Plon Plon’s baubles to the Messageries Impériales, only consider. It needs just one guard to be corrupted. Or suppose the ship’s captain—or any member of the crew—cannot resist the money offered by an international brotherhood of crime. No matter that his ultimate reward is likely to be a bullet in the head. What then? We already know there is a stoker on this ship who cannot be a stoker. A helmsman in his sou’wester could have been anyone. Above all, only a complete fool would trust a consignment of royal gems to a box that has been stamped and marked with a Napoleonic crown.”
“Then who is beyond bribing?”
“The Prince’s make-believe valet, if no one else. You have met the man already. Theodore Cabell, otherwise known as Captain Cabell, late of the Swiss military intelligence service, for the time being in the service of our client. A man whose bland manner belies tenacity and resolve. A sharp mind. It was he who first suspected the conspiracy of the forged despatches between Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria and the Comtesse de Flandre eighteen months ago. My success in the matter owed more than a little to him.”
He closed the lid again and locked it.
I believe it was the tension of what had gone before that now overcame me. I began to shake with laughter at the thought of the temperance pamphlets in the royal treasure chest—and the baubles no doubt on their way to the military security of Aldershot Garrison. I confess that it was not a healthy or wholesome laughter; even at that moment, it felt too close to hysteria. If I had stopped to think for a moment, I should have known, as Holmes did, that the worst dangers still lay ahead. When Rawdon Moran discovered how neatly he had been cheated, the matter would not rest there.
At that moment, the hoarse wail of the Comtesse de Flandre’s siren, which had diminished every minute as the steam pipe failed, faded altogether. It was a warning that the sea washing through the stoke-hold had put out the last fires. Apart from the scattered oil-lights along the lower-deck passageways and the upper-deck structures, the steamer was dead. Only the whistle of the Princess Henriette still carried its gusts of sound across the murky water. In the quietness around us, there was a sudden voice of command from the companionway to the upper deck.
“Holloa! Holloa! Is there anyone still down there? Make yourselves known! The ship is going over! Our last boat must cast off in five minutes! Are you there? Is anyone still there?”
Without waiting for a reply, the officer went back to the upper deck. Holmes had kept his forefinger to his lips to indicate silence. Now he lowered it.
“This is not over,” he said softly. “Have you your revolver with you?”
“Of course. Have you?”
“No. I should like to borrow yours, if you would be so kind.”
With a sense of exasperation, I gave it to him. We went slowly back towards the companionway steps, through the rush and swill of water on the tilted deck planking of the passageway. I guessed there would be no further warning before a sudden lurch and capsizing of the broken hull. We came up into the fog and the cold, between the funnels and the after-saloon. There was a haloed light here and there, but the vapour in the air seemed as thick as ever. No one remained in the first-class saloon. Plon Plon and his party were safe if anyone was. Two or three of the ship’s officers and a handful of passengers seemed to be making their way towards the boat.
What followed next was beyond anything I could have imagined. We were standing behind the funnels just aft of the remains of the navigation-bridge. Lifeboats from the Princesse Henriette had come alongside the stern and taken off the passengers. The forward deck of our vessel was thankfully deserted. At the moment of the impact, the bow of the Henriette had not quite cut us in two. Now, beneath my feet I felt the timbers of the Comtesse de Flandre pulling apart; then I heard them screech and rend. Without further warning, the intolerable weight of tons of water in the depths of the ship on its port side twisted the broken hull beyond endurance. There came a deep rumble, though not a loud one.
Through the last drifts of smoke and steam that overhung the deck, unreal as if in a dream, I saw the