When Eight Bells Toll

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘I’m sorry.’ The light went out. ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘And don’t switch on any other lights either. Not even in your cabin. Rocks are the least of my worries in Loch Houron.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘And I’m sorry about earlier on. That’s why I came up. To tell you that. About the way I spoke and leaving so abruptly, I mean. I’ve no right to sit on judgment on others – and I think my judgment was wrong. I was just – well, literally shocked. To see two men killed like that, no, not killed, there’s always heat and anger about killing, to see two men executed like that, because it wasn’t kill or be killed as Sir Arthur said, and then see the person who did it not care . . .’ Her voice faded away uncertainly.

  ‘You might as well get your facts and figures right, my dear,’ Uncle Arthur said. ‘Three men, not two. He killed one just before you came on board to-night. He had no option. But Philip Calvert is not what any reasonable man would call a killer. He doesn’t care in the way you say, because if he did he would go mad. In another way, he cares very much. He doesn’t do this job for money. He’s miserably paid for a man of his unique talents.’ I made a mental note to bring this up next time we were alone. ‘He doesn’t do it for excitement, for – what is the modem expression? – kicks: a man who devotes his spare time to music, astronomy and philosophy does not live for kicks. But he cares. He cares for the difference betwen right and wrong, between good and evil, and when that difference is great enough and the evil threatens to destroy the good then he does not hesitate to take steps to redress the balance. And maybe that makes him better than either you or me, my dear Charlotte.’

  ‘And that’s not all of it either,’ I said. ‘I’m also renowned for my kindness to little children.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Calvert,’ Uncle Arthur said. ‘No offence and no embarrassment, I hope. But if Charlotte thought it important enough to come up here and apologise, I thought it important enough to set the record straight.’

  ‘That’s not all Charlotte came up for,’ I said nastily, ’If that’s what she came up for in the first place. She came up here because she’s consumed with feminine curiosity. She wants to know where we are going.’

  ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ she asked.

  ‘Don’t strike the match in front of my eyes.’

  She lit the cigarette and said: ‘Consumed with curiosity is right. What do you think? Not about where we’re going, I know where we’re going. You told me. Up Loch Houron. What I want to know is what is going on, what all this dreadful mystery is about, why all the comings and goings of strange men aboard the Shangri-la, what is so fantistically important to justify the deaths of three men in one evening, what you are doing here, what you are, who you are. I never really thought you were a unesco delegate, Sir Arthur. I know now you’re not. Please. I have the right to know, I think.’

  ‘Don’t tell her,’ I advised.

  ‘Why ever not?’ Uncle Arthur said huffily. ‘As she says, she is deeply involved, whether she wants it or not. She does have the right to know. Besides, the whole thing will be public knowledge in a day or two.’

  ‘You didn’t think of that when you threatened Sergeant MacDonald with dismissal and imprisonment if he contravened the Official Secrets Act.’

  ‘Merely because he could ruin things by talking out of turn,’ he said stiffly. ‘Lady – I mean, Charlotte – is in no position to do so. Not, of course,’ he went on quickly, ‘that she would ever dream of doing so. Preposterous. Charlotte is an old and dear friend, a trusted friend, Calvert. She shall know.’

  Charlotte said quietly: ‘I have the feeling that our friend Mr Calvert does not care for me overmuch. Or maybe he just does not care for women.’

  ‘I care like anything,’ I said. ‘I was merely reminding the admiral of his own dictum: ‘Never, never, never – I forget how many nevers, I think there were four or five – tell anyone anything unless it’s necessary, essential and vital. In this case it’s none of the three.’

  Uncle Arthur lit another vile cheroot and ignored me. His dictum was not meant to refer to confidential exchanges between members of the aristocracy. He said: ‘This is the case of the missing ships, my dear Charlotte. Five missing ships, to be precise. Not to mention a fair scattering of very much smaller vessels, also missing or destroyed.

