When Eight Bells Toll

SEVEN

Three of them came to kill us, not at midnight as promised, but at 10.40 p.m. that night. Had they come five minutes earlier then they would have got us because five minutes earlier we were still tied up to the old stone pier. And had they come and got us that five minutes earlier, then the fault would have been mine for, after leaving Hunslett in the police station I had insisted that Sergeant MacDonald accompany me to use his authority in knocking up and obtaining service from the proprietor of the only chemist's shop in Torbay. Neither of them had been too keen on giving me the illegal help I wanted and it had taken me a full five minutes and the best part of my extensive repertoire of threats to extract from the very elderly chemist the minimum of reluctant service and a small green-ribbed bottle informatively labelled 'The Tablets.' But I was lucky and I was back aboard the Firecrest just after 10.30 p.m.

The west coast of Scotland doesn't go in much for golden Indian summers and that night was no exception. Apart from being cold and windy, which was standard, it was also black as sin and bucketing heavily, which if not quite standard was at least not so unusual as to excite comment. A minute after leaving the pier I had to switch on the searchlight mounted on the wheelhouse roof. The western entrance to the Sound from Torbay harbour, between Torbay and Garve Island, is a quarter of a mile wide and I could have found it easily on a compass course: but there were small yachts, I knew, between the pier and the entrance and if any of them was carrying a riding light it was invisible in that driving rain.

The searchlight control was on the wheelhouse deckhead. I moved it to point the beam down and ahead, then traversed it through a forty-degree arc on either side of the bows.

I picked up the first boat inside five seconds, not a yacht riding at its moorings but a rowing dinghy moving slowly through the water. It was fine on the port bow, maybe fifty yards away. I couldn't identify the man at the oars, the oars wrapped at their middle with some white cloth to muffle the sound of the rowlocks, because his back was towards me. A very broad back. Quinn. The man in the bows was sitting facing me. He wore oilskins and a dark beret and in his hand he held a gun. At fifty yards it's almost impossible to identify any weapon, but his looked like a German Schmeisser machine-pistol. Without a doubt Jacques, the machine-gun specialist. The man crouched low in the stern-sheets was quite unidentifiable, but I could see the gleam of a short gun in his hand. Messrs. Quinn, Jacques and Kramer coming to pay their respects as Charlotte Skouras had said they would. But much ahead of schedule.

Charlotte Skouras was on my right in the darkened wheel-house. She'd been there only three minutes, having spent all our time alongside in her darkened cabin with the door closed. Uncle Arthur was on my left, desecrating the clean night air with one of his cheroots. I reached up for a clipped torch and patted my right hand pocket to see if the Lilliput was still there. It was.

I said to Charlotte Skouras: "Open the wheelhouse door. Put it back on the catch and stand clear." Then I said to Uncle Arthur: "Take the wheel, sir. Hard a-port when I call. Then back north on course again."

He took the wheel without a word. I heard the starboard wheelhouse door click on its latch. We were doing no more than three knots through the water. The dinghy was twenty-five yards away, the men in the bows and stern holding up arms to shield their eyes from our searchlight. Quinn had stopped rowing. On our present course we'd leave them at least ten feet on our port beam. I kept the searchlight steady on the boat.

Twenty yards separated us and I could see Jacques lining up his machine-pistol on our light when I thrust the throttle lever right open. The note of the big diesel exhaust deepened and the Firecrest began to surge forward.

"Hard over now," I said.

Uncle Arthur spun the wheel. The sudden thrust of our single port screw boiled back against the port-angled rudder, pushing the stem sharply starboard. Flame lanced from Jacques machine-pistol, a silent flame, he'd a silencer on. Bullets ricocheted off our aluminium foremast but missed both light and wheelhouse. Quinn saw what was coming and dug his oars deep but he was too late. I shouted "Midships, now," pulled the throttle lever back to neutral and jumped out through the starboard doorway on to the deck.

We hit them just where Jacques was sitting, breaking off the dinghy's bows, capsizing it and throwing the three men into the water. The overturned remains of the boat and a couple of struggling figures came slowly down the starboard side of the Firecrest. My torch picked up the man closer in to our side. Jacques, with the machine-pistol held high above his head, instinctively trying to keep it dry though it must have been soaked when he had been catapulted into the water. I held gun-hand and torch-hand together, aiming down the bright narrow beam. I squeezed the Lilliput's trigger twice and a bright crimson flower bloomed where his face had been. He went down as if a shark had got him, the gun in the stiffly up-stretched arms. It was a Schmeisser machine-pistol all right. I shifted the torch. There was only one other to be seen in the water and it wasn't Quinn, he'd either dived under the Firecrest or was sheltering under the upturned wreck of the dinghy. I fired twice more at the second figure and he started to scream. The screaming went on for two or three seconds, then stopped in a shuddering gurgle. I heard the sound of someone beside me on the deck being violently sick over the side. Charlotte Skouras. But I'd no time to stay and comfort Charlotte Skouras, she'd no damned right to be out on deck anyway. I had urgent matters to attend to, such as preventing Uncle Arthur from cleaving Torbay's old stone pier in half. The townspeople would not have liked it. Uncle Arthur's idea of midships differed sharply from mine, he'd brought the Firecrest round in a three-quarter circle. He would have been the ideal man at the helm of one of those ram-headed Phoenician galleys that specialised in cutting the opposition in two, but as a helmsman in Torbay harbour he Jacked something. I jumped into the wheelhouse, pulled the throttle all the way to astern and spun the wheel to port. I jumped out again and pulled Charlotte Skouras away before she got her head knocked off by one of the barnacle-encrusted piles that fronted the pier. Whether or not we grazed the pier was impossible to say but we sure as hell gave the barnacles a nasty turn.

