sea and dropping steeply to a succession of charming little bays. The villages along it are few and far between, and consist mostly of tin-roofed, open-sided, brick bungalows, built by the generous Americans after a great number of the bures of the unfortunate natives were destroyed some years ago by a terrible hurricane.
‘The principal attraction there is Pago-Pago. Hundreds of years ago its site was occupied by an enormous volcano. One day it erupted with such terrific violence that it broke down a short strip of the coast, so that the ocean rushed in and turned the crater into a vast, almost land-locked lagoon. The little town of Pago-Pago stands along an inner arm of it. Not many years ago, on the extremity of the arm, overlooking the bay, the Americans put up their great Intercontinental Hotel, and the architect they employed did a splendid job for them. Instead of the usual big, oblong box, all the buildings, including about a score of separate bures, are copied from the local native design, and have roofs the shape of broad, upside-down boats. The hotel, too, has everything, and is one of the finest in the Pacific.
‘The Americans also erected a cable railway which passes over the town and across the water up to their Radio Station at the top of Rainmaker Mountain, which dominates the country for miles round. I went up it, and was scared out of my wits. We were warned that the car stops and changes gear about a hundred feet from the top; but not that it would wobble violently, then suddenly run backward for about a dozen yards. I felt certain it was about to crash and, as the Rainmaker is over seventeen hundred feet high, I would have been smashed to atoms at the bottom. But my scare proved worth it, as the view from the top is fabulous.’
Gregory sighed. ‘Why are we Europeans such fools as to spend our lives swarming like ants in hideous cities, when we might live in this South Sea paradise?’
With a smile James replied, ‘If only a tenth of you settled in the South Pacific in no time things here would be just as bad. Even without that, our golden age of happy isolation is already over. Increases in population, science and modernisation are putting an end to true leisure and simple pleasures. We, too, are doomed to become the victims of the rat race.’
‘Yet you plan to foster that unhappy state of things. That is, if we get the Spanish gold. To mechanise your native industries, build a canning factory and so on, is bound to do so.’
‘The gold! Yes. My mind has been so occupied with the results of my folly in Noumea that I had almost forgotten about it. I fear, though, that by now either Lacost will have made off with it illegally or de Carvalho will have divers at work salvaging it. In any case, the latter holds the licence, so it will not be easy to contest his rights. I shall, though. The Maria Amalia went down long before the French became the masters here. In the name of my ancestors who ruled here then, I mean to claim it.
‘But you are right, of course, that the true welfare of my people and my plans for them conflict. Yet how can I stand by and watch them being exploited by the rising tide of Indians? Modernisation will come here anyhow. At least it will be better for them if I can succeed in controlling it on their behalf.’
As they turned to enter the bure, an old, half-blind man who appeared to be dozing on the doorstep suddenly saw them, stood up and went down on his knees. James spoke to him and said to Gregory, ‘This is Sukuna. He has been our doorkeeper for longer than any of us can remember. In his youth people were still eating human flesh. I will send him for Kalabo, my head servant. We will have a bath while he has breakfast prepared for us.’
‘By that I suppose you mean a shower?’
‘You hate them, don’t you?’ James chuckled. ‘But your luck is in. You seem to have forgotten that I was educated in the British manner. I, too, love to relax and lie soaking; so, when I succeeded my father I had three baths installed here.’
The interior of the bure was very similar to that of Manon’s, except that it was much larger, the patterned designs of woven bamboo on the walls more intricate, and that on the great tapa-covered beams were imposed whole rows of precious whale teeth and the white cowrie shells that, by tradition, only Royalty is permitted to use for decoration.
Kalabo came in and made smiling obeisance. He was a huge man, as tall as and much broader than his Ratu, with a pouffe of black hair that must have measured close on eighteen inches from side to side. James spoke rapidly to him in the sing-song native tongue, then told Gregory:
‘I have ordered him to send four of my men to guard the Frenchmen and give them food. It will be quite unnecessary to remove them from the hangar, at least until our next weekly aircraft is due in, and that will not be for the next three days. Kalabo will also send his aunt down to the telegraph office. She is the mother of the operator there and, should a message come in from General Ribaud, we shall know its contents long before it reaches the Resident.’
Gregory did not even think of questioning the decision to leave the two Frenchmen in the hangar. Since they had arrived at the bure, James seemed to have become a different person. Although he was still in the travel-stained Western suit that he had worn for over two months, he had acquired an air of immense dignity. Even his movements and the tone of his voice had altered. About him there was an aura of complete self-assurance and unchallengeable authority.
In a bedroom bure to which another servant shortly afterwards conducted Gregory he found laid out for him a set of native clothes, and, in the adjacent bathroom, a safety razor, clean hairbrushes and everything else he might need. He lay for a long time in a tepid bath, then dressed. The colourful shirt, evidently one of James’, was much too large for him; but the sulu, a form of kilt, was easily adjustable.
Having had to make do for many weeks on monotonous prison fare, they tremendously enjoyed an enormous breakfast. While they ate, James told Gregory that, at least concerning the gold, their luck was in. Contrary to expectations, despite their having been out of action for two months, no attempt to salvage it had so far been made. Through his servants James had obtained the following information.
