When eight bells toll (16 page)

"I've found Huns-felt, 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: "Youwill, 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 noon-day 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 headj 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—"He 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 thevoice 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 handkerchief, "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! Charlotte. Charlotte Meiner. Charlotte."