Alistair MacLean - When Eight Bells Toll

"All right." She was calm now. "But you've overlooking something."

"I'm a great old overlooker. What?"

"Harry. He'll be missing. He'll have to be. You can't leave him to talk."

"He'll be missing. So will the keeper of the gate. I clobbered him on the way in." She started to get all wide-eyed again but I held up my hand, stripped off coat and wind-breaker, unwrapped the razor she'd brought me and nicked my forearm, not too deeply, the way I felt I needed all the blood I had, but enough to let me smear the bottom three inches of the bayonet on both sides. I handed her the tin of Elastoplast and without a word she stuck a strip across the incision. I dressed again and we left, Susan with the whisky bottle and torch, myself with the rifle, shepherding Harry in front of me. Once in the hall I relocked the door with the skeleton key I'd used to open it.

The rain had stopped and there was hardly any wind, but the mist was thicker than ever and the night had turned bitterly cold. The Highland Indian summer was in full swing. We made our way through the courtyard across to where I'd left the bayonet lying on the cliff edge, using the torch, now with the Elastoplast removed from its face, quite freely, but keeping our voices low. The lad maintaining his ceaseless vigil on the battlements couldn't have seen us five yards away with the finest night-glasses in the world, but sound in heavy mist has unpredictable qualities, it can be muffled, it can be distorted, or it can occasionally be heard with surprising clarity and it was now too late in the day to take chances.

I located the bayonet and told Harry to lie face down in the grass; if I'd left him standing he just might have been tempted to kick me over the edge. I gouged the grass in assorted places with heel and toe, made a few more scores with the butt of a bayonet, stuck the blade of the gate-keeper's bayonet in the ground at a slight angle so that the rifle was just clear of the ground, kid Harry down so that the blood-stained bayonet tip was also just dear of the ground, so preventing the blood from running off among the wet grass, scattered most of the contents of the whisky bottle around and carefully placed the bottle, about a quarter full now, close to one of the bayonets. I said to Susan: "And what happened here do you think?"

"It's obvious. They had a drunken fight and both of them slipped on the wet grass over the edge of the cliff."

"And what did you hear?"

"Oh! I heard the sound of two men shouting in the hall. I went on to the landing and I heard them shouting at the tops of their voices. I heard the one tell Harry to get back to his post and Harry saying, no, by God, he was going to settle it now. I'll say both men were drunk, and I won't repeat the kind of language they were using. The last I heard they were crossing the courtyard together, still arguing."

"Good girl. That's exactly what you heard."

She came with us as far as the place where I'd left the gate-keeper. He was still breathing, I used most of what rope I'd left to tie them together at the waist, a few feet apart, and wrapped the end of it in my hand. With their arms lashed behind their backs they weren't going to have much balancing power and no holding power at all on the way down that steep and crumbling path to the landing stage. If either slipped or stumbled I might be able to pull them back to safety with a sharp tug. There was going to be none of this Alpine stuff with the rope around my waist also. If they were going to step out into the darkness they were going to do it without me.

I said: "Thank you, Susan. You have been a great help. Don't take any more of those Nembutal tablets to-night. They'd think it damn funny if you were still asleep at midday to-morrow."

"I wish it were midday the next day. I won't let you down, Mr. Calvert. Everything is going to be all right, isn't it?"

"Of course."

There was a pause, then she said: "You could have pushed these two over the edge if you wanted to, couldn't you. But you didn't. You could have cut Harry's arm, but you cut your own. I'm sorry for what I said, Mr. Calvert. About you being horrible and terrible. You do what you have to do." Another pause. "I think you're rather wonderful."

"They all come round in the end," I said, but I was talking to myself, she'd vanished into the mist. I wished drearily that I could have agreed with her sentiments, I didn't feel wonderful at all, I just felt dead tired and worried stiff for with all the best planning in the world there were too many imponderables and I wouldn't have bet a brass farthing on the next twenty-four hours. I got some of the worry and frustration out of my system by kicking the two prisoners to their feet.

We went slowly down that crumbling treacherous path in single file, myself last, torch in my left hand, rope tightly -but not too tightly — in my right hand. I wondered vaguely as we went why I hadn't nicked Harry instead of myself. It would have been so much more fitting, Harry's blood on Harry's bayonet.

"You had a pleasant outing, I trust?" Hutchinson asked courteously.

"It wasn't dull. You would have enjoyed it." I watched Hutchinson as he pushed the Firecrest into the fog and the darkness, "Let me into a professional secret. How in the world did you find your way back into this pier to-night? The mist is twice as bad as when I left. You cruise up and down for hours, impossible to take any bearings, there's the waves, tide, fog, currents — and yet there you are, right on the nose, to the minute. It can't be done."

"It was an extraordinary feat of navigation," Hutchinson said solemnly. "There are such things as charts, Calvert, and if you look at that large-scale one for this area you'll see an eight fathom bank, maybe a cable in length, lying a cable and a half out to the west of the old pier there. I just steamed out straight into wind and tide, waited till the depth-sounder showed I was over the bank and dropped the old hook. At the appointed hour the great navigator lifts his hook and lets wind and tide drift him ashore again. Not many men could have done it."

"I'm bitterly disappointed," I said. "I'll never think the same of you again. I suppose you used the same technique on the way in?"

"More or less. Only I used a series of five banks and patches. My secrets are gone for ever. Where now?"

"Didn't Uncle Arthur say?"

"You misjudge Uncle Arthur. He says he never interferes with you in — what was it? — The execution of a field operation. 'I plan,' he said. ' co-ordinate. Calvert finishes the job'."

"He has his decent moments," I admitted.

"He told me a few stories about you in the past hour. I guess it's a privilege to be along."

"Apart from the four hundred thousand quid or whatever?"

"Apart, as you say, from the green men. Where to, Calvert?"

"Home. If you can find it in this lot."

"Craigmore? I can find it." He puffed at his cigar and held the end close to his eyes. "I think I should put this out. It's getting so I can't even see the length of the wheelhouse windows, far less beyond them. Uncle Arthur's taking his time, isn't he?"

"Uncle Arthur is interrogating the prisoners."

"I wouldn't say he'd get much out of that lot."

"Neither would I. They're not too happy."

"Well, it teas a nasty jump from the pier to the foredeck. Especially with the bows plunging up and down as they were. And more especially with their arms tied behind their backs."

"One broken ankle and one broken forearm," I said. "It could have been worse. They could have missed the fore-deck altogether."

"You have a point," Hutchinson agreed. He stuck his head out the side window and withdrew it again. "It’s not the cigar," he announced. "No need to quit smoking. Visibility is zero, and I mean zero. We're flying blind on instruments. You may as well switch on the wheelhouse lights. Makes it all that easier to read the charts, depth-sounder and compass and doesn't affect the radar worth a damn." He stared at me as the light came on. "What the hell are you doing in that flaming awful outfit?"