When eight bells toll (26 page)

She said flatly:   "You don't trust me, Philip."

"What on earth makes you say that?   Why shouldn't I?"

"You tell me.  You are evasive, you will not answer questions. No, that is wrong, you will and you do answer questions, but I know enough of men to know that the answers you give me are the ones you want to give me and not the ones I should hear.   Why should this be, Philip?   What have I done that you should not trust me?"

"So the truth is not in me?   Well, I suppose I do stretch it a bit at times, I may even occasionally tell a lie.   Strictly in the line of business, of course.   I wouldn't lie to a person like you."   I meant it and intended not to - unless I had to do it for her sake, which was different.

"Why should you not lie to a person like me?"

"I don't know how to say it.  I could say I don't usually lie to lovely and attractive women for whom I have a high regard, and then you'd cynically  say  I was  stretching the truth till it snapped, and you'd be wrong because it is the truth, if truth lies in the eye of the beholder.  I don't know if that sounds like an insult, it's never meant to be.  I could say it's because I hate to see you sitting there all washed up and with no place to go and no one to turn to at the one time hi your life you need some place to go and someone to turn to, but I suppose again that might sound like an insult. I could say I don't lie to my friends, but that again would be an insult, the Charlotte Skourases of this world don't make friends with government hirelings who kill for their wages. It's no good.  I don't know what to say, Charlotte, except that it doesn't matter whether you believe me or not as long as you believe that no harm will come to you from me and, as long as Fm near you, no harm will come to you from anyone else either.  Maybe you don't believe that either, maybe your feminine intuition has stopped working,"

"It is working - what you say? - overtime.   Very hard indeed."   The brown eyes were still and the face without expression. "I do think I could place my life in your hands."

"You might not get it back again."

"If s not worth all that much.  I might not want ft back."

She looked at me for a long moment when there was no fear in her eyes, then stated down at her folded hands. She gazed at them so long that I finally looked in the same direction myself, but there was nothing wrong with her hands that I could see. Finally she looked up with an almost timid half-smile that didn't belong to her at all.

"You are wondering why I came," she asked.

"No. You've told me. You want me to tell you a story. Especially the beginning and end of the story."

She nodded. "When I began as a stage actress, I played very small parts, but I knew what the play was all about. In this real-life play, I'm still playing a very small part. Only, I no longer know what the play is all about. I come on for three minutes in Act
2,
but I have no idea what has gone before, I'm back for another minute in Act 4, but I've no idea in the world what's happened between Acts 2 and 4. And I cannot begin to imagine how it will all end." She half-lifted her arms, turning the palms upwards. "You cannot imagine how frustrating this can be for a woman."

"You really know nothing of what has gone before this?"

"I ask you to believe me."

I believed her. I believed her because I knew it to be true.

"Go to the front room and bring me, as they say in these parts, a refreshment," I said. "I grow weaker by the hour."

So she rose obediently and went to the front room and brought me the refreshment which gave me just enough strength to tell her what she wanted to know.

"They were a triumvirate," I  said, which  if not  strictly accurate, was close enough to the truth for my explanation. "Sir Anthony, Lavorski, who,  I gather, was not only  his public and private accountant, but his overall financial director as well, and John Dollmann, the managing director of the shipping companies - they were split up for tax reasons -associated with your husband's oil companies.  I thought that MacCallum, the Scots lawyer, and Jules Biscarte, the lad with the beard who owns one of the biggest merchant banks in
 
Paris, was in with  them too.   But  they weren't.   At  least not Biscarte.   I  think he  was  invited  aboard  ostensibly to discuss business but actually to provide our triumvirate with information that would have given them the basis for next coup, but he didn't like the way the wind was blowing and shied off, I know nothing about MacCallum."

"I know nothing about Biscarte," Charlotte said, "Neither he nor Mr. MacCallum stayed aboard the
Shangri-la,
they were at the Columba hotel for a few days and were invited out twice for dinner. They haven't been aboard since the night you were there."

"Among other things they didn't care for your husband's treatment of you."