I moved back into the wheelhouse, taking Charlotte Skouras with me. I was breathing heavily. All this jumping in and out through wheelhouse doors took it out of a man. I said: "With all respects, sir, what the hell were you trying to do?"

"Me?" He was as perturbed as a hibernating bear in January, "Is something up, then?"

I moved the throttle to slow ahead, took the wheel from him and brought the Firecrest round till we were due north on a compass bearing. I said: "Keep it there, please," and did some more traversing with the searchlight. The waters around were black and empty, there was no sign even of the dinghy. I'd expected to see every light in Torbay lit up like a naval review, those four shots, even the Lilliput's sharp, light-weighted cracks, should have had them all on their feet. But nothing, no sign, no movement at all. The gin bottle levels would be lower than ever. I looked at the compass: north-twenty-west. Like the honey-bee for the flower, the iron filing for the magnet, Uncle Arthur was determinedly heading straight for the shore again. I took the wheel from him, gently but firmly, and said: "You came a bit close to the pier back there, sir."

"I believe I did." He took out a handkerchief and wiped his monocle, "Damn glass misted up just at the wrong moment, I trust, Calvert, that you weren't just firing at random out there." Uncle Arthur had become a good deal more bellicose in the past hour or so: he'd had a high regard for Hunslett.

"I got Jacques and Kramer. Jacques was the handy one with the automatic arms. He's dead. I think Kramer is too. Quinn got away." What a set-up, I thought bleakly, what a set-up. Alone with Uncle Arthur on the high seas in the darkness of the night. I'd always known that his eyesight, even in optimum conditions, was pretty poor: but I'd never suspected that, when the sun was down, he was virtually blind as a bat. But unfortunately, unlike the bat, Uncle Arthur wasn't equipped with a built-in radar which would enable him to shy clear of rocks, headlands, islands and such-like obstructions of a similarly permanent and final nature with which we might go bump in the dark. To all intents and purposes I was single-handed. This called for a radical revision in plans only I didn't see how I could radically revise anything.

"Not too bad," Uncle Arthur said approvingly, "Pity about Quinn, but otherwise not too bad at all. The ranks of the ungodly are being satisfactorily depleted. Do you think they'll come after us?"

"No. For four reasons. One, they won't know yet what has happened. Two, both their sorties this evening have gone badly and they won't be in a hurry to try any more boarding expeditions for some time. Three, they'd use the tender for this job, not the Shangri-la and if they get that tender a hundred yards I've lost all faith in Demerara sugar. Four, there's mist or fog coming up. The lights of Torbay are obscured already. They can't follow us because they can't find us."

Till that moment the only source of illumination we'd had in the wheelhouse had come from the reflected light of the compass lamp. Suddenly the overhead light came on. Charlotte Skouras's hand was on the switch. Her face was haggard and she was staring at me as if I were the thing from outer space. Not one of those admiring affectionate looks.

"What kind of man are you, Mr. Calvert?" No "Philip" this time. Her voice was lower and huskier than ever and it had a shake in it. "You — you're not human. You kill two men and go on speaking calmly and reasonably as if nothing had happened. What in God's name are you, a hired killer? It's — it's unnatural. Have you no feelings, no emotions, no regrets?"

"Yes, I have. I'm sorry I didn't kill Quinn too."

She stared at me with something like horror in her face, then switched her gaze to Uncle Arthur. She said to him and her voice was almost a whisper: "I saw that man, Sir Arthur. I saw his face being blown apart by the bullets. Mr. Calvert could have — could have arrested him, held him up and handed him over to the police. But he didn't. He killed him. And the other. It was slow and deliberate. Why, why, why?"

"There's no ' why' about it, my dear Charlotte." Sir Arthur sounded almost irritable. "There's no justification needed. Calvert killed them or they killed us. They came to kill us. You told us that yourself. Would you feel any compunction at killing a poisonous snake? Those men were no better than that. As for arresting them!" Uncle Arthur paused, maybe for the short laugh he gave, maybe because he was trying to recall the rest of the homily I'd delivered to him earlier that evening. "There's no intermediate stage in this game. Its kill or be killed. These are dangerous and deadly men and you never give them warning,"

Good old Uncle Arthur, he'd remembered the whole lecture, practically word for word.

