Cargo of Eagles (28 page)

He turned to the leader of the surveyors.

‘You know what to do. Could you be ready and move in half an hour?'

Charlie grinned. ‘We can fix our own tea break.'

Mr Lugg had worked miracles with unpromising material in
the kitchen for the room had a stone flagged floor, an ancient black oven and an air of hard working austerity. It was now warm, polished and glowing with a bright scarlet and white chequered tablecloth as the centre piece. Hot amber tea laced with whisky appeared within minutes and the reviving benison was sipped in silence.

Morty broke the spell by thumping the table. ‘The loot,' he said explosively. ‘The pirates' hoard that's driven Saltey round the bend for all these years. Was it just another myth, an inflated nonsense like the Demon—did it ever exist?'

Mr Campion surveyed him over his glasses.

‘Oh yes. It certainly existed.' He stood up and crossed the room to a cupboard beneath a dresser. From it he produced a dark green metal box about eighteen inches square and four inches deep, a solid unattractive object which might have been designed to hold ammunition. He placed it carefully on the table for it was clearly heavy.

‘A treasure chest. Or part of it.' He patted it gently before continuing. ‘This is the real object of the exercise. It weighs fifty pounds and there are ten of them. Until two nights ago when Lugg and I found them they were lying beneath the body of Target Burrows but it seemed best to satisfy Miss Jensen's curiosity by allowing her to know only half the story.'

He pressed a spring catch and raised the lid. Inside lay a row of cylinders each wrapped in discoloured paper which had once been white, fitting closly into grooves. He prized one free with a kitchen knife and unwrapped it methodically, balancing it in his hand. The column swayed in the air and broke, splaying a yellow cascade over the table. On the chequered cloth the coins made a gay modern design in red, white and gold.

‘Double Eagles,' he said. ‘Twenty dollar gold pieces. Pirate gold—fairy gold—a king's ransom. It depends how you look at them.'

The steaming drink provided an essential pause. The bright coins glistened on the table between the tea cups and it was
some time before Morty picked one of them up, holding it gingerly between finger and thumb.

‘Give me a minute to get my breath,' he said. ‘I've never seen one before except on a bandleader's watchchain. They must be worth a fortune.'

Mr Campion sipped his tea thoughtfully before producing a slip of paper from his wallet.

‘According to my Bank Manager, who says he is not really used to this sort of enquiry, the Double Eagle is worth £15 and weighs 0.967501 of a fine ounce. Today's price for bullion gold is £11.11.9 an ounce. Mathematics is not my strong point but I make the grand total around £100,000. Quite a haul, even for a modern pirate.'

‘How much did Doll really know of this?' Dido's voice had the trace of an edge. ‘Or was she guessing hopefully in her little dream world?'

Mr Campion shook his head. ‘She didn't know anything. All she had to go on was the vague boast repeated by her mother. Teague only opened his mouth once and as soon as he was caught he thought better of it. He had killed two men to keep his secret and in a way, three. But twenty years is a long time to think over one's sins especially if not all of them have been found out. There's no statute of limitations for murder, you know, and he dared not face the chance of a second charge when he was old and broken. When I saw him it occurred to me that he'd had some sort of mild stroke. He . . .'

Morty interrupted. ‘You said he killed two men and possibly three. Who was the third?'

‘The third death was Matt Parsley, the undertaker. I don't think Teague killed him but he was certainly morally responsible. On that particular night the 26th of March, 1946, when the barge
Blossom
lay off the Bowl, Teague and Burrows took their cargo ashore. It was stowed in champagne cases which fitted the boxes very neatly, two to a case.

‘Matt Parsley was an old villian who knew all about smuggling and had certainly helped them many times before, and his
workshop was very close to the quay. They loaded the stuff on to his barrow, probably putting most of it into a coffin, in case anyone noticed them going up the road to Forty Angels. Teague had his hideaway here at The Hollies, a cache he'd built long before the war for hiding contraband. Miss Kytie was away all that spring and the house was empty.

