When eight bells toll (14 page)

He heard me out, then said:   "Loch Houron, you think?"

"Loch Houron it must be. I spoke to no one else, anywhere else, and to the best of my knowledge no one else saw me. Someone recognised me. Or someone"transmitted my description. By radio. It must have been by radio. The boat that was waiting for Williams and myself came from Torbay or somewhere near Torbay, a boat from Loch Houron could I               never have made it to the eastern end of the Sound of Torbay in five times the time we took. Somewhere near here, on              land or sea, is a transceiver set. Somewhere out on Loch Houron there's another."

"This University expedition boat you saw on the south shore of Loch Houron. This alleged University expedition. It would have a radio transmitter aboard."

"No, sir. Boys with beards." I rose, pulled back the saloon curtains on both sides, then sat down again. "I told you their boat was damaged and listing. She'd been, riding moored fore and aft in plenty of water. They didn't hole it themselves and it wasn't holed by any act of nature. Somebody kindly obliged. Another of those odd little boating incidents that occur with such profusion up and down the west coast."

"Why did you pull those curtains back?"

"Another of those odd little boating incidents, sir. One that's about to happen. Some time to-night people will be coming aboard. Hunslett and I, those people think, are dead, At least, I'm dead and Hunslett is dead or a prisoner. But they can't leave an abandoned
Firecrest
at anchor to excite suspicion and invite investigation. So they'll come in a boat, up anchor, and take die
Firecrest
out into the Sound, followed by their own boat. Once there, they'll slice through the flexible salt-water cooling intake, open the salt-water cock, take to their own boat and lift their hats as the
Firecrest
goes down to join the helicopter. As far as the big wide innocent world is concerned, Hunslett and I will just have sailed off into the sunset."

"And the gulfs will have washed you down," Uncle Arthur nodded. "You are very sure of this, Calvert?"

"You might say I'm absolutely certain."

"Then why open those blasted curtains?"

"The scuttling party may be coining from anywhere and they may not come for hours. The best time to scuttle a boat in close waters is at slack tide, when you can be sure that it will settle exactly where you want it to settle, and slack tide is not until one o'clock this morning. But if someone comes panting hotfoot aboard soon after those curtains are opened, then that will be proof enough that the radio transmitter we're after, and our friends who are working the transmitter, are somewhere in this bay, ashore or afloat."

"How will it be proof?" Uncle Arthur said irritably. "Why should they come, as you say, panting hotfoot?"

"They know they have Hunslett. At least, I assume they have, I can't think of any other reason for his absence. They think they know I'm dead, but they can't be sure. Then they see the beckoning oil lamp in the window. What is this, they say to themselves, Calvert back from the dead? Or a third, or maybe even a third and a fourth colleague of Calvert and Hunslett that we wot not of? Whether it's me or my friends, they must be silenced. And silenced at once. Wouldn't you come panting hotfoot?"

"There's no need to treat the matter with levity," Uncle Arthur complained.

"In your own words, sir, if you can believe that, you can believe anything."

"You should have consulted me first, Calvert." Uncle Arthur shifted in his seat, an almost imperceptible motion, though his expression didn't change. He was a brilliant administrator, but the more executive side of the business, the sand-bagging and pushing of people off high cliffs, wasn't exactly in his line. "I've told you that I came to take charge."

"Sorry, Sir Arthur. You'd better change that report, hadn't you? The bit about the best in Europe, I mean."

"
Touché, touché, touché,"
he grumbled. "And they're coming at us out of the dark, is that it? On their way now. Armed men. Killers. Shouldn't we - shouldn't we be preparing to defend ourselves? Dammit, man, I haven't even got a gun."

"You won't need one. You may not agree with me." I handed him the Luger. He took it, checked the indicator and that the safety catch moved easily, then sat there holding it awkwardly in his hand.

"Shouldn't we move, Calvert?   We're sitting targets here."

