this.
'Do you know where they are kept? There should be any amount of handy dungeons in Dubh Sgeir castle,'
'There are cellars deep underground. I've never been allowed to go near them in the past four months.'
'This is your big chance come at last. Get your clothes on and take me there,'
'Go down to the cellars?' Aghast was the word for her expression. 'Are you mad? Daddy tells me there are at least three men on guard duty all night long.' There were only two men now, but her opinion of me was low enough already, so I kept quiet. 'They're armed. You
'I didn't think you would. You'll let your boy friend die just because you're a contemptible little coward,' I could almost taste the self-loathing in my mouth. 'Lord Kirkside and the Honourable Rollinson, What a lucky father. What a fortunate fiance'.'
She hit me, and I knew I had won. I said without touching my face: 'Don't do that. You'll waken up the guard, Get your clothes on.'
I rose, sat on the footboard of the bed and contemplated the door and higher things while she changed. I was becoming tired of women telling me what a horrible character I was.
'I'm ready,' she said.
She was back in her uniform of pirate's jersey and the denims she'd outgrown when she was about fifteen. Thirty seconds flat and nary a sound of a portable sewing machine. Baffling, that's what it was.
NINE
We went down the stairs hand in hand. I may have been the last man in the world she would have elected to be alone with on a desert island, but she clung on pretty tightly all the same.
At the foot of the steps we turned right. I flicked on the torch every few yards but it wasn't really necessary, Susan knew every yard of the way. At the end of the hall we turned left along the eastern wing. Eight yards and we stopped at a door on the right-hand side.
'The pantry,' she whispered. 'The kitchen is beyond that.'
I stooped and looked through the keyhole. Beyond was darkness. We passed through the doorway, then into an archway giving on to the kitchen. I flashed the tiny beam around the room. Empty.
There were three guards, Susan had said. The outside man, for whom I had accounted. The lad who patrolled the battlements. No, she didn't know what he did, but it was a good guess that he wasn't studying astronomy or guarding against parachutists. He'd have night glasses to his eyes and he'd be watching for fishing vessels, naval craft or fishery cruisers 'that might happen by and interrupt honest men at their work. He wouldn't see much on a night like this. And the third man, she said, guarded the back kitchen premises, the only entrance to the castle apart from the main gate — and the unfortunates in their cellars down below.
He wasn't in the kitchen premises, so he would be in the cellars down below,
A flight of steps led from the scullery beyond the kitchen down to a stone-flagged floor. To the right of this floor I could see the loom of light. Susan raised a finger to her lips and we made our way soundlessly down to the footof the steps. I slid a cautious eye round the corner of this passageway.
It wasn't passageway, it was the damnedest flight of steps I'd ever come across. They were lit by two or three far-spaced and very weak electric bulbs, the walls coming together towards the foot like a pair of railway lines disappearing into the distance. Maybe fifty feet - or seventy steps - down, where the first light was, another passageway branched off to the right. There was a stool at the corner of the small stone landing there, and sitting on the stool a man. Across his knees lay a rifle. They certainly went in for the heavy artillery.
I drew back. I murmured to Susan: 'Where in hell's name do those steps lead to?'
'The boathouse, of course.' A surprised whisper. 'Where else?'
Where else, indeed. Brilliant work, Calvert, brilliant work. You'd skirted the south side of the Dubh Sgeir in the helicopter, you'd seen the castle, you'd seen the boathouse, you'd seen nary a handhold on the sheer cliff separating them, and you'd never raised an eyebrow at the glaring obviousness of the fact that ne'er the twain did meet.
'Those are the cellars in that passage going off to the right?' She nodded. 'Why so far down? It's a long walk to collect the bubbly.'
'They're not really wine-cellars. They used to be used as water reservoirs.'
'No other way of getting down there?'
'No. Only this way.'
'And if we take five steps down this way he shoots us full of holes with his Lee Enfield. Know who it is?'
'Harry. I don't know his other name. He's an Armenian, Daddy says. People can't pronounce his real name. He's young and smooth and greasy - and detestable.'
'He had the effrontery to make a pass at the chieftain's daughter?'
'Yes. It was horrible.' She touched her lips with the back of her hand. 'He stank of garlic,'
'I don't blame him. I'd do it myself if I didn't feel my pension creeping up on me. Call him up and make amends.'
'What?'
'Tell him you're sorry. Tell him you misjudged his noble character. Tell him your father is away and this is the first chance you've had of speaking to him. Tell him anything.'
'No!'
'Sue!'
