‘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 us 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 stem 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 wheel-house 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 stem light even if they approach from the wheelhouse roof so they can’t see me silhouetted against the loom of the stem light even if they approach from the bows.’
‘But what are 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 my 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 was still 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, spreadeagled 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 coining 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 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 comes 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.’
‘I threw him over the side.’
Uncle Arthur made the mess on the carpet even worse. H
e spilt whisky all over it. He said: ‘You what?’
‘There’s no worry.’ I pointed downwards. ‘Twenty fathoms and thirty pounds of metal attached to his ankles.’
‘At – at the bottom of the sea?’
‘What did you expect me to do with him? Give him a state funeral? I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you, he was dead. I had to kill him.’
‘Had to? Had to?’ He seemed upset. ‘Why, Calvert?’
‘There’s no “why.” There’s no justification needed. I killed him or he killed me, and then you, and now we’d both be where he is. Do you have to justify killing men who have murdered at least three times, probably oftener? And if that particular character wasn’t a murderer, he came to-night to murder. I killed him with as little thought and compunction and remorse as I’d have tramped on a black widow spider.’
‘But you can’t go around acting like a public executioner.’
‘I can and I will. As long as it’s a choice between them and me.’
‘You’re right, you’re right.’ He sighed. ‘I must confess that reading your reports of an operation is quite different from being with you on one. But I must also confess that it’s rather comforting having you around at times like this. Well, let’s put this man in cells.’
‘I’d like to go to the Shangri-la first, sir. To look for Hunslett.’
‘I see. To look for Hunslett. Has it occurred to you, Calvert, that if they are hostile to us, as you admit is possible, that they may not let you look for Hunslett?’
‘Yes, sir. It’s not my intention to go through the Shangri-la, a gun in each hand, searching for him. I wouldn’t get five feet. I’m just going to ask for him, if anyone has seen him. Assuming they really are the bandits, don’t you think it might be most instructive, sir, to observe their reactions when they see a dead man walking aboard, especially a dead man coming alongside from a boat to which they’d shortly beforehand dispatched a couple of killers? And don’t you think it will become more and more instructive to watch them as time passes by with no sign of First and Second Murderers entering left?’
‘Assuming they are the bandits, of course.’
‘I’ll know before we say good-bye to them.’
‘And how do we account for our knowing one another?’
‘If they’re white as the driven snow, we don’t have to account to them. If they’re not, they won’t believe a damned word either of us say anyway.’
I collected the roll of flex from the wheelhouse and led our prisoner to the after cabin. I told him to sit down with his back to one of the bulkhead generators and he did. Resistance was the last thought in his mind. I passed a few turns of flex round his waist and secured him to the generator: his feet I secured to one of the stanchions. His hands I left free. He could move, he could use the towel and the bucket of cold fresh water I left to administer first aid to himself whenever he felt like it. But he was beyond reach of any glass or sharp instrument with which he could either free himself or do himself in. On the latter score I wasn’t really worried one way or another.
I started the engines, weighed anchor, switched on the navigation lights and headed for the Shangri-la. Quite suddenly, I wasn’t tired any more.
SIX
Wednesday: 8.40 p.m. – 10.40 p.m.
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. Halfway 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 closed 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 most 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 had been obscuring the lower part of my face, removed the sou-wester that had been obscuring most of the upper part of my face, knocked politely and entered. I said: ‘Good evening, Lady Skouras. Goodevening, gentlemen. Please forgive the interruption, Sir Anthony.’
Apart from Uncle Arthur there were six of them 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, halfspeculative 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 deepset in a tanned face. Expressionless faces seemed to be the order of the day there, so I kept mine expressionless. It wasn’t easy.