Chapter 2

"Third Girl Missing - Caribbean Mystery - Latest"

Angela FitzMaurice glanced at the placard as she dashed towards Mansion House Station, hurrying home after another long day at the office. Those six words were sufficient to make her pause in her headlong rush back to Hampstead. She thrust fifty pence into the hand of the eternally amiable newsvendor, telling him to keep the change, then continued on her hurried way to the platform.

As usual, at the highly inconvenient hour she finished work, (much the same time as everyone else!) the station was heaving with other commuters, all anxious to be home slumped moronically in front of the television to watch whatever puerile mid-Atlantic trash was on offer this evening. Angela, though, was not about to join the great unwashed in this pursuit of mindless triviality. She was on her way to the "Duke of Hamilton", the "Holly Bush" and last, but not least "The Flask" before flopping down onto her bed for a few hours of much needed slumber. When she finally hit the sack she hoped to be well and truly smashed!

By the time Angela had passed Tottenham Court Road, she had managed to get herself a seat, by dint of making eyes at a vulnerable looking young man. She smiled sweetly at him as he surrendered his and thenceforth ignored him! The disappointed youth resigned himself to the fact that such an un-charismatic fellow as he could never succeed in pulling a delicious girl like that and forgot the incident. It was enough for him that he had, however briefly, made eye contact with such loveliness.

Angela remembered the paper and took a look at it. As usual, the item she was most interested in was on an inside page. She turned the pages and found what she was looking for.

"Fun loving and busty Marcella Forbes-Benson-Hope, elder daughter of the Earl and Countess of Laxtonbury, is still missing, six weeks after leaving for a holiday on the Caribbean island of Rio del Espana. Her inexplicable disappearance has added to the mystery surrounding the fate of two other English girls whose fate is still unknown after nearly a year.

"Marlene Holroyd and Doris Maloney went missing more than eleven months ago in the same island. They had been on a trip organised by "Captain Morgan Tours" the recently dissolved travel company, whose fugitive director has been named by the police as a person who may be able to assist them in their enquiries."

Angela sat back in her seat. Golly! First those two girls in the General Office who had been posted absent without leave! And now a scion of the nobility and darling of the gossip columnists missing in equally strange circumstances.!

Why had that company been dissolved? She had a pretty good idea! Just going to ground for a while, only to resurface a little later. That was how these commercial pirates worked!

During the following days she kept a weather eye on the papers, both the company and travel pages. One rainy Saturday her vigilance was rewarded. In the weekend travel supplement she saw an item which rang loads of bells!

"Long John Silver Tours!! The Spanish Main!! Buccaneers - Pirates - Castaways!!!. Live the exciting days of old!!!! OOH aye me hearties!!. Belay there atween decks!! Book now and pay as little as two hundred pounds for ten unforgettable days!"

Angela, an adventurous girl who bitterly regretted resigning her commission in the Royal Navy, was sick and tired of her boring if highly paid job! Shit! Let's go and see what happened to those girls, she thought! I feel in my water that something is awfully wrong here! Let's go for it!

Professor Aloysius Hamley-Benson-Fortescue was not a happy chappie!

"There has been a major breach of security, gentlemen," he said. "I am certain of that."

"I really think you are becoming just a little paranoid, Professor!"

"Maybe, Benson! But this is pretty high security stuff. If any one gets his/her hands on this, it could be curtains for a lot of people!"

There was silence as the Faculty took this on board.

"We all know we've uncovered something pretty exciting, gentlemen! If it falls into unscrupulous hands, I dread to think what might happen. Vigilance must be our watchword! That fellow we employed as Personnel Director, What was his name?"

"Farr, Professor. Augustus Farr. Fat and lazy. Not only that but very nasty with it. Good job he left, if you ask me!"

"Maybe." replied the Professor, "But my guess is he took a look in our top security safe and copied a lot of documents. I hope not, but that's what I suspect. I hear he set up as a travel agent and then disappeared with the police hot on his trail."

There was an uneasy silence. They had all read of Farr's travel business and the two young women who had booked on one of his tours and gone missing. If they had been abducted by someone who had access to their discovery, the poor girls could be anywhere - not only that, but any time as well!

"Wasn't Farr supposed to be mixed up with some kidnapping in Scotland?" asked Clive Jenkins-Brown, a small worried looking man who had taken little part so far in the discussion.

The Professor nodded. "There was a girl the police found wandering naked and half dead along the coastal path. She was babbling about having been abducted and held in a ruined castle on a small island off the coast. Said she had broken free and swum ashore. No one believed her, but they checked her story out - she did have signs of having been beaten recently - and, sure enough, they found two other young women, both naked like her and both with the same story to tell. For some reason, it never made the national press in a big way - there was a war on at the time, I suppose - or was it Princess Di being killed? Anyway it went largely unnoticed."

The Professor paused for breath and took a sip of water.

"The fellow who was holding them answered Farr's description OK and he could have been there at the time. He was on leave of absence. The things they said of his treatment of them fit in with what we know of his character too. He wanted all manner of kinky things from them, but underlying everything was a desire to strip, humiliate and cause pain to young women. I'd say he was one very dangerous and unpleasant man."

"How did he slip away from the island!" asked Jenkins-Brown.

"He had a fast boat." answered the Professor. "He is quite a sailor. I think he was in the RN until his bizarre sexual tastes grew too much for even that organisation to stomach any more."

"And we took on a man like that as Personnel Director! Ye Gods!" muttered Jenkins-Brown

"Forged references." snapped the Professor. "Sadly we were none to careful how we checked them out. The thing we have to decide is this - what are we going to do about it?"