"They won't be here for some time. The nearest house or boat is a mile away to 'the east. They'll be pushing wind and tide and they daren't use a motor. Whether they're rowing a boat or paddling a rubber dinghy they have a long haul ahead of them. Time's short, sir. We have a lot to do to-night. To get back to Loch Houron. The expedition's out, they couldn't pirate a dinghy, far less five ocean-going freighters. Our friend Donald MacEachern acts in a highly suspicious fashion, he's got the facilities there, he's dead worried and he might have had half a dozen guns at his back while he had his in my front. But it was all too good to be true, professionals wouldn't lay it on the line like that."

"Maybe that's how professionals would expect a fellow-professional to react. And
you said he's worried."

"Maybe the fish aren't biting. Maybe he's involved, but not directly. Then there's the shark-fishers. They have the boats, the facilities and, heaven knows, they're tough enough. Against that, they've been based there for years, the place is littered with sharks - it should be easy enough to check if regular consignments of liver oil are sent to the mainland - and they're well known and well thought of along the coast. They'll bear investigating. Then there's Dubh Sgeir. Lord Kirkside and his lovely daughter Sue."

"Lady Susan," Uncle Arthur said. It's difficult to invest an impersonal, "Inflectionless voice with cool reproach, but he managed it without any trouble. "I know Lord Kirkside, of course"- his tone implied that it would be remarkable if he didn't - "and while I may or may not be right about Sir Anthony, and I will lay you a hundred to one, in pounds, that I am, I'm convinced that Lord Kirkside is wholly incapable of any dishonest or illegal action."

"Me, too. He's a very tough citizen, I'd say, but on the side of the angels."

"And his daughter?  I haven't met her."

"Very much a girl of to-day. Dressed in the modern idiom, speaks in the modern idiom, I'm tough and I'm competent and I can take care of myself, thank you. She's not tough at all, just a nice old-fashioned girl in new-fashioned clothes."

"So that clears them." Uncle Arthur sounded relieved. "That leaves
MS
the expedition, in spite of your sneers, or MacEachern's place, or the shark-fishers. I go for the shark-fishers myself."

I let him go for wherever he wanted to. I thought it was time I went to the upper deck and told him so.

"It won't be long now?"

"I shouldn't think so, sir. We'll put out the lights in the saloon here — it would look very odd if they peered in the windows and saw no one here. We'll put on the two sleeping-cabin lights and the stern light. That will destroy their night-sight. The after deck will be bathed in light. For'ard of that, as far as they are concerned, it will be pitch dark. We hide in the dark."

"Where in the dark?" Uncle Arthur didn't sound very confident.

"You stand inside the wheelhouse. All wheelhouse doors are hinged for'ard and open outwards. Keep your hand on the inside handle. Lightly. When you feel it begin to turn, a very slow and stealthy turn, you can bet your boots, wait till the door gives a fraction, then kick the rear edge, just below the handle, with the sole of your right foot and with all the weight you have. If you don't break his nose or knock him overboard you'll at least set him in line for a set of false teeth. I'll take care of the other or others."

"How?"

"I'll be on the saloon roof. It's three feet lower than the loom of the stern light even if they approach from the wheelhouse roof so they can't see me silhouetted against the loom of the stern light even if they approach from the bows."

"But what arc you going to do?"

"Clobber him or them. A nice big Stilson from the engine-room with a rag round it will do nicely."

"Why don't we just dazzle them with torches and tell them to put their hands up?" Uncle Arthur clearly didn't care for ray proposed
modus operandi
.

"
Three reasons. These are dangerous and deadly men and you never give them warning. Not the true sporting spirit, but it helps you survive. Then there will almost certainly be night-glasses trained on the
Firecrest
at this very moment. Finally, sound carries very clearly over water and the wind is blowing towards Torbay. Shots, I mean."

He said no more.  We took up position and waited.   It wasstill raining heavily with the wind still from the west. For once the rain didn't bother me, I'd a full set of oilskins on. I just lay there, spread-eagled on the saloon coach-roof, occasionally easing the fingers of my hands, the right round the Stilson, the left round the little knife. After fifteen minutes they came. I heard the gentle scuff of rubber on our starboard side - the side of the wheelhouse door. I pulled on the cord which passed through the rear window of the wheelhouse. The cord was attached to Uncle Arthur's hand.

