“So your foot slipped, Sergeant,” Uncle Arthur said without preamble. He was using his cold, Sat, quite urunflected voice, the one that curled your hair. “The fact that you stand here now indicates that. Mr. Calvert went ashore with a prisoner and enough rope for you to hang yourself and you seized it with both hands. Not very clever of you, Sergeant. You should not have tried to contact your friends.”
“They are no friends of mine, sir,” MacDonald said bitterly.
“I’m going to tell you as much as you need to know about Calvert – Petersen was a pseudonym – and myself and what we are doing.” Uncle Arthur hadn’t heard him. “If you ever repeat any part of what I say to anyone, it will cost you your job, your pension, any hope that you will ever again, in whatever capacity, get another job in Britain and several years in prison for contravention of .the Official Secrets Act. I myself will personally formulate the charges.” He paused then added in a masterpiece of superfluity: “Do I make myself clear?”
“You make yourself very clear,” MacDonald said grimly.
So Uncle Arthur told him all he thought MacDonald needed to know, which wasn’t much, and finished by saying: “I am sure we can now count on your hundred per cent cooperation, Sergeant.”
“Calvert is just guessing at my part in this,” he said dully.
“For God’s sake!” I said. “You knew those customs officers were bogus. You knew they had no photo-copier with them. You knew their only object in coming aboard was to .locate and smash that set – and locate any other we might have. You knew they couldn’t have gone back to ‘the mainland in that launch – it was too rough. The launch, was, in fact, the tender – which is why you left without lights – and no launch left the harbour after your departure. We’d have heard it. The only life we saw after that was when they switched on their lights in the Shangri-la’s wheelhouse to smash up their own radio – one of their own radios, I should have said. And how did you know the telephone lines were down in the Sound? You knew they were down, but why did you say the Sound? Because you knew they had been cut there. Then, yesterday morning, when I asked you if there was any hope of ‘the lines being repaired, you said no. Odd. One would have thought that you would have told the customs boys going back to the mainland to contact the G.P.O. at once. But you knew they weren’t going hack there. And your two sons, Sergeant, the boys supposed to be dead, you forgot to ‘close their accounts. Because you knew they weren’t dead.”
“I forgot about the accounts,” MacDonald said slowly. “And all the other points – I’m afraid I’m not good at this sort of thing.” He looked at “Uncle Arthur. “I know this is the end of the road for me. They said they would kill my boys, sir.”
“If you will extend us your full co-operation,” Uncle Arthur said precisely, “I will personally see to it that you remain the Torbay police sergeant until you’re falling over your beard. Who are ‘ they’?”
“The only men I’ve seen is a fellow called Captain Imrie and the two customs men – Durran and Thomas. Durran’s real name is Quinn. I don’t know the others’ names. I usually met them in my house, after dark. I’ve been out to the Shangri-la only twice. To see Imrie.”
“And Sir Anthony Skouras?”
“I don’t know.” MacDonald shrugged helplessly. “He’s a good man, sir, he really is. Or I thought so. Maybe he is mixed up in this. Anyone can fall into bad company. It’s very strange, sir.”
“Isn’t it? And what’s been your part in this?”
“There’s been funny things happening in this area in the past months. Boats have vanished. People have vanished. Fishermen have had their nets torn, in harbour, and yacht engines have been mysteriously damaged, also in harbour. This is when Captain Imrie wants to prevent certain boats from going certain places at the wrong time.”
“And your part is to investigate with great diligence and a total lack of success,’ Uncle Arthur nodded. “You must be invaluable to them, Sergeant. A man with your record and character is above suspicion. Tell me, Sergeant, what are they up to?”
“Before God, sir, I have no idea.”
“You’re totally in the dark?”
“Yes, sir.”
“1 don’t doubt it. This is the way the very top men operate. And you will have no idea where your boys are being held?”
“No, sir.”
“How do you know they’re alive?”
“I was taken out to the Shangri-la three weeks ago. My sons had been brought there from God only knows where. They were well.”