After further discussion it was agreed that they should keep an eye on the situation and tighten security but not call in the authorities. The last thing any of them wanted was the Government asking awkward questions about their research. They all agreed that any financial benefits accruing from it should be theirs and not a Government all of them despised. So it was decided to do nothing. Poor Jenkins-Brown was not happy, but held his peace.

On the way home he became more concerned than ever. As was his wont he stopped by at his favourite Hampstead pub for an evening unwinding drink. His friend Angela joined him. She saw he was worried and skilfully drew the whole story out of him, almost without his noticing he was being pumped.

On her own way home after this productive chance meeting, her head was spinning with what she had just heard. What a diabolical scheme, if it were true! She knew Farr well enough and had been the prosecuting officer on that loathsome creep's court martial. Being cashiered had been too good for him as far as she had been concerned. Now she knew she simply had to follow this up!

Had she known that one of the three disappeared women was just starting her twelfth week chained in the filthy darkness of a ship's hold, she would have had more of a sense of urgency. Even so, she knew there was little time to lose.

Angela, the Professor and Jenkins-Brown were closeted in the Professor's office. Angela shared the Professor's reluctance to involve the authorities, although not for the same reason. While they were reluctant to have others cash in on their discovery she was afraid that if the kidnappers got wind of a pursuit they might put themselves and their victims out of reach for ever.

"So you seriously think you've invented some kind of time-travel device?" she asked the Professor. Her mind had still not entirely come to terms with what her friend Jenkins-Brown had told her the other night.

"We think so - yes. Of course we can't be totally sure. What we do know is that by beaming an impulse from a transmitter to a receiver, the receiver appears to disappear. When the transmitter is turned off the receiver reappears. We're pretty sure the receiver is pushed into a different time, whether past or future we don't know. Since it would be such a risk, no one on my team has even thought about attaching themselves to the receiver. We are at too experimental a stage at present. Whoever has stolen our research details has clearly taken it several stages further than we have if these disappearance in the Caribbean are connected with our work."

The Professor got up and looked out of the window. It was early Autumn and the leaves were already beginning to fall. The scene below in the park looked so normal, and yet inside this room the most amazing things were being discussed. He came back to his chair and continued explaining to Angela, who was still not sure she believed him.

"I'll give you a demonstration in a few minutes, my dear. As you will see, the mounting of the receiver also disappears. I think it possible that a very large object indeed could be made apparently to vanish, including people. They would still exist, but either somewhere or some time else. I think our demonstration should be ready; shall we go?"

"I bet he's rigged up one of these devices on a ship!" said Angela as the three of them returned to the office. What she had just seen had settled her doubts once and for all. There was no way that that what she had seen could be an illusion. "Do you think that would be possible?"

The other two nodded. They thought it entirely possible. They thought a lot of things were entirely possible. Angela formed the impression that the implications of their invention had by no means been fully appreciated by them. It was still in many ways just an interesting theory to these people, but a criminal mind would see endless opportunities.

As a condition of her not approaching the police herself about the possible theft of information, she insisted on a fuller investigation, including putting a person at the receiving end of the device. She was determined to see what happened to the disappeared object and volunteered herself for the role of guinea pig.

An appointment was arranged for ten days hence. She was assured that it would take this long to fix everything up and reluctantly agreed. Poor Marlene, meanwhile, continued to languish in the dark and Marcella spent day after day tied to the front of the ship and evening after evening participating in a variety of kinky activities, many of which culminated in fresh punishments for her.

Doris continued to clean the deck and fetch and carry for the crew. She was becoming a very strong young woman by this time but she feared her hands were ruined for ever.

While she was waiting for the Professor and company to get their experiment together, Angela visited the parents of the three missing girls. Marcella's parents were not inclined to be too worried as yet. Their daughter was famously independent and both had every confidence in her ability to look after herself. They offered Angela every assistance in her quest.

Doris's parents had divorced many years ago, not long after she had been born. Her mother was a mousy little thing, quite beside herself with grief. She was sure Doris was dead.
"She was a good girl. Miss FitzMaurice!" she sobbed. "She'd never have gone off without a word to her poor old mum!"

Doris's father had since remarried twice. His present spouse was a lissom young blonde no older than Doris. His interest in his first offspring was purely perfunctory.

Marlene's father was different kettle of fish altogether. Brigadier Holroyd had been to the island several times trying to find his daughter, whose name he pointed was pronounced the German way, with the terminal 'e' being pronounced.

Angela could see that this was a man who would not rest until he knew his favourite child's fate one way or another. He expressed utter incredulity when Angela told him of the Professor's project, but a meeting with the group and a demonstration soon convinced him. He agreed to accompany Angela to the island as soon as she was ready.

"My idea is to act as a kind of decoy, Brigadier. I think you should keep a discreet eye on me and organise a search for the transmitter. Once we find that and destroy or immobilise it, the whole criminal enterprise will be over, but we must be careful not to alert them to the fact that they are under surveillance. But first we have to investigate this device of theirs more fully."

"You're a brave girl, my dear. If and when you meet Marlene, you'll find you've a lot in common! That girl's afraid of nothing and of nobody." His eyes became moist as he said this and his military moustache could not hide the trembling of his upper lip.

Some weeks after this conversation, while Angela was arranging to fly to the Caribbean on one of the "Long John Silver" tours, Marcella and Doris were on shore helping to load supplies on to a longboat. It was hard work and both of them were exhausted. However tired they might be, they knew they must not ease up in the slightest if they wanted their hides to remain untouched by the broad leather belt that their "minder" was using to beat the air. He would like nothing better than to use it on them!