Алистер Маклин - When Eight Bells Toll

The boatshed wasn’t quite empty, but it wasn’t far off it. I flashed my small torch around its interior and realised that MacEachern’s boatshed wasn’t the place I was after. There was nothing there but a weather-beaten, gunwale-splintered launch, with, amidships, an unboxed petrol engine that seemed to be a solid block of rust.

I came to the house. On its northern side, the side remote from the sea, a light shone through a small window. A light at half-past one in the morning. I crawled up to this and hitched a wary eye over the window-sill. A neat, clean, well-cared-for small room, with lime-washed walls, mat-covered stone floor and the embers of a driftwood fire smouldering in an inglenook in the corner. Donald MacEachern was sitting in a cane-bottomed chair, still unshaven, still in his month-old shirt, his head bent, staring into the dull red heart of the fire. He had the look of a man who was staring into a dying fire because that was all that was left in the world for him to do. I moved round to the door, turned the handle and went inside.

He heard me and turned around, not quickly, just the way a man would turn who knows there is nothing left on earth that can hurt him. He looked at me, looked at the gun in my hand, looked at his own twelve-bore hanging on a couple of nails on the wall then sank back into his chair again.

He said tonelessly: ‘Who in the name of God are you?’

‘Calvert’s my name. I was here yesterday.’ I pulled off my rubber hood and he remembered all right. I nodded to the twelve-bore. ‘You won’t be needing that gun to-night, Mr MacEachern. Anyway, you had the safety catch on.’

‘You don’t miss much,’ he said slowly. ‘There were no cartridges in the gun.’

‘And no one standing behind you, was there?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said tiredly. ‘Who are you, man? What do you want?’

‘I want to know why you gave me the welcome you did yesterday.’ I put the gun away. ‘It was hardly friendly, Mr MacEachern.’

‘Who are you, sir?’ He looked even older than he had done yesterday, old and broken and done.

‘Calvert. They told you to discourage visitors, didn’t they, Mr MacEachern?’ No answer. ‘I asked some questions to-night of a friend of yours. Archie MacDonald. The Torbay police sergeant. He told me you were married. I don’t see Mrs MacEachern.’

He half rose from his cane chair. The old bloodshot eyes had a gleam to them. He sank back again and the eyes dimmed.

‘You were out in your boat one night, weren’t you, Mr MacEachern? You were out in your boat and you saw too much. They caught you and they took you back here and they took Mrs MacEachern away and they told you that if you ever breathed a word to anyone alive you would never see your wife that way again. Alive, I mean. They told you to stay here in case any chance acquaintances or strangers should call by and wonder why you weren’t here and raise the alarm, and just to make sure that you wouldn’t be tempted to go the mainland for help – although heaven knows I would have thought there would be no chance in the world of you being as mad as that – they immobilised your engine. Saltwater impregnated sacks, I shouldn’t wonder, so that any chance caller would think it was due to neglect and disuse, not sabotage.’

‘Aye, they did that.’ He stared sightlessly into the fire, his voice the sunken whisper of a man who is just thinking aloud and hardly aware that he is speaking. ‘They took her away and they ruined my boat. And I had my life saving in the back room there and they took that too. I wish I’d had a million pounds to give them. If only they had left my Mairi. She’s five years older than myself.’ He had no defences left.

‘What in the name of God have you been living on?’

‘Every other week they bring me tinned food, not much, and condensed milk. Tea I have, and I catch a fish now and then off the rocks.’ He gazed into the fire, his forehead wrinkling as if he were suddenly realising that I brought a new dimension into his life. ‘Who are you, sir? Who are you? You’re not one of them. And you’re not a policeman, I know you’re not a policeman. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen policemen. But you are a very different kettle of fish.’ There were the stirrings of life in him now, life in his face and in his eyes. He stared at me for a full minute, and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable under the gaze of those faded eyes, when he said: ‘I know who you are. I know who you must be. You are a Government man. You are an agent of the British Secret Service.’

Well, by God, I took off my hat to the old boy. There I was, looking nondescript as anything and buttoned to the chin in a scuba suit, and he had me nailed right away. So much for the inscrutable faces of the guardians of our country’s secrets. I thought of what Uncle Arthur would have said to him, the automatic threats of dismissal and imprisonment if the old man breathed a word. But Donald MacEachern didn’t have any job to be dismissed from and after a lifetime in Eilean Oran even a maximum security prison would have looked like a hostelry to which Egon Ronay would have lashed out six stars without a second thought, so as there didn’t seem to be much point in threatening him I said instead, for the first time in my life: ‘I am an agent of the Secret Service, Mr MacEachern. I am going to bring your wife back to you.’

He nodded very slowly, then said: ‘You will be a very brave man, Mr Calvert, but you do not know the terrible men who will wait for you.’

‘If I ever earn a medal, Mr MacEachern, it will be a case of mistaken identification, but, for the rest, I know very well what I am up against. Just try to believe me, Mr MacEachern. It will be all right. You were in the war, Mr MacEachern.’

‘You know. You were told?’

I shook my head. ‘Nobody had to tell me.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ The back was suddenly very straight. ‘I was a soldier for twenty-two years. I was a sergeant in the 51st Highland Division.’

‘You were a sergeant in the 51st Highland Division,’ I repeated. ‘There are many people, Mr MacEachern, and not all of them Scots, who maintain that there was no better in the world.’

‘And it is not Donald MacEachern who would be disagreeing with you, sir.’ For the first time the shadow of a smile touched the faded eyes. ‘There were maybe one or two worse. You make your point, Mr Calvert. We were not namely for running away, for losing hope, for giving up too easily.’ He rose abruptly to his feet. ‘In the name of God, what am I talking about? I am coming with you, Mr Calvert.’

I rose to my feet and touched my hands to his shoulders. ‘Thank you, Mr MacEachern, but no. You’ve done enough. Your fighting days are over. Leave this to me.’

He looked at me in silence, then nodded. Again the suggestion of a smile. ‘Aye, maybe you’re right. I would be getting in the way of a man like yourself. I can see that.’ He sat down wearily in his chair.

I moved to the door. ‘Good night, Mr MacEachern. She will soon be safe.’

‘She will soon be safe,’ he repeated. He looked up at me, his eyes moist, and when he spoke his voice held the same faint surprise as his face. ‘You know, I believe she will.’

‘She will. I’m going to bring her back here personally and that will give me more pleasure than anything I’ve ever done in my life. Friday morning, Mr MacEachern.’

‘Friday morning? So soon? So soon?’ He was looking at a spot about a billion light years away and seemed unaware that I was standing by the open door. He smiled, a genuine smile of delight, and the old eyes shone. ‘I’ll not sleep a wink tonight, Mr Calvert. Nor a wink to-morrow night either.’

‘You’ll sleep on Friday,’ I promised. He couldn’t see me any longer, the tears were running down his grey unshaven cheeks, so I closed the door with a quiet hand and left him alone with his dreams.