She looked at him for a long moment, her face uncomprehending, looked at me then slowly turned and left the wheelhouse. I said to Uncle Arthur: "You're just as bad as I am."

She reappeared again exactly at midnight, switching on the light as she entered. Her hair was combed and neat, her face was less puffy and she was dressed in one of those synthetic fibre dresses, white, ribbed and totally failing to give the impression that she stood in need of a good meal. From the way she eased her shoulders I could see that her back hurt. She gave me a faint tentative smile. She got none in return.

I said: "Half an hour ago, rounding Carrara Point, I near as dammit carried away the lighthouse. Now I hope I'm heading north of Dubh Sgeir but I may be heading straight into the middle of it. It couldn't be any blacker if you were a mile down in an abandoned coal mine, the fog is thickening, I'm a not very experienced sailor trying to navigate my way through the most dangerous waters in Britain and whatever hope we have of survival depends on the preservation of what night-sight I've slowly and painfully built up over the past hour or so. Put out that damned light!"

"I'm sorry." The light went out. "I didn't think."

"And don't switch on any other lights either. Not even in your cabin. Rocks are the least of my worries in Loch Houron."

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "And I'm sorry about earlier on. That's why I came up. To tell you that. About the way I spoke and leaving so abruptly, I mean. I've no right to sit on judgment on others — and I think my Judgment was wrong. I was just — well, literally shocked. To see two men killed like that, no, not killed, there's always heat and anger about killing, to see two men executed like that, because it wasn't kill or be killed as Sir Arthur said, and then see the person who did it not care…," Her voice faded away uncertainly.

"You might as well get your facts and figures right, my dear," Uncle Arthur said. "Three men, not two. He killed one just before you came on board to-night. He had no option, But Philip Calvert is not what any reasonable man would call a killer. He doesn't care in the way you say, because if he did he would go mad. In another way, he cares very much. He doesn't do this job for money. He's miserably paid for a man of his unique talents." I made a mental note to bring this up next time we were alone. "He doesn't do it for excitement, for — what is the modern expression? — kicks: a man who devotes his spare time to music, astronomy and philosophy does not live for kicks. But he cares. He cares for the difference between right and wrong, between good and evil, and when that difference is great enough and the evil threatens to destroy the good then he does not hesitate to take steps to redress the balance. And maybe that makes him better than either you or me, my dear Charlotte."

"And that's not all of it either," I said. "I'm also re-nowned for my kindness to little children."

"I'm sorry, Calvert," Uncle Arthur said. "No offence and no embarrassment, I hope. But if Charlotte thought it important enough to come up here and apologise, I thought it important enough to set the record straight."

"That's not all Charlotte came up for," I said nastily. "If dial's what she came up for in the first place. She came up here because she's consumed with feminine curiosity. She wants to know where we are going."

"Do you mind if I smoke?" she asked.

"Don't strike the match in front of my eyes."

She lit the cigarette and said: "Consumed with curiosity is right. What do you think? Not about where we're going, I know where we're going. You told me. Up Loch Houron. What I want to know is what is going on, what all this dreadful mystery is about, why all the comings and goings of strange men aboard the Shangri-la, what is so fantastically important to justify the deaths of three men in one evening, what you are doing here, what you are, who you are. I never really thought you were a UNESCO delegate, Sir Arthur. I know now you're not. Please. I have the right to know, I think."

"Don't tell her," I advised.

"Why ever not?" Uncle Arthur said huffily. "As she says, she is deeply involved, whether she wants it or not. She does have the right to know. Besides the whole thing will be public knowledge in a day or two."

"You didn't think of that when you threatened Sergeant MacDonald with dismissal and imprisonment if he contravened the Official Secrets Act."

"Merely because he could ruin things by talking out of turn," he said stiffly. "Lady — I mean, Charlotte — is in no position to do so. Not, of course," he went on quickly, "that she would ever dream of doing so. Preposterous. Charlotte is an old and dear friend, a trusted friend, Calvert. She shall know."

Charlotte said quietly: "I have the feeling that our friend Mr. Calvert does not care for me overmuch. Or maybe he just does not care for women."

"I care like anything," I said. "I was merely reminding the admiral of his own dictum: "Never, never, never — I forget how many nevers, I think there were four or five -tell anyone anything unless it's necessary, essential and vital. In this case it's none of the three."

Uncle Arthur lit another vile cheroot and ignored me. His dictum was not meant to refer to confidential exchanges between members of the aristocracy. He said: "This is the case of the missing ships, my dear Charlotte. Five missing ships, to be precise. Not to mention a fair scattering of very much smaller vessels, also missing or destroyed."

