There was nobody waiting to greet him on the island, nor had he expected anyone. He fed the right combination into the alarm system to keep it quiet and set off up the rough wooden walk toward the buildings that huddled together a few hundred yards from the dock. The warehouses, he noticed, needed a new coat of paint, and the dock would require repairs if the tramp freighter were to use it much longer.
There was a smell of smoke in the air, tangy and resinous at first, but growing stronger as he moved away from the ocean’s crisp counteracting odor. As he passed the big machine shop, a stronger whiff of it reached him, unpleasant now. There was a thin wisp of smoke going up behind it, the faint gray of an almost exhausted fire. The men must be getting careless, burning their rubbish so clo
