Fear is the Key

The door was held on a heavy steel latch, unlocked. I opened the latch, pushed back the door and passed inside. It was pitch dark, but my torch found the light switch right away. I pressed it and looked around.

The bay was perhaps a hundred feet long. Stacked in nearly empty racks on both sides were three or four dozen screwed pipes almost as long as the bay itself. Round each pipe, near the end, were deep gouge marks as if some heavy metal claws had bitten into it. Sections of the drill pipe. And nothing else. I switched off the light, went out, pulled shut the door and felt a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"Would you be looking for something, my friend?" It was a deep rough no-nonsense voice, as Irish as a sprig of shamrock.

I turned slowly, but not too slowly, pulling the lapels of my coat together with both hands as if to ward off the wind and the thin cold rain that was beginning to sift across the deck, glittering palely through the beams of the arc-lamps then vanishing into the darkness again. He was a short stocky man, middle-aged, with a battered face that could be kindly or truculent as the needs of the moment demanded. At that moment, the balance of expression was tipped on the side of truculence. But not much. I decided to risk it.

"As a matter of fact, I am." Far from trying to conceal my British accent, I exaggerated it. A marked high-class English accent in the States excites no suspicion other than the charitaible one that you may be slightly wrong in the head. "The field foreman told me to inquire for the — ah — roustabout foreman. Are you he?"

"Golly!" he said. I felt that it should have been "be-gorrah" but the grammatical masterpiece had floored him. You could see his mind clambering on to its feet again. "Mr. Jerrold sent you to look for me, eh?"

"Yes, indeed. Miserable night, isn't it?" I pulled my hat-brim lower. "I certainly don't envy you fellows-"

"If you was looking for me," he interrupted, "why were you poking about in there?"

"Ah, yes. Well, I could see you were busy and as he thought he had lost it in there, I thought perhaps I-"

"Who had lost what where?" He breathed deeply, patience on a monument.

"The general. General Ruthven. His brief-case, with very important private papers — and very urgent. He'd been making a tour of inspection yesterday — let me see, now, it would have been early afternoon — when he received the dastardly news-"

"He what?"

"When he heard his daughter had been kidnapped. He went straight for his helicopter, forgetting all about the briefcase and-"

"I get you. Important, huh?"

"Very. General Ruthven says he'd put it down just inside some doorway. It's big, morocco, marked C. C. F. in gold letters."

"C.C.F.? I thought you said it was the general's?"

"The general's papers. He'd borrowed my case. I'm Farnborough, his private confidential secretary." It was very long odds indeed against one of the scores of roustabout foremen employed by the general knowing the real name of his secretary, C. C. Farnborough.

"C. C., eh?" All suspicion and truculence now vanished. He grinned hugely. "Not Claude Cecil by any chance?"

"One of my names does happen to be Claude," I said quietly. "I don't think it's funny."

I had read the Irishman rightly. He was instantly contrite.

"Sorry, Mr. Farnborough. Talkin' outa turn. No offence. Want that me and my boys help you look?"

"I'd be awfully obliged."

"If it's there we'll have it in five minutes."

He walked away, issued orders to his gang of men. But I had no interest in the result of the search, my sole remaining interest lay in getting off that platform with all speed. There would be no brief-case there and there would be nothing else there. The foreman's gang were sliding doors open with the abandon of men who have nothing to conceal. I didn't even bother glancing inside any of the bays, the fact that doors could be opened without unlocking and were being opened indiscriminately in the presence of a total stranger was proof enough for me that there was nothing to be concealed. And apart from the fact that there were far too many men there to swear to secrecy, it stood out a mile that that genial Irishman was not the type to get mixed up in any criminal activities. Some people are like that, you know it the moment you see and speak to them. The roustabout foreman was one of those.

I could have slipped away and down the gangway while the search was still going on but that would have been stupid. The search for the missing brief-case would be nothing compared to the all-out search that would then start for C. C. Farnborough. They might assume I had fallen over the side. Powerful searchlights could pick up the Matapan in a matter of minutes. And even were I aboard the Matapan I didn't want to leave the vicinity of the rig. Not yet. And above all I didn't want the news to get back ashore that an intruder disguised as, or at least claiming to be, the general's secretary had been prowling around the X 13.