Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

A gloomy silence was the only result of her enquiry.

'We've got to do something before the week is out,' Sally announced after a moment.

'You tell me what and I'll do it m'dear,' the McKay said quite seriously. 'The only thing I can think of is signalling a passing ship.'

'Admirable, my dear Captain,' smiled Count Axel, 'but, as you know the Azores he about four hundred miles to the south of the great shipping track between North Europe and New York, and we are at least seventy from Punta Delgada, the capital of these islands, where the smaller shipping calls.'

'True, O Count,' agreed the McKay, 'and although I've been keeping my weather eye on the horizon, as they say in the story books, I've raised nothing but a smudge of smoke and a couple of local fishing boats in these last two days.'

'The sea's so damn big,' complained Nicky as one who has discovered a profound truth, 'people don't realise just how vast it is until they get stuck on it in some place like this.'

'Oh, think of something do,' Sally implored glancing 138

round. 'I simply couldn't sleep a wink last night thinking what that man Kate may do to us when he gets back.'

'He won't come back m'dear,' the McKay tried to comfort her. 'We went into all that yesterday. If the will goes through he'll collect the cash and if it doesn't he's got nothing to gain by returning here, so try to put that out of your mind.'

'He won't get the cash because I'm certain there'll be a hitch, and directly he learns of that through the clerk they've bribed in Simon John's office he will come back I tell you,' Sally persisted. 'He'll be so livid that he'll kill the lot of us I shouldn't be surprised.'

'Well m'dear, it's no good anticipating things like that. We must just try to think of some way to get the better of these scoundrels before they send us to the Falklands.'

For about three minutes nobody spoke at all. Then Camilla broke the silence by exclaiming sharply: 'Have none of you men any brains?'

Nicky tentatively resurrected his first idea: 'We've got to get Slinger somehow in the next five days and prevent him from quitting this ship.'

'But how?' Camilla shot at him angrily. 'That's what I want to know?'

A miserable wrangle ensued during which wild schemes were produced by both Vladimir and Nicky only to be torn to shreds by the cold logic of Count Axel, whom in retaliation they accused of lack of endeavour to help by putting up any suggestions himself. The McKay sat all through it, placidly smoking his after-dinner cigar and watching their faces from under his beetling grey eyebrows; unable to give his support to the hot-headed proposals of the younger men or rescue the Count by putting up some new proposition. He had squeezed his wits until he was half stupid with bumping up against the succession of cul-de-sacs in which Kate's perfectly planned coup had left them and had not the ghost of a new idea to offer.

Their anxiety had shortened all their tempers to such an extent that they were being openly rude to each other without having advanced one step nearer to a practical solution of their problem when Slinger arrived with his two attendant gunmen.

He rubbed his knobbly hands together and smiled round 139

at them. 'Well, I hope you've all had a nice day. I've been able to turn in a report of real first class interest over the ether of your dive in the bathysphere.'

'Oh, go to hell!' said Nicky rudely.

'No, only to bed when I've seen you all safely locked up for the night,' beamed Slinger. 'But the account of the Mermaid was great—just the stuff to catch public interest. Camilla and her party will be front page news all over the world tomorrow. We couldn't have had a finer story for our purpose if I'd thought it up myself.'

'What the devil d'you want to go and tell him about that for,' the McKay snapped turning suddenly on Doctor Tisch.

The little man spread out his hands and was about to reply when Slinger answered for him.

'That's the price the Doctor has to pay for being allowed to go down in his ball, so you mustn't blame him for it. No stories no cliving—that's the order, and if he didn't care to play I'd just have to fake the reports. Now drink up your drinks and off you go to bed.'

They knew from the previous night that nothing was to be gained by argument so with sullen faces they did as they were told.

Tuesday dawned bright and clear again. At nine o'clock the party gathered at the stern of the ship and the McKay duly saw them off. Despite the desperate plight they were in these excursions under water 1seemed to hold such a fascination for them that once any member of the party had been down nothing short of an immediate prospect of escape would have tempted them to forgo a repetition of the experience. Camilla had persuaded Nicky into going with them now but Sally failed in her attempt to make the McKay change his mind.

'Besides,' he had told her, 'even if I wanted to I wouldn't. Someone must stay on deck to keep a look out in case a passing ship does come near enough for us to flag her, and I'm probably the only one among you who can semaphore,' so he had to spend the best part of the day on his own.

When the bathysphere had reached bottom it was hauled up again for two hundred feet and trawled by the ship a quarter of a mile to the south-eastward, then let down again. In that manner they cruised for nearly three hours but covered no great distance. Each halt with the raising and lowering of the sphere occupied about ten minutes since they remained for a couple of minutes at the bottom every time they settled on it. The McKay estimated the ship's total movement to be roughly four miles. At two o'clock they asked to be drawn up to the surface, and by four were safely on board again.

'Any luck? asked the McKay as Sally scrambled up the ladder.

She shook her head and they walked forward together without waiting for the silent, watchful gunmen to give them any order.

'It was just as wonderful as ever,' she said. 'Every sort of beautiful thing that you can imagine and more. That brilliant blue light too, that I've told you about, that one sees going down and coming up between 100 and 800 feet, gives ten times the kick that one can get out of a couple of absinthe cocktails, but we didn't find any traces of Atlantis. The sea floor is nearly all hard volcanic rock except for the valley of white shells that we landed on yesterday, and a nasty patch of oozy mud that we struck on our last two dips.

'Any Mermaids today?' the McKay enquired.

'Yes, they seem to frequent that valley of shells, we didn't see one anywhere else. I think it was the shock of having a living thing like that come and stare in at the window which scared us all so yesterday. They are very horrible, of course, but I wasn't a bit frightened of them today. They became rather a nuisance though and so many of them came crowding round the ports at one time we couldn't see anything else so the Doctor had to drive them off.'

'And how the devil did he do that may it please your Majesty—make a rude face at them?'

'No, stupid. The bathysphere is a wonderful piece of work you know and there are electric rods on hinges in its outer surface that can be made to stick out like the spines on a sea urchin when the current is turned orij from inside.'

'I see, same principle as a diver's electric knife that they tackle sharks and conger eels with?'

'That's it. You can't stab fish with these but anything that touches them gets a nasty shock. They were fitted originally in case some giant squid tried to wrap its tentacles round the sphere and made it difficult to pull up.'

'How did the Mermen take this unusual treatment?'

'They simply hated it. If they had been above water and had voices I'm certain that they would have been absolutely screaming with rage. One was knocked right out and the others swam off with his body. That shows that they are not quite brute beasts or like other fish otherwise they would have eaten him I think.'