“You stand inside the wheelhouse. All wheelhouse doors are hinged for’ard and open outwards. Keep your hand on the inside handle. Lightly. When you feel it begin to turn, a very slow and stealthy turn, you can bet your boots, wait till the door gives a fraction, then kick the rear edge, just below the handle, with the sole of your right foot and with all the weight you have. If you don’t break his nose or knock him overboard you’ll at least set him in line for a set of false teeth. I’ll take care of the other or others.”
“How?”
“I’ll be on the saloon roof. It’s three feet lower than the loom of the stern light even if they approach from the wheelhouse roof so they can’t see me silhouetted against the loom of the stern light even if they approach from the bows.”
“But what arc you going to do?”
“Clobber him or them. A nice big Stilson from the engine-room with a rag round it will do nicely.”
“Why don’t we just dazzle them with torches and tell them to put their hands up?” Uncle Arthur clearly didn’t care for ray proposed modus operandi.
“Three reasons. These are dangerous and deadly men and you never give them warning. Not the true sporting spirit, but it helps you survive. Then there will almost certainly be night-glasses trained on the Firecrest at this very moment. Finally, sound carries very clearly over water and the wind is blowing towards Torbay. Shots, I mean.”
He said no more. We took up position and waited. It was still raining heavily with the wind still from the west. For once the rain didn’t bother me, I’d a full set of oilskins on. I just lay there, spread-eagled on the saloon coach-roof, occasionally easing the fingers of my hands, the right round the Stilson, the left round the little knife. After fifteen minutes they came. I heard the gentle scuff of rubber on our starboard side – the side of the wheelhouse door. I pulled on the cord which passed through the rear window of the wheelhouse. The cord was attached to Uncle Arthur’s hand.
There were only two of them. My eyes were perfectly tuned to the dark by this time and I could easily distinguish the shape of the first man coming aboard just below where I lay. He secured a painter and waited for his mate. They moved forward together.
The leading man gave a cough of agony as the door smashed, fair and square, as we later established, into his face. I wasn’t so successful, the second man had cat-like reactions and had started to drop to the deck as the Stilson came down. I caught him on back or shoulder, I didn’t know which, and dropped on top of him. In one of his hands he’d have either a gun or knife and if I’d wasted a fraction of a second trying to find out which hand and what he had in it, I’d have been a dead man. I brought down my left hand and he lay still.
I passed the other man lying moaning in agony in the scuppers, brushed by Uncle Arthur, pulled the saloon curtains to and switched on the lights. I then went out, half-pulled, half-lifted the moaning man through the wheelhouse door, down the saloon, steps and dropped him on the carpet. I didn’t recognise him. That wasn’t surprising, his own mother or wife wouldn’t have recognised him. Uncle Arthur was certainly a man who believed in working with a will and he’d left the plastic surgeon a very tricky job.
“Keep your gun on him, sir,” I said. Uncle Arthur was looking down at his handiwork with a slightly dazed expression. What one could see of his face behind the beard seemed slightly paler than normal, “If he breathes, kill him,”
“But – but look at his face, man. We can’t leave—–”
“You look at this, sir.” I stooped and picked up the weapon that had fallen from the man’s hand as I’d dropped him to the floor, “This is what is technically known to the United States’ police departments as a whippet. A shot-gun with two-thirds of the barrel and two-thirds of the stock sawn off. If he’d got you first, you wouldn’t have any face no left at all. I mean that literally. Do you still feel like playing Florence Nightingale to the fallen hero?” That wasn’t at all the way one should talk to Uncle Arthur, there would be a few more entries in the confidential report when we got back. If we got back. But I couldn’t help myself, not then. I passed by Uncle Arthur and went out.
In the wheelhouse I picked up a small torch, went outside and shone it down into the water, hooding it with my hand so that the beam couldn’t have been seen fifty yards away. They had a rubber dinghy, all right – and an outboard motor attached. The conquering heroes, bathed in that warm and noble glow of satisfaction that conies from the comforting realisation of a worthwhile job well done, had intended to make it home the easy way.
Looping a heaving line round the outboard’s cylinder head and hauling alternately on the heaving line and painter, I had both dinghy and outboard up and over in two minutes. I unclamped the outboard, lugged the dinghy round to the other side of the superstructure, the side remote from the inner harbour, and examined it carefully in the light of the torch. Apart from the manufacturer’s name there was no mark on it, nothing to indicate to which craft it belonged. I sliced it to ribbons and threw it over the side.
Back in the wheelhouse, I cut a twenty-foot length from a roll of P.V.C. electric wiring cable, went outside again and lashed the outboard to the dead man’s ankles. I searched his pockets. Nothing, I’d known there would be nothing, I was dealing with professionals. I hooded the torch and looked at his face. I’d never seen him before. I took from him the pistol still clutched in his right hand, undid ‘the spring clips holding the guard-chains in place above the gunwale slots for our companion-way ladder, then eased, first the outboard, and then the man, over the side. They vanished into the dark waters of Torbay harbour without the whisper of a splash. I went inside, closing wheelhouse and saloon doors behind me.
Uncle Arthur and the injured man had reversed positions by this time. The man was on his feet now, leaning drunkenly against the bulkhead, dabbing his face with a blood-stained towel Uncle Arthur must have found, and moaning from time to time. I didn’t blame him, if I’d a broken nose, most of my front teeth displaced and a jaw that might or might not have been fractured, I’d have been moaning too. Uncle Arthur, gun in one hand and some more of my Scotch in the other, was sitting on the settee and contemplating his bloody handiwork with an odd mixture of satisfaction and distaste. He looked at me as I came in, nodded towards the prisoner.
“Making a fearful mess of the carpet,” he complained, “What do we do with him?”
“Hand him over to the police.”
“The police? You had your reservations about the police, I thought.”
“Reservations is hardly the word. We have to make the break some time.”
“Our friend outside, as well?”
“Who?”
“This fellow’s — ah – accomplice.”
“I threw him over the side.”
“Uncle Arthur made the mess on the carpet even worse. He spilt whisky all over it. He said: “You what?”
“There’s no worry.” I pointed downwards. “Twenty fathoms and thirty pounds of metal attached to his ankles.”
“At – at the bottom of the sea?”
“What did you expect me to do with him? Give him a state funeral? I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you, he was dead. I had to kill him.”
“Had to? Had to?” He seemed upset. “Why, Calvert?”
“There’s no ‘ why’. There’s no justification needed. I killed him or he killed me, and then you, and now we’d both be where he is. Do you have to justify killing men who have murdered at least three times, probably oftener? And if that particular character wasn’t a murderer, he came to-night to murder. I killed him with as little thought and compunction and remorse as I’d have tramped on a black widow spider.”
“But you can’t go around acting like a public executioner,”
“I can and I will. As long as it’s a choice between them and me.”
“You’re right, you’re right.” He sighed. “I must confess that reading your reports of an operation is quite different from being with you on one. But I must also confess that it’s rather comforting having you around at times like this. Well, let’s put this man in cells.”