Free Solomons Seal by Hammond Innes

him to have a drink with me before lunch at the County Hotel next day.
    I thought he might be a little less reticent over a drink than if I saw him at his office. Unfortunately I was delayed, and he had already bought his own drink by the time I got there. It started us off on the wrong foot. ‘I can only give you a quarter of an hour,’ he said primly.
    â€˜And I’ve got to be at Rowlinson Fast Freeze by one.’ I wasn’t in the best of tempers. I’d just had a long session with Sam Baker, who had told me bluntly that if I went off to Australia to do a job for Rowlinson on my own account, it would be the end of ourassociation. With business the way it was I knew he was taking advantage of the situation to edge me out. In the end we had had a blazing row, and I had walked out, telling him he’d better start advertising for another office boy right away. I got myself a drink and steered Chandler to an empty table.
    â€˜So you’re lunching with Chips Rowlinson.’ He was looking at me the way a thrush eyes a worm, his eyes bright behind his glasses. ‘There’s talk that they’re expanding again. If I can assist in any way …’ He left it at that. ‘Well now, you want some information on the Hollands. May I ask why?’
    I explained briefly about the stamps, but when I asked him about Carlos Holland, he said, ‘I wouldn’t know about that. Before my time. In any case, I’m not at all sure I’m at liberty to discuss their affairs with you.’
    â€˜Then why did you agree to meet me?’
    He smiled suddenly, his glasses catching the light. ‘Like you, perhaps I’m a little curious. Also, I don’t like loose ends. I ought to have been informed. She should have told me she was going abroad, not written to me so that I only received the letter after she had sailed.’
    I asked him how long his firm had been acting for them, and he said, ‘Since January 1922. I had one of my juniors check through the files. Fortunately they were in store here when our Moorgate office was gutted in the Blitz. The first conveyance we handled was for the sale of a London office property, thenshortly afterwards a house in Surrey. Of course, the partner who dealt with that is dead now.’
    â€˜Presumably he was acting for Miss Holland’s grandfather.’
    â€˜Yes. Lieutenant-Colonel Lawrence Douglas Holland. He sold up and went abroad shortly after the First World War.’
    â€˜Do you know where he went?’
    â€˜Singapore. His address was care of a bank in Singapore. We had to have his bank address, as he had arranged for us to manage his affairs. At that time all his funds were invested in this country. Later he instructed us to sell most of his investments and remit the proceeds to a bank in Sydney, Australia. In 1923 he changed his address again to a Post Office Box number at Port Moresby in Papua. After that there’s nothing on the file until his son, Captain Philip Holland, arrived in England with his family and we handled the conveyancing, first for a farm near Snape, and then, when he sold that, for the purchase of the house at Aldeburgh.’
    â€˜I take it her grandfather was dead by then?’
    He nodded. ‘Apparently Colonel Holland disappeared the same year they came to England.’
    â€˜When was that?’
    â€˜About six years ago.’
    â€˜You say he disappeared.’
    â€˜Yes. Made an end of it, that was what she said. He took a native boat and just sailed off into the blue.’
    â€˜Did she say why?’
    â€˜No. She wasn’t there at the time. Anyway, she hadcome to see me on business, and that was a private matter. I didn’t ask her.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘I don’t know whether I should tell you this, but she was badly injured, and her mother was killed, in some sort of an outbreak of native hysteria. I think perhaps this preyed on the old man’s