  ‘Five ships, I said. On 5th April of this year the S.S. Holmwood disappeared off the south coast of Ireland. It was an act of piracy. The crew was imprisoned ashore, kept under guard for two or three days, then released unharmed. The Holmwood was never heard of again. On 24th April, the M.V. Antara vanished in St George’s Channel. On 17th May, the M.V. Headley Pioneer disappeared off Northern Ireland, on 6th August the S.S. Hurricane Spray disappeared after leaving the Clyde and finally, last Saturday, a vessel called the Nantesville vanished soon after leaving Bristol. In all cases the crews turned up unharmed.

  ‘Apart from their disappearances and the safe reappearances of their crews, those five vessels all had one thing in common – they were carrying extremely valuable and virtually untraceable cargoes. The Holmwood had two and a half million pounds of South African gold aboard, the Antara had a million and a half pounds’ worth of uncut Brazilian diamonds for industrial use, the Headley Pioneer had close on two million pounds’ worth of mixed cut and uncut Andean emeralds from the Muzo mines in Columbia, the Hurricane Spray, which had called in at Glasgow en route from Rotterdam to New York, had just over three million pounds’ worth of diamonds, nearly all cut, and the last one, the Nantesville,’ – Uncle Arthur almost choked over this one – ‘had eight million pounds in gold ingots, reserves being called in by the U.S. Treasury.

  ‘We had no idea where the people responsible for these disappearances were getting their information. Such arrangements as to the decision to ship, when, how and how much, are made in conditions of intense secrecy. They, whoever “they” are, had impeccable sources of information. Calvert says he knows those sources now. After the disappearance of the first three ships and about six million pounds’ worth of specie it was obvious that a meticulously organised gang was at work.’

  ‘Do you mean to say – do you mean to say that Captain Imrie is mixed up in this?’ Charlotte asked.

  ‘Mixed up is hardly the word,’ Uncle Arthur said dryly. ‘He may well be the directing mind behind it all.’

  ‘And don’t forget old man Skouras,’ I advised. ‘He’s pretty deep in the mire, too – about up to his ears, I should say.’

  ‘You’ve no right to say that,’ Charlotte said quickly.

  ‘No right? Why ever not? What’s he to you and what’s all this defence of the maestro of the bull-whip? How’s your back now?’

  She said nothing. Uncle Arthur said nothing, in a different kind of way, then went on:

  ‘It was Calvert’s idea to hide two of our men and a radio signal transmitter on most of the ships that sailed with cargoes of bullion or specie after the Headley Pioneer had vanished. We had no difficulty, as you can imagine, in securing the cooperation of the various exporting and shipping companies and governments concerned. Our agents – we had three pairs working – usually hid among the cargo or in some empty cabin or machinery space with a food supply. Only the masters of the vessels concerned knew they were aboard. They delivered a fifteen-second homing signal at fixed – very fixed – but highly irregular intervals. Those signals were picked up at selected receiving stations round the west coast – we limited our stations to that area for that was where the released crews had been picked up – and by a receiver aboard this very boat here. The Firecrest, my dear Charlotte, is a highly unusual craft in many respects.’ I thought he was going to boast, quietly of course, of his own brilliance in designing the Firecrest but he remembered in time that I knew the truth.

  ‘Between 17th May and 6th August nothing happened. No piracy. We believe they were deterred by the short, light nights. On 6th August, the Hurricane Spray disappeared. We had no one aboard that vessel – we couldn’t cover
them all. But we had two men aboard the Nantesville, the ship that sailed last Saturday. Delmont and Baker. Two of our best men. The Nantesville was forcibly taken just off the Bristol Channel. Baker and Delmont immediately began the scheduled transmissions. Cross-bearings gave us a completely accurate position at least every half-hour.

  ‘Calvert and Hunslett were in Dublin, waiting. As soon –’

  ‘That’s right,’ she interrupted. ‘Mr Hunslett. Where is he? I haven’t seen –’

  ‘In a moment. The Firecrest moved out, not following the Nantesville, but moving ahead of its predicted course. They reached the Mull of Kintyre and had intended waiting till the Nantesville approached there but a south-westerly gale blew up out of nowhere and the Firecrest had to run for shelter. When the Nantesville reached the Mull of Kintyre area our radio beacon fixes indicated that she was still on a mainly northerly course and that it looked as if she might pass up the Mull of Kintyre on the outside – the western side. Calvert took a chance, ran up Loch Fyne and through the Crinan Canal. He spent the night in the Crinan sea-basin. The sea-lock is closed at night. Calvert could have obtained the authority to have it opened but he didn’t want to: the wind had veered to westerly late that evening and small boats don’t move out of Crinan through the Dorus Mor in a westerly gusting up to Force 9. Not if they have wives and families to support – and even if they haven’t.

