“Hey! Hey there! Are you all right?”

For a moment he didn’t know where to look. The voice seemed to have come out of the sky. Then he saw, in the bows of the ship, leaning over the taffrail, a man in oilskins and sou’wester. He waved at Ricky.

“Are you OK, mate?” shouted the man.

Ricky tried to answer but could only produce a croak.

“Hang on, I’ll be with you. Hang on.”

Ricky hauled himself up another three rungs. His reeling head was just below the level of the jetty. He pushed his left arm through the rungs of the ladder and hung there, clinging with his right hand. He heard boots clump down the gangway and along the jetty towards him.

“You’ll be all right,” said the voice, close above him. He let his head flop back. The face under the sou’wester was red and concerned and looked very big against the sky. An arm and a purplish hand reached down. “Come on, then,” said the voice, “only a couple more.”

“I’m sort of — gone—” Ricky whispered.

“Not you. You’re fine. Make the effort, Jack.”

He made the effort and was caught by the arms and saved.

He lay on the jetty saying, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” and being sick.

The man was very kind. He took off his oilskin and spread it over Ricky, whose teeth now chattered like castanets. He lay on his back and saw the clouds part and disperse. He felt the sun on his face.

“You’re doing good, mate,” said the man. “How’s about we go on board and take a drop of something for the cold? You was aboard us this morning? That right?”

“Yes. This morning.”

“Up she rises. Take it easy. Lovely.”

He was on his feet. They began to move along the jetty.

“Is there anybody else?” Ricky said.

“How’d you mean, anybody else?”

“Watching.”

“You’re not yourself. You’ll be all right. Here we go, then.”

Ricky made heavy work of the gangway. Once on board he did what he was told. The man took him into the little saloon. He helped him strip and brought him a vest and heavy underpants. He lay on a bench and was covered with a blanket and overcoats and given half a tumbler of raw whiskey. It made him gasp and shudder but it ran through him like fire. “Super,” he said. “That’s super.”

“What happened, then? Did you slip on the jetty or what?”

“I was pushed. No, I’m not wandering and I’m not tight — yet. I was given a bloody great shove in the back. I swear I was. Listen.”

The man listened. He scraped his jaw and eyed Ricky and every now and then wagged his head.

“I was looking up at the deck, trying to see if anyone was about. I wanted to know when she sails. I was on the edge almost. I can feel it now — two hands hard in the small of my back. I took a bloody great stride into damnall and dropped. I hit something. Under my eye, it was.”

The man leaned forward and peered at his face. “It’s coming up lovely,” he admitted. “I’ll say that for you.”

“Didn’t you see anybody?”

“Me! I was taking a bit of kip, mate, wasn’t I? Below. Something woke me, see. Thunder or what-have-you and I come up on deck and there you was, swimming and ducking and grabbing the ladder. I hailed you but you didn’t seem to take no notice. Not at first you didn’t.”

“He must have been hiding in the goods shed. He must have followed me down and sneaked into the shed.”

“Reckon you think you know who done it, do you? Somebody got it in for you, like?” He stared at Ricky. “You don’t look the type,” he said. “Nor yet you don’t sound like it, neither.”

“It’s hard to explain,” Ricky sighed. He was beginning to feel sleepy.

“Look,” said the man, “we sail at six. Was you thinking of sailing with us, then? Just to know, like. No hurry.”

“Oh yes,” Ricky said. “Yes, please.”

“Where’s your dunnage?”

Ricky pulled himself together and told him. The man said his mate, the second deckhand, was relieving him as watchman at four-thirty. He offered to collect Ricky’s belongings from the hotel and pay his bill. Ricky fished his waterproof wallet out of an inside pocket of his raincoat and found that the notes were not too wet to be presentable.

“I can’t thank you enough,” he said. “Look. Take a taxi. Buy yourself a bottle of Scotch from me. You will, won’t you?”

He said he would. He also said his name was Jim Le Compte and they’d have to get Ricky dressed proper and sitting up before the Old Man came aboard them.

And by six o’clock Ricky was sitting in the saloon fully dressed with a rug over his knees. It was a smoother crossing than he had expected, and rather to his surprise he was not seasick, but slept through most of it. At Montjoy he said goodbye to his friend. “Look,” he said, “Jim, I owe you a lot already. Will you do something more for me?”

“What would that be?”

“Forget about there being anyone else in it. I just skidded and fell. Please don’t think,” Ricky added, “that I’m in any sort of trouble. Believe me, I’m not. Word of honor. But — will you be a good chap and leave it that way?”

Le Compte looked at him for some moments with his head on one side. “Fair enough, squire,” he said at last. “If that’s the way you want it. You skidded and fell.”

“You are a good chap,” said Ricky. He went ashore carrying a rucksack full of wet clothes and took a taxi to the Cove.

He let himself in and went straight upstairs, passing Mrs. Ferrant who was speaking on the telephone.

When he entered his room a very tall man rose from the armchair.

It was his father.

iv

“So you see I’m on duty,” said Alleyn. “Fox and I have got a couple of tarted-up apartments at the Neo-Ritz or whatever it calls itself in Montjoy, the use of a police car, and a tidy program of routine work ahead. I wouldn’t have any business talking to you, Rick, except that by an exasperating twist you may turn out to be a source of information.”

“Hi!” said Ricky excitedly. “Is it about Miss Harkness?”

“Why?” Alleyn asked sharply.

“I only wondered.”

“I wouldn’t dream of telling you what it’s about normally, but if we’re to get any further I think I’ll have to. And Rick — I want an absolute assurance that you’ll discuss this business with nobody. But nobody. In the smallest degree. It must be as if it’d never been. Right?”

“Right,” said Ricky and his father thought he heard a tinge of regret.

“Nobody,” Alleyn repeated. “And certainly not Julia Pharamond.”

Ricky blushed.

“As far as you’re concerned, Fox and I have come over to discuss a proposed adjustment to reciprocal procedure between the island constabulary and the mainland police. We shall be sweating it out at interminable and deadly boring meetings. That’s the story. Got it?”

“Yes, Cid.” (“Cid,” deriving from C.I.D., was the name Ricky and his friends gave his father.)

“Yes. And nobody’s going to believe it when we start nosing round at the riding stables. But never mind. Let’s say that as we were here, the local chaps thought they’d like a second opinion. By the way, talking about local chaps, the Super at Montjoy who called us in hasn’t helped matters by bursting his appendix and having an urgent operation. The local sergeant at the Cove, Plank — but of course you know Plank — is detailed to the job.”

“He’s nobody’s fool.”

“Good. Now, coming back to you. The really important bit to remember is that we must be held to take no interest whatever in Monsieur Ferrant’s holidays and we’ve never even heard of Sydney Jones.”

“But,” Ricky ventured, “I’ve told the Pharamonds about his visit to you and Mum.”

“Damn. All right, then. It passed off quietly and nothing has ever come of it.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. Loud and clear.”

“Yes, Cid.”

“Good. All right. Are you hungry, by the way?”

“Now you mention it.”

“Could that formidable lady downstairs be persuaded to give us both something to eat?”