"Five ships, I said. On 5th April of this year the S.S. Holmwood disappeared off the south coast of Ireland. It was an act of piracy. The crew was imprisoned ashore, kept tinder guard for two or three days, then released unharmed. The Holmwood was never heard of again. On 24th April, the M.V. Antara vanished in St. George's Channel. On 17th May, the M.V. Headley Pioneer disappeared off Northern Ireland, on 6th August the S.S. Hurricane Spray disappeared after leaving the Clyde and finally, last Saturday, a vessel called the Nantesville vanished soon after leaving Bristol. In all cases the crews turned up unharmed.

"Apart from their disappearances and the safe reappearances of their crews, those five vessels all had one thing in common — they were carrying extremely valuable and virtually untraceable cargoes. The Holmwood had two and a half million pounds of South African gold aboard, the Antara had a million and a half pounds' worth of uncut Brazilian diamonds for industrial use, the Headley Pioneer had close on two million pounds' worth of mixed cut and uncut Andean emeralds from the Muzo mines in Columbia, the Hurricane Spray, which had called in at Glasgow en route from Rotterdam to New York, had just over three million pounds worth of diamonds, nearly all cut, and the last one, the Nantesville," — Uncle Arthur almost choked over this one — "had eight million pounds in gold ingots, reserves being called in by the U.S. Treasury.

"We had no idea where the people responsible for these disappearances were getting their information. Such arrangements as to the decision to ship, when, how and how much, are made in conditions of intense secrecy. They, whoever they' are, had impeccable sources of information. Calvert says he knows those sources now. After the disappearance of the first three ships and about six million pounds' worth of specie it was obvious that a meticulously organised gang was at work."

"Do you mean to say — do you mean to say that Captain Imrie is mixed up in this?" Charlotte asked.

"Mixed up is hardly the word," Uncle Arthur said dryly, "He may well be the directing mind behind it all."

"And don't forget old man Skouras," I advised. "He's pretty deep in the mire, too — about up to his ears, I should say."

"You've no right to say that," Charlotte said quickly.

"No right? Why ever not? What's he to you and what's all this defence of the maestro of the bull-whip? How's your back now?"

She said nothing. Uncle Arthur said nothing, in a different kind of way, then went on: "It was Calvert's idea to hide two of our men and a radio signal transmitter on most of the ships that sailed with cargoes of bullion or specie after the

Headley Pioneer had vanished. We had no difficulty, as you can imagine, in securing the co-operation of the various exporting and shipping companies and governments concerned. Our agents — we had three pairs working — usually hid among the cargo or in some empty cabin or machinery space with a food supply. Only the masters of the vessels concerned knew they were aboard. They delivered a fifteen-second homing signal at fixed — very fixed — but highly irregular intervals. Those signals were picked up at selected receiving stations round the west coast — we limited our stations to that area for that was where the released crews had been picked up — and by a receiver aboard this very boat here. The Firecrest, my dear Charlotte, is a highly unusual craft in many respects." I thought he was going to boast, quietly of course, of his own brilliance in designing the Firecrest but he remembered in time that I knew the truth.

"Between 17th May and 6th August nothing happened. No piracy. We believe they were deterred by the short, light nights. On 6th August, the Hurricane Spray disappeared. We had no one aboard that vessel — we couldn't cover them all. But we had two men aboard the Nantesville, the ship that sailed last Saturday. Delmont and Baker. Two of our best men. The Nantesville was forcibly taken just off the Bristol Channel. Baker and Delmont immediately began the scheduled transmissions. Cross-bearings gave us a completely accurate position at least every half-hour.

"Calvert and Hunslett were in Dublin, waiting. As soon -"

"That's right," she interrupted. "Mr. Hunslett. Where is he? I haven't seen — "

"In a moment. The Firecrest moved out, not following the Nantesville, but moving ahead of its predicted course. They reached the Mull of Kintyre and had intended waiting till the Nantesville approached there but a south-westerly gale blew up out of nowhere and the Firecrest had to run for shelter. When the Nantesville reached the Mull of Kintyre area our radio beacon fixes indicated that she was still on a mainly northerly course and that it looked as if she might pass up the Mull of Kintyre on the outside — the western side. Calvert took a chance, ran up Loch Fyne and through the Crinan Canal. He spent the night in the Crinan sea-basin. The sea-lock is closed at night. Calvert could have obtained the authority to have it opened but he didn't want to: the wind had veered to westerly late that evening and small boats don't move out of Crinan through the Dorus Mor in a westerly gusting up to Force 9. Not if they have wives and families to support — and even if they haven't.

"During the night the Nantesville turned out west into the Atlantic. We thought we had lost her. We think we know now why she turned out. She wanted to arrive at a certain place at a certain state of the tide in the hours of darkness, and she had time to kill. She went west, we believe, firstly because it was the easiest way to ride out the westerly gale and, secondly, because she didn't want to be seen hanging around the coast all of the next day and preferred to make a direct approach from the sea as darkness was falling.

