When eight bells toll by Alistair MacLean Read Free Book Online Page B

beside the echo-sounder and had the face-plate off our R.T.D./D.F. set inside sixty seconds. He looked at the interior for five seconds, looked at me for the same length of time, then started screwing the face-plate back into position. One thing was certain, we wouldn't be using that transmitter for a long time to come.
    I turned away and stared out through the wheelhouse windows into the darkness. The wind was still rising, the black sea gleamed palely as the whitecaps came marching in from the south-west, the Firecrest snubbed sharply on her anchor chain and, with the wind and the tide at variance, she was beginning to corkscrew quite noticeably now. I felt desperately tired. But my eyes were stilt working. Hunslett offered me a cigarette. I didn't -want one, but I took one. Who knew, it might even help me to think. And then I had caught his wrist and was staring down at his palm.
    "Well, well," I said. "The cobbler should stick to his last."
    "He what?"
    "Wrong proverb. Can'-t think of the right one. A good workman uses only his own tools. Our pal with the penchant for smashing valves and condensers should have remembered that. No wonder my neck was twitching when Durran was around. How did you cut yourself?"
    "I didn't cut myself."
    "I know. But there's a smear of blood on your paten. He's been taking lessons from Peter Sellers, I shouldn't wonder. Standard southern English on the Nantesville, northern Irish on the Firecrest. I wonder how many other accents he has up his sleeve - behind his Iarynx 3 I should say. And I thought he was running to a little fat. He's running to a great deal of muscle. You noticed he never took his gloves off, even when he had that drink?"
    "I'm the best noticer you ever saw. Beat me over the head with a club and I'll notice anything." He sounded bitter. "Why didn't they clobber us? You, anyway? The star witness?"
    "Maybe we have moved out of our class. Two reasons. They couldn't do anything with the oops there, genuine cops as we've both agreed, not unless they attended to the cops too. Only a madman would deliberately kill a cop and whatever those boys may lack it isn't sanity,"
    "But why cops in the first place?"
    "Aura of respectability. Cops are above suspicion. When a uniformed policeman shoves his uniformed cap above your gunwale in the dark watches of the night, you don't whack him over the head with a marline-spike. You invite him aboard. All others you might whack, especially if we had the bad consciences we might have been supposed to have."
    "Maybe.   It's arguable.  And the second point?"
    "They took a big chance, a desperate chance, almost, with Durran. He was thrown to the wolves to see what the reaction would be, whether either of us recognised him."
    "Why Durran?"
    "I didn't tell you. I shone a torch in his face. The face didn't register, just a white blur with screwed-up eyes half-hidden behind an upflung hand. I was really looking lower down, picking the right spot to kick him. But they weren't to know that. They wanted to find out if we would recognise him. We didn't. If we had done we'd either have started throwing the crockery at him or yelped for the cops to arrest them - if we're against them then we're with the cops. But we didn't. Not a nicker of recognition. Nobody's as good as that. I defy any man in the world to meet up again in 'the same night with a man who has murdered two other people and nearly murdered himself without at least twitching an eyebrow. So the immediate heat is off, the urgent necessity to do us in has become less urgent. It's a safe bet that if we didn't recognise Durran, then we recognised nobody on the Nantesville and so we won't be burning up the lines to Interpol"
    "We're in the clear?"
    "I wish to God we were. They're on to us."
    "But you said------"
    "I don't know how I know," I said irritably. "I know. They went through the after end of the Firecrest like a TrebleChance winner hunting for -the coupon he's afraid he's forgotten to post.