Alistair MacLean - When Eight Bells Toll

"What do you want?" she whispered. "What are you doing here?"

"I'm here to end your troubles," I said. I'm here to cadge an invitation to your wedding to the Honourable John Rollinson. Make it about the end of next month, will you? I'm due some leave, then."

"Go away from here," Her voice was low and desperate. "Go away from here or you'll ruin everything. Please, please, please go away. I'm begging you, I'm begging you. Go away. If you're a friend, go away. Please, oh please go away!"

It seemed that she wanted me to leave. I said: "It appears that they have you pretty well brain-washed. If you believe their promise, you'll believe anything in the world. They won't let you go, they daren't let you go, they'll destroy every shred and trace of evidence that might ever point a finger at them. That includes anyone who has ever had anything to do with them."

"They won't, they won't. I was with Mr. Lavorski when be promised Daddy that no one would come to any harm. He said they were businessmen, and killing was no part of business. He meant it."

"Lavorski, is it? It had to be." I looked at the earnest scared face. "He may have meant it when he said it. He wouldn't have mentioned that they've murdered four people in the last three days, or that they have tried to murder me four times in the last three days."

"You're lying! You're making this up. Things like that- things like that don't happen any more. For pity's sake leave us alone!"

"There speaks the true daughter of the old Scottish clan chieftain." I said roughly. "You're no good to me. Where's your father?"

"I don't know. Mr. Lavorski and Captain Imrie — he's another of them — came for him at eleven tonight. Daddy didn't say where he was going. He tells me nothing." She paused and snatched her hands away. Faint red patches stained her cheeks. "What do you mean, I'm no good to you?"

"Did he say when he would be back?"

"What do you mean I'm no good to you?"

"Because you're young and not very clever and you don't know too much about this world and you'll believe anything a hardened criminal will tell you. But most especially because you won't believe me. You won't believe the one person who can save you all. You're a stupid and pig-headed young fool, Miss Kirkside. If it wasn't that he was jumping from the frying-pan into the fire, I'd say the Honourable Rollinson has had a lucky escape."

"What do you mean?" It is hard for a mobile young face to be expressionless, but hers was then.

"He can't marry you when he is dead," I said brutally. "And he is going to die. He's going to die because Sue Kirkside let him die. Because she was too blind to know truth when she saw it." I had what was, for me, an inspiration. I turned down my collar and pulled my scarf away. "Like it?" I asked.

She didn't like it at all. The red faded from her cheeks. I could see myself in her dressing-table mirror and I didn't like it either. Quinn's handiwork was in full bloom. The kaleidoscope of colour now made a complete ring round my neck.

"Quinn?" she whispered.

"You know his name. You know him?"

"I know them all. Most of them, anyway. Cook said that one night, after he'd too much to drink, he'd been boasting in the kitchen about how he'd once been the strong man in a stage act. He'd an argument one night with his partner. About a woman. He killed his partner. That way." She had to make a physical effort to turn her eyes away from my neck. "I thought — I thought it was just talk."

"And do you still think our pals are unpaid missionaries for the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge?" I sneered. "Do you know Jacques and Kramer?"

She nodded.

"I killed them both to-night. After they had killed a friend of mine. They broke his neck. Then they tried to kill my boss and myself. And I killed another. He came out of the dark to murder us. I think his name was Henry. Do you believe me now? Or do you still think we're all dancing round the old maypole on the village green, singing ring-a-ring-o'-roses as we go?"

The shock treatment worked almost too well. Her face wasn't pale now, it was ashen. She said; "I think I’m going to be sick."

"Later," I said coldly. What little self-regard I had was down among my shoelaces, what I would have liked to do was to take her in my arms and say: "There, there, now, don't you worry your pretty head, just you leave everything to your old Uncle Philip and all will be well at the end of the day." In fact, it was damned hard not to do it. Instead, what I said, still in the same nasty voice, was: "We've no time for those little fol-de-rols. You want to get married, don't you? Did your father say when he would be back?"

She looked at the wash-basin in the corner of the room as if she were still making up her mind whether to be sick or not then pulled her eyes back to me and whispered: "You're just as bad as they are. You're a terrible man. You're a killer."

I caught her shoulders and shook them. I said savagely: "Did he say when he would be back?"

"No." Her eyes were sick with revulsion. It was a long time since any woman had looked at me like that I dropped my hands.

"Do you know what those men are doing here?"

"No."

I believed her. Her old man would know, but he wouldn't have told her. Lord Kirkside was too astute to believe that their uninvited guests would just up and leave them unharmed. Maybe he was just desperately gambling that if he told his daughter nothing and if he could swear she knew nothing then they would leave her be. If that was what he thought, he was in urgent need of an alienist. But that was being unjust, if I stood in his shoes — or, more accurately, was swimming in the murky waters he was in — I'd have grabbed at any straw.

"It's obvious that you know that your fiancé is still alive," I went on. "And your elder brother. And others. They're being held here, aren't they?"

She nodded silently. I wished she wouldn't look at me like that.

"Do you know how many?"

"A dozen. More than that. And I know there are children there. Three boys and a girl."

That would be right. Sergeant MacDonald's two sons and the boy and the girl that had been aboard the converted lifeboat that had disappeared after setting off on the night cruise from Torbay. I didn't believe a word that Lavorski had said to Susan about their reverence for human life. But I wasn't surprised that the people in the boats who had accidentally stumbled across his illegal operations were still alive. There was a very good reason for this.

"Do you know where they are kept? There should be any amount of handy dungeons in Dubh Sgeir castle."

"There are cellars deep underground. I've never been allowed to go near them in the past four months."

"This is your big chance come at last. Get your clothes on and take me there."

"Go down to the cellars?" Aghast was the word for her expression. "Are you mad? Daddy tells me there are at least three men on guard duty all night long." There were only two men now, but her opinion of me was low enough already, so I kept quiet. "They're armed. You must be mad, I'm not going!"

"I didn't think you would. You'll let your boy friend die just because you're a contemptible little coward," I could almost taste the self-loathing in my mouth. "Lord Kirkside and the Honourable Rollinson, What a lucky father. What a fortunate fiancé"

She hit me, and I knew I had won. I said without touching my face: "Don't do that. You'll waken up the guard, Get your clothes on."

I rose, sat on the footboard of the bed and contemplated the door and higher things while she changed. I was becoming tired of women telling me what a horrible character I was.

"I'm ready," she said.

She was back in her uniform of pirate's jersey and the denims she'd outgrown when she was about fifteen. Thirty seconds flat and nary a sound of a portable sewing machine. Baffling, that's what it was.