"The weather moderated a fair way overnight. Calvert left Crinan at dawn, almost at the very minute the Nantesville turned back east again. Radio transmissions were still coming in from Baker and Delmont exactly on schedule. The last transmission came at 10.22 hours that morning: after that, nothing."

Uncle Arthur stopped and the cheroot glowed fiercely in the darkness. He could have made a fortune contracting out to the cargo shipping companies as a one-man fumigating service. Then he went on very quickly as if he didn't like what he had to say next, and I'm sure lie didn't.

"We don't know what happened. They may have betrayed themselves by some careless action. I don't think so, they were too good for that. Some member of the prize crew may just have stumbled over their hiding-place. Again it's unlikely, and a man who stumbled over Baker and Delmont wouldn't be doing any more stumbling for some time to come. Calvert thinks, and I agree with him, that by the one unpredictable chance in ten thousand, the prize crew's radio-operator happened to be traversing Baker and Delmont's wave-band at the very moment they were sending their fifteen second transmission. At that range he'd about have his head blasted off and the rest was inevitable.

"A plot of the Nantesville's fixes between dawn and the last transmission showed her course as 082° true. Predicted destination — Loch Houron. Estimated time of arrival — sunset. Calvert had less than a third of the Nantesville's distance to cover. But he didn't take the Firecrest into Loch Houron because he was pretty sure that Captain Imrie would recognise a radio beacon transmitter when he saw one and would assume that we had his course. Calvert was also pretty sure that if the Nantesville elected to continue on that course — and he had a hunch that it would — any craft found in the entrance to Loch Houron would receive pretty short shrift, either by being run down or sunk by gunfire. So he parked the Firecrest in Torbay and was skulking around the entrance to Loch Houron in a frogman's suit and with a motorised rubber dinghy when the Nantesville turned up. He went aboard in darkness. The name was changed, the flag was changed, one mast was missing and the superstructure had been repainted. But it was the Nantesville.

"Next day Calvert and Hunslett were storm-bound in Torbay but on Wednesday Calvert organised an air search for the Nantesville or some place where she might have been hidden. He made a mistake. He considered it extremely unlikely that the Nantesville would still be in Loch Houron because Imrie knew that we knew that he had been headed there and therefore would not stay there indefinitely, because the chart showed Loch Houron as being the last place in Scotland where anyone in their sane minds would consider hiding a vessel and because, after Calvert had left the Nantesville that evening, she'd got under way and started to move out to Carrara Point. Calvert thought she'd just stayed in Loch Houron till it was dark enough to pass undetected down the Sound of Torbay or round the south of Torbay Island to the mainland. So he concentrated most of his search on the mainland and on the Sound of Torbay and Torbay itself. He thinks now the Nantesville is in Loch Houron. We're going there to find out." His cheroot glowed again. "And that's it, my dear. Now, with your permission, I'd like to spend an hour on the saloon settee. Those nocturnal escapades…" He sighed, and finished: "I’m not a boy any longer. I need my sleep."

I liked that I wasn't a boy any longer either and I didn't seem to have slept for months. Uncle Arthur, I knew, always went to bed on the stroke of midnight and the poor man had already lost fifteen minutes. But I didn't see what I could do about it. One of my few remaining ambitions in life was to reach pensionable age and I couldn't make a better start than by ensuring that Uncle Arthur never laid hands on the wheel of the Firecrest.

"But surely that's not it," Charlotte protested. "That's not all of it. Mr. Hunslett, where's Mr. Hunslett? And you said Mr. Calvert was aboard the Nantesville. How on earth did."

"There are some things you are better not knowing, my dear, Why distress yourself unnecessarily? Just leave this to us."

"You haven't had a good look at me recently, have you, Sir Arthur?" she asked quietly.

"I don't understand."

"It may have escaped your attention but I’m not a child any more. I'm not even young any more. Please don't treat me as a juvenile. And if you want to get to that settee to-night."

"Very well. If you insist. The violence, I'm afraid, has not all been one-sided. Calvert, as I said, was about the Nantesville. He found my two operatives. Baker and Delmont." Uncle Arthur had the impersonal emotionless voice of a man checking his laundry list. "Both men had been stabbed to death. This evening the pilot of Calvert's helicopter was killed when the machine was shot down in the Sound of Torbay. An hour after that Hunslett was murdered. Calvert found him in the Firecrest's engine-room with a broken neck."

Uncle Arthur's cheroot glowed and faded at least half a dozen times before Charlotte spoke. The shake was back in her voice. "They are fiends. Fiends." A long pause, then: "How can you cope with people like that?"

Uncle Arthur puffed a bit more then said candidly: "I don't intend to try. You don't find generals slugging it out hand-to-hand in the trenches. Calvert will cope with them. Good night, my dear."