  ‘During the night the Nantesville turned out west into the Atlantic. We thought we had lost her. We think we know now why she turned out: she wanted to arrive at a certain place at a certain state of the tide in the hours of darkness, and she had time to kill. She went west, we believe, firstly because it was the easiest way to ride out the westerly gale and, secondly, because she didn’t want to be seen hanging around the coast all of the next day and preferred to make a direct approach from the sea as darkness was falling.

  ‘The weather moderated a fair way overnight. Calvert left Crinan at dawn, almost at the very minute the Nantesville turned back east again. Radio transmissions were still coming in from Baker and Delmont exactly on schedule. The last transmission came at 1022 hours that morning: after that, nothing.’

  Uncle Arthur stopped and the cheroot glowed fiercely in the darkness. He could have made a fortune contracting out to the cargo shipping companies as a one-man fumigating service. Then he went on very quickly as if he didn’t like what he had to say next, and I’m sure he didn’t.

  ‘We don’t know what happened. They may have betrayed themselves by some careless action. I don’t think so, they were too good for that. Some member of the prize crew may just have stumbled over their hiding-place. Again it’s unlikely, and a man who stumbled over Baker and Delmont wouldn’t be doing any more stumbling for some time to come. Calvert thinks, and I agree with him, that by the one unpredictable chance in ten thousand, the prize crew’s radio-operator happened to be traversing Baker and Delmont’s wave-band at the very moment they were sending their fifteen second transmission. At that range he’d about have his head blasted off and the rest was inevitable.

  ‘A plot of the Nantesville’s fixes between dawn and the last transmission showed her course as 082° true. Predicted destination – Loch Houron. Estimated time of arrival – sunset. Calvert had less than a third of the Nantesville’s distance to cover. But he didn’t take the Firecrest into Loch Houron because he was pretty sure that Captain Imrie would recognise a radio beacon transmitter when he saw one and would assume that we had his course. Calvert was also pretty sure that if the Nantesville elected to continue on that course – and he had a hunch that it would – any craft found in the entrance to Loch Houron would receive pretty short shrift, either by being run down or sunk by gunfire. So he parked the Firecrest in Torbay and was skulking around the entrance to Loch Houron in a frogman’s suit and with a motorised rubber dinghy when the Nantesville turned up. He went aboard in darkness. The name was changed, the flag was changed, one mast was missing and the superstructure had been repainted. But it was the Nantesville.

  ‘Next day Calvert and Hunslett were stormbound in Torbay but on Wednesday Calvert organised an air search for the Nantesville or some place where she might have been hidden. He made a mistake. He considered it extremely unlikely that the Nantesville would still be in Loch Houron because Imrie knew that we knew that he had been headed there and therefore would not stay there indefinitely, because the chart showed Loch Houron as being the last place in Scotland where anyone in their sane minds would consider hiding a vessel and because, after Calvert had left the Nantesville that evening, she’d got under way and started to move out to Carrara Point. Calvert thought she’d just stayed in Loch Houron till it was dark enough to pass undetected down the Sound of Torbay or round the south of Torbay Island to the mainland. So he concentrated most of his search on the mainland and on the Sound of Torbay and Torbay itself. He thinks now the Nantesville is in Loch Houron. We’re going there to find out.’ His cheroot glowed again. ‘And that’s it, my dear. Now, with your permission, I’d like to spend an hour on the saloon settee. Those nocturnal escapades.’ He sighed, and finished: ‘I’m not a boy any longer. I need my sleep.’

