When Eight Bells Toll

SIX

Less than two hundred yards from the Shangri-la the anchor clattered down into fifteen fathoms of water. I switched off the navigation lights, switched on all the wheelhouse lights, passed into the saloon and closed the door behind me.

"How long do we sit here?" Uncle Arthur asked.

"Not long. Better get into your oilskins now, sir. Next really heavy shower of rain and we'll go."

"They'll have had their night-glasses on us all the way across the bay, you think?"

"No question of that. They'll still have the glasses on us. They'll be worried stiff, wondering what the hell has gone wrong, what's happened to the two little playmates they sent to interview us. If they are the bandits."

"They're bound to investigate again."

"Not yet. Not for an hour or two. They'll wait for their two friends to turn up. They may think that it took them longer than expected to reach the Firecrest and that we'd upped anchor and left before they got there. Or they may think they'd trouble with their dinghy." I heard the sudden drumming of heavy rain on the coach-roof. "It's time to go."

We left by the galley door, felt our way aft, quietly lowered the dinghy into the water and climbed down the transom ladder into it. I cast off. Wind and tide carried us in towards the harbour. Through the driving rain we could dimly see the Shangri-la's riding light as we drifted by about a hundred yards from her port side. Half-way between the Shangri-la and the shore I started up the outboard motor and made back towards the Shangri-la.

The big tender was riding at the outer end of a boom which stretched out from the Shangri-la's starboard side about ten feet for'ard of the bridge. The stern of the tender was about fifteen out from the illuminated gangway. I approached from astern, upwind, and dosed in on the gangway. An oilskinned figure wearing one of the Shangri-la's crew's fancy French sailor hats came running down the gangway and took the painter.

"Ah, good-evening, my man," Uncle Arthur said. He wasn't putting on the style, it was the way he talked to moat people. "Sir Anthony is aboard?"

"Yes, sir."

"I wonder if I could see him for a moment?"

"If you could wait a — " The sailor broke off and peered at Sir Arthur. "Oh, it's — it's the Admiral, sir."

"Admiral Arnford-Jason. Of course — you're the fellow who ran me ashore to the Columba after dinner."

"Yes, sir. I'll show you to the saloon, sir."

"My boat will be all right here for a few moments." The unspoken implication was that I was his chauffeur.

"Perfectly, sir."

They climbed the gangway and went aft. I spent ten seconds examining the portable lead that served the gangway light decided that it would offer much resistance to a good hefty tug, then followed the two men aft. I passed by the passage leading to the saloon and hid behind a ventilator. Almost at once the sailor emerged from the passage and made his way for'ard again. Another twenty seconds and he'd be yelling his head off about the mysteriously vanished chauffeur. I didn't care what he did in twenty seconds.

When I reached the partly open saloon door I heard Sir Arthur's voice.

"No, no, I really am most sorry to break in upon you like this. Well, yes, thank you, small one if you will. Yes, soda, please." Uncle Arthur really was having a go at the whisky to-night. "Thank you, thank you. Your health, Lady Skouras. Your health, gentlemen. Mustn't delay you. Fact is, I wonder if you can help us. My friend and I are most anxious, really most anxious. I wonder where he is, by the way? I thought he was right behind — "

Cue for Calvert. I turned down the oilskin collar that bad been obscuring the lower part of my face, removed the souwester that had been obscuring most of the upper part of my face, knocked politely and entered. I said: "Good evening, Lady Skouras. Good evening, gentlemen. Please forgive the interruption, Sir Anthony."

Apart from Uncle Arthur there were six of than gathered round the fire at the end of the saloon. Sir Anthony standing, the others seated. Charlotte Skouras, Dollmann, Skouras's managing director, Lavorski, his accountant, Lord Charnley, his broker and a fifth man I didn't recognise. All had glasses in their hands.

Their reaction to my sudden appearance, as expressed by their faces, was interesting. Old Skouras showed a half-frowning, half-speculative surprise. Charlotte Skouras gave me a strained smile of welcome: Uncle Arthur hadn't been exaggerating when he spoke of that bruise, it was a beauty. The stranger's face was noncommittal, Lavorski's inscrutable, Dollmann's rigid as if carved from marble and Lord Charnley's for a fleeting moment that of a man walking through a country churchyard at midnight when someone taps him on the shoulder. Or so I thought. I could have imagined it. But there was no imagination about the sudden tiny snapping sound as the stem of the glass fell soundlessly on to the carpet. A scene straight from Victorian melodrama. Our aristocratic broker friend had something on his mind. Whether the others had or not it was difficult to say. Dollmann, Lavorski and, I was pretty sure, Sir Anthony could make their faces say whatever they wanted them to say.

"Good Lord, Petersen!" Skouras's tone held surprise but not the surprise of a person welcoming someone back from the grave. "I didn't know you two knew each other."

"My goodness, yes. Petersen and I have been colleagues for years, Tony. UNESCO, you know." Uncle Arthur always gave out that he was a British delegate to UNESCO, a cover that gave him an excellent reason for his frequent trips abroad. "Marine biology may not be very cultural, but it's scientific and educational enough. Petersen's one of my star performers. Lecturing, I mean.

Done missions for me in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America." Which was true, enough, only they weren't lecture missions. "Didn't even know he was here until they told me at the hotel. But dear me, dear me, mustn't talk about ourselves. It's Hunslett. Petersen's colleague. And mine in a way. Can't find him anywhere. Hasn't been in the village. Yours is the nearest boat. Have you seen anything of him, anything at all?"

