“Help me!” The voice was low and urgent and desperate. “For God’s sake, help me.”
The voice came from the water, amidships on the port side. I moved back silently to where I thought the voice had come from and stood motionless. I thought of Hunslett and I didn’t move a muscle, I’d no intention of helping anyone until I’d made sure the voice didn’t come from some dinghy -a dinghy with two other passengers, both carrying machine-guns. One word, one incautious flash of light, a seven pound pull on a trigger and Calvert would be among his ancestors if, that was, they would have anything to do with such a bloody fool of a descendant.
“Please! Please help me! Please!”
I helped her. Not so much because the desperation in the voice was unquestionably genuine as because of the fact that it as unquestionably belonged to Charlotte Skouras.
I pushed through between the scuppers and the lowest guard-rail, a rubber tyre fender that was permanently attached to one of the guard-rail stanchions and lowered it to water-level. I said: “Lady Skouras?”
“Yes, yes, ifs me. Thank God, thank God!” Her voice didn’t come just as easily as that, she was gasping for breath and she’d water in her mouth.
“There’s a fender at the boat’s side. Catch it.”
A moment or two, then: “I have it.”
“Can you pull yourself up?”
More splashing and gasping, then: “No. No, I can’t do it”
“No matter. Wait.” I turned round to go for Uncle Arthur but he was already by my side. I said softly in his ear: “Lady Skouras is down there in the water. It may be a trap. I don’t think so. But if you see a light, shoot at it.”
He said nothing but I felt his arm move as he took the Luger from his pocket I stepped over the guard-rail and lowered myself till my foot came to rest on the lower part of the tyre. I reached down and caught her arm. Charlotte Skouras was no slender sylph-like figure, she had some bulky package tied to her waist, and I wasn’t as fit -as I’d been a long, long time ago, say about forty-eight hours, but with a helping hand from Uncle Arthur I managed to get her up on deck. Between us, we half carried her to the curtained saloon and set her down on the settee. I propped a cushion behind her head and took a good look at her.
She’d never have made the front cover of Vogue. She looked terrible. Her dark slacks and shirt looked as if they had spent a month in the sea instead of probably only a few minutes. The long tangled auburn hair was plastered to her head and cheeks, her face was dead-white, the big brown eyes, with the dark half-circles, were wide open and frightened and both mascara and lipstick had begun to run. And she hadn’t been beautiful to start with. I thought she was the most desirable woman I’d ever seen. I must be nuts.
“My dear Lady Skouras, my dear Lady Skouras!” Uncle Arthur was back among the aristocracy and showed it. He knelt by her side, ineffectually dabbing at her face with a handkerchief, “What in God’s name has happened? Brandy, Calvert, brandy 1 Don’t just stand there, man. Brandy!”
Uncle Arthur seemed to think he was in a pub but, as it happened, I did have some brandy left. I handed him the glass and said: “If you’ll attend to Lady Skouras, sir, I’ll finish getting the anchor up.”
“No, no!” She took a gulp of the brandy, choked on it and I had to wait until she had finished coughing before she went on. “They’re not coming for at least two hours yet. I know. I heard. There’s something terrible going on, Sir Arthur. I had -to come, I had to come.”
“Now, don’t distress yourself, Lady Skouras, don’t distress yourself,” Uncle Arthur said, as if she weren’t distressed enough already. “Just drink this down, Lady Skouras.”
“No, not that!” I got all set to take a poor view of this, it -was damned good brandy, then I realised she was talking of something else. “Not Lady Skouras. Never again! Charlotte. Charlotte Meiner. Charlotte.”
One thing about women, they always get their sense of priorities right. There they were on the Shangri-la, rigging up a home-made atom bomb to throw through our saloon windows and all she could think was to ask us to call her “Charlotte.” I said: “Why did you have to come?”