  I liked that. I wasn’t a boy any longer either and I didn’t seem to have slept for months. Uncle Arthur, I knew, always went to bed on the stroke of midnight and the poor man had already lost fifteen minutes. But I didn’t see what I could do about it. One of my few remaining ambitions in life was to reach pensionable age and I couldn’t make a better start than by ensuring that Uncle Arthur never laid hands on the wheel of the Firecrest.

  ‘But surely that’s not it,’ Charlotte protested. ‘That’s not all of it. Mr Hunslett, where’s Mr Hunslett? And you said Mr Calvert was aboard the Nantesville. How on earth did he –?’

  ‘There are some things you are better not knowing, my dear. Why distress yourself unnecessarily? Just leave this to us.’

  ‘You haven’t had a good look at me recently, have you. Sir Arthur?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It may have escaped your attention but I’m not a child any more. I’m not even young any more. Please don’t treat me as a juvenile. And if you want to get to that settee to-night –’

  ‘Very well. If you insist. The violence, I’m afraid, has not all been one-sided. Calvert, as I said, was about the Nantesville. He found my two operatives, Baker and Delmont.’ Uncle Arthur had the impersonal emotionless voice of a man checking his laundry list. ‘Both men had been stabbed to death. This evening the pilot of Calvert’s helicopter was killed when the machine was shot down in the Sound of Torbay. An hour after that Hunslett was murdered. Calvert found him in the Firecrest’s engine-room with a broken neck.’

  Uncle Arthur’s cheroot glowed and faded at least half a dozen times before Charlotte spoke. The shake was back in her voice. ‘They are fiends. Fiends.’ A long pause, then: ‘How can you cope with people like that?’

  Uncle Arthur puffed a bit more then said candidly: ‘I don’t intend to try. You don’t find generals slugging it out hand-to-hand in the trenches. Calvert will cope with them. Good night, my dear.’

  He pushed off. I didn’t contradict him. But I knew that Calvert couldn’t cope with them. Not any more, he couldn’t. Calvert had to have help. With a crew consisting of a myopic boss and a girl who, every time I looked at her, listened to her or thought of her, started the warning bells clanging away furiously in the back of my head, Calvert had to have a great deal of help. And he had to have it fast.

  After Uncle Arthur had retired, Charlotte and I stood in silence in the darkened wheelhouse. But a companionable silence. You can always tell. The rain drummed on the wheelhouse roof. It was as dark as it ever becomes at sea and the patches of white fog were increasing in density and number. Because of them I had cut down to half speed and with the loss of steerage way and that heavy westerly sea corning up dead astern. I’d normally have been hard put to it to control the direction of the Firecrest: but I had the auto-pilot on an
d switched to ‘Fine’ and we were doing famously. The auto-pilot was a much better helmsman than I was. And streets ahead of Uncle Arthur.

  Charlotte said suddenly: ‘What is it you intend to do to-night?’

  ‘You are a gourmand for information. Don’t you know that Uncle Arthur – sorry. Sir Arthur – and I are engaged upon a highly secret mission? Security is all.’

  ‘And now you’re laughing at me – and forgetting I’m along on this secret mission too.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re along and I’m not laughing at you, because I’ll be leaving this boat once or twice to-night and I have to have somebody I can trust to look after it when I’m away.’

  ‘You have Sir Arthur.’

  ‘I have, as you say, Sir Arthur. There’s no one alive for whose judgment and intelligence I have greater respect. But at the present moment I’d trade in all the judgment and intelligence in the world for a pair of sharp young eyes. Going by to-night’s performance. Sir Arthur shouldn’t be allowed out without a white stick. How are yours?’

  ‘Well, they’re not so young any more, but I think they’re sharp enough.’

  ‘So I can rely on you?’

  ‘On me? I – well, I don’t know anything about handling boats.’

  ‘You and Sir Arthur should make a great team.

  I saw you star once in a French film about -’

  ‘We never left the studio. Even in the studio pool I had a stand-in.’

  ‘Well, there’ll be no stand-in to-night.’ I glanced out through the streaming windows. ‘And no studio pool. This is the real stuff, the genuine Atlantic. A pair of eyes, Charlotte, that’s all I require. A pair of eyes. Just cruising up and down till I come back and seeing that you don’t go on the rocks. Can you do that?’