The Wreck Of The Mary Deare

We cleared the saloon table of tools and wood-shavings, and I sat him down and gave him a drink and a cigarette and introduced him to Mike. It was neat rum I gave him and he knocked it straight back, and he drew on his cigarette as though it were the first he’d had in days. His suit was old and frayed and I remember wondering whether the Dellimare Company had paid him. Oddly enough, he accepted Mike at once and, without attempting to get me alone, asked straight out what Gundersen had wanted, what he had said.

I told him, and when I had finished, I said, ‘Gundersen suspects something. He hinted as much.’ I paused, waiting for the explanation he had promised me. But all he said was, ‘I’d forgotten that Higgins might work it out.’ He was speaking to himself.

‘What about that explanation?’ I asked him.

‘Explanation?’ He stared at me blankly.

‘You surely don’t imagine,’ I said, ‘that I can be a party to a piece of deception that involves the owners, the insurance people, everybody with a financial interest in the ship, unless I know that there is some good reason?’ I told him I considered that my duty was clear. ‘Either you explain why you’ve withheld this vital information or I go to the authorities.’ An obstinate, shut look had come over his face. ‘Why pretend the ship went down, when at any moment she may be sighted lying there in the middle of the Minkies?’

‘She could have been carried there by the tides,’ he murmured.

‘She could have been, but she wasn’t.’ I lit a cigarette and sat down opposite him. He looked so desperately tired of it all. ‘Listen,’ I said more gently. ‘I’ve been trained in marine insurance. I know the procedure after the loss of a ship. Any moment now the Receiver of Wreck will start taking depositions under oath from everybody connected with the loss.

And under oath I’ve no alternative but to give the full-’

‘You won’t be called on to make a deposition,’ he said quickly. ‘You weren’t connected with the ship.’

‘No, but I was on board.’

‘By accident.’ He pushed his hand up through his hair in a gesture that brought it all back to me. ‘It’s not for you to make any comment.’

‘No, but if I have to make a statement under oath …’ I leaned across the table towards him. ‘Try and see it from my point of view,’ I said. ‘You made me a certain proposition that day in Paimpol. A proposition which, in the light of your failure to notify the owners of the present whereabouts of the ship, was entirely crooked. And Gundersen is beginning to think-’

‘Crooked?’ He began laughing and there was a note of hysteria in his voice. ‘Do you know what cargo the Mary Deare carried?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Aero engines. Snetterton told me.’

‘And did he tell you that the other Dellimare ship was moored next to the Mary Deare for four days in the Rangoon River? Those aero engines are in China now — sold to the Chinks for a mint of money.’

The positiveness of his accusation took me by surprise. ‘How can you be certain?’ I asked him.

He looked at me, hesitating for a moment. ‘All right. I’ll tell you. Because Dellimare offered me five thousand quid to wreck the Mary Deare. Cash — in fivers.’

In the sudden silence I could hear the lapping of the water at the bottom of the slip. ‘Dellimare? Are you serious?’ I asked.

‘Yes, Dellimare.’ His voice was angry and bitter. ‘It was after old Taggart died. Dellimare was desperate then. He had to improvise. And, by the luck of the devil, I was on board. He knew my record. He thought he could buy me.’ He leaned back and lit another cigarette, his hands shaking. ‘Sometimes I wish to God I’d accepted his offer.’

I poured him another drink. And then I said, ‘But I still don’t understand why you should conceal the Mary Deare’s position. Why haven’t you told all this to the authorities?’

He turned and looked at me. ‘Because if Gundersen knows where she is, he’ll go out there and destroy her.’

That was nonsense, of course. You can’t destroy a 6,000-ton ship just like that. I told him so. He’d only got to go to the authorities, demand an examination of the vessel and the whole thing would be decided. But he shook his head. ‘I have to go back myself — with somebody like you that I can trust.’

‘You mean you’re not sure about what you just told me — about the cargo?’

He didn’t say anything for a moment, but just sat there, hunched over his drink, smoking. You could feel his nerves in the stillness of the cabin. ‘I want you to take me out there,’ he said finally. ‘You and Duncan.’ He turned, leaning towards us. ‘You’ve been in marine insurance, haven’t you, Sands? You know how to fix up a salvage contract. Now listen. When will your boat be ready?’

‘Not till the end of the month,’ Mike said, and the way he said it was a warning to me that he didn’t want to have anything to do with it.