The professional diver Hamie Baker, who had been engaged by Gregory in Fiji, had arrived with his salvaging apparatus in the second week of February. He had put up at the Bonne Cuisine, a guest house down on the harbour, and had remained there ever since, evidently awaiting instructions. Another professional diver, named Philip Macauta, bringing salvaging equipment from Tahiti, had arrived shortly after Baker and had also taken a room at the Bonne Cuisine.
But his employer, Lacost, and the other Colons had not put in an appearance until nine days previously. They had turned up in a battered seagoing launch named the Pigalle and, according to the island grapevine, one of them had let it out, during a drunken evening ashore, that Lacost and one of the others had only recently completed a two-month prison sentence after having been caught smuggling drugs from Mexico into Tahiti. Soon after their arrival they had taken their launch and equipment out to the sunken Maria Amalia; but, having no licence, they had been warned off by the Resident and his Sergeant of gendarmes.
Lacost had defied them and refused to leave the site. The following day, de Carvalho had arrived in the Boa Viagem. He had brought no salvaging equipment with him, but had gone out to view the wreck. Both parties had then returned to harbour and two days ago both had sailed, it was thought, for Fiji.
In the light of the scanty information available, to find an explanation for these movements was not possible. It might be that Lacost, having sent his diver Macauta down to the wreck, had found there was no quantity of gold in her, after all. But if so why had he defied the Resident’s order to leave the site, yet left after de Carvalho had gone out to it? Again, why, although the Colons had sailed from Revika in the Pigalle two days before, had they left Macauta and their salvaging equipment behind? And, biggest question of all, why should Lacost and de Carvalho have lingered in Revika for several days, then sailed on the same day for Fiji?
Only one thing was clear. If there was treasure in the wreck, it was still there; so, if James chose to ignore the fact that he had no licence, his rivals had left him a free field to send divers down right away to get it, provided Ribaud took no steps against him in the next few days. And James had made it clear that, regarding himself as the rightful owner of the gold, that was what he meant to do.
When they had finished their meal Gregory said, ‘First things first. For the time being we must forget the gold and try to stave off Ribaud. While I was in my bath I did some pretty hard thinking, and if you’ll give me a pencil and paper I’ll draft a telegram I want to get off to him.’
From a fine old walnut Dutch bureau James produced Gregory’s requirements. After writing for a few minutes Gregory picked up the paper and read out:
‘Your two compatriots deprived of clothes by natives here. Suggest you send replacements by air. Am arranging agreed transfer of money to Credit Lyonnaise 44 Boulevard St. Germain. Do you wish Charles Lorraine be informed of transaction? Expect reply by 1800 hours. Dantés.’
James gave him a puzzled look. ‘I can’t make head nor tail of it.’
‘I’ll interpret,’ Gregory grinned. The two compatriots are, of course, Fournier and Joubert. You, anyhow, are a native of this island and that’s good enough. Ribaud is an old Secret Service hand and so am I. When such types get hold of an enemy, and have no means of handing him over to someone else who will keep him for a while from becoming dangerous, it is common practice to take away his clothes and shoes. Then, even if he does break out from wherever he had been locked up, it is difficult for him get very far or persuade anyone he happens to meet that he is not a lunatic. Ribaud knows that one as well as I do, so he’ll jump to it that you and I debagged his two boys and left them to cool their heels in the nude.
‘Having done that, it’s obvious that at any time it suited us we could give them back their clothes. So “replacements” does not mean other sets of uniforms for them, but that Ribaud should send us our belongings. He’ll get that one, too.
‘Then there is the transfer of money. As I told you, I did not actually blackmail Ribaud; but when he had agreed to arrange our escape I offered to send quite a substantial sum of money to his bank in Paris. He accepted and gave me the address of his bank. It would have been round about four thousand pounds, but I felt that he would have earned it if he rigged matters with his police and had flown us to Tujoa.
‘As things turned out, we’ve got to hand it to him as a conscientious servant of the French Republic. To make certain that we did not blow the gaff about the Russians and their rockets on Yuloga he attempted to send us back there, and leave it to them to see to it that we had no chance to talk. And he knew that little gesture would cost him the four thousand he might have pocketed if he had really connived at our escape.
‘But now I am blackmailing him—good, hard and proper. Only Fournier and Joubert believe us to be criminals and knew that he meant to give us back to the Russians. The other boys, all the police, obviously believed that they had been given the job of ensuring that we should escape because we were members of the Deuxième Bureau who had got ourselves into a fix.
‘If there is an investigation and they are questioned, having no axe to grind they will tell what they believe to be the truth—and say that they were simply obeying the General’s orders.
‘If I send four thousand pounds to Ribaud’s bank in Paris nobody will be able to contest the fact that he has received a large sum of money from me. And in certain circumstances somebody might require him to explain why I did so. In this telegram I have asked my old pal if he wishes Charles Lorraine to be informed of this transaction. Charles, of course, is General de Gaulle. You will remember that he took the double cross of Lorraine as his symbol for the Free French. Ribaud will pick that one up as swiftly as I would drop a red-hot coal.
‘So, you see, he will be faced with a choice. Either he lets sleeping dogs lie and refrains for good from any attempt to have you and me arrested, or he will be called on to explain why he instructed his police to arrange our escape, and accepted a big bribe for doing so. I’ve given him until six o’clock this evening to make up his mind. Now, whether he gives in or, more maddened than ever by my threat, decides to go all out to get us, lies in the lap of the gods.’