“And are you really so naive as to believe that your sons will be well and will be returned alive when all this is over? Even although your boys will be bound to know who their captors are and would be available for testimony and identification if the time came for that?”
“Captain Imrie said they would come to no harm. If I co-operated. He said that only fools ever used unnecessary violence.”
“You are convinced, then, they wouldn’t go to the length of murder?”
“Murder! What are you talking about, sir?”
“Calvert?”
“Sir?”
“A large whisky for the sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.” When it came to lashing out with my private supplies Uncle Arthur was generous to a fault. Uncle Arthur paid no entertainment allowance. So I poured the sergeant a large whisky and, seeing that bankruptcy was inevitable anyway, did the same for myself. Ten seconds later the sergeant’s glass was empty. I took his arm and led him to the engine-room. When we came back to the saloon in a minute’s time the sergeant needed no persuading to accept another glass. His face was pale.
“I told you that Calvert carried out a helicopter reconnaissance to-day,” Uncle Arthur said conversationally. “What I didn’t tell you was that his pilot was murdered this evening. I didn’t tell you -that two other of my best agents have been killed in the last sixty hours. And now, as you’ve just seen) Hunslett. Do you still believe, Sergeant, that we are dealing with a bunch of gentlemanly law-breakers to whom human life is sacrosanct?”
“What do you warn me to do, sir?” Colour was back in the brown cheeks again and the eyes were cold and hard and a little desperate.
“You and Calvert will take Hunslett ashore to your office. You will call in the doctor and ask for an official post-mortem
– we must have an official cause of death. For the trial. The other dead men are probably beyond recovery. You will then row out to the Shangri-la and tell Imrie that we brought Hunslett and the other man – the Italian – to your office. You will tell them that you heard us say that we must go to the mainland for new depth-sounding equipment and for armed help and that we can’t be back for two days at least. Do you know where the telephone lines are cut in the Sound?”
“Yes, sir. I cut them myself.”
“When you get back from the Shangri-la get out there and fix them. Before dawn. Before dawn to-morrow you, your wife and son must disappear. For thirty-six hours. If you want to live. That is understood?”
“I understand what you want done. Not why you want it done.”
“Just do it. One last thing. Hunslett has no relations – few of my men have – so he may as well be buried in Torbay. Knock up your local undertaker during the night and make arrangements for the funeral on Friday. Calvert and I would like to be there.”
“But – but Friday? That’s Just the day after to-morrow.”
“The day after to-morrow. It will be all over then. You’ll have your boys back home.”
MacDonald looked at him in long silence, then said slowly: “How can you be sure?”
“Fm not sure at all.” Uncle Arthur passed a weary hand across his face and looked at me. “Calvert is. It’s a pity, Sergeant, that the Secrets Act will never permit you to tell your friends that you once knew Philip Calvert. If it can be done, Calvert can do it. I think he can. I certainly hope so.”
“I certainly hope so, too,” MacDonald said sombrely.
Me too, more than either of them, but there was already so much despondency around that it didn’t seem right to deepen it, so I just put on my confident face and led Mac-Donald back down to the engine-room.
SEVEN
Wednesday; 1040 p.m. – Thursday: 3 a.m.
Three of them came to kill us, not at midnight as promised, but at 10.40 p.m. that night. Had they come five minutes earlier then they would have got us because five minutes earlier we were still tied up to the old stone pier. And had they come and got us that five minutes earlier, then the fault would have been mine for, after leaving Hunslett in the police station I had insisted that Sergeant MacDonald accompany me Co use his authority in knocking up and obtaining service from the proprietor of the only chemist’s shop in Torbay. Neither of them had been too keen on giving me the illegal help I wanted and it had taken me a full five minutes and the best part of my extensive repertoire of threats to extract from die very elderly chemist the minimum of reluctant service and 3 small green-ribbed bottle informatively labelled ‘ The Tablets.’ But I was lucky and I was back aboard the Firecrest just after 10.30 p.m.