CHAPTER V

HOW?

Bobby got a bus from Oxford Circus to Charing Cross. It was after twelve when he reached Cadogan Street and turning on the electric light in his sitting-room, sat down to smoke, to think, and to plan.

It seemed to him that he had never come against the real things of life till now. Up to this he had followed the grooves worn and polished by other men. Even in story-writing he had followed custom, the advice of experts and the leading of his literary agent. Here was a business in which no other people were engaged, where there were no rules to follow, and where a mistake might land him in worse than difficulties. He would have to manufacture his own mechanism, guide it and direct it.

The most essential part of that mechanism was its human element.

He had fished with the Devonshire men of Plymouth and Brixham, and the thought of them had sprung to his mind at Behrens', but it was some years now since he had been on the Devonshire coast, and he had forgotten the very names of the men he had known there, but he had not forgotten certain facts about the Devonshire fishing people. They were like a huge family; they knew one another's affairs, and a man going off to the Mediterranean on a job like this would be sure to talk of it when he got back.

And it was not a question of one man. He would want half a dozen.

Half a dozen men chattering on their return would mean that the port authorities, who are all in touch with the fisherfolk, would know of the matter in a week. Bribery would be no use; Bobby had enough imagination to see that a gallon of cider would be enough to undo the business, no matter how much money was spent on bribery.

Well, failing Devonshire, where else could men be found? The docks? He knew enough of the docks to understand that this would be a very difficult place to work. There were loads of men to be found on the East India Dock Road, or down in Lambert Road, Canning Town. But what sort of men? Men from the deep-sea ships, steamboat men, who knew nothing of the handling of small sailing craft; men whose characters might be good or might be bad.

Then, leaving the men aside, how about the vessel? Where could he go for a boat to suit his purpose?

At two o'clock in the morning, by which time the whole proposition had taken on the colours of a nightmare and Behrens the appearance of a fiend, Bobby was knocking out the ashes of his last pipe, when before him rose like an angel the picture of Samuel Hackett.

Sam, bronzed and weather-beaten, just as he had seen him in the restaurant; Sam, with his old coat and scrubby beard and his absolute indifference to all things earthly but his "boat" and the sea; Sam, who lived as the gulls live in Poole Harbour; the man of all men to help, or at least point out where help might be obtained.

Bobby put out the light in his sitting-room, switched on the light in his bedroom, and went to bed, feeling that the weight of a world had been taken from his shoulders.

Sam, from a man, had become an inspiration, a refuge, a star. Fantastic fears assailed Bobby as he lay awake in the dark revolving the picture of Hackett in his mind, suggestions that Sam in his peregrinations in search of a suit of oilskins might have been run over by an omnibus, or that he might fall sick, or be drowned before Bobby could get at him. No mother was ever more anxious for the safety of a child; yet a few hours ago news of the death of this precious one would scarcely have moved him.

Then, under the alchemy of drowsiness, the vision of Sam turned into the picture of Martia Hare, and then came sleep, profound and dreamless, as it only comes to the young.