The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [1016]
'It's just as well you did,' I interposed. 'We shall never be able to leave the boat by herself. I believe we're watched,' and I related my experience.
'H'm! It's a pity you didn't see who it was. Confound that bob-stay!' (his tactful way of reflecting on my clumsiness); 'which way did he run?' I pointed vaguely into the west. 'Not towards the island? I wonder if it's someone off one of those galliots. There are three anchored in the channel over there; you can see their lights. You didn't hear a boat pulling off?'
I explained that I had been a miserable failure as a detective.
'You've done jolly well, I think,' said Davies. 'If you had shouted when you first heard him we should know less still. And we've got a boot, which may come in useful. Anchor out all right? Let's get below.'
We smoked and talked till the new flood, lapping softly round the Dulcibella, raised her without a jar.
Of course, I argued, there might be nothing in it. The visitor might have been a commonplace thief; an apparently deserted yacht was a tempting bait. Davies scouted this possibility from the first.
'They're not like that in Germany,' he said. 'In Holland, if you like, they'll do anything. And I don't like that turning out of the lantern to gain time, if we were away.'
Nor did I. In spite of my blundering in details, I welcomed the incident as the first concrete proof that the object of our quest was no mare's nest. The next point was what was the visitor's object? If to search, what would he have found?
'The charts, of course, with all our corrections and notes, and the log. They'd give us away,' was Davies's instant conclusion. Not having his faith in the channel theory, I was lukewarm about his precious charts.
'After all, we're doing nothing wrong, as you've often said yourself,' I said.
Still, as a true index to our mode of life they were the only things on board that could possibly compromise us or suggest that we were anything more than eccentric young Englishmen cruising for sport (witness the duck guns) and pleasure. We had two sets of charts, German and English. The former we decided to use in practice, and to hide, together with the log, if occasion demanded. My diary, I resolved, should never leave my person. Then there were the naval books. Davies scanned them with a look I knew well.
'There are too many of them,' he said, in the tone of a cook fixing the fate of superfluous kittens. 'Let's throw them overboard. They're very old anyhow, and I know them by heart.'
'Well, not here!' I protested, for he was laying greedy hands on the shelf; 'they'll be found at low water. In fact, I should leave them as they are. You had them when you were here before, and Dollmann knows you had them. If you return without them, it will look queer.' They were spared.
The English charts, being relatively useless, though more suitable to our _rôle_ as English yachtsmen, were to be left in evidence, as shining proofs of our innocence. It was all delightfully casual, I could not help thinking. A seven-ton yacht does not abound in (dry) hiding-places, and we were helpless against a drastic search. If there _were_ secrets on this coast to guard, and we were suspected as spies, there was nothing to prevent an official visit and warning. There need be no prowlers scuttling off when alarmed, unless indeed it was thought wisest to let well alone, if we _were_ harmless, and not to arouse suspicions where there were none. Here we lost ourselves in conjecture. Whose agent was the prowler? If Dollmann's, did Dollmann know now that