“Calvert!” Uncle Arthur’s voice was sharp. “Do you mind? Lady – I mean, Charlotte – has just suffered a severe shock. Let her take her time to——”
“No.” She struggled to an upright sitting position and forced a wan smile, half-scared, half-mocking. “No, Mr. Petersen, Mr. Calvert, whatever your name, you’re quite right. Actresses tend to over-indulge their emotions. Fm not an actress any longer.” She took another sip of the brandy and a little colour came back to her face. “I’ve known for some time that something was very far wrong aboard the Shangri-la. Strange men have been aboard. Some of the old crew were changed for no reason. Several times I’ve been put ashore with the stewardess in hotels while the Shangri-la went off on mysterious journeys. My husband – Sir Anthony – would tell me nothing. He has changed terribly since our marriage – I think he takes drugs. I’ve seen guns. Whenever those strange men came aboard I was sent to my stateroom after dinner.” She smiled mirthlessly. “It wasn’t because of any jealousy on my husband’s part, you may believe me. The last day or two I sensed that everything was coming to a climax. To-night, just after you were gone, I was sent to my stateroom. I left, but stayed out in the passage. Lavorski was talking. I heard him saying: ‘If your admiral pal is a unesco delegate, Skouras, then I’m King Neptune. I know who he is. We all know who he is. It’s too late in the day now and they know too much. It’s them or us.’ And then Captain Imrie – how I hate that man! – said: ‘ I’ll send Quinn and Jacques and Kramer at midnight. At one o’clock they’ll open the sea-cocks in the Sound’.”
“Charming friends your husband has,” I murmured.
She looked at me, half-uncertainly, half-specula lively and said: “Mr. Petersen or Mr, Calvert – and I heard Lavorski call you Johnson——”
“It is confusing,” I admitted. “Calvert. Philip Calvert.”
“Well, Philip,” – she pronounced it ‘the French way and very nice it sounded too – “you are one great bloody fool it you talk like that. You are in deadly danger.”
“Mr. Calvert,” Uncle Arthur said sourly – it wasn’t her language he disapproved of, it was this Christian name familiarity between the aristocracy and the peasants – “is quite aware of the danger. He has unfortunate mannerisms of speech, that’s alL You are a very brave woman, Charlotte.” Blue-bloods first-naming each other was a different thing altogether. “You took a great risk in eavesdropping. You might have been caught”
“I was caught, Sir Arthur.” The smile showed up the lines on either side of her mouth but didn’t touch her eyes. “That is another reason why I am here. Even without the knowledge of your danger, yes, I would have come. My husband caught me. He took me into my stateroom.” She stood up shakily, turned her back to us and pulled up the sodden dark shirt. Right across her back ran three great blue-red weals. Uncle Arthur stood stock-still, a man incapable of movement. I crossed the saloon and peered at her back. The weals were almost an inch wide and running half-way round her body, Here and there were tiny blood-spotted punctures. Lightly I tried a finger on one of the weals. The flesh was raised and puffy, a fresh weal, as lividly-genuine a weal as ever I’d clapped eyes on. She didn’t move. I stepped back and she turned to face us.
“It is not nice, is it? It does not feel very nice.” She smiled and again that smile, “I could show you worse than that.”
“No, no, no,” Uncle Arthur said hastily. “That will not be necessary.” He was silent for a moment, then burst out: “My dear Charlotte, what you must have suffered. It’s fiendish, absolutely fiendish. He must be – he must be inhuman, A monster. A monster, perhaps under the influence of drugs. I would never have believed it!” His face was brick-red with outrage and his voice sounded as if Quinn had him by the throat. Strangled. “No one would ever have believed it!”
“Except the late Lady Skouras,” she said quietly. “I understand now why she was in and out of mental homes several times before she died.” She shrugged. “I have no wish to go the same way. I am made of tougher stuff than Madeleine Skouras. So I pick up my bag and run away.” She nodded at the small polythene bag of clothes that had been tied to her waist. “Like Dick Whittington, is it not?”