"Afraid I haven't," Skouras said. "Anybody here? No? Nobody?" He pressed a bell and a steward appeared. Skouras asked him to make inquiries aboard and the steward left. "When did he disappear, Mr. Petersen?"

"I've no idea. I left him carrying out experiments, I've been away all day collecting specimens. Jellyfish." I laughed deprecatingly and rubbed my inflamed face. "The poisonous type, I'm afraid. No sign of him when I returned."

"Could your friend swim, Mr. Petersen?" the stranger asked. I looked at him, a dark thickset character in his middle forties, with black snapping eyes deepest in a tanned face. Expressionless faces seemed to be the order of the day there, so I kept mine expressionless. It wasn't easy.

"I'm afraid not," I said quietly. "I'm afraid you're thinking along the same lines as myself. We've no guard rails aft. A careless step — " I broke off as the steward re-entered and reported that no one had seen a sign of Hunslett, then went on: "I think I should report this to Sergeant MacDonald at once."

Everybody else seemed to think so, too, so we left. The cold slanting rain was heavier than ever. At the head of the gangway I pretended to slip, flung my arms about wildly for a bit then toppled into the sea, taking the gangway wandering lead with me. What with the rain, the wind and the sudden darkness there was quite a bit of confusion and it was the better part of a minute before I was finally hauled on to the landing stage of the companionway. Old Skouras was commiseration itself and offered me a change of clothes at once but I declined politely and went back to the Firecrest with Uncle Arthur. Neither of us spoke on the way back.

As we secured the dinghy I said; "When you were at dinner on the Shangri-la you must have given some story to account for your presence here, for your dramatic appearance in an R.A.F. rescue launch."

"Yes. It was a good one. I told them a vital UNESCO conference in Geneva was being dead-locked because of the absence of a certain Dr. Spenser Freeman. It happens to be true. In all the papers to-day. Dr. Freeman is not there because it suits us not to have him there. No one knows that, of course. I told them that it was of vital national importance that he should be there, that we'd received information that he was doing field research in Torbay and that the Government had sent me here to get him back."

"Why send the launch away? That would seem odd."

"No. If he's somewhere in the wilds of Torbay I couldn't locate him before daylight. There's a helicopter, I said, standing by to fly him out. I've only to lift the phone to have it here in fifty minutes."

"And of course, you weren't to know that the telephone lines were out of order. It might have worked if you hadn't called at the Firecrest in the rescue launch before you went to the Shangri-la. You weren't to know that our friends who were locked in the after cabin when you went aboard would report back that they'd heard an R.A.F, rescue launch here at such and such a time. They might have seen it through a porthole, but even that wouldn't be necessary, the engines are unmistakable. So now our friends know you're lying like a trooper. The chances are that they've now a very shrewd idea as to who exactly you are. Congratulations, sir. You've now joined the category I've been in for years — no insurance company in the world would issue you a life policy even on a ninety-nine per cent premium."

"Our trip to the Shangri-la has removed your last doubts about our friends out there?"

"Yes, sir. You saw the reaction of our belted broker, Lord Charnley. And him an aristocrat to hoot!"

"A small thing to base a big decision on, Calvert," Uncle Arthur said coldly.

"Yes, sir," I fished my scuba suit from the after locker and led the way below. "I didn't fall into the water by accident. By accident on purpose, I didn't mention that when I was hanging on to the boat's rudder off the reef this evening I cut a notch in it. A deep vee notch. The Shangri-la's tender has a deep vee notch in it. Same notch, in fact. Same boat."

"I see. I see indeed." Uncle Arthur sat on the settee and gave me the combination of the cold blue eye and the monocle. "You forgot to give me advance notification of your intentions."

"I didn't forget," I started to change out of my soaking clothes. "I'd no means of knowing how good an actor you are, sir."

"I'll accept that. So that removed your last doubts."

"No, sir. Superfluous confirmation, really. I knew before then. Remember that swarthy character sitting beside Lavorski who asked me if Hunslett could swim. I'll bet a fortune to a penny that he wasn't at the Shangri-la's dinner table earlier on."

"You would win. How do you know?"

"Because he was in command of the crew of the boat who shot down the helicopter and killed Williams and hung around afterwards waiting to have a go at me. His name is Captain Imrie. He was the captain of the prize crew of the Nantes-“

Uncle Arthur nodded, but his mind was on something else. It was on the scuba suit I was pulling on.

"What the hell do you think you're going to do with that thing?" he demanded,

"Advance notification of intentions, sir. Won't be long. I'm taking a little trip to the Shangri-la. The Shangri-la's tender, rather. With a little homing device and a bag of sugar. With your permission, sir."

"Something else you forgot to tell me, hey, Calvert? Like that breaking off the Shangri-la's gangway light was no accident?"

"I'd like to get there before they replace it, sir."

"I can't believe it, I can't believe it." Uncle Arthur shook his head. For a moment I thought he was referring to the dispatch with which I had made the uneventful return trip to the Shangri-la's tender, but his next words showed that his mind was on higher and more important things. "That Tony Skouras should be up to his neck in this. There's something far wrong. I just can't believe it. Good God, do you know he was up for a peerage in the next List?"

"So soon? He told me he was waiting for the price to come down."

