“I have devious reasons for the things I do. You told us that you had come to warn us of our deadly danger – as if we didn’t know, I told you we were leaving Torbay within the hour, so off you trotted to your little cabin and told them we were going to leave within the hour. So Quinn, Jacques and Kramer came paddling across well in advance of the time you’d told us they would be corning, trusting we would have been lulled into a sense of false security. You must love Mrs. Skouras very much, Charlotte. A clear-cut choice, she or us, and you made your choice. But I was waiting for them, so Jacques and Kramer died. I told you we were going to Eilean Oran and Craigmore, so off you trotted down to your little cabin and told them we were going to Eilean Oran and Craigmore, which wouldn’t have worried them at all. Later on I told you we were going to Dubh Sgeir. So off you trotted down to your little cabin again, but before you could tell them anything you passed out on your cabin deck, possibly as a result of a little night-cap I’d put in your coffee. I couldn’t have you telling your friends here that I was going to Dubh Sgeir, could I now? They would have had a reception committee all nicely organised.”
“You – you were in my cabin? You said I was on the floor?”
“Don Juan has nothing on me. I flit in and out of ladies’ bedrooms like anything. Ask Susan Kirkside. You were on the floor. I put you to bed. I looked at your arms, incidentally, and the rope marks were gone. They’d used rubber bands, twisted pretty tightly, just before Hunslett and I had arrived?”
She nodded. She looked dazed.
” I also, of course, found the transmitter and gun. Then, back in Craigmore, you came and pumped back for some more information. And you did try to warn me, you were about torn in half by that time. I gave you that information. It wasn’t the whole truth, I regret, but it was what I wanted you to tell Lavorski and company, which,” I said approvingly, “like a good little girl you did. Off you trotted to your little white-washed bedroom—–”
“Philip Calvert,” she said slowly, “you are the nastiest, sneakingest, most low-down double-crossing—–”
“There are some of Lavorski’s men aboard the Shangri-la,” old Skouras interrupted excitedly. He had rejoined the human race. “They’ll get away——”
“They’ll get life,” I said, “They’re in irons, or whatever Captain Rawley’s men here are in the habit of using.”
“But how did you – how did you know where the Shangri4a was? In the darkness, in the mist, it’s impossible——”
“How’s the Shangri-la’s tender working?” I asked.
“The what? The Shangri-la – what the devil——?” He calmed down. “It’s not working. Engines out of order.”
“Demerara sugar has that effect upon them,” I explained. “Any sugar has, in fact, when dumped in the petrol tanks, but demerara was all I could lay hands on that Wednesday night after Sir Arthur and I had left you but before we took the Firecrest in to the pier. I went aboard the tender with a couple of pounds of the stuff. I’m afraid you’ll find the valves are ruined. I also took with me a homing signal transmitter, a transistorised battery-powered job, which I attached to the inner after bulkhead of the anchor locker, a place that’s not looked at once a year. So, when you hauled the incapacitated tender aboard the Shangri-la – well, we knew where the Shangri’-la was.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow, Calvert.”
“Look at Messrs. Dollmann, Lavorski and Imrie. They follow all right. I know the exact frequency that transmitter sends on – after all, it was my transmitter. One of Mr. Hutchinson’s skippers was given this frequency and tuned in to it Like all M.F.V.s it has a loop aerial for direction finding, he just had to keep turning the loop till the signal was at full strength. He couldn’t miss. He didn’t miss.”
“Mr, Hutchinson’s skippers?” Skouras said carefully. “M.F.V.S you said?”
It was as well, I reflected, that I wasn’t overly troubled with self-consciousness, what with Mrs. MacEachern on one hand, Charlotte on the other, and every eye, a large proportion of them hostile to a degree, bent upon me, it could have been embarrassing to a degree, “Mr. Hutchinson has two shark-fishing boats. Before I came to Dubh Sgeir last night I radioed from one of his boats asking for help – the gentlemen you see here. They said they couldn’t send boats or helicopters in this weather, in almost zero visibility. I told them the last thing I wanted was their damned noisy helicopters, secrecy was everything, and not to worry about the sea transport, I knew some men for whom the phrase ‘ zero visibility’ was only a joke. Mr. Hutchinson’s skippers. They went to the mainland and brought Captain Rawley and his men back here. I didn’t think they’d arrive until late at night, that’s why Sir Arthur and I were afraid to move before midnight. What time did you get here, Captain Rawley?”