‘What happened in the garden room that night is a matter of pure guess work. My guess is that Matt Parsley, who was a fat, asthmatic old man with a weak heart, had an attack, perhaps brought on by lifting heavy weights, I think he died in this room, but quite unexpectedly—leaving only Teague and Burrows. They may have quarrelled and had a fight for Teague may have killed his partner in cold blood. Again Burrows may have been killed first and the shock was too much for Matt Parsley. Remember, there was the very devil of a row about the piracy when it became known. On the night the
Blossom
lay off Saltey a description of the two men was broadcast, with particular emphasis on Burrows' glass eye, which made him very easy to recognise. They had to hide the loot and they certainly didn't trust each other enough to lie low separately until things quietened down. Teague was the brains of the act and he probably realised that as long as Burrows was anywhere near him, his chances of being recognised and caught were more than doubled. He was a calculating killer and the idea could have been in his mind all along. He is the only man who knows the truth and he is pretty certain to die with his secret.

‘What I am sure he did was to put Matt Parsley's body into the coffin and trundle it back to the shed, where he abandoned it in a rather spectacular way.'

Mr Lugg lifted one of the curtains and looked out. ‘Dawn coming up,' he said. ‘I'll take the boys a drop and see how they're gettin' on with the packin'.'

Morty was still playing with the golden array on the table.

‘Who owns this stuff? What happens to it now?'

‘Two very good questions,' said Mr Campion. ‘And the first
one isn't so simple to answer. Strictly speaking it belongs to the Treasury but that is not quite where it is going.'

He drew his chair closer to the table and began to arrange the coins in a pile.

‘This is the whole story. I couldn't tell it before and for reasons you'll understand it must never be told again.

‘At the end of the War I was with a man called L. C. Corkran—you spotted him the other day in Killowen Square, Morty—doing one of those hush-hush jobs in France.

‘I'm afraid a lot of bribery and corruption came into it and the only reliable currency was gold. In the Middle East they used British sovereigns but in the Resistance business it was best to pay in twenty dollar gold pieces. When the show closed down the remainder of the cash, all this pirate's hoard, among a lot of other items which we didn't want to explain to the French Government, had to be brought home. At that point it had to be got away very quickly. Not all the people we dealt with were noble souls. They knew we had big money available. An ocean going yacht, the
Clymene
, which belonged to the Greek millionaire Christoff, a chap very much on our side, seemed the ideal transport. He had diplomatic immunity and so far as customs were concerned the yacht could get into any port in England with no questions asked. Our little outfit was so secret that no one was allowed to know about us but the fact must be faced that we weren't secret enough. Somewhere along the line there was a leak. Teague and his pal Burrows who'd spent the War in the Merchant Navy were hanging around Marseilles, up to no good and looking for trouble. They had a couple of other thugs in tow, Goddard and Hunter and between them they ran a profitable line in smuggling and probably gun running between the Riviera and Algiers.

‘It looks as if they had a longer trip chasing the
Clymene
than they'd expected or they'd have headed back for an African port once they'd got what they wanted. As it was they were probably running short of fuel so they had to make a dash for the Hamble river and abandon the pirate craft.

‘But Christoff's cargo was certainly hi-jacked in a big way and the really valuable part of it vanished without trace. To complicate matters there couldn't be a full scale official enquiry because officially the cargo didn't exist.

‘Christoff got most of his own property back and was compensated for the rest because he was a very wily bird and heavily insured. The Eagles were never mentioned. After the trial—when it was clear that Teague had no intention of speaking—the loss had to be placed very regretfully in the just-too-bad section, and filed for reference.'

‘Written off?'

‘The Department,' said Mr Campion formally, ‘never explains its budget, but it has to ask for it just the same. Unfortunately, this does not mean that the funds are liberal—in fact the place is run on the well known shoe string. Things were getting pretty tight when I left them at the end of 1946 and I gather that they've got progressively worse since then. No more golden gifts to keep the natives friendly and precious little sugar for the weekly issue of office tea.