He pushed off. I didn't contradict him. But I knew that Calvert couldn't cope with them. Not any more, he couldn't. Calvert had to have help. With a crew consisting of a myopic boss and a girl who, every time I looked at her, listened to her or thought of her, starred the warning bells clanging away furiously in the back of my head, Calvert had to have a great deal of help. And he had to have it fast.

After Uncle Arthur had retired, Charlotte and I stood in silence in the darkened wheelhouse. But a companionable silence. You can always tell. The rain drummed on the wheel-house roof. It was as dark as it ever becomes at sea and the patches of white fog were increasing in density and number. Because of them I had cut down to half speed and with the loss of steerage way and that heavy westerly sea coining up dead astern I'd normally have been hard put to it to control the direction of the Firecrest: but I had the auto-pilot on and switched to "Fine" and we were doing famously. The auto-pilot was a much better helmsman than I was. And streets ahead of Uncle Arthur.

Charlotte said suddenly: "What is it you intend to do to-night?"

"You are a gourmand for information. Don't you know that Uncle Arthur — sorry, Sir Arthur — and I are engaged upon a highly secret mission? Security is all."

"And now you're laughing at me — and forgetting I'm along on this secret mission too."

"I'm glad you're along and I'm not laughing at you, because I'll be leaving this boat once or twice to-night and I have to have somebody I can trust to look after it when I'm away."

"You have Sir Arthur."

"I have, as you say. Sir Arthur, There's no one alive for whose judgment and intelligence I have greater respect. But at the present moment I'd trade in all the judgment and intelligence in the world for a pair of sharp young eyes. Going by to-night's performance, Sir Arthur shouldn't be allowed out without a white stick. How are yours?"

"Well, they're not so young any more, but I think they're sharp enough."

"So I can rely on you?"

"On me? I — well, I don't know anything about handling boats."

"You and Sir Arthur should make a great team, I saw you star once in a French film about — "

"We never left the studio. Even in the studio pool I had a stand-in."

"Well, there be no stand-in to-night." I glanced out through the streaming windows. "And no studio pool. This is the real stuff, the genuine Atlantic. A pair of eyes, Charlotte, that's all I require. A pair of eyes. Just cruising up and down till I come back and seeing that you don't go on the rocks. Can you do that?"

"Will I have any option?"

"Nary an option."

"Then I'll try. Where are you going ashore?"

"Eilean Oran and Craigmore. The two innermost islands in Loch Houron. If," I said thoughtfully, "I can find them."

"Eilean Oran and Craigmore." I could have been wrong, but I thought the faint French accent a vast improvement on the original Gaelic pronunciation. "It seems so wrong. So very wrong. In the middle of all this hate and avarice and killing. These names — they breathe the very spirit of romance."

"A highly deceptive form of respiration, my dear." I'd have to watch myself, I was getting as bad as Uncle Arthur. "Those islands breathe the very spirit of bare, bleak and rocky desolation. But Eilean Oran and Craigmore hold the key to everything. Of that I'm very sure."

She said nothing. I stared out -through the high-speed Kent clear-view screen and wondered if I'd see Dubh Sgeir before it saw me. After a couple of minutes I felt a hand on my upper arm and she was very close to me. The hand was trembling. Wherever she'd come by her perfume it hadn't been bought in a supermarket or fallen out of a Christmas cracker. Momentarily and vaguely I wondered about the grievous impossibility of ever understanding the feminine mind: before fleeing for what she had thought to be her life and embarking upon a hazardous swim in the waters of Torbay harbour, she hadn't forgotten to pack a sachet of perfume in her polythene kit-bag. For nothing was ever surer than that any perfume she'd been wearing had been well and truly removed before I'd fished her out of Torbay harbour.

"Philip?"

Well, this was better than the Mr. Calvert stuff. I was glad Uncle Arthur wasn't there to have his aristocratic feelings scandalised, I said: "Uh-huh?"

"I'm sorry." She said it as if she meant it and I supposed I should have tried to forget that she was once the best actress in Europe. "I'm truly sorry. About what I said -about what I thought — earlier on. For thinking you were a monster. The men you killed, I mean. I — well, I didn't know about Hunslett and Baker and Delmont and the helicopter pilot. All your friends. I'm truly sorry, Philip. Truly."

She was overdoing it. She was also too damn close. Too damn warm. You'd have required a pile-driver in top condition to get a cigarette card between us. And that perfume that hadn't fallen out of a cracker — intoxicating, the ad-boys in the glossies would have called it. And all the time the warning bells were clanging away like a burglar alarm with the St. Virus's dance. I made a manful effort to do something about it. I put my mind to higher things.

She said nothing. She just squeezed my arm a bit more and even the pile-driver would have gone on strike for piece-work rates. I could hear the big diesel exhaust thudding away behind us, a sound of desolate reassurance. The Firecrest swooned down the long overtaking combers then gently soared again. I was conscious for the first time of a curious meteorological freak in the Western Isles. A marked rise in temperature after midnight. And I'd have to speak to the Kent boys about their guarantee that their clear view screen wouldn't mist up under any conditions, but maybe that wasn't fair, maybe they'd never visualised conditions like this. I was just thinking of switching off the auto-pilot to give me something to do when she said: "I think I'll go below soon. Would you like a cup of coffee first?"

