Trustee From the Toolroom (11 page)

He thought perhaps that he could raise about a hundred pounds without increasing the mortgage on the house. But Katie would have to know.

If he took a hundred pounds 'from their bank account it would drain it to the very bottom, to the utmost limit of overdraft that the bank manager would allow. There was a little money owing to him from the
Miniature Mechanic,
perhaps about fifteen pounds. Katie, in theory at any rate, could carry on for a month or two upon her salary to meet the living expenses of Janice and herself; they had just paid the school fees for the coming term. Without his earnings they could not pay off the debt upon the house, or maintain anything; they could not paint the windows or replace sheets or blankets or pillowcases or clothes. If he were to take a hundred pounds and go off on a trip like this, Katie would be down to the barest of bare bedrock.

He got up and walked about the workshop, uncertain in his mind. Presently it occurred to him that by Ids movements he might be waking Janice, who slept in the little room off the workshop that once had been the scullery. He opened the door gently, and looked in. Janice was sleeping deeply, the plastic duck on the table by her side perched hazardously on its basketwork nest stabilized by the weight of the metal eggs. She had thrown the bedclothes off from her shoulders and one arm was out. The room was cold; he went over to the bed and gently put the arm inside and tucked the bedclothes up around her shoulders. She did not wake, and he went back into the workshop, closing the door softly behind him.

The diamonds
must
be in the jewel case, safely buried in the lump of concrete that had once been
Shearwater.
It was the only place where they could be. It was just a matter of someone going there and getting them, without attracting too much attention.

And he was the trustee.

He sat down at his desk again, irresolute. Suppose he didn't go. With the help of Mr Sanderson and Mr Thorn and Albatross Airways he might have enough money to get there - just - but he certainly hadn't got enough money to get back. He would be leaving Katie with little or no money for an indefinite time, with Janice to look after. John Dermott and his sister Jo wouldn't have wanted him to do that. . .

If he didn't recover her little fortune, well, Janice would be all right. Katie had said that they could manage, and Katie knew. She'd have to work like any other girl as soon as she could leave school; probably Mr Buckley would give her a job in the shop. It would be just as if she was their own -daughter. She'd never be a fine lady, but who wanted to be a fine lady these days, anyway ?

He sat there in mental torment, knowing that he couldn't, take it that way. Unless he made a real effort to get back what belonged to her, he'd never be able to look at her without feeling ashamed of himself. He'd never be able to think of John and Jo without feeling ashamed of himself. They had made him the trustee.

But, dear Lord, what was Katie going to say about it all ?

He went upstairs presently, conscious of a bad half hour ahead of him. Katie was still up, sitting by the fire knitting something for Janice and looking at the television. He sat down opposite her, and said, ' I've got something I want to talk about.'

' I know what that is,' she remarked, turning off the set.

'What's that,' he asked, startled.

She said complacently, ' You want to go out to this place Tahiti. I heard you talking about it on the telephone. I think it's silly.'

'Better wait to say that till you know all about it,' he replied, a little nettled.

'What don't I know?'

'Everything,' he said. 'You remember that time when I went down to the yacht with them to fix up an electric light over the compass?' She nodded. 'Well, it wasn't an electric light at all. It was something quite different.'

'I guessed that much,' she said. 'What was it?'

'Jo's jewel case,' he said. ' Sort of building it into the boat.' He started in and told her the whole thing; it took about a quarter of an hour. "Course, I believed what John told me,' he said. ' He told me it was just Jo's rings and things like that. But now we know that they took £26,000 of diamonds along with them, I bet that they were in that jewel case, too.'

Katie got up from her chair. ' Make a pot of tea,' she said. She went and busied herself in her little kitchenette while she thought it over. She came back presently with two cups of tea. 'Suppose you went out there,' she said, ' what's it all going to cost ?'

'Everything we've got and probably a bit more,' he replied. 'That's just to get there. Getting back would cost as much again.'

She stared at him helplessly. ' But that's crazy!'

