“That was very kind of you, sir.” If I could remove that beard, whisky, cheroot and monocle, at least three of which were obscuring his face at any given moment, his expression might have given me some faint clue as to what was going on in that devious mind, “You were going to fire me thirty-six hours ago.”
“If you believe that,” Uncle Arthur said calmly, “you’ll believe anything.” He puffed out a cloud of foul smoke and went on: “one of the comments in your report states: ‘ Unsuitable for routine investigation. Loses interest and becomes easily bored. Operates at his best only under extreme pressure. At this level he is unique.’ It’s on the files, Calvert. I don’t cut off my right hand.”
“No, sir. Do you know what you are, sir?”
“A Machiavellian old devil,” Uncle Arthur said with some satisfaction. “You know what’s going on?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Pour me another whisky, my boy, a large one, and tell me what’s happened, what you know and what you think you know.”
So I poured him another whisky, a large one, and told him what had happened, what I knew and as much of what I ‘ thought I knew as seemed advisable to tell him.
He heard me out, then said: “Loch Houron, you think?”
“Loch Houron it must be. I spoke to no one else, anywhere else, and to the best of my knowledge no one else saw me. Someone recognised me. Or someone”transmitted my description. By radio. It must have been by radio. The boat that was waiting for Williams and myself came from Torbay or somewhere near Torbay, a boat from Loch Houron could I never have made it to the eastern end of the Sound of Torbay in five times the time we took. Somewhere near here, on land or sea, is a transceiver set. Somewhere out on Loch Houron there’s another.”
“This University expedition boat you saw on the south shore of Loch Houron. This alleged University expedition. It would have a radio transmitter aboard.”
“No, sir. Boys with beards.” I rose, pulled back the saloon curtains on both sides, then sat down again. “I told you their boat was damaged and listing. She’d been, riding moored fore and aft in plenty of water. They didn’t hole it themselves and it wasn’t holed by any act of nature. Somebody kindly obliged. Another of those odd little boating incidents that occur with such profusion up and down the west coast.”
“Why did you pull those curtains back?”
“Another of those odd little boating incidents, sir. One that’s about to happen. Some time to-night people will be coming aboard. Hunslett and I, those people think, are dead, At least, I’m dead and Hunslett is dead or a prisoner. But they can’t leave an abandoned Firecrest at anchor to excite suspicion and invite investigation. So they’ll come in a boat, up anchor, and take die Firecrest out into the Sound, followed by their own boat. Once there, they’ll slice through the flexible salt-water cooling intake, open the salt-water cock, take to their own boat and lift their hats as the Firecrest goes down to join the helicopter. As far as the big wide innocent world is concerned, Hunslett and I will just have sailed off into the sunset.”
“And the gulfs will have washed you down,” Uncle Arthur nodded. “You are very sure of this, Calvert?”
“You might say I’m absolutely certain.”
“Then why open those blasted curtains?”
“The scuttling party may be coining from anywhere and they may not come for hours. The best time to scuttle a boat in close waters is at slack tide, when you can be sure that it will settle exactly where you want it to settle, and slack tide is not until one o’clock this morning. But if someone comes panting hotfoot aboard soon after those curtains are opened, then that will be proof enough that the radio transmitter we’re after, and our friends who are working the transmitter, are somewhere in this bay, ashore or afloat.”
“How will it be proof?” Uncle Arthur said irritably. “Why should they come, as you say, panting hotfoot?”
“They know they have Hunslett. At least, I assume they have, I can’t think of any other reason for his absence. They think they know I’m dead, but they can’t be sure. Then they see the beckoning oil lamp in the window. What is this, they say to themselves, Calvert back from the dead? Or a third, or maybe even a third and a fourth colleague of Calvert and Hunslett that we wot not of? Whether it’s me or my friends, they must be silenced. And silenced at once. Wouldn’t you come panting hotfoot?”
“There’s no need to treat the matter with levity,” Uncle Arthur complained.
“In your own words, sir, if you can believe that, you can believe anything.”
“You should have consulted me first, Calvert.” Uncle Arthur shifted in his seat, an almost imperceptible motion, though his expression didn’t change. He was a brilliant administrator, but the more executive side of the business, the sand-bagging and pushing of people off high cliffs, wasn’t exactly in his line. “I’ve told you that I came to take charge.”
“Sorry, Sir Arthur. You’d better change that report, hadn’t you? The bit about the best in Europe, I mean.”
“Touché, touché, touché,” he grumbled. “And they’re coming at us out of the dark, is that it? On their way now. Armed men. Killers. Shouldn’t we – shouldn’t we be preparing to defend ourselves? Dammit, man, I haven’t even got a gun.”
“You won’t need one. You may not agree with me.” I handed him the Luger. He took it, checked the indicator and that the safety catch moved easily, then sat there holding it awkwardly in his hand.
“Shouldn’t we move, Calvert? We’re sitting targets here.”
“They won’t be here for some time. The nearest house or boat is a mile away to ‘the east. They’ll be pushing wind and tide and they daren’t use a motor. Whether they’re rowing a boat or paddling a rubber dinghy they have a long haul ahead of them. Time’s short, sir. We have a lot to do to-night. To get back to Loch Houron. The expedition’s out, they couldn’t pirate a dinghy, far less five ocean-going freighters. Our friend Donald MacEachern acts in a highly suspicious fashion, he’s got the facilities there, he’s dead worried and he might have had half a dozen guns at his back while he had his in my front. But it was all too good to be true, professionals wouldn’t lay it on the line like that.”
“Maybe that’s how professionals would expect a fellow-professional to react. And you said he’s worried.”
“Maybe the fish aren’t biting. Maybe he’s involved, but not directly. Then there’s the shark-fishers. They have the boats, the facilities and, heaven knows, they’re tough enough. Against that, they’ve been based there for years, the place is littered with sharks – it should be easy enough to check if regular consignments of liver oil are sent to the mainland – and they’re well known and well thought of along the coast. They’ll bear investigating. Then there’s Dubh Sgeir. Lord Kirkside and his lovely daughter Sue.”
“Lady Susan,” Uncle Arthur said. It’s difficult to invest an impersonal, “Inflectionless voice with cool reproach, but he managed it without any trouble. “I know Lord Kirkside, of course”- his tone implied that it would be remarkable if he didn’t – “and while I may or may not be right about Sir Anthony, and I will lay you a hundred to one, in pounds, that I am, I’m convinced that Lord Kirkside is wholly incapable of any dishonest or illegal action.”
“Me, too. He’s a very tough citizen, I’d say, but on the side of the angels.”
“And his daughter? I haven’t met her.”
“Very much a girl of to-day. Dressed in the modern idiom, speaks in the modern idiom, I’m tough and I’m competent and I can take care of myself, thank you. She’s not tough at all, just a nice old-fashioned girl in new-fashioned clothes.”
“So that clears them.” Uncle Arthur sounded relieved. “That leaves ms the expedition, in spite of your sneers, or MacEachern’s place, or the shark-fishers. I go for the shark-fishers myself.”
I let him go for wherever he wanted to. I thought it was time I went to the upper deck and told him so.
“It won’t be long now?”
“I shouldn’t think so, sir. We’ll put out the lights in the saloon here — it would look very odd if they peered in the windows and saw no one here. We’ll put on the two sleeping-cabin lights and the stern light. That will destroy their night-sight. The after deck will be bathed in light. For’ard of that, as far as they are concerned, it will be pitch dark. We hide in the dark.”
“Where in the dark?” Uncle Arthur didn’t sound very confident.