Алистер Маклин - When Eight Bells Toll

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 and 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 Kirkside’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 co-operation.’

‘But – but people just can’t disappear like that.’

‘We’re not dealing with street corner 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 Torbay and 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.

‘Calvert nears the sunset of his days,’ I said. ‘My mind’s going. Sure they’ll leave. But not for forty-eight hours yet. They will think they have plenty of time, it’s less than eight hours since we instructed Sergeant MacDonald to tell them that we were going to the mainland for help.’

‘I see,’ she said dully. ‘And what did you do on Dubh Sgeir tonight, Philip?’

‘Not much. But enough.’ Another little white lie. ‘Enough to confirm my every last suspicion. I swam ashore to the little harbour and picked the side door of the boathouse. It’s quite a boat-house. Not only is it three times as big on the inside as it is from the outside, but it’s stacked with diving equipment.’

‘Diving equipment?’

‘Heaven help us all, you’re almost as stupid as I am. How on earth do you think they recover the stuff from the sunken vessels? They use a diving-boat and the Dubh Sgeir boathouse is its home.’

‘Was – was that all you found out?’

‘There was nothing more to find out. I had intended taking a look round the castle – there’s a long flight of steps leading up to it from the boatyard inside the cliff itself – but there was some character sitting about three parts of the way up with a rifle in his hand. A guard of some sort. He was drinking out of some sort of bottle, but he was doing his job for all that. I wouldn’t have got within a hundred steps of him without being riddled. I left.’

‘Dear God,’ she murmured. ‘What a mess, what a terrible mess. And you’ve no radio, we’re cut off from help. What are we going to do? What are you going to do, Philip?’

‘I’m going there in the Firecrest this coming night, that’s what I’m going to do. I have a machine-gun under the settee of the saloon in the Firecrest and Uncle Arthur and Tim Hutchinson will have a gun apiece. We’ll reconnoitre. Their time is running short and they’ll want to be gone to-morrow at the latest. The boathouse doors are ill-fitting and if there’s no light showing that will mean they still haven’t finished their diving. So we wait till they have finished and come in. We’ll see the light two miles away when they open the door to let the diving-boat in to load up all the stuff they’ve cached from the four other sunken ships. The front doors of the boathouse will be closed, of course, while they load up. So we go in through the front doors. On the deck of the Firecrest. The doors don’t look all that strong to me. Surprise is everything. We’ll catch them napping. A submachine-gun in a small enclosed space is a deadly weapon.’

‘You’ll be killed, you’ll be killed!’ She crossed to and sat on the bed-side, her eyes wide and scared. ‘Please, Philip! Please, please don’t. You’ll be killed, I tell you. I beg of you, don’t do it!’ She seemed very sure that I would be killed.

‘I have to, Charlotte. Time has run out. There’s no other way’

‘Please.’ The brown eyes were full of unshed tears. This I couldn’t believe: ‘Please, Philip. For my sake.’

‘No.’ A tear-drop fell at the corner of my mouth, it tasted as salt as the sea. ‘Anything else in the world. But not this.’

She rose slowly to her feet and stood there, arms hanging limply by her side, tears trickling down her cheeks. She said dully: ‘It’s the maddest plan I’ve ever heard in my life,’ turned and left the room, switching off the light as she went.

I lay there staring into the darkness. There was sense in what the lady said. It was , I thought, the maddest plan I’d ever heard in my life. I was damned glad I didn’t have to use it.

‘Let me sleep.’ I said. I kept my eyes shut. ‘I’m a dead man.’

‘Come on, come on.’ Another violent shake, a hand like a power shovel. ‘Up!’

‘Oh, God!’ I opened the corner of one eye. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Just after noon. I couldn’t let you sleep any more.’

‘Noon! I asked to be shaken at five. Do you know–’

‘Come here.’ He moved to the window, and I swung my legs stiffly out of bed and followed him. I’d been operated on during my sleep, no anæsthetic required in the condition I was in, and someone had removed the bones from my legs. I felt awful. Hutchinson nodded towards the window. ‘What do you think of that?’

I peered out into the grey opaque world. I said irritably: ‘What do you expect me to see in that damn’ fog?’