He rubbed his hand across his eyes. ' I know. The other way is to do nothing and just leave it be.'

She sat in silence for a minute. 'That don't seem right,' she said at last. 'I can't say I like that much better.'

He looked up at her gratefully; Katie was coming round to the unthinkable course he had proposed. 'I like it a bloody sight worse,' he said. 'I'd never be able to think of John and Jo again if we just sat tight on our fannies and did nothing.'

'That's enough of that shop language,' she said. 'Drink your tea while it's hot.' He obeyed her. 'This Governor in this place Papeete,' she said. 'Suppose you were to write to him and tell him all about it, couldn't he go there and get the box out of the keel ?'

Keith nodded. ' I thought of that. Tell you the truth, I don't just know what a Governor does. Would he be the top man ? An asylum's got a Board of Governors, but they aren't top of anything.'

'I think he's the top man,' said Katie. 'I read about a Governor in a book once.'

'That's what I thought,' said Keith. ' If that's right he'd be paid by the Government - the French Government, I suppose, in Paris. Well, when John and Jo took those diamonds out of England they could have gone to prison for it - that's what Mr Carpenter said. Maybe the diamonds would have been confiscated if they'd been found out.' She nodded. 'Well now, who's to say that if this Governor got his hands on them they wouldn't be confiscated again? I just don't know, and, what's more, I don't know who to ask, safely. I mean, £26,000 is worth while anybody going after, if they know it's there. I don't feel like telling anyone about it, least of all this Governor.'

She nodded slowly. Twenty-six thousand pounds was an incredible sum of money to her, but if it existed at all it belonged to Janice, and no one else was going to lay a finger on it. She knew from her Sunday newspaper that many a bank manager had fallen from grace for much less than that, and who was to say that a French Governor would be any better ? She was reluctant to admit it and to face the infinite difficulties that would ensue, but Keith had the right idea. Better to say nothing to anybody and go after this himself. She asked him, ' What were you going to do in this place, Papeete, if the island's 300 miles away?'

'I don't honestly know,' he said. 'But look at it like this. Suppose we had lots of money, enough to do whatever we wanted without thinking about it.' She nodded. 'Well, I'd go out there and get a headstone for the grave made in this place Papeete, and then I'd hire a ship with a crew that knew the way around, and I'd go to this island and get the headstone set up on the grave and everything done proper. And I'd take a lot of photographs for Janice to see when she's older. Well, while I was there I'd go out to the wreck upon this reef in a small boat, and I'd know soon as I laid eyes on it if the box was still there in the concrete. Just behind the mast it was, towards the rudder end. I'd be a poor sort of a fish if I couldn't lay my hands upon it then, and get it away.'

'Well, we haven't got lots of money,' she said. 'Not for hiring ships and that. I suppose you'd say that if you can get a free ride out to this place Honolulu you can do the rest of it free, too.'

'I could try,' he said simply. 'Maybe I could do some work out there or something, if I get into a jam. much money do you think I could take with me? I was thinking I could take a hundred pounds.'

She laid her teacup down. ' I'll get the bank book.'

They discussed finances for a time, upon the basis that he would be away for three or four months. 'You forgot about the rest of the top flat,' she said. She figured with a stub of pencil on the back of the cheque book. ' I think it would be all right if you took a hundred and ten pounds,' she said. ' But we'd have to have money coming in by the middle of April or we wouldn't be able to pay school fees for the summer term for Janice at Miss Pearson's.'

'She'd have to go to the Council school.'

'I know. But Jo was against that.'

He nodded. 'That gives me a deadline, anyway.'

She sat deep in thought. At last she said, 'It'll be hot out in those parts, Keith. You'll have to take your cricket shirts and your blazer.' On that note they went to bed.

