"You're sure you can manage it?" I asked.
"Easily," was the comforting rejoinder. "There's next to nothing doing in our line at present. I must run over to Martlesea some time to-morrow; otherwise I'm at your disposal for the next three days."
Considerably cheered by this assurance, I led the way back into the hall where I found our two visitors in the act of wiping their moustaches.
"Very good whisky that, sir," observed the landlord approvingly. "'Tain't often you get a taste of the pre-war stuff nowadays."
"Well, I'm ready if you are, gentlemen," I said.
With a regretful glance at the decanter the Sergeant picked up his helmet, and, leaving Bobby standing in the window, we all three set out across the lawn.
We found the motor-launch lying about twenty yards out in the estuary, and a dilapidated dinghy tied up alongside the landing-stage.
"I had to bring one of me own boats," explained the landlord as he unfastened the painter. "We got yours all right, sir, same as I told you; but the rudder's broke and two of her planks stove in."
"She must have been smashed up pretty badly," I remarked. "It seems to me as if she'd been run down."
"I should have said the same," put in the Sergeant, "but accordin' to what they told me at Pen Mill there wasn't a craft afloat yesterday. That's so, ain't it, Mr. Robinson?"