"As long as you don't have to put on a light to do it. And as long as you don't trip over Uncle Arthur — I mean, Sir — "

"Uncle Arthur will do just fine," she said. "It suits him." Another squeeze of the arm and she was gone.

The meteorological freak was of short duration. By and by the temperature dropped back to normal and the Kent guarantee became operative again. I took a chance, left the Firecrest to its own devices and nipped aft to the stern locker. I took out my scuba diving equipment, together with air-cylinders and mask, and brought them for'ard to the wheelhouse.

It took her twenty-five minutes to make the coffee. Calor gas has many times the calorific efficiency of standard domestic coal gas and, even allowing for the difficulties of operating in darkness, this was surely a world record for slowness in making coffee at sea. I heard the clatter of crockery as the coffee was brought through the saloon and smiled cynically to myself in the darkness. Then I thought of Hunslett and Baker and Delmont and Williams, and I wasn't smiling any more.

I still wasn't smiling when I dragged myself on to the rocks of Eilean Oran, removed the scuba equipment and set the big, rectangular-based, swivel-headed torch between a couple of stones with its beam staring out to sea. I wasn't smiling, but it wasn't for the same reason that I hadn't been smiling when Charlotte had brought the coffee to the wheelhouse just over half an hour ago, I wasn't smiling because I was in a state of high apprehension and I was in a state of high apprehension because for ten minutes before leaving the Firecrest I'd tried to instruct Sir Arthur and Charlotte in the technique of keeping a boat in a constant position relative to a fixed mark on the shore.

"Keep her on a due west compass heading," I'd said. "Keep her bows on to the sea and wind. With the engine at 'Slow' that will give you enough steerage way to keep your head up. If you find yourselves creeping too far forwards, come round to the south " — if they'd come round to the north they'd have found themselves high and dry on the rock shores of Eilean Oran — "head due east at half speed, because if you go any slower you'll broach to, come sharply round to the north then head west again at slow speed. You can see those breakers on the south shore there. Whatever you do, keep them at least two hundred yards away on the starboard hand when you're going west and a bit more when you're going east."

They had solemnly assured me that they would do just that and seemed a bit chuffed because of what must have been my patent lack of faith in them both, but I'd reason for my lack of faith for neither had shown any marked ability to make a clear distinction between shore breakers and the north-south line of the foaming tops of the waves rolling east-wards towards the mainland. In desperation I'd said I'd place a fixed light on the shore and that that would serve as a permanent guide. I just trusted to God that Uncle Arthur wouldn't emulate the part of an eighteenth-century French sloop's skipper vis-a-vis the smugglers' lamp on a rock-girt Cornish shore and run the damned boat aground under the impression that he was heading for a beacon of hope. He was a very clever man, was Uncle Arthur, but the sea was not his home.

The boatshed wasn't quite empty, but it wasn't far off it. I flashed my small torch around its interior and realised that MacEachern's boatshed wasn't the place I was after. There was nothing there but a weather-beaten, gunwale-splintered launch, with, amidships, an unboxed petrol engine that seemed to be a solid block of rust.

I came to the house. On its northern side, the side remote from the sea, a light shone through a small window. A light at half-past one in the morning. I crawled up to this and hitched a wary eye over the window-sill. A neat, clean, well-cared-for small room, with lime-washed walk, mat-covered stone floor and the embers of a drift-wood fire smouldering in an ingle-nook in the corner. Donald MacEachern was sitting in a cane-bottomed chair, still unshaven, still in his month-old shirt, his head bent, staring into the dull red bean of the fire. He had the look of a man who was staring into a dying fire because that was all that was left in the world for him to do. I moved round to the door, turned the handle and went inside.

He heard me and turned around, not quickly, just the way a man would turn who knows there is nothing left on earth that can hurt him. He looked at me, looked at the gun in my hand, looked at his own twelve-bore hanging on a couple of nails on the wall then sank back into his chair again.

He said tonelessly: "Who in the name of God are you?"

"Calvert's my name. I was here yesterday." I pulled off my rubber hood and be remembered all right. I nodded to the twelve-bore. "You won't be needing that gun to-night, Mr. MacEachern. Anyway, you had the safety catch on."

"You don't miss much," he said slowly. "There were no cartridges in the gun."

"And no one standing behind you, was there?"

"I don't know what you mean," he said tiredly. "Who are you, man? What do you want?"

"I want to know why you gave me the welcome you did yesterday." I put the gun away. "It was hardly friendly, Mr. MacEachern."

"Who are you, sir?" He looked even older than he had done yesterday, old and broken and done.