Uncle Arthur said nothing. Normally, he would have regarded such a statement as a mortal insult, as he himself automatically collected a life peerage on retirement. But nothing. He was as shaken as that.

"I'd like nothing better than to arrest the lot of them," I said. "But our hands are tied. We're helpless. But now that I know what we do know I wonder if you would do me a favour before we go ashore, sir. There are two things I want to know. One is whether Sir Anthony really was down at some Clyde shipyard a few days ago having stabilisers fitted -a big job few yards would tackle in a yacht that size. Should find out in a couple of hours. People tell silly and unnecessary lies. Also I'd like to find out if Lord Kirkside has taken the necessary steps to have his dead son's title — he was Viscount somebody or other — transferred to his younger son."

"You get the set ready and I'll ask them anything you like," Uncle Arthur said wearily. He wasn't really listening to me, he was still contemplating with stunned disbelief the possibility that his future fellow peer was up to the neck in skulduggery on a vast scale. "And pass me that bottle before you go below."

At the rate Uncle Arthur was going, I reflected, it was providential that the home of one of the most famous distilleries in the Highlands was less than half a mile from where we were anchored.

I lowered the false head of the starboard diesel to the engine-room deck as if it weighed a ton. I straightened and stood there for a full minute, without moving. Then I went to the engine-room door.

"Sir Arthur?"

"Coming, coming." A few seconds and he was at the door-way, the glass of whisky in his hand. "All connected up?"

"I've found Hunslett, sir."

Uncle Arthur moved slowly forward like a man in a dream.

The transmitter was gone. All our explosives and listening devices and little portable transmitters were gone. That had left plenty of room. They'd had to double him up to get him in, his head was resting on his forearms and his arms on his knees, but there was plenty of room. I couldn't see his face. I could see no marks of violence. Half-sitting; half-lying there he seemed curiously peaceful, a man drowsing away a summer afternoon by a sun-warmed wall, A long summer afternoon because for ever was a long time. That's what I'd told him last night, he'd all the time in the world for sleep.

I touched his face. It wasn't cold yet. He'd been dead two to three hours, no more. I turned his face to see if I could find how he had died. His head lolled to one side like that of a broken rag doll. I turned and looked at Sir Arthur. The dream-like expression had gone, his eyes were cold and bitter and cruel. I thought vaguely of the tales I'd heard, and largely discounted, of Uncle Arthur's total ruthlessness. I wasn't so ready to discount them now. Uncle Arthur wasn't where he was now because he'd answered an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph, he'd have been hand-picked by two or three very clever men who would have scoured the country to find the one man with the extraordinary qualifications they required. And they had picked Uncle Arthur, the man with the extraordinary qualifications, and total ruthlessness must have been one of the prime requisites. I'd never really thought of it before.

He said: "Murdered, of course."

"Yes, sir."

"How?"

"His neck is broken, sir."

"His neck? A powerful man like Hunslett?"

"I know a man who could do it with one twist of his hands. Quinn. The man who killed Baker and Delmont. The man who almost killed me."

"I see." He paused, then went on, almost absently: "You will, of course, seek out and destroy this man. By whatever means you choose. You can reconstruct this, Calvert?"

"Yes, sir." When it came to reconstruction when it was too damn late, I stood alone. "Our friend or friends boarded the Firecrest very shortly after I had left this morning. That is, before daylight. They wouldn't have dared try it after it was light. They overpowered Hunslett and kept him prisoner. Confirmation that he was held prisoner all day comes from the fact that he failed to meet the noonday schedule. They still held him prisoner when you came aboard. There was no reason why you should suspect that there was anyone aboard — the boat that put them aboard before dawn would have gone away at once. They couldn't leave one of the Shangri-la's boats lying alongside the Firecrest all day."

"There's no necessity to dot i's and cross t's."

"No, sir. Maybe an hour or so after you departed the Shangri-la's tender with Captain Imrie, Quinn and company aboard turns up: they report that I'm dead. That was Hunslett's death warrant. With me dead they couldn't let him live. So Quinn killed him. Why he was killed this way I don't know. They may have thought shots could be heard, they may not have wanted to use knives or blunt instruments in case they left blood all over the deck. They were intending to abandon the boat till they came back at night, at midnight, to take it out to the Sound and scuttle it and someone might have come aboard in the interim. My own belief is that he was killed this way because Quinn is a psychopath and compulsive killer and liked doing it this way."

"I see. And then they said to themselves: 'Where can we hide Hunslett till we come back at midnight? Just in case someone does come aboard.' And then they said: 'Ha! We know. We'll hide him in the dummy diesel.' So they threw away the transmitter and all the rest of the stuff — or took it with them. It doesn't matter. And they put Hunslett inside."

Uncle Arthur had been speaking very quietly throughout and then suddenly, for the first time I'd ever known it, his voice became a shout, "How in the name of God did they know this was a dummy diesel, Calvert? How could they have known?" His voice dropped to what was a comparative whisper. "Someone talked, Calvert, or someone was criminally careless."

"No one talked, sir. Someone was criminally careless. I was. If I'd used my eyes Hunslett wouldn't be lying there now. The night the two bogus customs officers were aboard I knew that they had got on to something when we were in the engine-room here. Up to the time that they'd inspected the batteries they'd gone through the place with a tooth-comb. After that they didn't give a damn. Hunslett even suggested that it was something to do with the batteries but I was too clever to believe him." I walked to the work-bench, picked up a torch and handed it to Uncle Arthur. "Do you see anything about those batteries that would excite suspicion?"

