“Hush!” said Fleet. “Our young friend’s making up his mind. To be sensible, I hope.”
“I haven’t got a lot of choice, have I?” said Luke loudly; and his manner became, in some way Bunty could recognise but not define, a direct response to Fleet’s, a nice balance of nervousness, doubt, and growing assurance. He had not looked at her throughout, and she understood that he dared not, that if he did his eyes would betray him, and the enemy would no longer believe in this guilt-ridden, squirming fugitive.
“It’s an alternative,” said Fleet, smiling at him with the first careless glint of contempt. “You can hand over and go free, or rot in gaol for fourteen years or so thinking about the money you can’t get at. For a million it might be worth it—not for this little lot, not by my measure. You please yourself.”
“It isn’t worth it by my measure, either.” He licked his dry lips and swallowed hard, reluctant but driven. “All right! ” he said in a gulping breath. “You can have the damned money!”
“That’s better,” said Fleet warmly. “I knew you’d see sense. Where is it?”
Bunty had not the least idea what Luke was going to say. She was lost, like Fleet’s henchmen, she could only wait, and be ready to follow whatever lead events and Luke offered her.
“You ought to have known, if you’d given any thought to it,” said Luke, with the feeble spleen of a defeated man scrabbling for what crumbs of dignity he can salvage. “You think we were going without it, or something, when we lit out of here down to the sea? We had the stuff down there already, of course, waiting till it was dark and we could slip away without being seen.”
“Aaaah!” breathed Fleet, and pondered in silence for a moment, his eyes narrowed upon Luke’s face. It was apt, it was reasonable, it would certainly have to be tested. “Go on, tell us more. Why didn’t you take off as soon as you got here?”
“Because it was nearly daylight. Anybody round here would know the boat. Even if they didn’t start investigating us, they might very well take it for granted the Alports were up here, and the local shop might send in, even on a Sunday, to see if they wanted supplies. There’s no telephone here, people come. The Alports are good customers, and well known. We didn’t want anyone poking around here and finding us instead, and that car in the garage. It seemed better to risk lying low to-day, and setting out after dark.”
“But you put the cash aboard in advance! Then why not your luggage, too?” demanded Fleet shrewdly.
“We wanted it. Damn it, we’d been up all night, we needed a bath… I had to shave… We weren’t expecting any trouble. I’ve been here before with the owners, I could account for being here if I had to—for everything except Pippa and the money.” He wiped his forehead feverishly; there was no need to act, sweat stood on him in globules, bitter as gall on his lips. “Pippa—it was too light to risk being seen carrying her down to the boat, and anyhow, there was no way of hiding her there any better than here. No use trying to sink her here, inshore. She had to wait for dark. But the money, just a flat parcel, that was only a minute’s job, so we made sure of it.”
“It occurs to me,” said Fleet thoughtfully, “that with all this talk of ‘ our ’ luggage your lady friend here doesn’t seem to have any belongings, beyond a handbag—I take it that grey one belongs to her? That was going to be a bit awkward, wasn’t it, girl? Are you always so improvident?”
“I’ve got nothing but a handbag,” Bunty said with hard deliberation, “because I walked out with nothing but a handbag. Why, is my business. He doesn’t know the reason, and you’re not interested, either. He told you, he picked me up in a pub. What’s the odds? If you know anything about that kid upstairs, you know that king-size case of hers is full of brand-new stuff. I carry a few extra pounds, but we’re much the same size. I could get by.”
Amazed, she watched the image she was projecting emerge and parade before him, no predictable bar-fly, but a woman on the dangerous verge of middle-age, a woman who had suddenly rebelled, looked over her shoulder and cut her losses. And how far from the truth was that picture? There had been a time, only twenty-four hours ago, when it would have seemed to her as close as a mirror-image. Now it was clear that she and this imaginary creature were at opposite poles, and never could, by any miracle, have touched fingertips. Fleet’s eyes went over her with mild curiosity, and looked away again. To him it was a reasonably convincing portrait she had drawn, or perhaps he didn’t care enough to probe any further.
“So you hid the money ready,” he said, eyeing Luke, “in the boat.”
“I didn’t say it was in the boat.” That would have been too easy, one man could go over the whole craft in ten minutes, and Luke wanted at least two of them out of the way. “It was getting light, we couldn’t hang around to unlock the boat-house. We had the stuff all proofed up for sea, in oiled silk and plastic, we just fastened a nylon line on the parcel and let it down over the edge of the jetty, into the water. There’s an old mooring ring down there, right at the seaward end, well down the stone facing, it’ll be under water now. But you can reach it, all right, if you lie on your stomach and reach over. The end of the line’s made fast to that.”
Blackie Crowe had paled with shock at the thought of fifteen thousand pounds bubbling about beneath the tide on the end of a nylon line. Even Fleet’s thick eyebrows arched as high as the Neanderthal bone-structure within would let them.
“I hope for your sake you did make it fast,” he said grimly. “How come, is it weighted, then?”
Luke nodded. “Enough to keep it down out of sight.” He came to his feet, slowly and cautiously, in order not to provoke Con’s jumpy trigger-finger, but readily enough to show his willingness to oblige. “I’ll go down with your man and show him,” he said, in a soft voice that did its best not to seem too eager.
“Ah, now, just a minute, not too fast.” Fleet waved him down again, but Luke, though he stayed where he was, remained standing. “How do I know you’re not in Channel class in the water? You might make a break for it with a nice clean dive while one of the boys was fishing off the end of the jetty. You might even stick a toe under him and help him into the water. And we might still be whistling for that money. Oh, no, laddie, you won’t do any showing, only on paper. We might never see you again.”
Luke jerked his head at Bunty. “You’d have her, wouldn’t you?” he said, aggrieved; but the very faint, opportunist glint in his eye was not quite concealed. “Think I’d do a thing like that to her?”
“Since you ask me, yes, I think you would. I’m not so sure you put the right value on the lady. No, you’ll stay here.”
“One man alone won’t have an easy job finding it,” Luke urged earnestly. “It’s pitch dark down there now, he’ll need somebody to give him a light, and hang on to him while he leans over. The ring must be eighteen inches under by now, and there’s a tidy drag below those rocks. You could lose him and the money.”
Fleet hesitated. “Know what, kid? I think you’re trying to pull something. You didn’t have much trouble putting it there, seemingly.”
“I didn’t have any! It was nearly daylight, and low tide, and I know the place. It’s a different cup of tea now, for somebody who doesn’t. Better let me go. I’ll do the fishing, if that’ll satisfy you.”