roof, there was nothing on board to distinguish us from any other cruising yacht in these waters.
I said, ‘Perhaps the Moroccan has been doing some exploring on his own account.’
Coertze swore. ‘If he’s been poking his nose in where it isn’t wanted I’ll throw him overboard.’
I went on deck. The Moroccan was still squatting on the foredeck. I said interrogatively, ‘Mr Metcalfe?’
He stretched an arm and pointed across the harbour to the Fairmile. I put the dinghy over the side and rowed across. Metcalfe hailed me as I got close. ‘How’s Walker?’
‘Feeling sorry for himself,’ I said, as Metcalfe took the painter. ‘A pity it happened; he’ll probably be as sick as a dog when we get under way.’
‘You leaving?’ said Metcalfe in surprise.
I said, ‘I didn’t get the chance to tell you last night. We’re heading for Spain.’ I gave him my prepared story, then said, ‘I don’t know if we’ll be coming back this way. Walker will, of course, but Coertze and I might go back to South Africa by way of the east coast.’ I thought that there was nothing like confusing the issue.
‘I’m sorry about that,’ said Metcalfe. ‘I was going to ask you to design a dinghy for me while you were here.’
‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘I’ll write to Cape Town and get the yard to send you a Falcon kit. It’s on me; all you’ve got to do is pay for the shipping.’
‘Well, thanks,’ said Metcalfe. ‘That’s decent of you.’ He seemed pleased.
‘It’s as much as I can do after all the hospitality we’ve had here,’ I said.
He stuck out his hand and I took it. ‘Best of luck, Hal, in all your travels. I hope your project is successful.’
I was incautious. ‘What project?’ I asked sharply.
‘Why, the boatyard you’re planning. You don’t have anything else in mind, do you?’
I cursed myself and smiled weakly. ‘No, of course not.’ I turned to get into the dinghy, and Metcalfe said quietly, ‘You’re not cut out for my kind of life, Hal. Don’t try it if you’re thinking of it. It’s tough and there’s too much competition.’
As I rowed back to Sanford I wondered if that was a veiled warning that he was on to our scheme. Metcalfe was an honest man by his rather dim lights and wouldn’t willingly cut down a friend. But he would if the friend didn’t get out of his way.
At three that afternoon we cleared Tangier harbour and I set course for Gibraltar. We were on our way, but we had left too many mistakes behind us.
When we were beating through the Straits Coertze suggested that we should head straight for Italy. I said, ‘Look, we’ve told Metcalfe we were going to Spain, so that’s where we are going.’
He thumped the cockpit coaming. ‘But we haven’t time.’
‘We’ve got to make time,’ I said doggedly. ‘I told you there would be snags which would use up our month’s grace; this is one of the snags. We’re going to take a month getting to Italy instead of a fortnight, which cuts us down to two weeks in hand – but we’ve got to do it. Maybe we can make it up in Italy.’
He grumbled at that, saying I was unreasonably frightened of Metcalfe. I said, ‘You’ve waited fifteen years for this opportunity – you can afford to wait another fortnight. We’re going to Gibraltar, to Malaga and Barcelona; we’re going to the Riviera, to Nice and to Monte Carlo; after that, Italy. We’re going to watch bullfights and gamble in casinos and do everything that every other tourist does. We’re going to be the most innocent people that Metcalfe ever laid eyes on.’
‘But Metcalfe’s back in Tangier.’
I smiled thinly. ‘He’s probably in Spain right now. He could have passed us any time in that Fairmile of his. He could even have flown or taken the ferry to Gibraltar, dammit. I think he’ll keep an eye on us if he reckons we’re up to something.’
‘Damn Walker,’ burst out Coertze.
‘Agreed,’ I said. ‘But that’s water under the bridge.’
I was adding up the mistakes we had made. Number one was Walker’s incautious statement to Aristide that he had drawn money on a letter of credit. That was a lie – a needless one, too – I had the letter of credit and Walker could have said so. Keeping control of the finances of the expedition was the only way I had of making sure that Coertze didn’t get the jump on me. I still didn’t know the location of the gold.
Now, Aristide would naturally make inquiries among his fellow bankers about the financial status of this rich Mr Walker. He would get the information quite easily – all bankers hang together and the hell with ethics – and he would find that Mr Walker had not drawn any money from any bank in Tangier. He might not be too perturbed about that, but he might ask Metcalfe about it, and Metcalfe would find it another item to add to his list of suspicions. He would pump Aristide to find that Walker and Halloran had taken an undue interest in the flow of gold in and out of Tangier.
He would go out to the Casa Saeta and sniff around. He would find nothing there to conflict with Walker’s cover story, but it would be precisely the cover story that he suspected most – Walker having blown hell out of it when he was drunk. The mention of gold would set his ears a-prick – a man like Metcalfe would react very quickly to the smell of gold – and if I were Metcalfe I would take great interest in the movements of the cruising yacht, Sanford.
All this was predicated on the fact that Walker had not told about the gold when he was drunk. If he had, then the balloon had really gone up.
We put into Gibraltar and spent a day rubber-necking at the Barbary apes and looking at the man-made caves. Then we sailed for Malaga and heard a damn’ sight more flamenco music than we could stomach.
It was on the second day in Malaga, when Walker and I went out to the gipsy caves like good tourists, that I realized we were being watched. We were bumping into a sallow young man with a moustache everywhere we went. He sat far removed when we ate in a sidewalk café, he appeared in the yacht basin, he applauded the flamenco dancers when we went to see the gipsies.
I said nothing to the others, but it only went to confirm my estimate of Metcalfe’s abilities. He would have friends in every Mediterranean port, and it wouldn’t be difficult to pass the word around. A yacht’s movements are not easy to disguise, and he was probably sitting in Tangier like a spider in the centre of a web, receiving phone calls from wherever we went. He would know all our movements and our expenditure to the last peseta.
The only thing to do was to act the innocent and hope that we could wear him out, string him on long enough so that he would conclude that his suspicions were unfounded, after all.
In Barcelona we went to a bullfight – the three of us. That was after I had had a little fun in trying to spot Metcalfe’s
