The second cottage was as deserted as the first.
The third cottage, the one most remote from the flensing shed, was where the shark-fishers lived. A logical and very understandable choice, one would have thought, the farther away from that olfactory horror the better. Had I the option, I"d have been living in a tent on the other side of the island. But that was a purely personal reaction. The stench of that flensing shed was probably to the shark-fishers, as is the ammonia-laden, nostril-wrinkling, wholly awful mist - mist - liquid manure - to the Swiss farmers: the very breath of being. The symbol of success. One can pay too high a price for success, liquid manure - to the Swiss farmers: the very breath of being. The symbol of success. One can pay too high a price for success, I eased open the well-oiled - shark-liver oil, no doubt - door and pa.s.sed inside. The torch came on again. Grandma wouldn"t have gone very much on this front parlour but grandpa would cheerfully have sat there watching his beard turn white through the changing seasons without ever wanting to go down to the sea again. One entire wall was given up to food supplies, a miserable couple of dozen crates of whisky and score upon scores of crates of beer. Australians, Williams had said. I could well believe it. The other three walls - there was hardly a sc.r.a.p of wall-paper to be seen - wasdevoted to a form of art, in uninhibited detail and glorious Technicolor, of a type not usually to be found in the bettercla.s.s museums and art galleries. Not grandma"s cup of tea at all.
I skirted the furniture which hadn"t come out of Harrods and opened the interior door. A short corridor lay beyond. Two doors to the right, three to the left. Working on the theory that the boss of the outfit probably had the largest room to himself, I carefully opened the first door to the right.
The flash-light showed it to be a surprisingly comfortable room. A good carpet, heavy curtains, a couple of good armchairs, bedroom furniture in oak, a double bed and a bookcase. A shaded electric light hung above the bed. Those rugged Australians believed in their home comforts. There was a switch beside the door. I touched it and the overhead lamp came on.
There was only one person in the double bed but even at that he was cramped in it. It"s hard to gauge a man"s height when he"s lying down but if this lad tried to stand up in a room with a ceiling height of less than six feet four inches, he"d finish up with concussion. His face was towards me but I couldn"t see much of it, it was hidden by a head of thick black hair that had fallen over his brows and the most magnificently bushy black beard I"d ever clapped eyes on. He was sound asleep.
I crossed to the bed, prodded his ribs with the gun barrel and a pressure sufficient to wake a lad of his size and said: "Wake up."
He woke up. I moved a respectful distance away. He rubbed his eyes with one hairy forearm, got his hands under him and heaved himself to a sitting position. I wouldn"t have been surprised to see him wearing a bearskin, but no, he was wearing a pair of pyjamas in excellent taste, I might have chosen the colour myself.
Law-abiding citizens woken in the dark watches of the night by a gun-pointing stranger react in all sorts of ways, varying from terror to apoplectically-purple outrage. The man in the beard didn"t react in any of the standard ways at all. He just stared at me from under dark overhanging cliffs of eyebrows and the expression in the eyes was that of a Bengal tiger mentally tucking in his napkin before launching himself on the thirty-foot -leap that is going to culminate in lunch. I stepped back another couple of paces and said: "Don"t try it."
"Put that gun away, sonny boy," he said. The deep rumbling voice seemed to come from the innermost recesses of the Carlsbad cavern. "Put it away or I"ll have to get up and clobber you and take it from you."
"Don"t be like that," I complained, then added politely: "If I put it away, will you clobber me?"
He considered this for a moment, then said: "No." He reached out for a big black cigar and lit it, his eyes on me all the time. The acrid fumes reached across the room and as it isn"t polite for a guest in another"s house to rush to open the nearest window without permission I didn"t but it was a near thing. No wonder he"d never notice the stench from the flensing shed: compared to this, Uncle Arthur"s cheroots came into the same category as Charlotte"s perfume.
"My apologies for the intrusion. Are you Tim Hutchinson?"
"Yeah. And you, sonny boy?"