"I didn't care for it myself, I know what Mr. MacCallmn was doing aboard. My husband was planning to build a refinery in the Clyde estuary this coming winter and MacCallum was negotiating the lease for him. My husband said that, by the end of the year, he expected to have a large account of uncommitted capital for investment."

"I'll bet he did, that's as neat a phrase for the proceeds of grand larceny as ever I've come across, Lavorski, I think we'll find, was the instigator and guiding brain behind all this. Lavorski it would have been who discovered that the Skouras empire was badly in need of some new lifeblood in the way of hard cash and saw the way of putting matters right by using means they already had close to hand."

"But - but my husband was never short of money,"  Charlotte objected. "He had the best of everything, yachts, cars, houses------"

"He was never short in that sense. Neither were half the millionaires who jumped off the New York skyscrapers at the time of the stock market crash. Do be quiet, there's a good girl, you know nothing about high finance." Coming from a character who eked out a bare living from an inadequate salary, I reflected, that was very good indeed. "Lavorski struck upon the happy idea of piracy on a grand scale — vessels carrying not less than a million pounds' worth of specie at a time,"

She stared at me, her lips parted. I wished I had teeth like that, instead of having had half of them knocked out by Uncle Arthur's enemies over the years. Uncle Arthur, I mused bitterly, was twenty-five years older than I was and was frequently heard to boast that he'd still to lose his first tooth. She whispered: "You're making all this up."

"Lavorski made it all up. Fm just telling you, I wouldn't have die brains to think of something like that. Having thoughtup this splendid scheme for making money, they found themselves with three problems to solve: how to discover when and where large quantities of specie were being shipped, how to seize those ships and how to hide them while they opened the strong-room - a process which in ships fitted with the most modern strong-rooms can take anything up to a day — and removed said specie.

"Problem number one was easy. I have no doubt that they may have suborned high-ranking banking officials - the fact that they tried it on with Biscarte is proof of that — but I don't think it will ever be possible to bring those men to justice. But it will be possible to arrest and very successfully indict their ace informant, their trump card, our good friend the belted broker, Lord Charnley. To make a real good-going success of piracy you require the co-operation of Lloyd's. Well, that's an actionable statement, the co-operation of someone in Lloyd's. Someone like Lord Charnley. He is, by profession,
&
marine underwriter at Lloyd's, Stop staring at me like that, you're putting me off.

"A large proportion of valuable marine cargoes are insured at Lloyd's. Charnley would know of at least a number of those. He would know the amount, the firm or bank of dispatch, and possibly the date of dispatch and vessel."

"But Lord Charnley is a wealthy man," she said,

"Lord Charnley gives the appearance of being a wealthy man," I corrected. "Granted, he had to prove that he was a man of substance to gain admission to the old club, but he may have backed the wrong insurance horses or played the Stock market. He either needed money or wanted money. He
may
have plenty but money is like alcohol, some people can take it and some can't, and with those who can't the more money they have the more they require.

"Dollmann solved problem two - the hi-jacking of the specie. I shouldn't imagine this strained his resources too far. Your husband ships his oil into some very odd and very tough places indeed and it goes without saying that he employs some very odd and very tough people to do it. Dollmann wouldn't have recruited the hi-jacking crew himself, he probably singled out our good friend Captain Imrie, who will prove to have a very interesting history, and gave him the authority to go through the Skouras fleets and hand-pick suitable men for the job. Once the hi-jacking crew was assembled and ready, Messrs. Skouras, Lavorski and Dollmannwaited till the victim was on the high seas, dumped you and the stewardess in a hotel, embarked the lads on the
Shangri-la
, intercepted die specie-carrying vessel and by one of a series of ruses I'll tell you about later, succeeded in boarding it and taking over. Then the
Shangri-la
landed the captured crew under guard while the prize crew sailed the hi-jacked vessel to the appointed hiding-place."

"It can't be true, it can't be true," she murmured. It was a long time since I'd seen any woman wringing her hands but Charlotte Skouras was doing it then. Her face was quite drained of colour. She knew that what I was saying was true and she'd never heard of any of it before. "Hiding place, Philip? What hiding place?"