He looked at me, that monocled eye still ice-cold and bitter, took the torch and examined the batteries carefully. He spent all of two minutes searching, then straightened.

"I see nothing," he said curtly.

"Thomas — the customs man who called himself Thomas -did. He was on to us from the start. He knew what he was looking for. He was looking for a powerful radio transmitter. Not the tuppenoe ha'penny job we have up in the wheel-house. He was looking for signs of a power take-off from those batteries. He was looking for the marks left by screw clamps or by a pair of saw-toothed, powerfully spring-loaded crocodile dips."

Uncle Arthur swore, very quietly, and bent over the batteries again. This time his examination took only ten seconds.

"You make your point well, Calvert." The eyes were still bitter, but no longer glacial.

"No wonder they knew exactly what I was doing to-day," I said savagely, "No wonder they knew that Hunslett would be alone before dawn, that I'd be landing at that cove this evening. All they required was radio confirmation from someone out in Loch Houron that Calvert had been snooping around there and the destruction of -the helicopter was a foregone conclusion. All this damned fol-de-rol about smashing up radio transmitters and making us think that we were the only craft left with a transmitter. God, how blind can you be?"

"I assume that there's some logical thought behind this outburst," Uncle Arthur said coldly.

"That night Hunslett and I were aboard the Shangri-la for drinks. I told you that when we returned we knew that we'd had visitors. We didn't know why, then. My God!"

"You've already been at pains to demonstrate the fact that I was no brighter than yourself about the battery. It's not necessary to repeat the process — "

"Let me finish," I interrupted. Uncle Arthur didn't like being interrupted. "They came down to the engine-room here. They knew there was a transmitter. They looked at that starboard cylinder head. Four bolts — the rest are dummies -with the paint well and truly scraped off. The port cylinder head bolts without a flake of paint missing. They take off this head wire into the transceiver lines on the output side of the scrambler and lead out to a small radio transmitter hidden, like as not, behind the battery bank there. They'd have all the equipment with them for they knew exactly what they wanted to do. From then on they could listen in to our every word. They knew all our plans, everything we intended to do, and made their own plans accordingly. They figured and how right they were that it would be a damn sight more advantageous for them to let Hunslett and I have our direct communication with you and so know exactly what was going on than to wreck this set and force us to find some other means of communication that they couldn't check on."

"But why — but why destroy the advantage they held by — by — " e gestured at the empty engine casing.

"It wasn't an advantage any longer," I said tiredly. "When they ripped out that set Hunslett was dead and they thought Calvert was dead. They didn't need the advantage any more."

"Of course, of course. My God, what a fiendish brew this is." He took out his monocle and rubbed his eye with the knuckle of his hand. "They're bound to know that we will find Hunslett the first time we attempt to use this radio. I am beginning to appreciate the weight of your remark in the saloon that we might find it difficult to insure ourselves. They cannot know how much we know, but they cannot afford to take chances. Not with, what is it now, a total of seventeen million pounds at stake. They will have to silence us."

"Up and off is the only answer," I agreed. "We've been down here too long already, they might even be on their way across now. Don't let that Luger ever leave your hand, sir. We'll be safe enough under way. But first we must put Hunslett and our friend in the after cabin ashore."

"Yes. Yes, we must put them ashore first."

At the best of times, weighing anchor by electric windlass is not a job for a moron, even an alert moron. Even our small windlass had a pull of over 1,400 pounds, A carelessly placed hand or foot, a flapping trouser leg or the trailing skirts of an oilskin, any of those being caught up between chain and drum and you can be minus a hand or foot before you can cry out, far less reach the deck switch which is invariably placed abaft the windlass. Doing this on a wet slippery deck is twice as dangerous. Doing it on a wet slippery deck, in total darkness, heavy rain and with a very unstable boat beneath your feet, not to mention having the brake pawl off and the winch covered by a tarpaulin, is a highly dangerous practice indeed. But it wasn't as dangerous as attracting the attention of our friends on the Shangri-la.

Perhaps h was because of my total absorption In the job on hand, perhaps because of the muffled clank of the anchor coming inboard, that I didn't locate and identify the sound as quickly as I might. Twice I'd thought I'd heard the far-off sound of a woman's voice, twice I'd vaguely put it down to late-night revelry on one of the smaller yachts in the bay — it would require an LB.M, computer to work out the gallon-age of gin consumed in British yacht harbours after the sun goes down. Then I heard the voice again, much nearer this time, and I put all thought of revelry afloat out of my mind. The only cry of desperation ever heard at a yacht party is when the gin runs out: this soft cry had a different quality of desperation altogether. I stamped on the deck switch, and all sound on the fo'c'sle ceased. The Lilliput was in my hand without my knowing how it had got there.

"Help me!" The voice was low and urgent and desperate. "For God's sake, help me."

The voice came from the water, amidships on the port side. I moved back silently to where I thought the voice had come from and stood motionless. I thought of Hunslett and I didn't move a muscle, I'd no intention of helping anyone until I'd made sure the voice didn't come from some dinghy -a dinghy with two other passengers, both carrying machine-guns. One word, one incautious flash of light, a seven pound pull on a trigger and Calvert would be among his ancestors if, that was, they would have anything to do with such a bloody fool of a descendant.