There were only two of them. My eyes were perfectly tuned to the dark by this time and I could easily distinguish the shape of the first man coming aboard just below where I lay. He secured a painter and waited for his mate. They moved forward together.

The leading man gave a cough of agony as the door smashed, fair and square, as we later established, into his face. I wasn't so successful, the second man had cat-like reactions and had started to drop to the deck as the Stilson came down. I caught him on back or shoulder, I didn't know which, and dropped on top of him. In one of his hands he'd have either a gun or knife and if I'd wasted a fraction of a second trying to find out which hand and what he had in it, I'd have been a dead man. I brought down my left hand and he lay still.

I passed the other man lying moaning in agony in the scuppers, brushed by Uncle Arthur, pulled the saloon curtains to and switched on the lights. I then went out, half-pulled, half-lifted the moaning man through the wheelhouse door, down the saloon, steps and dropped him on the carpet. I didn't recognise him. That wasn't surprising, his own mother or wife wouldn't have recognised him. Uncle Arthur was certainly a man who believed in working with a will and he'd left the plastic surgeon a very tricky job.

"Keep your gun on him, sir," I said. Uncle Arthur was looking down at his handiwork with a slightly dazed expression. What one could see of his face behind the beard seemed slightly paler than normal, "If he breathes, kill him,"

"But - but look at his face, man.   We can't leave-----"

"You look at this, sir." I stooped and picked up the weapon that had fallen from the man's hand as I'd dropped him to the floor, "This is what is technically known to the United States' police departments as a whippet. A shot-gun with two-thirds of the barrel and two-thirds of the stock sawn off. If he'd got you first, you wouldn't have any face no left at all. I mean that literally. Do you still feel like playing Florence Nightingale to the fallen hero?" That wasn't at all the way one should talk to Uncle Arthur, there would be a few more entries in the confidential report when we got back. If we got back. But I couldn't help myself, not then. I passed by Uncle Arthur and went out.

In the wheelhouse I picked up a small torch, went outside and shone it down into the water, hooding it with my hand so that the beam couldn't have been seen fifty yards away. They had a rubber dinghy, all right - and an outboard motor attached. The conquering heroes, bathed in that warm and noble glow of satisfaction that conies from the comforting realisation of a worthwhile job well done, had intended to make it home the easy way.

Looping a heaving line round the outboard's cylinder head and hauling alternately on the heaving line and painter, I had both dinghy and outboard up and over in two minutes. I unclamped the outboard, lugged the dinghy round to the other side of the superstructure, the side remote from the inner harbour, and examined it carefully in the light of the torch. Apart from the manufacturer's name there was no mark on it, nothing to indicate to which craft it belonged. I sliced it to ribbons and threw it over the side.

Back in the wheelhouse, I cut a twenty-foot length from a roll of P.V.C. electric wiring cable, went outside again and lashed the outboard to the dead man's ankles. I searched his pockets. Nothing, I'd known there would be nothing, I was dealing with professionals. I hooded the torch and looked at his face. I'd never seen him before. I took from him the pistol still clutched in his right hand, undid 'the spring clips holding the guard-chains in place above the gunwale slots for our companion-way ladder, then eased, first the outboard, and then the man, over the side. They vanished into the dark waters of Torbay harbour without the whisper of a splash. I went inside, closing wheelhouse and saloon doors behind me.

Uncle Arthur and the injured man had reversed positions by this time. The man was on his feet now, leaning drunkenly against the bulkhead, dabbing his face with a blood-stained towel Uncle Arthur must have found, and moaning from time to time. I didn't blame him, if I'd a broken nose, most of my front teeth displaced and a jaw that might or might not have been fractured, I'd have been moaning too. Uncle Arthur, gun in one hand and some more of my Scotch in the other, was sitting on the settee and contemplating his bloody handiwork with an odd mixture of satisfaction and distaste. He looked at me as I came in, nodded towards the prisoner.

"Making a fearful mess of the carpet," he complained, "What do we do with him?"

"Hand him over to the police."

"The police? You had your reservations about the police, I thought."

"Reservations is hardly the word. We have to make the break some time."

"Our friend outside, as well?"

"Who?"

"This fellow's — ah - accomplice."