Dennis Wheatley - They Found Atlantis

Count Axel smiled. 'I agree, I had to take that risk, but I considered this creation of delay worth it.'

The cocktails had passed round. Bozo and his friend had settled themselves in chairs, each guarding one of the deck entrances. The McKay glanced from one to another of them.

'You chaps care for anything,' he asked affably.

Bozo replied for both of them. 'We'll help ourselves if we feel like a shot, but we got plenty of liquor aft an' the orders about our being dumb to your crowd stand—so you'd best forget us.'

To ignore their presence was easier suggested than carried out so conversation among Camilla's party became a little halting, but, when dinner had been announced, and the guards had accompanied them below, they saw that if they were to be driven to their cabins immediately afterwards their only chance to discuss the possible effect of this new development on their own situation was between the soup and the savoury—even if it necessitated being overheard by Bozo and his friend.

Doctor Tisch was entirely one minded on the matter, full of praise for Count Axel and in a high good humour. Whatever might follow he felt that the wrecking of the engine had ensured him at least one, if not more opportunities to explore the sunken capital of Atlantis.

The McKay agreed, and stated that since he had seen the crew casting out kedge anchors from the deck house windows while they were drinking their cocktails it was reasonably certain that the ship would remain in much the same position considering that the evening had produced an almost glassy sea but, he added, 'Things won't be half so funny if it begins to blow. A ship that lacks power is like a man who's lost the use of his legs. Neither can either fight or run, they've just got to take what's coming to them. If a sea gets up we're going to roll like blazes, so make up your minds to that, and although the chances are against it, we might quite well be piled up on the rocks of Pico.'

'Can't they keep the rudder straight,' asked Sally ingenuously.

He stared at her from beneath her bushy eyebrows. 'A rudder m'dear can't steer a gig unless there's pressure against it by the boat being forced through the water. We 'llbe just like a cork in a whirlpool if a storm does get up but fortunately there is little likelihood of that.'

'I wish you wrong,' declared Vladimir. 'If the weather remits a storm we take ourselves to the boats. The sand of Pico is hospitable to our nearness. Then, this conspiracy of bandits is wrecked by crikey and we put out thumbs to our eyebrows.'

'That possibility did occur to me,' announced Count Axel modestly.

'How long do you think it will take to repair the engines?' Camilla asked.

The McKay shrugged. 'It's difficult to say since we don't know the extent of the damage, but if the Count is right and he has wrecked the propeller shaft it's not a question of days but complete refitting in dry dock. As a first move, if that's happened, they'll probably wireless Punta Delgarda for a tender to tow us in. There wouldn't be one at a little place like Horta.'

Then Slinger will be able to leave the ship after all tomorrow.' Nicky's voice held grievous disappointment.

'Yes, but he'll have missed his boat for New York so he is stuck in the Azores for another week, and that, I take it, was the Count's principal object.'

'True,' the Count bowed, 'that I think we agreed, was our most immediate necessity.'

'But it won't prevent Kate coming out to us,' said Sally miserably.

'How?' asked the McKay. 'How can he, even if he wants to, and I've never seen any reason why he should.'

'We were all reported dead this afternoon. Fifty people will have been on the long distance to Camilla's lawyers by this time pressing for particulars of her will. Kate will get wise to it; somehow things aren't going to run as smoothly as he thinks for him. Then he'll come back here just as fast as he can. That's the sort of man he is.'

'But what are you afraid he is going to do if he does?'

'Heaven knows,' Sally dug viciously into her biscuit ice, 'I don't—but I've a feeling that he'll make things horribly unpleasant for us all.'

'Leastways,' Vladimir commented. 'If this defence you sit upon so forcibly is made by our so beautiful Duchess's lawyer why should we sad ourselves. For a week more her fortune is reserved and in that space Nicky our probation shall accept to give Slinger a blue-eye.'

'You missed it,' said Nicky, 'but the others saw. I hit him, didn't I—right on the nose.'

'How unfortunate,' remarked the Prince with a flash of his white teeth, 'that I was lying still in my cabin this time. Otherwise that poor Slinger's thick ears would now be standing out on the backside of his head.'

Bozo, sitting by the doorway of the dining room coughed. It was not that he had the least interest in Slinger's ears, in fact the conversation was almost unintelligible to him, but he did want his own dinner, and knew that he would not get it as long as the people at the table talked stupid nonsense instead of eating up their food.

The reminder of his presence, and that of his friend at the far end of the apartment stilled conversation and five minutes after coffee had been served he was able to stand up, cough again, and see his charges to their cabins. Vladimir taking the Kummel bottle with him as he said, 'To be a safe guarding against revisiting pains in the old knob.'

As they went below the McKay got next to Sally and murmured under his breath, 'Don't worry m'dear. Unless Captain Ardow's mad he'll have to get us towed to safe anchorage by a tender. When it comes alongside I'll chuck them my tin box with the letter to the Police. Then we'll have Mr. Slinger cornered and your friend Kate too if he turns up for the party.'

Sally wished him a loud good night but gave his hand a grateful squeeze as she turned with new cheerfulness towards her cabin.

Slinger had far more cause for worry than his prisoners that evening. He knew that his chief would not take at all a good view of this new situation and would call upon him to answer for not having kept his charges more closely under guard. Over dinner with Captain Ardow he aired his anxiety and the Russian was neither comforting nor helpful.

It seemed that despite his lack of knowledge of machinery Count Axel had succeeded in completely disabling the ship without injuring any member of the crew. A reconstruction of his sabotage showed that he must have managed to reach the after hold without being spotted while pretending to be ill in his cabin that afternoon; stacked his dynamite round the propeller shaft, waited until the bathysphere had been hauled up in case the force of the explosion wrecked the crane on the deck above; then lighted a time fuse and gone forward. The engine room remained unharmed and, as the hold was empty, the explosion was not sufficiently confined to blow a hole in the bottom of the vessel, but the propeller shaft was cracked and twisted so that they were now completely at the mercy of the ocean. Captain Ardow explained with brief and bitter feeling that only the kedge anchors that he had thrown out prevented the ship being washed up on the shores of Pico or drifting, completely helpless, down to the South Pole.

Slinger declared that he did not give a cuss what happened to the ship. The all important thing was that he should reach New York at the earliest possible moment.

'So,' said Captain Ardow. 'Well, I have already wirelessed Punta Delgarda for a tender.'

'The devil you have,' exclaimed Slinger. 'That's a mighty risky thing to have done. The radio about the Duchess's death only went out this afternoon and we made no request for assistance then. It was not suggested that there had been an accident in the ship but stated clearly that the bathysphere had suddenly caved in under the immense pressure a mile below the water. Don't you see that the news of a second big calamity in the space of a few hours may make people suspect that there's something fishy going on.'