“Thank you.” He looked at Van Effen. “As a matter of interest, who gave Miss Plenderleith the diamonds — and the plans?”
“What does it matter now?” Van Effen’s voice was heavy, remote. “It’s all past and done with now.”
“Please,” Nicolson persisted. It had suddenly become essential to stall for time. “I really would like to know.”
“Very well.” Van Effen looked at him curiously. “I’ll tell you. Farnholme had them both — and he had them nearly all the time. That should have been obvious to you from the fact that Miss Plenderleith had them. Where the plans came from I’ve told you I don’t know: the diamonds were given him by the Dutch authorities in Borneo.”
“They must have had a great deal of faith in him,” Nicolson said dryly.
“They had. They had every reason to. Farnholme was utterly reliable. He was an infinitely resourceful and clever man, and knew the East — especially the islands — as well as any man alive. We know for a fact that he spoke at least fourteen Asiatic languages.”
“You seem to have known a great deal about him.” “We did. It was our business — and very much to our interest — to find out all we could. Farnholme was one of our archenemies. To the best of our knowledge he had been a member of your Secret Service for just over thirty years.”
There were one or two stifled gasps of surprise and the sudden low murmur of voices. Even Yamata had sat down again and was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, his keen dark face alight with interest.
“Secret Service!” Nicolson let his breath go in a long, soundless whistle of surprise, rubbed a hand across his forehead in a gesture of disbelief and wonderment. He had guessed as much five minutes ago. Under the protective cover of his hand his eyes flickered sideways for a split second, glanced through the open door of the council house, then looked at Van Effen. “But — but Miss Plenderleith said he commanded a regiment in Malaya, some years ago.”
“That’s right, he did.” Van Effen smiled. “At least, he appeared to.”
“Go on, go on.” It was Captain Findhorn who urged him. “Not much to go on with. The Japanese and myself knew of the missing plans, within hours of their being stolen. I was after them with official Japanese backing. We hadn’t reckoned on Farnholme having made arrangements to take the diamonds with him also — a stroke of genius on Farnholme’s part. It served a double purpose. If anyone penetrated his disguise as an alcoholic beachcomber on the run, he could buy his way out of trouble. Or if anyone were still suspicious of him and discovered the diamonds they would be sure to think that that accounted for his disguise and odd behaviour and let it go at that. And, in the last resort, if the Japanese discovered on what ship he was, he hoped that cupidity or their natural desire to recover such a valuable wartime merchandise would make them think twice about sinking the ship, in the hope that they might get the plans and so recover the diamonds another way, killing two birds with one stone. I tell you, Farnholme was brilliant. He had the most diabolically ill luck.”
“It didn’t work out that way,” Findhorn objected. “Why did they sink the Kerry Dancer!”
“The Japanese didn’t know he was aboard at the time,” Van Effen explained. “But Siran did — he always did. He was after the diamonds, I suspect, because some renegade Dutch official double-crossed his own people and gave Siran the information in return for a promised share of the profits when Siran laid hands on the stones. He would never have seen a single guilder or stone. Neither would the Japanese.”
“A clever attempt to discredit me.” It was Siran speaking for the first time, his voice smooth and controlled. “The stones would have gone to our good friends and allies, the Japanese. That was our intention. My two men here will bear me out.”
“It will be difficult to prove otherwise,” Van Effen said indifferently. “Your betrayal this night is worth something. No doubt your masters will throw the jackal a bone.” He paused, then went on: “Farnholme never suspected who I was — not, at least, until after we had been several days in the lifeboat. But I had known him all along, cultivated him, drunk with him. Siran here saw us together several times and must have thought that Farnholme and I were more than friends, a mistake anyone might make. That, I think, is why he rescued me — or rather didn’t chuck me overboard when the Kerry Dancer went down. He thought I either knew where the diamonds were or would find out from Farnholme.”
“Another mistake,” Siran admitted coldly. “I should have let you drown.”