"Philip Calvert. I want to use one of your boat"s transmitters to contact London, I also need your help. How urgently you can"t imagine. A good many lives and millions of pounds can be lost in the next twenty-four hours,"
He watched a particularly noxious cloud of this Vesuvian poison gas drift up to the cringing ceiling, then bent his eyes on me again. "Ain"t you the little kidder, now, sonny boy."
"I"m not kidding, you big black ape. And, while we"re at it, we"ll dispense with the "sonny boy" Timothy."
He bent forward, the deep-set, coal-black eyes, not at all as friendly as I would have liked, then relaxed with a laugh. "Touche, as my French governess used to say. Maybe you ain"t kidding at that. What are you, Calvert?" as my French governess used to say. Maybe you ain"t kidding at that. What are you, Calvert?"
In for a penny, in for a pound. This man would grant his co-operation for nothing less than the truth. And he looked like a man whose co-operation would be very well worth having. So, for the second time that night and the second time in my life, I said: "I"m an agent of the British Secret Service." I was glad that Uncle Arthur was out there fighting for his life on the rolling deep, his blood pressure wasn"t what it ought to have been and a thing like this, twice in one night, could have been enough to see him off. said: "I"m an agent of the British Secret Service." I was glad that Uncle Arthur was out there fighting for his life on the rolling deep, his blood pressure wasn"t what it ought to have been and a thing like this, twice in one night, could have been enough to see him off.
He considered my reply for some time, then said: "The Secret Service. I guess you have to be "at that. Or a nut case. But you blokes never tell."
"I had to. It would have been obvious anyway when I tell you what I have to tell you."
"I"ll get dressed. Join you in the front room in two minutes. Help yourself to a Scotch there." The beard twitched and I deduced from this that he was grinning. "You should find some, somewhere."
I went out, found some somewhere and was conducting myself on the grand tour of the Craigmore art gallery when Tim Hutchinson came in. He was dressed all in black, trousers, sailor"s jersey, mackinaw and seaboots. Beds were deceptive, he"d probably pa.s.sed the six foot four mark when he was about twelve and had just stopped growing. He glanced at the collection and grinned.
"Who would have thought it?" he said. "The Guggenheim and Craigmore. Hotbeds of culture, both of them. Don"t you think the one with the ear-rings looks indecently overdressed?"
"You must have scoured the great galleries of the world," I said reverently, "I"m no connoisseur. Renoir and Matisse are my cup of tea." It was so unlikely that it had to be true. "You look like a man in a hurry. Just leave out all the inessentials."
I left out the inessentials, but not one of the essentials. Unlike MacDonald and Charlotte, Hutchinson got not only the truth but the whole truth.
"Well, if that isn"t the most G.o.dd.a.m.ned story any man ever heard. And right under our b.l.o.o.d.y noses." It was hard to tell at times whether Hutchinson was Australian or American - I learnt later that he"d spent many years tuna-fishing in Florida. "So it was you in that chopper this afternoon. Brother, you"ve had a day and then some. I I retract that" sonny boy" crack. One of my more ill-advised comments. What do you want, Calvert?" retract that" sonny boy" crack. One of my more ill-advised comments. What do you want, Calvert?"
So I told him what I wanted, his own personal a.s.sistance that night, the loan of his boats and crews for the next twenty-four hours and the use of a radio transmitter immediately. He nodded.
"Count on us. I"ll tell the boys. You can start using that transmitter right away."
"I"d rather go out with you to our boat right away," I said, "leave you there and come back in myself to transmit."
"You lack a mite confidence in your crew, hey?"
"I"m expecting to see the bows of the Firecrest Firecrest coming through that front door any minute." coming through that front door any minute."
"I can do better than that. I"ll roust out a couple of the boys, we"ll take the Charmaine - Charmaine - that"s the M.F.V. nearest the flensing shed - out to the that"s the M.F.V. nearest the flensing shed - out to the Firecrest, Firecrest, I"ll go aboard, we"ll cruise around till you get your message off, then you come aboard the I"ll go aboard, we"ll cruise around till you get your message off, then you come aboard the Firecrest Firecrest while the boys take the while the boys take the Charmaine Charmaine back again." back again."
