Алистер Маклин - When Eight Bells Toll

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. Good evening, 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, half-speculative 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.

‘I’m afraid not,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m afraid you’re thinking along the same lines as myself. We’ve no guard rails aft. A careless step–’ I broke off as the steward re-entered and reported that no one had seen a sign of Hunslett, then went on: ‘I think I should report this to Sergeant MacDonald at once.’

Everybody else seemed to think so, too, so we left. The cold slanting rain was heavier than ever. At the head of the gangway I pretended to slip, flung my arms about wildly for a bit then toppled into the sea, taking the gangway wandering lead with me. What with the rain, the wind and the sudden darkness there was quite a bit of confusion and it was the better part of a minute before I was finally hauled on to the landing stage of the companionway. Old Skouras was commiseration itself and offered me a change of clothes at once but I declined politely and went back to the Firecrest with Uncle Arthur. Neither of us spoke on the way back.

As we secured the dinghy I said: ‘When you were at dinner on the Shangri-la you must have given some story to account for your presence here, for your dramatic appearance in an R.A.F. rescue launch.’

‘Yes. It was a good one. I told them a vital UNESCO conference in Geneva was being deadlocked because of the absence of a certain Dr Spenser Freeman. It happens to be true. In all the papers to-day. Dr Freeman is not there because it suits us not to have him there. No one knows that, of course. I told them that it was of vital national importance that he should be there, that we’d received information that he was doing field research in Torbay and that the Government had sent me here to get him back.’

‘Why send the launch away? That would seem odd.’

‘No. If he’s somewhere in the wilds of Torbay I couldn’t locate him before daylight. There’s a helicopter, I said, standing by to fly him out. I’ve only to lift the phone to have it here in fifty minutes.’