left us just a little stunned, and it was Godall who brought us back around by saying to St. Ives, “I fancy that there is no Professor Frost at Edinburgh in any capacity at all.”
“Not a chemist, certainly. Not in any of the sciences. That much is a ruse.”
“And it’s his handwriting, too, there at the end.”
“Of course it is.” St. Ives shuddered. Here was an old wound opening up—Alice, Narbondo’s death in Scandinavia, St. Ives once again grappling with weighty moral questions that had proven impossible to settle. All he could make out of it all was guilt—his own. And finally he had contrived, by setting himself adrift, simply to wipe it out of his mind. Now this—Narbondo returning like the ghost at the feast...
“It’s just the tiniest bit shaky, though,” Godall said, “as if he were palsied or weak but was making a great effort to disguise it, so as to make the handwriting of this new letter as like the old as possible. I’d warrant that he wasn’t well enough to write the whole thing, but could only manage a couple of sentences; the rest was written for him.”
“A particularly clever forger, perhaps...” began St. Ives. But Godall pointed out the puzzle:
“Why forge another man’s handwriting but not use his name? That’s the key, isn’t it? There’s no point in such a forgery unless these are deeper waters than they appear to be.”
“Perhaps someone wanted the letter to get round to us, to make us believe Narbondo is alive...”
“Then it’s a puzzling song and dance,” said Godall, “and far more a dangerous one. We’re marked men if she’s right. It’s Narbondo’s way of calling us out. I rather believe, though, that this is his way of serving her a warning, of filling her with fear; he’s come back, he means to say, and he wants that notebook.”
“I believe,” said St. Ives, “that if I were her I’d tell him, if she knows where it is.”
“That’s what frightens me about the woman,” said Godall, sweeping tobacco off the counter. “She seems to see this as an opportunity of some sort, doesn’t she? She means to tackle the monster herself. My suggestion is that we find out the whereabouts of this man Piper. He must be getting on in age, probably retired from Oxford long ago.”
Just then a lad came in through the door with the Standard, and news that the first of the ships had gone down off Dover. It was another piece to the puzzle, anyone could see that, or rather could sense it, even though there was no way to know how it fit.
The ship had been empty, its captain, crew, and few paying passengers having put out into wooden boats for the most curious reason. The captain had found a message in the ship’s log—scrawled into it, he thought, by someone on board, either a passenger or someone who had come over the side. It hadn’t been there when they’d left the dock at Gravesend; the captain was certain of it. They had got a false start, having to put in at Sterne Bay, and they lost a night there waiting for the cargo that didn’t arrive.
Someone, of course, had sneaked on board and meddled with the log; there had never been any cargo.
What the message said was that every man on board must get out into the boats when the ship was off Ramsgate on the way to Calais. They must watch for a sailing craft with crimson sails. This boat would give them a sign, and then every last one of them would take to the lifeboats and row for all he was worth until they’d put a quarter mile between themselves and the ship. Either that or they would die—all of them.
It was a simple mystery, really, baffling, but with nothing grotesque about it. Until you thought about it—about what would have happened if the captain hadn’t opened the logbook and those men hadn’t got into the boat. The message was in earnest. The ship sank, pretty literally like a stone, and although the crew was safe, their safety was a matter of dumb luck. Whoever had engineered the disaster thought himself to be Destiny, and had played fast and high with the lives of the people on board. That had been the real message, and you can bank on it.
The captain lost his post as well as his ship. Why hadn’t he turned about and gone back to Dover? Because the