I thought of the maelstrom of white breakers outside the mouth of the alleged harbour. I said: "It won"t be too dangerous to take an M.F.V. out on a night like this?"
"What"s wrong with a night like this? It"s a fine fresh night. You couldn"t ask for better. This is nothing, I"ve seen the boys take a boat out there, six o"clock in a black December evening, into a full gale."
"What kind of emergency was that?"
"A serious one, admittedly." He grinned. "We"d run out of supplies and the boys wanted to get to Torbay before the pubs shut. Straight up, Calvert."
I said no more. It was obviously going to be a great comfort to have Hutchinson around with me for the rest of the night. He turned towards the corridor and hesitated: "Two of the boys are married. I wonder-----"
"There"ll be no danger for them. Besides, they"ll be well rewarded for their work."
"Don"t spoil it, Calvert." For a man with such a deep rumbling voice he could make it very soft at times. "We don"t take money for this kind of work."
"I"m not hiring you," I said tiredly. I"d quite enough people fighting me already without Tim Hutchinson joining their ranks, "There"s an insurance reward. I have been instructed to offer you half."
"Ah, now, that"s very different indeed. I"ll be delighted to relieve the insurance companies of their excess cash at any time. But not half, Calvert, not half. Not for a day"s work, not after all you"ve done. Twenty-five per cent to us, seventy-five per cent to you and your friends."
"Half is what you get. The other hah" will be used to pay compensation for those who have suffered hardship. There"san old couple on Eilean Oran, for instance, who are going to be wealthy beyond their dreams for the rest of their days."
"You get nothing?"
"I get my salary, the size of which I"d rather not discuss, as It"s a sore point. Civil Servants are not permitted to accept gratuities."
"You mean to say you get beaten up, shot down, half-drowned and suffered another couple of murder attempts just for a lousy pay cheque? What makes you tick, Calvert? Why the h.e.l.l do you do it?"
"That"s not an original question. I ask myself the same question about twenty times a day, rather more often recently. It"s time we were gone."
"I"ll get the boys up. They"ll be tickled pink by those gold watches or whatever the insurance boys will be handing over. Engraved, of course. We insist on that,"
"The reward will be in cash, not kind. Depends how much of the stolen goods are recovered. We"re pretty sure to recover all the Nantesville"s Nantesville"s cargo. Chances are that well recover the lot. The award is ten per cent. Yours will be five. The minimum you and your boys will pick up will be four hundred thousand pounds: the maximum will be eight hundred and fifty. Thousand pounds, I mean." cargo. Chances are that well recover the lot. The award is ten per cent. Yours will be five. The minimum you and your boys will pick up will be four hundred thousand pounds: the maximum will be eight hundred and fifty. Thousand pounds, I mean."
"Say that in English." He looked as if the London Post Office Tower had fallen on top of him. So I said it again, and after a time he looked as if only a telegraph pole had fallen on him and said carefully: "At rates like that, a man might expect a fair bit of co-operation. Say no more. Put right out of your head any thoughts you had of advertising in the Telegraph. Telegraph. Tim Hutchinson is your man." Tim Hutchinson is your man."
And Tim Hutchinson was undoubtedly my man. On a night like that, dark as doomsday, rain sluicing down and a thickening mist making it impossible - for me, at least - to tell the difference between a naturally breaking sea and a wave foaming over a reef, Tim Hutchinson was my man. Cheap at half a million.
He was one of that rare breed, that very rare breed, of naturals to whom the sea is truly home. Twenty years" daily polishing and refining in every conceivable condition a rarely-bestowed gift with which you must be born in the first place and anyone can be like this. Just as the great Grand Prix drivers, the Carraciolas and Nuvolaris and Clarks, operate on a level incomprehensible to highly competent drivers of very fast cars, so Hutchinson operated on a level incomprehensible to the finest of amateur yachtsmen. Search your ocean racing clubs and Olympic yachting teams the world over and you will not find men like this. They are to be found, and even then so very seldom, only in the ranks of the professional deep-sea fishermen.