“You should. Then you might have got the whole two million to yourself.” Van Effen paused for a moment’s recollection, then looked at the Japanese officer. “Tell me, Captain Yamata, has there been any unusual British naval activity in the neighbourhood recently?”
Captain Yamata looked at him in quick surprise. “How do you know?”
“Destroyers, possibly?” Van Effen had ignored the question. “Moving in close at night?”
“Exactly.” Yamata was astonished. “They come close in to Java Head each night, not eighty miles from here, then retire before dawn, before our planes can come near. But how—–”
“It is easily explained. On the dawn of the day the Kerry Dancer was sunk, Farnholme spent over an hour in the radio room. Almost certainly he told them of his escape hopes — south from the Java Sea. No allied ship dare move north of Indonesia — it would be a quick form of suicide. So they’re patrolling the south, moving close in at nights. My guess is that they’ll have another vessel patrolling near Bali. You have made no effort to deal with this intruder, Captain Yamata?”
“Hardly.” Yamata’s tone was dry. “The only vessel we have here is our commander’s, Colonel Kiseki’s. It is fast enough, but too small — just a launch, really only a mobile radio station. Communications are very difficult in these parts.”
“I see.” Van Effen looked at Nicolson. “The rest is obvious. Farnholme came to the conclusion that it was no longer safe for him to carry the diamonds round with him any longer — nor the plans. The plans, I think, he gave to Miss Plenderleith aboard the Viroma, the diamonds on the island — he emptied his own bag and filled it with grenades … I have never known a braver man.”
Van Effen was silent for a few moments, then continued. “The poor renegade Muslim priest was just that and no more: Farnholme’s story, told on the spur of the moment, was completely untrue, but typical of the audacity of the man — to accuse someone else of what he was doing himself . . . And just one final thing — my apologies to Mr. Walters here.” Van Effen smiled faintly. “Farnholme wasn’t the only one who was wandering into strange cabins that night. I spent over an hour in Mr. Walters’s radio room. Mr. Walters slept well. I carry things with me that ensure that people will sleep well.”
Walters stared at him, then glanced at Nicolson, remembering how he had felt that next morning, and Nicolson remembered how the radio operator had looked, white, strained and sick. Van Effen caught Walters’s slow nod of understanding.
“I apologise, Mr. Walters. But I had to do it, I had to send out a message. I am a skilled operator, but it took me a long time. Each time I heard footsteps in the passage outside, I died a thousand deaths. But I got my message through.”
“Course, speed and position, eh?” Nicolson said grimly.
“Plus a request not to bomb the oil cargo tanks. You just wanted the ship stopped, isn’t that it?”
“More or less,” Van Effen admitted. “I didn’t expect them to make quite so thorough a job of stopping the ship, though. On the other hand, don’t forget that if I hadn’t sent the message, telling them the diamonds were on board, they would probably have blown the ship sky-high.”
“So we all owe our lives to you,” Nicolson said bitterly. “Thank you very much.” He looked at him bleakly for a long, tense moment, then swung his gaze away, his eyes so obviously unseeing that no one thought to follow his gaze. But his eyes were very far indeed from unseeing, and there could be no doubt about it now. McKinnon had moved, and moved six inches, perhaps nearer nine, in the past few minutes, not in the uncontrolled, jerky twitchings of an unconscious man in deep-reaching pain, but in the stealthy, smoothly coordinated movements of a fully conscious person concentrating on inching silently across the ground, so silently, so soundlessly, with such imperceptible speed that only a man with his nerves strung up to a pitch of hyper-sensitivity could have seen it at all. But Nicolson saw it, knew there could be no mistake at all. Where originally there had been head, shoulders and arms lying in the bar of light that streamed out through the door, now there was only the back of the black head and one tanned forearm. Slowly, unconcernedly, his face an empty, expressionless mask, Nicolson let his gaze wander back to the company. Van Effen was speaking again, watching him with speculative curiosity.