"Please! Please help me! Please!"

I helped her. Not so much because the desperation in the voice was unquestionably genuine as because of the fact that it as unquestionably belonged to Charlotte Skouras.

I pushed through between the scuppers and the lowest guard-rail, a rubber tyre fender that was permanently attached to one of the guard-rail stanchions and lowered it to water-level. I said: "Lady Skouras?"

"Yes, yes, ifs me. Thank God, thank God!" Her voice didn't come just as easily as that, she was gasping for breath and she'd water in her mouth.

"There's a fender at the boat's side. Catch it."

A moment or two, then: "I have it."

"Can you pull yourself up?"

More splashing and gasping, then: "No. No, I can't do it"

"No matter. Wait." I turned round to go for Uncle Arthur but he was already by my side. I said softly in his ear: "Lady Skouras is down there in the water. It may be a trap. I don't think so. But if you see a light, shoot at it."

He said nothing but I felt his arm move as he took the Luger from his pocket I stepped over the guard-rail and lowered myself till my foot came to rest on the lower part of the tyre. I reached down and caught her arm. Charlotte Skouras was no slender sylph-like figure, she had some bulky package tied to her waist, and I wasn't as fit -as I'd been a long, long time ago, say about forty-eight hours, but with a helping hand from Uncle Arthur I managed to get her up on deck. Between us, we half carried her to the curtained saloon and set her down on the settee. I propped a cushion behind her head and took a good look at her.

She'd never have made the front cover of Vogue. She looked terrible. Her dark slacks and shirt looked as if they had spent a month in the sea instead of probably only a few minutes. The long tangled auburn hair was plastered to her head and cheeks, her face was dead-white, the big brown eyes, with the dark half-circles, were wide open and frightened and both mascara and lipstick had begun to run. And she hadn't been beautiful to start with. I thought she was the most desirable woman I'd ever seen. I must be nuts.

"My dear Lady Skouras, my dear Lady Skouras!" Uncle Arthur was back among the aristocracy and showed it. He knelt by her side, ineffectually dabbing at her face with a hand-kerchief, "What in God's name has happened? Brandy, Calvert, brandy 1 Don't just stand there, man. Brandy!"

Uncle Arthur seemed to think he was in a pub but, as it happened, I did have some brandy left. I handed him the glass and said: "If you'll attend to Lady Skouras, sir, I'll finish getting the anchor up."

"No, no!" She took a gulp of the brandy, choked on it and I had to wait until she had finished coughing before she went on. "They're not coming for at least two hours yet. I know. I heard. There's something terrible going on, Sir Arthur. I had -to come, I had to come."

"Now, don't distress yourself, Lady Skouras, don't distress yourself," Uncle Arthur said, as if she weren't distressed enough already. "Just drink this down, Lady Skouras."

"No, not that!" I got all set to take a poor view of this, it was damned good brandy, then I realised she was talking of something else. "Not Lady Skouras. Never again! Char-lotte. Charlotte Meiner. Charlotte."

One thing about women, they always get their sense of prior-ities right. There they were on the Shangri-la, rigging up a home-made atom bomb to throw through our saloon windows and all she could think was to ask us to call her "Charlotte." I said: "Why did you have to come?"

"Calvert!" Uncle Arthur's voice was sharp. "Do you mind? Lady — I mean, Charlotte — has just suffered a severe shock. Let her take her time to — "

"No." She struggled to an upright sitting position and forced a warn smile, half-scared, half-mocking. "No, Mr. Petersen, Mr. Calvert, whatever your name, you're quite right. Actresses tend to over-indulge their emotions. I’m not an actress any longer." She took another sip of the brandy and a little colour came back to her face. "I've known for some time that something was very far wrong aboard the Shangri-la. Strange men have been aboard. Some of the old crew were changed for no reason. Several times I've been put ashore with the stewardess in hotels while the Shangri-la went off on mysterious journeys. My husband — Sir Anthony — would tell me nothing. He has changed terribly since our marriage — I think he takes drugs. I've seen guns. Whenever those strange men came aboard I was sent to my stateroom after dinner." She smiled mirthlessly. "It wasn't because of any jealousy on my husband's part, you may believe me. The last day or two I sensed that everything was coming to a climax. To-night, just after you were gone, I was sent to my stateroom. I left, but stayed out in the passage. Lavorski was talking. I heard him saying: 'If your admiral pal is a UNESCO delegate, Skouras, then I'm King Neptune. I know who he is. We all know who he is. It's too late in the day now and they know too much. It's them or us.' And then Captain Imrie — how I hate that man! — said: ' I'll send Quinn and Jacques and Kramer at midnight. At one o'clock they'll open the sea-cocks in the Sound'."

"Charming friends your husband has," I murmured.

She looked at me, half-uncertainly, half-speculatively and said: "Mr. Petersen or Mr. Calvert — and I heard Lavorski call you Johnson — "

"It is confusing," I admitted. "Calvert. Philip Calvert."

"Well, Philip," — she pronounced it the French way and very nice it sounded too -"you are one great bloody fool it you talk like that. You are in deadly danger."

