The days passed and we heard no more from Tommy Tarantello. Life in the house on Oswald Street went back to normal. Or almost. Even though no one mentioned the powerful gangster, a guarded, uneasy feeling hung in the air after his visit.
For my part, I had other things to think about. One morning when Bernie and I were working in the shop, I found an unused postcard and some stamps in a box of bits and pieces. I smuggled the card, stamps and a pencil back to my cellar and once there I addressed the card to Ana and Signor Fidardo and wrote a note:
We are well. Staying in Glasgow a while longer. The Chief sends his love. Sally Jones
All I had to do now was post the card and I was intending to do so the next time Bernie and I were sent out on some job.
I didn’t have long to wait. The very next day Lucy asked us to run an errand for her. We were to return a dress she had on approval from a shop in Bath Street. Before we left, I ran back down to my cellar and fetched the postcard.
I kept my eyes open for a letter box on the way to Bath Street, but didn’t find one, so on our way back I made sure we passed the post office by Central Station. Bernie was surprised when I stopped at the big, red post box outside the post office. I took out the postcard and popped it into the dark slot in the post box.
Now I felt a great sense of relief. At last I could forget the awful nightmare about Ana, Moira and the Twilight Quay!
At that moment, however, I heard a sharp voice behind Bernie and me.
“What were you up to there?”
I turned round quickly and there was Flintheart, although it took me a few seconds to recognize her. She was dressed in a very expensive sable cape and she had a posh fur cap perched on her head. I’d seen the cape before—Skinflint had bought it off a thief who specialized in stealing expensive clothes from the cloakrooms of city restaurants. The fur cap, no doubt, was also stolen goods.
Flintheart stared at me suspiciously. She must have been coming out of the post office just as I was putting the postcard in the post box.
“What was that?” she said to Bernie again. “Whatever it was the ape put in the post? It looked like a postcard.”
Bernie didn’t know what to say. He looked at me, but I stared at the ground and pretended not to understand what they were talking about.
“Who was it who sent you into the city?” Flintheart said impatiently.
“Lucy did,” Bernie said.
Flintheart licked her thin lips, as she always did when she was being nosy.
“Lucy? Was she the one who asked you to post a card? Who was it going to?”
Bernie shook his head. “No,” he said. “We were returning a dress.”
“A dress? What are you talking about now? Who asked you to post the card?”
Bernie looked at me, obviously hoping I would help him out.
Flintheart snorted. “Bernie, you’re hopeless,” she said. “Push off now and go back to the house and find something useful to do. But don’t go the same way as me! It’s not proper for a lady to be seen in your sort of company.”
Not much happened during the following week, except the arrival of winter in Scotland. First came cold air sweeping down from the Arctic Ocean to the north, followed by a deep depression moving in from the south-west. The best part of three feet of snow fell on Glasgow in a couple of days. I thought of the Chief and hoped he’d managed to steer clear of the storm out in the Atlantic.
It was almost a month since I’d last heard anything from the Valkyrie. At that point, the Chief and his crew had just been setting out on their long return voyage across the Atlantic. How far had they sailed by now? And when might the Valkyrie be expected back in Glasgow?
In the hope of picking up news, I eavesdropped on every conversation in earshot. And one Friday while I was sweeping the floor in Lucky Lucy’s, Gordon came in to have a chat with Lucy.
“That ape is really quite useful,” I heard Lucy say. “How long can we keep it?”
“That’s up to Moira,” Gordon answered.
“What about that sailor then?” Lucy wondered. “He owns the ape, doesn’t he? Won’t he want it back?”
“I’ve no doubt he will,” Gordon answered. “But we aren’t likely to see Koskela for some time.”
And then Gordon told Lucy about an accident that had happened ten days earlier on the Valkyrie. A deckhand had fallen from the rigging in rough weather and been so badly injured his life was in danger. The Chief had decided to turn back and seek emergency help in America.
“Moira sent a telegram to Koskela,” Gordon said. “She ordered him to forget about the deckhand and to make for Scotland as planned. But Koskela refused and, instead, the Valkyrie is heading for a small island called Saint-Pierre off the coast of Newfoundland. It seems there’s a medical station there.”
The Chief was right, of course, to interrupt his voyage across the Atlantic and I wouldn’t have wanted him to do anything different. In spite of that, though, my whole body ached with disappointment. This news meant the Chief couldn’t be expected back in Glasgow for a long time. Possibly not for a couple of months, if the worst came to the worst. And there was nothing I could do about it, apart from hold on and try to keep my spirits up.
It was going to be hard for me.