Those huge hands on throttle and wheel had the delicacy of a moth. He had the night-sight of a barn owl and an ear which could infallibly distinguish between waves breaking in the open sea, on reefs or on sh.o.r.es: he could invariably tell the size and direction of seas coming at him out of the darkness and mist and touch wheel or throttle as need be: he had an inbuilt computer which provided instant correlation of wind, tide, current and our own speed and always let him know exactly where he was. And I"ll swear he could smell land, even on a lee sh.o.r.e and with the rest of us suffering olfactory paralysis from the fumes of the big black cigars which seemed to be an inseparable part of the man. It required only ten minutes beside him to realise that one"s ignorance of the sea and ships was almost total. A chastening discovery.
He took the Charmaine Charmaine out through the Scylla and Charybdis of that evil alleged harbour entrance under full throttle. Foaming white-fanged reefs reached out at us, bare feet away, on either side. He didn"t seem to notice them. He certainly didn"t look at them. The two "boys "he"d brought with him, a couple of stunted lads of about six foot two or thereabouts, yawned prodigiously. Hutchinson located the out through the Scylla and Charybdis of that evil alleged harbour entrance under full throttle. Foaming white-fanged reefs reached out at us, bare feet away, on either side. He didn"t seem to notice them. He certainly didn"t look at them. The two "boys "he"d brought with him, a couple of stunted lads of about six foot two or thereabouts, yawned prodigiously. Hutchinson located the Firecrest Firecrest a hundred yards before I could even begin to imagine I could see any shape at all and brought the a hundred yards before I could even begin to imagine I could see any shape at all and brought the Charmaine Charmaine alongside as neatly as I could part my car by the kerb in broad daylight - on one of my better days, that was. I went aboard the alongside as neatly as I could part my car by the kerb in broad daylight - on one of my better days, that was. I went aboard the Firecrest Firecrest to the vast alarm of Uncle Arthur and Charlotte who"d heard no whisper of our arrival, explained the situation, introduced Hutchinson and went back aboard the to the vast alarm of Uncle Arthur and Charlotte who"d heard no whisper of our arrival, explained the situation, introduced Hutchinson and went back aboard the Charmaine. Charmaine. Fifteen minutes later, the radio call over, I was back aboard the Fifteen minutes later, the radio call over, I was back aboard the Firecrest. Firecrest.
Uncle Arthur and Tim Hutchinson were already thick as thieves. The bearded Australian giant was extremely courteous and respectful, calling Uncle Arthur "Admiral"every other sentence while Uncle Arthur was plainly delighted and vastly relieved to have him on board. If I felt this was a slight on my own seaman-like qualities, I was undoubtedly correct.
"Where are we off to now?" Charlotte Skouras asked. I was disappointed to see that she was just as relieved as Uncle Arthur.
"Dubh Sgeir," I said. "To pay a call on Lord Kirkside and his charming daughter."
"Dubh Sgeir!" She seemed taken aback. "I thought you said the answer lay in Eilean Oran and Craigmore?"
"So I did. The answers to some essential preliminary questions. But the end of the road lies in Dubh Sgeir. And die foot of the rainbow,"
"You talk in riddles," she said impatiently.
"Not to me, he doesn"t," Hutchinson said jovially. "The foot of the rainbow, ma"am. That"s where the pot of gold lies."
"Here and now I"d settle for a pot of coffee," I said. "Coffee for four and I"ll make it with my own fair hands."
"I think I would rather go to bed," Charlotte said. "I am very tired."
"You made me drink your coffee," I said threateningly. "Now you drink mine. Fair"s fair."
"If you are quick, then."
I was quick. I"d four cups on a little tin tray in nothing flat, a powerful mixture of instant coffee, milk and sugar in all of them and a little something extra hi one of them. There were no complaints about the coffee. Hutchinson drained his cup and said: "Can"t see why you three shouldn"t get your heads down for a little. Unless you think I need help?"
No one thought he needed help. Charlotte Skouras was the first to go,, saying she felt very sleepy, which I didn"t doubt. She sounded it. Uncle Arthur and I left a moment later, Tim Hutchinson promising to call me when we neared the landing stage on the west side of Dubh Sgeir. Uncle Arthur wrapped himself in a rug on the saloon settee. I went to my own cabin and lay down.