‘The Eagles may have been written off, but they weren't forgotten. From then on any really big expenditure had to have sanction from Whitehall. Two months ago a situation arose in which a big sum of money—in Eagles, incidentally—was urgently needed. A British Agent, a woman, had been arrested in an area which is virtually behind the Iron Curtain, even if it pretends not to be. She wasn't charged, but just held and questioned, probably very unpleasantly. It doesn't look as if the people concerned were quite sure of what they'd got hold of, but they were prepared to take a long time finding out, using any methods they pleased.

‘Now in the ordinary way of business if a really valuable agent is caught and sentenced an exchange is arranged—it's part of the game and very well understood by both sides. But this case is rather different because as yet they are uncertain if she really is what they suspect. To offer an exchange now, or at any other time come to that, is to admit the woman's guilt and
to damn everyone faintly connected with her. Break one link and a whole length of chain goes along with it. Corkran has his human side where his own people are concerned but an admission of that sort would endanger a lot of lives and destroy a whole network.'

He paused to empty his cup. ‘There was—there still is—an alternative. Really a very simple one if you know that part of the world. Bribery. A well greased palm for politican and policeman alike. A lot of money, a cargo of Eagles distributed judiciously very near the top, would open any prison in the country.'

‘Lovely work if you can get it.' Mr Lugg's throaty tones brought the party back to immediate considerations. ‘More tea, one and all?'

‘The problem,' continued Mr Campion, ‘might be summed up as “First catch your Eagle”. Corkran's overtures to the money boys at the Treasury met with a remarkably frigid reception. In fact he was turned down at every level and finally right at the very top. But he had one shot left in the locker. If he could recover the cash which had been written off twenty years back—even if it was technically no longer his to dispose of—he need do no explaining or pleading to anyone.'

He turned to Dido. ‘You don't know the old boy, I suppose? Very few people do. He's theoretically too dyed-in-the-wool to thumb his nose at Authority when it's entrenched against him but the idea appeals to him all the same. A lot of his success had been built on it and now that he's retiring he's less respectful than ever.

‘In this case he said nothing to his colleagues in the department but called back a member of the firm who had left the business just after the war. Since I had no official standing no one could ask awkward questions. “Who owns that bag of gold you happen to be carrying?”: “The Treasury, I suppose, but we have other plans for it”.'

‘That situation had to be dodged. I'm afraid my efforts have caused you a lot of trouble.'

Dido shook her immaculate head.

‘You laid the ghost for me,' she said. ‘No one else could have removed Doll Jensen and her friends. Where is all the money, by the way—the rest of it. I mean? Somehow I don't feel it would be safe in a kitchen cupboard, even now.'

Mr Campion's diffident smile broadened. ‘If you look in your cellar,' he murmured, ‘you'll find seventy-two bottles of excellent champagne. A very good year—I chose it myself. The cases are missing because they are on their way to foreign parts under a diplomatic seal. You can guess the contents. As for the specimens on the table, they will travel to London with the surveyors. All except two, which will never be accounted for.'

He passed one across the table to Dido and another to Morty.

‘Just the thing for a watch chain.'

Mr Lugg cocked his head to one side at a sound from above their heads.

‘Your refined Ding Dong,' he said. ‘'Orrible friends you've got, ringing up at this time in the morning. As soon as I've packed this lot up I'm ex-communicating meself until late luncheon.'

When Mr Campion returned to the kitchen the old man had disappeared and light was streaming through the curtains. The dawn chorus was reaching a crescendo and the table in the centre of the room was empty.

Dido and Morty who were standing very close to each other by the open window did not hear his arrival and after a few moments he coughed discreetly. They turned towards him and he noticed with a flicker of amusement that Dido's hair had lost its flawless perfection.

‘What was all that about?' said Morty.

Mr Campion surveyed them benevolently from over his glasses before he answered. ‘A chap from the Department. He rang to say “Mission accomplished”.'

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