Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

'By Jove! Jefferson wasn't pulling my leg after all,' the McKay exclaimed softly.

The others had arrived on deck and the gunmen now insisted on shepherding them all forward to the lounge, so Sally had to stifle her impatience to hear the McKay's explanation.

'Goodness I'm hungry,' Camilla cried as the gunmen left them. 'D'you realise people that it's getting on for five o'clock and we've had no lunch.'

'I thought of that,' Nicky told her, 'and asked them to 134

start preparing something for you when you were about half way up.'

'Nicky—you're a thoughtful darling,' she cooed taking his arm as they walked down the companion-way. 'You shall sit next to me while we eat. I suppose you fed ages ago yourself?'

'Yes, the McKay gave me a first-class licking at deck tennis and then we lunched as usual. It's amazing how agile the old boy is; I'm a pretty fit man—have to be for my job —but he can knock spots off me where hopping round's concerned.'

'He's not so old my dear, only forty something, and look at the life he's led with the battles and bad weather he's been through. It's that and his grey hair which gave him such a dried-up appearance, but he laughs as much as anybody and his "imperial carcass" as he calls it is beautifully lean and muscular—I noticed it when he was swimming the other day.'

Over their meal they talked again of the sub-human monster. It was the one enthralling topic which stood out from all the other weird and unusual sights which they had seen on their dive and the discussion of it even took their thoughts for the time being, from the fact that they were still prisoners, sentenced to exile upon a barren frozen rock.

The moment they had finished Sally cornered the McKay and carried him off to a quiet corner of the foredeck.

'Now Nelson Andy McKay,' she said, 'you're going to tell me just what you know about these extraordinary creatures.'

'Well,' he smiled, 'it's like this. When I was on leave in England I used to be very fond of running down to Brighton for the week-end. D'you know it—no, I see you don't. Brighton's a fine place, a few days there in the winter makes you feel twice your own man and then a bit more. I'd like to take you down for a couple of nights at the Magnificent—I—er beg your pardon. I suppose I shouldn't have said that.'

'You certainly should not unless your intentions are honourable.' Sally chuckled to cover her momentary confusion and added: 'I'm a nice girl and don't go away with young men for the week-end.'

'Pity—sorry I mean,' murmured the McKay. 'Anyhow, 135

thank you for the young man part. However I'm a reasonably respectable person- myself really and usually stay at the Royal Albion. That place has atmosphere and they always greet me as though I were their long lost son, besides Harry Preston who runs it is a great personality and has the biggest heart of-'

'Now, now,' Sally interrupted, 'I've heard of him even in the States—who hasn't? Let's get back to the Mermaid.'

'Oh! Ah! the Mermaid. Well there is—or was—a fish and oyster shop just round the corner from the front, in West Street, and for years, up to about nineteen-twenty-nine, if I remember, they had a strange looking brute in a glass case always on show in the window. I often used to go and look at it on different leaves and it was only about three feet long but exactly like this monster that you say you've seen today.'

'The thing we saw was only about four feet from head to tail as far as I could judge, not more than four foot six at the outside. But how amazing that they should have caught one. Were the people in the shop able to tell you anything about it?'

'Not much. It was said to have been caught in African waters and brought home by an old sea captain about a hundred years ago. When I last went to look at it a waiter in the restaurant told me that it had been sold to some doctor who has a private museum of curiosities—at Arundel I think—and it's probably there now. Of course I always looked on it as a fake, a baby seal perhaps that had been tampered with—they are round headed you know, or perhaps the forepart of a monkey grafted on to a fish's tail. But the strange thing is that I did once meet a man who said he'd seen another like it.'

'Really!' Sally exclaimed, 'tell me, do.'

'He was a chap called Jefferson, a Captain who was transferring from the West African Regiment to the West Indian Regiment after a spot of leave in England.

'When he was ordered to report for duty to his new headquarters in Jamaica, he had the sense to apply for one of these liaison trips whereby soldiers become the guests of the Navy. It's a chance for each side to swop ideas and talk a bit of shop you know, so as to have some sort of line on each other's functions and work together better in the event of war. Anyhow he was allotted to the hooker that I was taking out to the West India station and a very amusing fellow he proved to be. We were exchanging yarns one night where the talk turned to Loch Ness Monsters, and sea serpents and the like so I told him about this queer fish I'd seen at Brighton. He was mighty interested in that and told me at once that he felt certain it couldn't be a fake because he'd seen its twin in Africa—on the West Coast. It seems that he was miles from his base with a shooting party fairly near the coast and one day he went down to the shore—I've forgotten why now—and there he stumbled across one of these Mermaid things exactly the same in every particular as the one I had described. It was dead, of course, and must have been washed up in a storm. It was half rotten and stinking like blazes under the African sun when he found it but, despite that, he said that he would have given anything to have been able to take it back with him. As he tried to pick it up it fell to pieces in his hands and he was five days' march from any place where he! could have got a big jar of spirits to preserve the bits in so he just had to leave them there.'

'Why did you think he was pulling your leg though?' Sally asked.

The McKay closed one eye in a gentle wink. 'Jefferson was a decent enough fellow but he had a peculiar sense of humour and I had a sort of feeling at the time that he had invented his little story just to persuade me that the Brighton fish was not a fake after all.'

'What had he got to gain by doing that?'

'The chance that I might start airing a serious belief in Mermaids to my brother officers. He was the sort of man who would have got a lot of quiet fun out of seeing me do that and I wasn't having any. Still it seems as if he must have been telling the truth and that the Brighton beast was a genuine fish. I remember too how definitely we agreed that both these things were the most vicious looking brutes we'd ever seen.'

They remained together until cocktail time while Sally recounted, in what she felt to be totally inadequate words, her impressions of the marvellous things she had seen on her first dive. The others too had been busy discussing their experiences, comparing notes upon the wonders that they had glimpsed and persuading Nicky to accompany them on the next descent; for, having come to the conclusion that, evil as the fishmen appeared they could not possibly harm them in the bathysphere, they were all going down again the following day.

When they met for dinner, however, the topic of the wonder world that lay beneath their keel had been temporarily exhausted and the knowledge that they were still prisoners having again come uppermost in their minds, it irked and fretted them into stilted conversation punctuated by awkward silences.

'Well,' Camilla said the moment the stewards had left them. 'We were all pretty nervy yesterday, which was hardly to be wondered at after the shock we got in the early morning, and I think this undersea trip has at least helped to steady us up a bit, but time's passing. It's Monday evening now and on Saturday the balloon's due to go up—we've only five days left. Has anybody had any brain waves as to how we can turn the tables on these crooks?'