I lay for three minutes then rose, picked up a three-cornered file, softly opened my cabin door and as softly knocked on Charlotte"s door. There was no reply, so I opened the door, pa.s.sed in, silently closed it and switched on the lights.
She was asleep all right, she was a million miles away. She hadn"t even managed to make it to bed, she was lying on the carpet, still fully clothed, I put her on the bunk and pulled a couple of blankets over her. I pushed up a sleeve and examined the mark left by the rope burn.
It wasn"t a very big cabin and it took me only a minute to find what I was looking for.
It made a pleasant change and a very refreshing one to transfer myself from the Firecrest Firecrest to land without that d.a.m.ned clammy scuba suit impeding every stroke or step of the way, to land without that d.a.m.ned clammy scuba suit impeding every stroke or step of the way, How Tim Hutchinson located that old stone pier in the rain, the fog and the darkness was something that would have been for ever beyond me - if he hadn"t told me later that night. He sent me to the bows with a torch in my hand and d.a.m.ned if the thing didn"t loom out of the darkness as if he"d gone hi on a radio bearing. He went into reverse, brought the bows, plunging heavily in the deep troughs, to within two feet of the pier, waited till I picked my moment to jump off then went full astern and disappeared into the fog and darkness. I tried to imagine Uncle Arthur executing that lot, but my imagination wasn"t up to it. It boggled. Uncle Arthur, thank heaven, slept the sleep of the just. Drake was in his hammock and a thousand miles away, dreaming all the time of W.C.I.
The path from the landing stage to the plateau above was steep and crumbling and someone had carelessly forgotten to equip k with a handrail on the seaward side. I was in no way heavily burdened. All I was carrying apart from the weight of my own years was a torch, gun and coil of rope - I"d neither the intention nor the expectation of doing a Douglas Fairbanks on the outer battlements of the Dubh Sgeir castle, but experience had taught me that a rope was the most essential piece of equipment to carry along on a jaunt on a precipitously walled island - but even so I was breathing pretty heavily by the time I reached the top.
I turned not towards the castle but north along the gra.s.s strip that led to the cliff at the northern end of the island. The strip that Lord Kirkside"s elder son had taken off from in his Beechcraft on the day when he and his brother-in-law to be had died, the strip that Williams and I had flown along less than twelve hours previously after our talk with Lord Kirkside and his daughter, the strip at the abrupt northern end of which I"d imagined I"d seen what I"d wanted to see, but couldn"t be sure. Now I was going to make sure.
The strip was smooth and flat and I made good time without having to use the big rubber torch I had with me. I didn"t dare use it anyway, not so close to the castle. There was no light to be seen from there but that was no guaranteethat the unG.o.dly weren"t maintaining a sleepless watch on the battlements. If I were the unG.o.dly, I"d have been maintaining a sleepless watch on the battlements. I stumbled over something warm and soft and alive and hit the ground hard.
My nerves weren"t what they had been forty-eight hours ago and my reactions were comparatively fast. I had the knife in my hand and was on to him before he could get to his feet. To his four feet. He had about him the pungent aroma of a a refugee from Tim Hutchinson"s flensing shed. Well might they say why stinks the goat on yonder hill who seems to dote on chlorophyll. I said a few conciliatory words to our four-footed friend and it seemed to work for he kept his horns to himself. I went on my way. refugee from Tim Hutchinson"s flensing shed. Well might they say why stinks the goat on yonder hill who seems to dote on chlorophyll. I said a few conciliatory words to our four-footed friend and it seemed to work for he kept his horns to himself. I went on my way.
This humiliating sort of encounter, I"d noticed, never happened to the Errol Flynns of this world. Moreover, if Enrol Flynn had been carrying a torch a little fall like that would not have smashed it. Had he been carrying only a candle it would still have kept burning brightly in the darkness. But not my torch. Not my rubber encased, rubber mounted bulb, plexi-gla.s.s guaranteed unbreakable torch. It was kaput. I fished out the little pencil torch and tried it inside my jacket. I could have spared myself the caution, a glow-worm would have sneered at it. I stuck it back in my pocket and kept going.
