When Eight Bells Toll

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?'

'They'll be here long before midnight when they discover you're gone,'  I observed.

'It may be morning before they find out. Most nights I lock my cabin door. To-night I locked it from the outside.'

'That helps,' I said. 'Standing about in those sodden clothes doesn't. There's no point in running away only to die of pneumonia. You'll find towels in my cabin. Then we can get you a room in the Columba Hotel.'

'I had hoped for better than that,' The fractional slump of the shoulders was more imagined than seen, but the dull defeat in the eyes left nothing to the imagination. 'You would put me in the first place they would look for me. There is no safe place for me in Torbay, They will catch me and bring me back and my husband will take me into that stateroom again. My only hope is to run away. Your only hope is to run away. Please. Can we not run away together?'

'No.'

'A man not given to evasive answers, is that it?' There was a lonely dejection, a proud humiliation about her that did very little for my self-respect. She turned towards Uncle Arthur, took both his hands in hers and said in a low voice: 'Sir Arthur, I appeal to you as an English gentleman,' Thumbs down on Calvert, that foreign-born peasant. 'May I stay? Please?'

Uncle Arthur looked at me, hesitated, looked at Charlotte Skouras, looked into those big brown eyes and was a lost man.

'Of course you may stay, my dear Charlotte.' He gave a stiff old-fashioned bow which, I had to admit, went very well with the beard and the monocle. 'Yours to command, my dear lady.'

'Thank you, Sir Arthur.' She smiled at me, not with triumph or satisfaction, just an anxious-to-be-friendly smile. 'It would be nice, Philip, to have the consent - what do you say? — unanimous.'

'If Sir Arthur wishes to expose you to a vastly greater degree of risk aboard this boat than you would experience in Torbay, that is Sir Arthur's business. As for the rest, my consent is not required. I'm a well-trained civil servant and I obey orders.'

'You are gracious to a fault,' Uncle Arthur said acidly.

'Sorry, sir,' I'd suddenly seen the light and a pretty dazzling beam it was too. 'I should not have called your judgment in question. The lady is very welcome. But I think she should remain below while we are alongside the pier, sir.'

'A reasonable request and a wise precaution,' Uncle Arthur said mildly. He seemed pleased at my change of heart, at my proper deference to the wishes of the aristocracy.

'It won't be for long.' I smiled at Charlotte Skouras. 'We leave Torbay within the hour.'

'What do I care what you charge him with?' I looked from Sergeant MacDonald to the broken-faced man with the wet blood-stained towel, then back to MacDonald again. 'Breaking and entering. Assault and battery. ISlegal possession of a dangerous weapon with intent to create a felony — murder. Anything you like.'

'Well, now. It's just not quite as easy as that.' Sergeant MacDonald spread his big brown hands across the counter of the tiny police station and looked at the prisoner and myself in turn. 'He didn't break and enter, you know, Mr. Petersen. He boarded. No law against that. Assault and battery? It looks as if he has been the victim and not the perpetrator. And what kind of weapon was he carrying, Mr. Petersen?'

'I don't know.   It must have been knocked  overboard.'

'I see. Knocked overboard, was it? So we have no real proof of any felonious intent.'

I was becoming a little tired of Sergeant MacDonald. He was fast enough to co-operate with bogus customs officers but with me he was just being deliberately obstructive. I said: 'You'll be telling me next that it's all a product of my fevered imagination. You'll be wiling me next .that I juststepped ashore, grabbed the first passer-by I saw, hit him in the face with a four-by-two then dragged him up here inventing this tale as I went. Even you can't be so stupid as to believe that.'

The brown face turned red and, on the counter, the brown knuckles turned ivory. He said softly: 'You'll kindly not talk to me like that.'

'If you insist on behaving like a fool 111 treat you as such. Are you going to lock him up?'