He knew shop hours, and he knew that half-past six on a pitch-dark January morning was no time to ring a busy man hurrying to catch the transport out to work at Blackbushe, forty miles from London. He waited until eight o'clock and rang Mrs Thorn, and got from her the telephone number of Albatross Airways, and the extension number. He inquired a little delicately if it was all right to ring Mr Thorn at his work, and got a somewhat affronted reply. 'Of course it's all right,' she said. 'Mr Thorn has a secretary.' He apologized and hung up, well pleased. Mr Oliver Thorn apparently was somebody at Albatross Airways Ltd.

Ten minutes later he was speaking to the man himself. He got a courteous reception, somewhat to his own surprise. 'Nice to hear your voice, Mr Stewart. We met last at the Baling and District exhibition.'

'That's right,' said Keith. 'I liked your Petrolea - liked it very much. If I'd been judging the locos I'd have given it a bronze."

'It wasn't worth it, Mr Stewart, not really. I should have fluted the connecting rods, and it's got cheesehead screws all over where they should be hex. I'll do better next time. But it goes all right.'

'Well, that's the main thing,' said Keith. 'Tell me, Mr Thorn, did you hear anything from Mr Sanderson about me?'

'Sure. He said you wanted to know if there was any chance of a ride with us to Honolulu.'

'That's right.'

'Well now, there is and there isn't, Mr Stewart. What I mean is, we don't carry passengers; we aren't allowed to. We run a freight service. We do sometimes stretch a point, but then it's for someone special like yourself, and we sign them on as crew - second engineer under instruction, or something like that. It's all at the discretion of the Chief Pilot, Captain Fielding. He'll be taking this Honolulu flight, and he's the one you'd have to get round.'

'You have got a machine going to Honolulu?'

'Oh, yes. Thursday or Friday of next week, as soon as the component is finished. We load at Liverpool, at Speke.' He paused. 'Are you doing anything today, Mr Stewart?'

'Nothing urgent.'

' Think you could come out here to Blackbushe and meet the boys? Captain Fielding, he's taking off for Ankara about three o'clock with four jet engines and spare parts and that, and then on the way back he picks up a load of cut flowers at Nice. He'll be gone three or four days. Then his next trip is the Honolulu one. He'll be here at dinner time, and you could have a talk with him.'

'What's the best way for me to get out to you at Blackbushe?'

There was a pause, and Keith heard, ' Daisy, what time is that truck leaving Belgrave Road with the manifolds? . . . Why not? . . . Okay.' He came back on the line. 'We've got a truck leaving Belgrave Road, that's by Victoria, about ten-thirty, Mr Stewart. One of our red trucks with Albatross all over it. If you wait for him on the Great West Road at the corner of South Baling Road, say - say about ten-fifty, I'll ring him and tell him to pick you up there then.'

'I'll be there waiting for him.'

'That's fine, Mr Stewart. There's four or five of the boys in the maintenance shop would like to meet you. I'll have a word with Captain Fielding, tell him what it's all about.'

There was plenty of time before he had to meet the truck. Janice went off to school, and Katie to the shop, and he went down into his workshop to find something that would entertain the fitters at Blackbushe. A couple of years before he had been doing some research upon miniature electric generators in connection with the Showman's version of his traction engine. He had evolved a little six-volt generator no more than an inch and a half in diameter running at 3,000 revs. For research purposes he had adapted the basic castings of his Hornet engine to make a new four-stroke seven cc engine running on petrol with a little carburettor, and in place of the reduction gear he had fitted a governor; ignition was by a tiny magneto of his own design and a miniature sparking plug. The whole lot mounted on a little baseplate was about four inches long, two inches wide, and two and a half inches high. It was an easy starter. He could flick it into life by swinging the flywheel at one end with his thumbnail, and as it speeded up to the governed revolutions a pea bulb at the other end glowed with the electricity it generated. It had always been a great success in workshops, and he put it in a little box and slipped it into his pocket.

By half past eleven he was sitting in the office with Mr Thorn, drinking a cup of tea. Albatross Airways Ltd was an independent company operating three ten-year-old Vikings and a couple of DCGbs, one of which was permanently on a trooping contract. Their offices in an old wartime hutment were not luxurious, but their shops were clean and adequately equipped.