I didn"t know how far I was from the precipitous end of the cliff and I"d no intention of finding out the hard way, I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled forward, the glow-worm leading the way. I reached the cliff edge in five minutes and found what I was looking for almost at once. The deep score on the cliff edge was almost eighteen inches in width and four in depth in the centre. The mark was fresh but not too fresh. The gra.s.s had grown in again in most places. The time factor would be just about right. It was the mark that had been left by the tail fuselage of the Beech-craft plane when, with no one aboard, it had been started up, throttle opened and then the chocks removed. It hadn"t had enough speed to become airborne and had fallen over the cliff edge, ripping this score in the earth as it had gone. That was all I needed, that and the holed hull of the Oxford expedition boat and the dark circles under the blue eyes of Susan Kirkside. Here was certainty.
I heard a slight noise behind me. A moderately fit five-year-old grabbing me by the ankles could have had me over the edge with nothing I could do to prevent it. Or maybe itwas Billy the Kid back to wreak vengeance for the rude interruption of his night"s sleep. I swung round with torch and gun at the ready. It was was Billy the Kid, his yellow eyes staring balefully out of the night. But his eyes belied him, he was just curious or friendly or both. I moved back slowly till I was out of b.u.t.ting range, patted him weakly on the head and left. At this rate I"d die of heart failure before the night was out. Billy the Kid, his yellow eyes staring balefully out of the night. But his eyes belied him, he was just curious or friendly or both. I moved back slowly till I was out of b.u.t.ting range, patted him weakly on the head and left. At this rate I"d die of heart failure before the night was out.
The rain had eased by this time and the wind fallen away quite a bit, but to compensate for this the mist was worse than ever. It swirled clammily around me and I couldn"t see four feet in front of my face. I wondered grimly how Hutchinson was getting on in this lot, but put him quickly out of my mind. I"d no doubt he was a d.a.m.ned sight better at his job than I was at mine. I kept the wind on my right cheek and continued towards the castle. Under my rubber-canvas raincoat my last suit was sodden. The Civil Service was going to be faced with a cleaner"s bill of some note.
I near as a toucher walked into the castle wall but saw its loom just in time. I didn"t know whether I was to the right or the left of the entrance gate on the landward side, so I felt my way cautiously to the left to find out. After about ten feet the wall fell away at right angles to another wall. That meant I"d arrived at the left or eastern side of the gate. I began to feel my way to the right, It was as well I had come upon the castle wall where I had done: had I arrived at the right-hand side, I"d have been upwind of the central gate and would never have smelted the tobacco smoke. It wasn"t much as tobacco went, nothing like as robust as Uncle Arthur"s cheroots and positively anaemic as compared to Tim Hutchinson"s portable poison-gas factories, but tobacco smoke for all that. Someone at the entrance gate was smoking a cigarette. It was axiomatic that sentries should never smoke cigarettes. This I could deal with. They"d never trained me on how to handle billy goats on the edge of a precipice but on this subject they had become boringly repet.i.tive.
I held the gun by the barrel and moved quietly forwards. He was leaning against the corner of the entrance, a hardly-seen shape, but his position outlined clearly enough by the movement of his cigarette end. I waited till he brought it to to his mouth for the third time, and when it was glowing at its brightest and his night vision consequently most affected I took one step forward and brought the b.u.t.t down where by extensionof the curve and subsequent glow of the cigarette end the back of the head of a normal man ought to have been. Fortunately, he was a normal man. his mouth for the third time, and when it was glowing at its brightest and his night vision consequently most affected I took one step forward and brought the b.u.t.t down where by extensionof the curve and subsequent glow of the cigarette end the back of the head of a normal man ought to have been. Fortunately, he was a normal man.
He fell back against me. I caught him and something jabbed painfully into my ribs. I let him finish the trip down on his own and removed this item that had become stuck in my coat. A bayonet, and, what was more, a bayonet with a very nasty point to it. Attached to the bayonet was a Lee Enfield .303. Very military. It seemed unlikely that this was just a routine precaution. Our friends were becoming worried and I had no means of knowing how much they knew or guessed. Time was running very short for them, almost as short as it was for me. In a few hours it would be dawn.
