When Eight Bells Toll

When I reached the partly open saloon door I heard Sir Arthur's voice.

'No, no, I really am most sorry to break hi upon you like this. Well, yes, thank you, small one if you will. Yes, soda, please.' Uncle Arthur really was having a go at the whisky to-night. 'Thank you, thank you. Your health, Lady Skouras. Your health, gentlemen. Mustn't delay you. Fact is, I wonder if you can help us. My friend and I are most anxious, really most anxious. I wonder where he is, by the way? I thought he was right behind------'

Cue for Calvert. I turned down the oilskin collar that bad been obscuring the lower part of my face, removed the sou-wester that had been obscuring most of the upper part of my face, knocked politely and entered. I said: 'Good evening, Lady Skouras. Good-evening, gentlemen. Please forgive the interruption, Sir Anthony.'

Apart from Uncle Arthur there were six of than gathered round the fire at the end of the saloon. Sir Anthony standing, the others seated. Charlotte Skouras, Dolhnann, Skouras's managing director, Lavorski, his accountant, Lord Charnley, his broker and a fifth man I didn't recognise. All had glasses in their hands.

Their reaction to my sudden appearance, as expressed by their faces, was interesting. Old Skouras showed a half-frowning, half-speculative surprise. Charlotte Skouras gave me a strained smile of welcome: Uncle Arthur hadn't been exaggerating when he spoke of that bruise, it was a beauty. The stranger's face was noncommittal, Lavorski's inscrutable, Dollmann's rigid as if carved from marble and Lord Charnley's for a fleeting moment that of a man walking through a countrychurchyard at midnight when someone taps him on the shoulder. Or so I thought. I could have imagined it. But there was no imagination about the sudden tiny snapping sound as the stem of the glass fell soundlessly on to the carpet. A scene straight from Victorian melodrama. Our aristocratic broker friend had something on his mind. Whether the others had or not it was difficult to say. Dollmann, Lavorski and, I was pretty sure, Sir Anthony could make their faces say whatever they wanted them to say.

'Good lord, Petersen!' Skouras's tone held surprise but not the surprise of a person weJcoming someone back from the grave. 'I didn't know you two knew each other.'

'My goodness, yes. Petersen and I have been colleagues for years, Tony. UNESCO, you know.' Uncle Arthur always gave out that he was a British delegate to UNESCO, a cover that gave him an excellent reason for his frequent trips abroad. 'Marine biology may not be very cultural, but it's scientific and educational enough. Petersen's one of my star performers. Lecturing, I mean. Done missions for me in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America.' Which was true, enough, only they weren't lecture missions. 'Didn't even know he was here until they told me at the hotel. But dear me, dear me, mustn't talk about ourselves. It's Hunslett. Petersen's colleague. And mine in a way. Can't find him anywhere. Hasn't been in the village. Yours is the nearest boat. Have you seen anything of him, anything at all?'

'Afraid I haven't,' Skouras said. 'Anybody here? No? Nobody?' He pressed a bell and a steward appeared. Skouras asked him to make inquiries aboard and the steward left. 'When did he disappear, Mr. Petersen?'

'I've no idea. I left him carrying out experiments, I've been away all day collecting specimens. Jellyfish.' I laughed deprecatingly and rubbed my inflamed face. 'The poisonous type, I'm afraid. No sign of him when I returned.'

'Could your friend swim, Mr. Petersen?' the stranger asked. I looked at him, a dark thickset character in his middle forties, with black snapping eyes deepset in a tanned face. Expressionless faces seemed to be the order of the day there, so I kept mine expressionless. It wasn't easy.

'I'm afraid not,' I said quietly. 'I'm afraid you're -thinking along the same lines as myself. We've no guard rails aft. A careless step------'I broke off as the steward re-entered and reported that no one had seen a sign of Hunslett, then went on: 'I think I should report this to Sergeant Mac-Donald at once.'

Everybody else seemed to think so, too, so we left. The cold slanting rain was heavier than ever. At the head of the gangway I pretended to slip, flung my arms about wildly for a bit then toppled into the sea, taking the gangway wandering lead with me. What with the rain, the wind and the sudden darkness 'there was quite a bit of confusion and it was the better part of a minute before I was finally hauled on to the landing stage of the companionway. Old Skouras was commiseration itself and offered me a change of clothes at once but I declined politely and went back to the Firecrest with Uncle Arthur. Neither of us spoke on the way back.

As we secured 'the dinghy I said; 'When you were at dinner on the Shangri-la you must have given some story to account for your presence here, for your dramatic appearance in an R.A.F. rescue launch.'

'Yes. It was a good one. I told them a vital UNESCO conference in Geneva was being dead-locked because of the absence of a certain Dr. Spenser Freeman. It happens to be true. In all the papers to-day. Dr. Freeman is not there because it suits us not to have him there. No one knows that, of course. I told them that it was of vital national importance that he should be there, that we'd received information that he was doing field research in Torbay and that the Government had sent me here to get him back.'

'Why send the launch away?   That would seem odd.'

'No. If he's somewhere in the wilds of Torbay I couldn't locate him before daylight. There's a helicopter, I said, standing by to fly him out. I've only to lift the phone to have it here in fifty minutes.'

'And of course, you weren't to know that the telephone lines were out of order. It might have worked if you hadn't called at the Firecrest in the rescue launch before you went to the Shangri-la. You weren't to know that our friends who were locked in the after cabin when you went aboard would report back that they'd heard an R.A.F, rescue launch here at such and such a time. They might have seen it through a porthole, but even that wouldn't be necessary, the engines are unmistakable. So now our friends know you're lying like a trooper. The chances are that they've now a very shrewd idea as to who exactly you are. Congratulations, sir. You've now joined the category I've been in for years - no insurancecompany in the world would issue you a life policy even on a ninety-nine per cent premium.'

'Our trip to the Shangri-la has removed your last doubts about our friends out there?'

'Yes, sir. You saw the reaction of our belted broker, Lord Charnley. And him an aristocrat to hoot!'

'A small thing to base a big decision on, Calvert,' Uncle Arthur said coldly.

'Yes, sir,' I fished my scuba suit from the after locker and led the way below. 'I didn't fall into the water by accident. By accident on purpose, I didn't mention that when I was hanging on to the boat's rudder off the reef this evening I cut a notch in it. A deep vee notch. The Shangri-la's tender has a deep vee notch in it. Same notch, in fact. Same boat.'

'I see. I see indeed.' Uncle Arthur sat on the settee and gave me the combination of the cold blue eye and the monocle. 'You forgot to give me advance notification of your intentions.'