The Riddle of the Sands
“No, no, nothing. It must never be known.”
I let go the gig’s gunwale and watched her tighten her sheet and make a
tack or two to windward. Then I rowed back to the _Dulcibella_ as hard
as I could.
CHAPTER XX.
The Little Drab Book
I found Davies at the cabin table, surrounded with a litter of books.
The shelf was empty, and its contents were tossed about among the cups
and on the floor. We both spoke together.
“Well, what was it?”
“Well, what did she say?”
I gave way, and told my story briefly. He listened in silence, drumming
on the table with a book which he held.
“It’s not good-bye,” he said. “But I don’t wonder; look here!” and he
held out to me a small volume, whose appearance was quite familiar to
me, if its contents were less so. As I noted in an early chapter,
Davies’s library, excluding tide-tables, “pilots”, etc., was limited to
two classes of books, those on naval warfare, and those on his own
hobby, cruising in small yachts. He had six or seven of the latter,
including Knight’s _Falcon in the Baltic,_ Cowper’s _Sailing Tours,_
Macmullen’s _Down Channel_, and other less known stories of adventurous
travel. I had scarcely done more than look into some of them at
off-moments, for our life had left no leisure for reading. This
particular volume was—no, I had better not describe it too fully; but I
will say that it was old and unpretentious, bound in cheap cloth of a
rather antiquated style, with a title which showed it to be a guide for
yachtsmen to a certain British estuary. A white label partly scratched
away bore the legend “3_d_.” I had glanced at it once or twice with no
special interest.
“Well?” I said, turning over some yellow pages.
“Dollmann!” cried Davies. “Dollmann wrote it.” I turned to the
title-page, and read: “By Lieut. X——, R.N.” The name itself conveyed
nothing to me, but I began to understand. Davies went on: “The name’s
on the back, too—and I’m certain it’s the last she looked at.”
“But how do you know?”
“And there’s the man himself. Ass that I am not to have seen it before!
Look at the frontispiece.”
It was a sorry piece of illustration of the old-fashioned sort, lacking
definition and finish, but effective notwithstanding; for it was
evidently the reproduction, though a cheap and imperfect process, of a
photograph. It represented a small yacht at anchor below some woods,
with the owner standing on deck in his shirt sleeves: a well-knit,
powerful man, young, of middle height, clean-shaved. There appeared to
be nothing remarkable about the face; the portrait being on too small a
scale, and the expression, such as it was, being of the fixed
“photographic” character.
“How do you know him? You said he was fifty, with a greyish beard.”
“By the shape of his head; that hasn’t changed. Look how it widens at
the top, and then flattens—sort of wedge shaped—with a high, steep
forehead; you’d hardly notice it in that” (the points were not very
noticeable, but I saw what Davies meant). “The height and figure are
right, too; and the dates are about right. Look at the bottom.”
Underneath the picture was the name of a yacht and a date. The
publisher’s date on the title-page was the same.
“Sixteen years ago,” said Davies. “He looks thirty odd in that, doesn’t
he? And fifty now.”
“Let’s work the thing out. Sixteen years ago he was still an
Englishman, an officer in Her Majesty’s Navy. Now he’s a German. At
some time between this and then, I suppose, he came to grief—disgrace,
flight, exile. When did it happen?”
“They’ve been here three years; von Brüning said so.”
“It was long before that. She has talked German from a child. What’s
her age, do you think—nineteen or twenty?”
“About that.”
“Say she was four when this book was published. The crash must have
come not long after.”
“And they’ve been hiding in Germany since.
“Is this a well-known book?”
“I never saw another copy; picked this up on a second-hand bookstall
for threepence.”
“She looked at it, you say?”
“Yes, I’m certain of it.”
“Was she never on board you in September?”
“No; I asked them both, but Dollmann made excuses.”
“But _he—he_ came on board? You told me so.”
“Once; he asked himself to breakfast on the first day. By Jove! yes;
you mean he saw the book?
“It explains a good deal.”
“It explains everything.”
We fell into deep reflexion for a minute or two.
“Do you really mean _everything_?” I said. “In that case let’s sail
straight away and forget the whole affair. He’s only some poor devil
with a past, whose secret you stumbled on, and, half mad with fear, he
tried to silence you. But you don’t want revenge, so it’s no business
of ours. We can ruin him if we like; but is it worth it?”
“You don’t mean a word you’re saying,” said Davies, “though I know why
you say it; and many thanks, old chap. I didn’t mean ‘everything’. He’s
plotting with Germans, or why did Grimm spy on us, and von Brüning
cross-examine us? We’ve got to find out what he’s at, as well as who he
is. And as to her—what do you think of her now?”
I made my _amende_ heartily. “Innocent and ignorant,” was my verdict.
“Ignorant, that is, of her father’s treasonable machinations; but
aware, clearly, that they were English refugees with a past to hide.” I
said other things, but they do not matter. “Only,” I concluded, “it
makes the dilemma infinitely worse.”
“There’s no dilemma at all,” said Davies. “You said at Bensersiel that
we couldn’t hurt him without hurting her. Well, all I can say is, we’ve
_got_ to. The time to cut and run, if ever, was when we sighted her
dinghy. I had a baddish minute then.”
“She’s given us a clue or two after all.”
“It wasn’t our fault. To refuse to have her on board would have been to
give our show away; and the very fact that she’s given us clues decides
the matter. She mustn’t suffer for it.”