I took the rifle and moved cautiously towards the edge of the cliff, the bayonet prodding the earth ahead of me as I went. By this time I was becoming quite adept at not falling over the edges of precipices and, besides, with a rifle and bayonet stretched out in advance you have five-feet notification of where eternity begins. I found the edge, stepped back, reversed the rifle, made two parallel scores in the sodden turf about a foot apart and eighteen inches in length, terminating on the very edge. I wiped the b.u.t.t clean and placed the rifle on the ground. When the dawn came, the sentry changed and a search made, I trusted the proper conclusions would be drawn.
I hadn"t hit him as hard as I"d thought, be was beginning to stir and moan feebly by the time I got back to him. This was all to the good, the alternative would have been to carry him and I was in no fit state to carry anyone. I stuffed a handkerchief into his mouth and the moaning stopped. Bad practice, I knew, for a gagged man with a head cold or nasal obstruction can die of suffocation in four minutes, but I hadn"t the facilities to carry out a sinus examination, and, more importantly, it was his health or mine.
He was up on his feet in two minutes. He didn"t try to run away or offer resistance, for by .this time he had his ankles on a short hobble, his hands tied securely behind his back and the barrel of an automatic pressing into the side of his neck. I told him to walk, and he walked. Two hundred yards away, at the head of the path leading down to the landing stage, I led him off to one side, tied his wrists and ankles together and left him there. He seemed to be breathing without too much difficulty.
There were no other sentries, at least not on the main gate, I crossed the hollow square of a courtyard and came to the main door. It was closed but not locked. I pa.s.sed inside and said a few hard things to myself about myself for not having searched that sentry for the torch he would almost certainly have been carrying. The window curtains must have been drawn and the darkness inside that hall was total. I didn"t much fancy moving around a Scottish baronial hall in total darkness, the risk of bringing down a suit of armour with a resounding metallic crash or impaling oneself on targes, claymores or a royal set of antlers must be high. I took out my pencil flash but the glow-worm inside was breathing its last, even when hard-pressed against the face of my wrist-watch it was impossible to tell the time. It was impossible to see the wrist-watch.
From the air, yesterday, I"d seen that the castle had been built in perfect symmetry round three sides of a hollow square. It was a reasonable a.s.sumption then that if the main door was in the middle of the central or seaward-facing section then the main staircase would be directly opposite. It seemed likely that the middle of the hall would offer a pa.s.sage unimpeded by either claymores or antlers.
It did. The stairs were where they should have been. Ten wide shallow steps and then the stairs branched both right and left. I chose the right-hand side because above me, on that side, I could see a faint loom of light. Six steps on the second flight of stairs, another right turn, eight more steps and then I was on the landing. Twenty-four steps and never a creak. I blessed the architect who had specified marble.
The light was much stronger now. I advanced towards its source, a door no more than an inch ajar, and applied a wary eye to the crack. All I could see was the corner of a wardrobe, a strip of carpet, the corner of the foot of a bed and, on the last, a muddy boot. A tow-register cacophony of sound emerged, reminiscent of a boiler factory in the middle distance. I pushed the door and walked inside.
I"d come to see Lord Kirkside, and whoever this was it wasn"t Lord Kirkside, for whatever Lord Kirkside was in the habit of doing I was fairly certain that he didn"t go to bed in boots, braces and cloth cap, with a bayoneted rifle lying on die blankets beside him, which was what this character had done. I couldn"t see his face, because the cloth cap reached as far as his nose. On the bedside table beside himlay a torch and a half-empty whisky bottle. No gla.s.s, but from what little I could see of him I would have judged that he was, anyhow, one of those characters whose direct and simple enjoyment of life has not been impaired by the effete contentions of modern civilisation. The faithful watchman prudently preparing himself for the rigours of the West Highland night before taking his turn at sentry-go. But he wouldn"t be making it at the appointed hour for there was no one now to call him. From the look of it, he"d be lucky to make it for lunch.