"Mr. Calvert," Uncle Arthur said sourly — it wasn't her language he disapproved of, it was this Christian name familiar -it between the aristocracy and the peasants — "is quite aware of the danger. He has unfortunate mannerisms of speech, that's all. You are a very brave woman, Charlotte." Blue-bloods first-naming each other was a different thing altogether. "You took a great risk in eavesdropping. You might have been caught"

"I was caught, Sir Arthur." The smile showed up the lines on either side of her mouth but didn't touch her eyes. "That is another reason why I am here. Even without the knowledge of your danger, yes, I would have come. My husband caught me. He took me into my stateroom." She stood up shakily, turned her back to us and pulled up the sodden dark shirt. Right across her back ran three great blue-red weals. Uncle Arthur stood stock-still, a man incapable of movement. I crossed the saloon and peered at her back. The weals were almost an inch wide and running half-way round her body, Here and there were tiny blood-spotted punctures. Lightly I tried a finger on one of the weals. The flesh was raised and puffy, a fresh weal, as lividly-genuine a weal as ever I'd clapped eyes on. She didn't move. I stepped back and she turned to face us.

"It is not nice, is it? It does not feel very nice." She smiled and again that smile, "I could show you worse than that."

"No, no, no," Uncle Arthur said hastily. "That will not be necessary." He was silent for a moment, then burst out: "My dear Charlotte, what you must have suffered. It's fiendish, absolutely fiendish. He must be — he must be inhuman. A monster. A monster, perhaps under the influence of drugs. I would never have believed it!" His face was brick-red with outrage and his voice sounded as if Quinn had him by the throat. Strangled. "No one would ever have believed it!"

"Except the late Lady Skouras," she said quietly. "I understand now why she was in and out of mental homes several times before she died." She shrugged. "I have no wish to go the same way. I am made of tougher stuff than Madeleine Skouras. So I pick up my bag and run away." She nodded at the small polythene bag of clothes that had been tied to her waist. "Like Dick Whittington, is it not?"

"They'll be here long before midnight when they discover you're gone," I observed.

"It may be morning before they find out. Most nights I lock my cabin door. Tonight I locked it from the outside."

"That helps," I said. "Standing about in those sodden clothes doesn't. There's no point in running away only to die of pneumonia. You'll find towels in my cabin. Then we can get you a room in the Columba Hotel."

"I had hoped for better than that," The fractional slump of the shoulders was more imagined than seen, but the dull defeat in the eyes left nothing to the imagination. "You would put me in the first place they would look for me. There is no safe place for me in Torbay, They will catch me and bring me back and my husband will take me into that stateroom again. My only hope is to run away. Your only hope is to run away. Please. Can we not run away together?"

"No."

"A man not given to evasive answers, is that it?" There was a lonely dejection, a proud humiliation about her that did very little for my self-respect. She turned towards Uncle Arthur, took both his hands in hers and said in a low voice: "Sir Arthur, I appeal to you as an English gentleman." Thumbs down on Calvert, that foreign-born peasant. "May I stay? Please?"

Uncle Arthur looked at me, hesitated, looked at Charlotte Skouras, looked into those big brown eyes and was a lost man.

"Of course you may stay, my dear Charlotte." He gave a stiff old-fashioned bow which, I had to admit, went very well with the beard and the monocle. "Yours to command, my dear lady."

"Thank you, Sir Arthur." She smiled at me, not with triumph or satisfaction, just an anxious-to-be-friendly smile. "It would be nice, Philip, to have the consent -what do you say? — unanimous."

"If Sir Arthur wishes to expose you to a vastly greater degree of risk aboard this boat than you would experience in Torbay, that is Sir Arthur's business. As for the rest, my consent is not required. I'm a well-trained civil servant and I obey orders."

"You are gracious to a fault," Uncle Arthur said acidly.

"Sorry, sir," I'd suddenly seen the light and a pretty dazzling beam it was too. "I should not have called your judgment in question. The lady is very welcome. But I think she should remain below while we are alongside the pier, sir."

"A reasonable request and a wise precaution," Uncle Arthur said mildly. He seemed pleased at my change of heart, at my proper deference to the wishes of the aristocracy.

"It won't be for long." I smiled at Charlotte Skouras. "We leave Torbay within the hour."

"What do I care what you charge him with?" I looked from Sergeant MacDonald to the broken-faced man with the wet blood-stained towel, then back to MacDonald again. "Breaking and entering. Assault and battery. Is legal possession of a dangerous weapon with intent to create a felony — murder. Anything you like."

"Well, now. It's just not quite as easy as that." Sergeant MacDonald spread his big brown hands across the counter of the tiny police station and looked at the prisoner and myself in turn. "He didn't break and enter, you know, Mr. Petersen. He boarded. No law against that. Assault and battery? It looks as if he has been the victim and not the perpetrator. And what kind of weapon was he carrying, Mr. Petersen?"

"I don't know. It must have been knocked overboard."

"I see. Knocked overboard, was it? So we have no real proof of any felonious intent."

I was becoming a little tired of Sergeant MacDonald. He was fast enough to cooperate with bogus customs officers but with me he was just being deliberately obstructive. I said: "You'll be telling me next that it's all a product of my fevered imagination. You'll be wiling me next that I just stepped ashore, grabbed the first passer-by I saw, hit him in the face with a four-by-two then dragged him up here inventing this tale as I went. Even you can't be so stupid as to believe that."

The brown face turned red and, on the counter, the brown knuckles turned ivory. He said softly: "You'll kindly not talk to me like that."

"If you insist on behaving like a fool I’ll treat you as such. Are you going to lock him up?"