“What will she do?”
“Stick to her father, I suppose.”
“And what shall we do?”
“I don’t know yet; how can I know? It depends,” said Davies, slowly.
“But the point is, that we have two objects, equally important—yes,
equally, by Jove!—to scotch him, and save her.”
There was a pause.
“That’s rather a large order,” I observed. “Do you realise that at this
very moment we have probably gained the first object? If we went home
now, walked into the Admiralty and laid our facts before them, what
would be the result?”
“The Admiralty!” said Davies, with ineffable scorn.
“Well, Scotland Yard, too, then. Both of them want our man, I dare say.
It would be strange if between them they couldn’t dislodge him, and,
incidentally, either discover what’s going on here or draw such
attention to this bit of coast as to make further secrecy impossible.”
“It’s out of the question to let her betray her father, and then run
away! Besides, we don’t know enough, and they mightn’t believe us. It’s
a cowardly course, however you look at it.”
“Oh! that settles it,” I answered, hastily. “Now I want to go back over
the facts. When did you first see her?”
“That first morning.”
“She wasn’t in the saloon the night before?”
“No; and he didn’t mention her.”
“You would have gone away next morning if he hadn’t called?”
“Yes; I told you so.”
“He allowed her to persuade you to make that voyage with them?”
“I suppose so.”
“But he sent her below when the pilotage was going on?”
“Of course.”
“She said just now, ‘Father said you would be safe.’ What had you been
saying to her?”
“It was when I met her on the sand. (By the way, it wasn’t a chance
meeting; she had been making inquiries and heard about us from a
skipper who had seen the yacht near Wangeroog, and she had been down
this way before.) She asked at once about that day, and began
apologising, rather awkwardly, you know, for their rudeness in not
having waited for me at Cuxhaven. Her father found he must get on to
Hamburg at once.”
“But you didn’t go to Cuxhaven; you told her that? What exactly _did_
you tell her? This is important.”
“I was in a fearful fix, not knowing what _he_ had told her. So I said
something vague, and then she asked the very question von Brüning did,
‘Wasn’t there a _schrecklich_ sea round the Scharhorn?’
“She didn’t know you took the short cut, then?”
“No; he hadn’t dared to tell her.”
“She knew that _they_ took it?”
“Yes. He couldn’t possibly have hidden that. She would have known by
the look of the sea from the portholes, the shorter time, etc.”
“But when the _Medusa_ hove to and he shouted to you to follow
him—didn’t she understand what was happening?”
“No, evidently not. Mind you, she couldn’t possibly have heard what we
said, in that weather, from below. I couldn’t cross-question her, but
it was clear enough what she thought; namely, that he had hove to for
exactly the opposite reason, to say _he_ was taking the short cut, and
that I wasn’t to attempt to follow him.”
“That’s why she laid stress on _waiting_ for you at Cuxhaven?”
“Of course; mine would have been the longer passage.”
“She had no notion of foul play?”
“None—that I could see. After all, there I was, alive and well.”
“But she was remorseful for having induced you to sail at all that day,
and for not having waited to see you arrived safely.”
“That’s about it.”
“Now what did you say about Cuxhaven?”
“Nothing. I let her understand that I went there, and, not finding
them, went on to the Baltic by the Eider river, having changed my mind
about the ship canal.”
“Now, what about her voyage back from Hamburg? Was she alone?”
“No; the stepmother joined her.”
“Did she say she had inquired about you at Brunsbüttel?”
“No; I suppose she didn’t like to. And there was no need, because my
taking the Eider explained it.”
I reflected. “You’re sure she hadn’t a notion that you took the short
cut?”
“Quite sure; but she may guess it now. She guessed foul play by seeing
that book.”
“Of course she did; but I was thinking of something else. There are two
stories afloat now—yours to von Brüning, the true one, that you
followed the _Medusa_ to the short cut; and Dollmann’s to her, that you
went round the Scharhorn. That’s evidently his version of the
affair—the version he would have given if you had been drowned and
inquiries were ever made; the version he would have sworn his crew to
if they discovered the truth.”
“But he must drop that yarn when he knows I’m alive and back again.”
“Yes; but meanwhile, supposing von Brüning sees him _before_ he knows
you’re back again, and wants to find out the truth about that incident.
If I were von Brüning I should say, ‘By the way, what’s become of that
young Englishman you decoyed away to the Baltic?’ Dollmann would give
his version, and von Brüning, having heard ours, would know he was
lying, and had tried to drown you.”
“Does it matter? He must know already that Dollmann’s a scoundrel.”
“So we’ve been supposing; but we may be wrong. We’re still in the dark
as to Dollmann’s position towards these Germans. They may not even know
he’s English, or they may know that and not know his real name and
past. What effect your story will have on their relations with him we
can’t forecast. But I’m clear about one thing, that it’s our paramount
interest to maintain the _status quo_ as long as we can, to minimise
the danger you ran that day, and act as witnesses in his defence. We
can’t do that if his story and yours don’t tally. The discrepancy will
not only damn him (that may be immaterial), but it will throw doubt on
us.”
“Why?”
“Because if the short cut was so dangerous that he dared not own to
having led you to it, it was dangerous enough to make you suspect foul
play; the very supposition we want to avoid. We want to be thought mere
travellers, with no scores to wipe out, and no secrets to pry after.”