It was just possible that he might wake himself up, those Stentorian snores wouldn"t have gone unremarked in a mortuary. He had about him the look of a man who, on regaining consciousness, would find himself in need of thirst-quenching nourishment, so I unscrewed the bottle top, dropped in half a dozen of the tablets supplied by my pharmaceutical friend in Torbay, replaced the top, took the torch and left.
Behind the next door to the left lay a bathroom. A filthy basin with, above it, a water-stained mirror, two shaving brushes covered with lather, a jar of shaving cream with the top off, two unwashed razors and, on the floor, two towels that might just possibly have been white at some distant aeon in the past. The interior of the bath was immaculate. Here was where the watchman performed his rudimentary ablutions.
The next room was a bedroom as dirty and disorderly as the watchman"s. It was a fair guess that this was the home of the man I"d left lying out among the gorse and stones on the hillside.
I moved across to the left-hand side of the central block - Lord Kirkside would have his room somewhere in that block. He did, but he wasn"t at home. The first room beyond the sleeping warrior"s was his all right, a glance at the contents of the nearest wardrobe confirmed this. But his bed hadn"t been slept in.
Predictably in this symmetrically designed house, the next room was a bathroom. The watchman wouldn"t nave felt at all at home in here, this antiseptic cleanliness was the hallmark of an effete aristocracy, A medicine cabinet was fixed to the wall. I took out a tin of Elastoplast and covered the face of the torch till I was left with a hole no more than the size of a sixpence. I put the tin in my pocket.
The next door was locked but locks, in the days when the Dubh Sgeir Castle had been built, were pretty rudimentaryaffairs. I took from my pocket the best skeleton key in the world - an oblong of stiff celluloid. I shoved it between door and jamb at bolt level, pulled the door handle back in the direction of the hinges, eased in the celluloid, released the handle, repeated the process and stood stock-still. That click might have wakened my watchman friend, it should certainly have wakened the person inside. But I heard no sound of movement. shoved it between door and jamb at bolt level, pulled the door handle back in the direction of the hinges, eased in the celluloid, released the handle, repeated the process and stood stock-still. That click might have wakened my watchman friend, it should certainly have wakened the person inside. But I heard no sound of movement.
I opened the door a fraction of an inch and went through the stock-still standing process once more. There was a light on inside the room. I changed the torch for the gun, went on my knees, crouched low and abruptly opened the door wide. I stood up, closed and locked the door and crossed over to the bed.
Susan Kirkside wasn"t snoring but she was just as deep in sleep as the man I"d just left. She had a blue silk band round her hair, and all of her face was visible, a sight that must have been rare indeed during her waking hours. Twenty-one, her father had said she was, but lying there asleep, smudged eyes and all, she looked no older than seventeen. A magazine had slipped from her hands to the floor. On the bedside table was a half-empty gla.s.s of water and beside that a bottle containing a commercial brand of Nanbutal tablets. Oblivion appeared to be a pretty hard thing to come by in Dubh Sgeir and I"d no doubt Susan Kirkside found it more difficult than most.
I picked up a towel from a basin in the corner of the room, removed the worst of the moisture and dirt from head and face, combed my hair into some semblance of order and gave my kindly rea.s.suring smile a try-out in the mirror. I looked like someone from the pages of the Police Gazette. Police Gazette.
It took almost two minutes to shake her awake or, at least, to pull her up from the dark depths of oblivion to a state of semi-awareness. Full consciousness took another minute, and it was probably this that saved me from a screaming match, she had time to adjust herself to the slow realisation of the presence of a stranger in the middle of the night. Mind you, I had my kindly smile going full blast till my face ached, but I don"t think it helped much.
"Who are you? Who are are you?" Her voice was shaking, the blue eyes, still misted with sieep, wide open and scared. "Don"t you touch me! Don"t you - I"ll scream for help- I"ll-----" you?" Her voice was shaking, the blue eyes, still misted with sieep, wide open and scared. "Don"t you touch me! Don"t you - I"ll scream for help- I"ll-----"