"If s only your word against his."

"No. I had a witness. He's down at the old pier, now, if you want to see him. Admiral Sir Arthur Arnford-Jason. A very senior civil servant."

"You had a Mr. Hunslett with you last time I was aboard your boat."

"He's down there, too." I nodded at the prisoner. "Why don't you ask a few questions of our friend here?"

"I've sent for the doctor. He'll have to fix his face first. I can't understand a word he says."

"The state of his face doesn't help," I admitted. "But the main trouble is that he speaks Italian."

"Italian, is it? I'll soon fix that. The owner of the Western Isles cafe is an Italian."

"That helps. There are four little questions he might put to our pal here. Where is his passport, how he arrived in this country, who is his employer and where does he live."

The sergeant looked at me for a long moment then said slowly: "It's a mighty queer marine biologist that you are, Mr. Petersen."

"And it's a mighty queer police sergeant that you are, Mr. MacDonald. Good night."

I crossed the dimly-lit street to the sea-wall and waited in the shadow of a phone booth. After two minutes a man with a small bag came hurrying up the street and turned into the police station. He was out again in five minutes, which wasn't surprising: there was little a G.P. could do for what was plainly a hospital job.

The station door opened again and Sergeant MacDonald came hurrying out, long black mackintosh buttoned to the neck. He walked quickly along the sea wall, looking neither to left nor right, which made it very easy for me to follow him, and turned down the old stone pier. At the end of the pier he flashed a torch, went down a flight of steps and began to haul in a small boat. I leaned over the pier wall and switched on my own torch.

"Why don't they provide you with a telephone or radio for conveying urgent messages?" I asked. "You could catch your death of cold rowing out to the Shangri-la on a night like this."

He straightened slowly and let the rope fall from his hands. The boat drifted out into the darkness. He came up the steps with the slow heavy tread of an old man and said quietly: "What did you say about the Shangri-la?"

"Don't let me keep you, Sergeant," I said affably. "Duty before the idle social chit-chat. Your first duty is to your masters. Off you go, now, tell them that one of their hirelings has been severely clobbered and that Petersen has very grave suspicions about Sergeant MacDonald."

"I don't know what you are talking about," he said emptily. "The Shangri-la — I'm not going anywhere near the Shangri-la."

"Where are you going, then? Do tell. Fishing? Kind of forgotten your tackle, haven't you?"

"And how would you like to mind your own damn business?" MacDonald said heavily.

"That's what I'm doing. Come off it, Sergeant. Think I give a damn about our Italian pal? You can charge him with playing tiddley-winks in the High Street for all I care. I just threw him at you, together with a hint that you yourself were up to no good, to see what the reaction would be, to remove the last doubts in my mind. You reacted beautifully."

"I'm maybe not the cleverest, Mr, Petersen," he said with dignity. "Neither am I a complete idiot. I thought you were one of them or after the same thing as them." He paused. "You're not. You're a Government agent."

"I'm a civil servant." I nodded to where the Firecrest lay not twenty yards away. "You'd better come to meet my boss."

"I don't take orders from Civil Servants."

"Suit yourself," I said indifferently, turned away and looked out over the seawall. "About your two sons, Sergeant MacDonald. The sixteen-year-old twins who, I'm told, died in the Cairngorms some time back."

"What about my sons?" he said tonelessly.

"Just that I'm not looking forward to telling them that their own father wouldn't lift a finger to bring them back to life again."

He just stood there in the darkness, quite still, saying nothing. He offered no resistance when I took his arm and led him towards the Firecrest.

Uncle Arthur was at his most intimidating and Uncle Arthur in full intimidating cry was a sight to behold. He'd made no move to rise when I'd brought

MacDonald into the saloon and he hadn't ask him to sit. The blue basilisk stare, channelled and magnified by the glittering monocles transfixed the unfortunate sergeant like a laser beam.

"So your foot slipped, Sergeant," Uncle Arthur said without preamble. He was using his cold, Sat, quite urunflected voice, the one that curled your hair. "The fact that you stand here now indicates that. Mr. Calvert went ashore with a prisoner and enough rope for you to hang yourself and you seized it with both hands. Not very clever of you, Sergeant. You should not have tried to contact your friends."

"They are no friends of mine, sir," MacDonald said bitterly.

"I'm going to tell you as much as you need to know about Calvert — Petersen was a pseudonym — and myself and what we are doing." Uncle Arthur hadn't heard him. "If you ever repeat any part of what I say to anyone, it will cost you your job, your pension, any hope that you will ever again, in whatever capacity, get another job in Britain and several years in prison for contravention of the Official Secrets Act. I myself will personally formulate the charges." He paused then added in a masterpiece of superfluity: "Do I make myself clear?"

"You make yourself very clear," MacDonald said grimly.

So Uncle Arthur told him all he thought MacDonald needed to know, which wasn't much, and finished by saying: "I am sure we can now count on your hundred per cent co-operation, Sergeant."

"Calvert is just guessing at my part in this," he said dully.