"Where would you hide a ship, Charlotte?"

"How should I know?" She shrugged tiredly. "My mind is not very clear to-night. Up in the Arctic perhaps, or in a lonely Norwegian fjord or some desert island. I can't think any more, Philip. There cannot be many places. A ship is a big thing."

"There are millions of places. You can hide a ship practically anywhere in the world. All you have to do is to open the bilge-valves and engine-room non-return valves to the bilges and detonate a couple of scuttling charges."

"You mean — you mean that      "

"I mean just that. You send it to the bottom. The west side of the Sound to the east of Dubh Sgeir island, a cheery stretch of water rejoicing in the name of Beul nan Uamh — the mouth of the grave - must be the most densely packed marine graveyard in Europe to-day. At dead slack water the valves were opened at a very carefully selected spot in the Beul nan Uamh and down they went, all five of them, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle. Tide tables show that, coincidentally, most of them were sunk at or near midnight. Cease upon the midnight, as the poet says, only in this case with a very great deal of pain, at least for the underwriters involved. Beul nan Uamh. Odd, I never thought of it before. A very apt name indeed. The mouth of the grave. Damn' place is printed far too large in the chart, it doesn't have to be very obvious to be too obvious for Calvert."

She hadn't been listening to my meanderings. She said: "Dubh Sgeir? But - but that's the home of Lord Kirkside."

"It's not but, it's because. The hiding place was picked either by your husband, or, if someone else, then the arrangement was made through your husband. I never knew until recently that your husband was an old drinking pal of Lord Kirkside. I saw him yesterday, but he wouldn't talk. Nor would his charming daughter."

"You do move around.  I've never met the daughter."

"You should. She thinks you're an old gold-digging hag. A nice kid really. But terrified, terrified for her life aod those of others."

"Why on earth should she be?"

"How do you think our triumvirate got Lord Kirkside to agree to their goings-on?"

"Money.   Bribery."

I shook my head. "Lord Kirkside is a Highlander and a gentleman. It's a pretty fierce combination. Old Skouras could never lay hands on enough money to bribe Lord Kirkside to pass the uncollected fares box on a bus, if he hadn't paid. A poor illustration, Lord Kirkside wouldn't recognise a bus even if it ran over him, but what I mean is, the old boy is incorruptive. So your charming friends kidnapped old Kirk-side's elder son - the younger lives in Australia - and just to make sure that Susan Kirkside wouldn't be tempted to do anything silly, they kidnapped her fiancé. A guess, but a damned good one. They're supposed to be dead,"

"No, no," she whispered. Her hand was to her mouth and her voice was shaking. "My God, no!"

"My God, yes. It's logical and tremendously effective. They also kidnapped Sergeant MacDonald's sons and Donald MacEachern's wife for the same reason. To buy silence and cooperation."

"But - but people just can't disappear like that"

"We're not dealing with street comer boys, we're dealing with criminal master-minds. Disappearances are rigged to look like accidental death. A few other people have disappeared also, people who had the misfortune to be hanging around in small private boats while our friends were waiting for the tide to be exactly right before opening the sea-cocks on the hijacked ships."

"Didn't it arouse police suspicion? Having so many small boats disappear in the same place."

"They sailed or towed two of those boats fifty or more miles away and ran them on the rocks. Another could have disappeared anywhere. The fourth did set sail from Torbayand disappeared, but the disappearance of one boat is not enough to arouse suspicion."

"It must be true, I know it must be true." She shook her head as if she didn't believe it was true at all. "It all fits so well, it explains so many things and explains them perfectly. But - but what's the good of knowing all this now? They're on to you, they
know
you know that something is far wrong and that that something is in Loch Houron. They'll leave—"

"How do they know we suspect Loch Houron?"

"Uncle Arthur told me in the wheelhouse last night." Surprise in her voice. "Don't you remember?"

I hadn't remembered. I did now. I was half-dead from lack of sleep. A stupid remark. Perhaps even a give-away remark. I was glad Uncle Arthur hadn't heard that one.