"Calvert. They told you to discourage visitors, didn't they, Mr. MacEachern?" No answer. "I asked some questions to-night of a friend of yours. Archie MacDonald. The Torbay police sergeant. He told me you were married. I don't see Mrs. MacEachern."

He half rose from his cane chair. The old bloodshot eyes had a gleam to them. He sank back again and the eyes dimmed.

"You were out in your boat one night, weren't you, Mr. MacEachern? You were out in your boat and you saw too much. They caught you and they -took you back here and they took Mrs. MacEachern away and they told you that if you ever breathed a word to anyone alive you would never see your wife that way again. Alive, I mean. They told you to stay here in case any chance acquaintances or strangers should call by and wonder why you weren't here and raise the alarm, and just to make sure that you wouldn't be tempted to go the mainland for help — although heaven knows I would have thought there would be no chance in the world of you being as mad as that — they immobilised your engine. Salt-water impregnated sacks, I shouldn't wonder, so that any chance caller would think it was due to neglect and disuse, not sabotage."

"Aye, they did that." He stared sightlessly into the fire, his voice the sunken whisper of a man who is just thinking aloud and hardly aware that he is speaking. "They took her away and they ruined my boat. And I had my life saving in the back room there and they took that too. I wish I'd had a million pounds to give them. If only they had left my Main. She's five years older than myself." He had no defences left.

"What in the name of God have you been living on?"

"Every other week they bring me tinned food, not much, and condensed milk. Tea I have, and I catch a fish now and then off the rocks." He gazed into the fire, his forehead wrinkling as if he were suddenly realising that I brought a new dimension into his life. "Who are you, sir? Who are you? You're not one of them. And you're not a policeman, I know you're not a policeman. I've seen them. I've seen policemen. But you are a very different kettle of fish." There were the stirrings of life in him now, life in his face and in his eyes. He stared at me for a full minute, and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable under the gaze of those faded eyes, when he said: "I know who you are. I know who you must be. You are a Government man. You are an agent of the British Secret Service."

Well, by God, I took off my hat to the old boy. There I was, looking nondescript as anything and buttoned to the chin in a scuba suit, and he had me nailed right away. So much for the inscrutable faces of the guardians of our country's secrets. I thought of what Uncle Arthur would have said to him, the automatic threats of dismissal and imprisonment if the old man breathed a word. But Donald MacEachern didn't have any job to be dismissed from and after a lifetime in Eilean Oran even a maximum security prison would have looked like a hostelry to which Egon Ronay would have lashed out six stars without a second thought, so as there didn't seem to be much point in threatening him I said instead, for the first time in my life: "I am an agent of the Secret Service, Mr. MacEachern. I am going to bring your wife back to you."

He nodded very slowly, then said: "You will be a very brave man, Mr. Calvert, but you do not know the terrible men who will wait for you."

"If I ever earn a medal, Mr. MacEachern, it- will be a case of mistaken identification, but, for the rest, I know very well what I am up against. Just try to believe me, Mr. MacEachern. It will be all right. You were in the war, Mr. MacEachern."

"You know. You were told?"

I shook my head. "Nobody had to tell me."

"Thank you, sir," The back was suddenly very straight. "I was a soldier for twenty-two years. I was a sergeant in-the 51st Highland Division."

"You were a sergeant in the 51st Highland Division," I repeated. "There are many people, Mr. MacEachern, and not all of them Scots, who maintain that there was no better in the world."

"And it is not Donald MacEachern who would be disagreeing with you, sir." For the first time the shadow of a smile touched the faded eyes. "There were maybe one or two worse. You make your point, Mr. Calvert. We were not namely for running away, for losing hope, for giving up too easily." He rose abruptly to his feet "In the name of God, what am I talking about? I am coming with you, Mr. Calvert."

I rose to my feet and touched my hands to his shoulders. "Thank you, Mr. MacEachern, but no. You've done enough. Your fighting days are over. Leave this to me."

He looked at me in silence, then nodded. Again the suggestion of a smile. "Aye, maybe you're right. I would be getting in the way of a man like yourself. I can see that." He sat down wearily in his chair.

I moved to the door. "Good night, Mr, MacEachern. She will soon be safe."

"She will soon be safe," he repeated. He looked up at me, his eyes moist, and when he spoke his voice held the same faint surprise as his face, "You know, I believe she will."

"She will. I'm going to bring her back here personally and that will give me more pleasure than anything I've ever done in my life. Friday morning, Mr. MacEachern."

"Friday morning? So soon? So soon?" He was looking at a spot about a billion light years away and seemed unaware that I was standing by the open door. He smiled, a genuine smile of delight, and the old eyes shone. "I'll not sleep a wink to-night, Mr. Calvert. Nor a wink to-morrow night either."

"You'll sleep on Friday," I promised. He couldn't see me any longer, the tears were running down his grey unshaven cheeks, so I closed the door with a quiet hand and left him alone with his dreams.