"For God's sake!" I said. "You knew those customs officers were bogus. You knew they had no photo-copier with them. You knew their only object in coming aboard was to locate and smash that set — and locate any other we might have. You knew they couldn't have gone back to the mainland in that launch — it was too rough. The launch, was, in fact, the tender — which is why you left without lights — and no launch left the harbour after your departure. We'd have heard it. The only life we saw after that was when they switched on their lights in the Shangri-la's wheelhouse to smash up their own radio — one of their own radios, I should have said. And how did you know the telephone lines were down in the Sound? You knew they were down, but why did you say the Sound? Because you knew they had been cut there. Then, yesterday morning, when I asked you if there was any hope of the lines being repaired, you said no. Odd. One would have thought that you would have told the customs boys going back to the mainland to contact the G.P.O. at once. But you knew they weren't going hack there. And your two sons, Sergeant, the boys supposed to be dead, you forgot to close their accounts. Because you knew they weren't dead."

"I forgot about the accounts," MacDonald said slowly. "And all the other points -I'm afraid I'm not good at this sort of thing." He looked at "Uncle Arthur." I know this is the end of the road for me. They said they would kill my boys, sir."

"If you will extend us your full co-operation," Uncle Arthur said precisely, "I will personally see to it that you remain the Torbay police sergeant until you're falling over your beard. Who are 'they'?"

"The only men I've seen is a fellow called Captain Imrie and the two customs men — Durran and Thomas. Durran's real name is Quinn. I don't know the others' names. I usually met them in my house, after dark. I've been out to the Shangri-la only twice. To see Imrie."

"And Sir Anthony Skouras?"

"I don't know." MacDonald shrugged helplessly. "He's a good man, sir, he really is. Or I thought so. Maybe he is mixed up in this. Anyone can fall into bad company. It's very strange, sir."

"Isn't it? And what's been your part in this?"

"There's been funny things happening in this area in the past months. Boats have vanished. People have vanished. Fishermen have had their nets torn, in harbour, and yacht engines have been mysteriously damaged, also in harbour. This is when Captain Imrie wants to prevent certain boats from going certain places at the wrong time."

"And your part is to investigate with great diligence and a total lack of success," Uncle Arthur nodded. "You must be invaluable to them, Sergeant. A man with your record and character is above suspicion. Tell me, Sergeant, what are they up to?"

"Before God, sir, I have no idea."

"You're totally in the dark?"

"Yes, sir."

"I don't doubt it. This is the way the very top men operate. And you will have no idea where your boys are being held?"

"No, sir."

"How do you know they're alive?"

"I was taken out to the Shangri-la three weeks ago. My sons had been brought there from God only knows where. They were well."

"And are you really so naive as to believe that your sons will be well and will be returned alive when all this is over? Even although your boys will be bound to know who their captors are and would be available for testimony and identification if the time came for that?"

"Captain Imrie said they would come to no harm. If I co-operated. He said that only fools ever used unnecessary violence."

"You are convinced, then, they wouldn't go to the length of murder?"

"Murder! What are you talking about, sir?"

"Calvert?"

"Sir?"

"A large whisky for the sergeant."

"Yes, sir." When it came to lashing out with my private supplies Uncle Arthur was generous to a fault. Uncle Arthur paid no entertainment allowance. So I poured the sergeant a large whisky and, seeing that bankruptcy was inevitable anyway, did the same for myself. Ten seconds later the sergeant's glass was empty. I took his arm and led him to the engine-room. When we came back to the saloon in a minute's time the sergeant needed no persuading to accept another glass. His face was pale.

"I told you that Calvert carried out a helicopter reconnaissance to-day," Uncle Arthur said conversationally. "What I didn't tell you was that his pilot was murdered this evening. I didn't tell you -that two other of my best agents have been killed in the last sixty hours. And now, as you've just seen Hunslett. Do you still believe, Sergeant, that we are dealing with a bunch of gentlemanly lawbreakers to whom human life is sacrosanct?"

"What do you warn me to do, sir?" Colour was back in the brown cheeks again and the eyes were cold and hard and a little desperate.

"You and Calvert will take Hunslett ashore to your office. You will call in the doctor and ask for an official post-mortem — we must have an official cause of death. For the trial. The other dead men are probably beyond recovery. You will then row out to the Shangri-la and tell Imrie that we brought Hunslett and the other man — the Italian — to your office. You will tell them that you heard us say that we must go to the mainland for new depth-sounding equipment and for armed help and that we can't be back for two days at least. Do you know where the telephone lines are cut in the Sound?"

"Yes, sir. I cut them myself."

"When you get back from the Shangri-la get out there and fix them. Before dawn. Before dawn to-morrow you, your wife and son must disappear. For thirty-six hours. If you want to live. That is understood?"

"I understand what you want done. Not why you want it done."

"Just do it. One last thing. Hunslett has no relations — few of my men have — so he may as well be buried in Torbay. Knock up your local undertaker during the night and make arrangements for the funeral on Friday. Calvert and I would like to be there."

"But — but Friday? That's Just the day after to-morrow."

"The day after to-morrow. It will be all over then. You'll have your boys back home."

MacDonald looked at him in long silence, then said slowly: "How can you be sure?"

"I’m not sure at all." Uncle Arthur passed a weary hand across his face and looked at me. "Calvert is. It's a pity, Sergeant, that the Secrets Act will never permit you to tell your friends that you once knew Philip Calvert. If it can be done, Calvert can do it. I think he can. I certainly hope so."

"I certainly hope so, too," MacDonald said sombrely.

Me too, more than either of them, but there was already so much despondency around that it didn't seem right to deepen it, so I just put on my confident face and led MacDonald back down to the engine-room.