“Nine-thirty.”
“So early? I must admit it was a bit awkward without a radio. Then ashore in your little rubber boats, through the side door, waited until the diving-boat came back — and waited and waited.”
“We were getting pretty stiff, sir.”
Lord Kirkside cleared his throat. Maybe he was thinking of my nocturnal assignation with his daughter.
“Tell me this, Mr. Calvert. If you radioed from Mr. Hutchinson’s boat in Craigmore, why did you have to radio again from here later that night?”
“If I didn’t, you’d be down among the dead men by this time. I spent the best part of fifteen minutes giving highly detailed descriptions, of Dubh Sgeir externally and of the castle and boathouse layout internally. Everything that Captain Rawley and his men have done had to be done in total darkness. You’ll keep an eye on our friends, Captain Rawley? A fishery cruiser will be off Dubh Sgeir shortly after dawn.”
The Marines herded them off into the left-hand cave, set three powerful lights shining “into the prisoners’ faces and mounted a four-man guard with machine-pistols at the ready, Our friends would undoubtedly keep until the fishery cruiser came in the morning.
Charlotte said slowly: “That was why Sir Arthur remained behind this afternoon when you and Mr. Hutchinson went to the “Nantesville? To see that I didn’t talk to the guards and find out the truth?”
“Why else?”
She took her arm away and looked at me without affection. “So you put me through the hoop,” she said quietly. “You let me suffer like this for thirty hours while you knew all the time,”
“Fair’s fair. You were doing me down, I was doing you down,”
“I’m very grateful to you,” she said bitterly,
“If you aren’t you damn’ well ought to be,” Uncle Arthur said coldly. This was one for the books, Uncle Arthur talking to the aristocracy, even if only the aristocracy by marriage, in this waspish tone. “If Calvert won’t speak for himself, I will.
“Point one: if you hadn’t kept on sending your little radio messages, Lavorski would have thought that there was something damned fishy going on and might well have left the last ton or two of gold in the Nantesville and taken off before we got here. People like Lavorski have a highly attuned sixth sense of danger. Point two: they wouldn’t have confessed to their crimes unless they thought we were finished. Point three: Calvert wanted to engineer a situation where all attention was on the Firecrest so that Captain Rawley and his men could move into position and so eliminate all fear of unnecessary bloodshed – maybe your blood, my dear Charlotte. Point four, and more important: if you hadn’t been in constant radio contact with them, advising them of our impending arrival right up to the moment we came through those doors – we’d even left the saloon door open so that you could clearly overhear us and know all we were doing – there would have been a pitched battle, guns firing as soon as those doors were breached, and who knows how many lives would have been lost. But they knew they were in control, they knew the trap was set, they knew you were aboard with that gun to spring the trap. Point five, and most important of all: Captain Rawley here was hidden almost a hundred yards away along the cross runnel and the detachment up above were concealed in a store-room in the castle. How do you think they knew when to move in and move in simultaneously? Because, like all commandos, they had portable radio sets and were listening in to every word of your running commentary. Don’t forget your transmitter was stolen from the Firecrest. It was Calvert’s transmitter, my dear. He knew the transmitting frequency to the mainland last night. That was after he had – urn – given you a little something to drink and checked your transmitter before using the one up in the castle last night.” Charlotte said to me: “I think you are the most devious and detestable and untrustworthy man I’ve ever met.” Her eyes were shining, whether from tears or whatever I didn’t know. I felt acutely embarrassed and uncomfortable. She put her hand on my arm and said in a low voice: “You fool, oh, you fool! That gun might have gone off, I – I might have killed you, Philip!”