They Found Atlantis

by Dennis Wheatley

  DENNIS WHEATLEY

  THEY FOUND ATLANTIS

  Edited by Miranda Vaughan Jones

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  I

  A Strange Craft

  II

  The Sunken Continent

  III

  Signs, Sounds, and a Worried Little Man

  IV

  The McKay Meets Heavy Weather in a Bullo-Carro

  V

  The Island of the Blessed

  VI

  The Three Lovers of Camilla

  VII

  Dive Number One

  VIII

  The Gentleman in the “Old School Tie”

  IX

  Captives in Conference

  X

  Davy Jones’s Locker

  XI

  The Empire of Perpetual Night

  XII

  Count Axel Wins a Trick

  XIII

  The McKay Makes a Grand Slam

  XIV

  The Last Dive

  XV

  Death Hovers in the Darkness

  XVI

  Trapped in the Sphere

  XVII

  The Kingdom of the Damned

  XVIII

  The Garden of the Gods

  XIX

  Count Axel Treads the Fields of Aspodel

  XX

  Menes Speaks

  XXI

  The Coming of the Serpent

  XXII

  Death in the Garden

  XXIII

  Out of Paradise

  A Note on the Author

  Introduction

  Dennis Wheatley was my grandfather. He only had one child, my father Anthony, from his first marriage to Nancy Robinson. Nancy was the youngest in a large family of ten Robinson children and she had a wonderful zest for life and a gaiety about her that I much admired as a boy brought up in the dull Seventies. Thinking about it now, I suspect that I was drawn to a young Ginny Hewett, a similarly bubbly character, and now my wife of 27 years, because she resembled Nancy in many ways.

  As grandparents, Dennis and Nancy were very different. Nancy’s visits would fill the house with laughter and mischievous gossip, while Dennis and his second wife Joan would descend like minor royalty, all children expected to behave. Each held court in their own way but Dennis was the famous one with the famous friends and the famous stories.

  There is something of the fantasist in every storyteller, and most novelists writing thrillers see themselves in their heroes. However, only a handful can claim to have been involved in actual daring-do. Dennis saw action both at the Front, in the First World War, and behind a desk in the Second. His involvement informed his writing and his stories, even those based on historical events, held a notable veracity that only the life-experienced novelist can obtain. I think it was this element that added the important plausibility to his writing. This appealed to his legions of readers who were in that middle ground of fiction, not looking for pure fantasy nor dry fact, but something exciting, extraordinary, possible and even probable.

  There were three key characters that Dennis created over the years: The Duc de Richleau, Gregory Sallust and Roger Brook. The first de Richleau stories were set in the years between the wars, when Dennis had started writing. Many of the Sallust stories were written in the early days of the Second World War, shortly before Dennis joined the Joint Planning Staff inWhitehall, and Brook was cast in the time of the French Revolution, a period that particularly fascinated him.

  He is probably always going to be associated with Black Magic first and foremost, and it’s true that he plugged it hard because sales were always good for those books. However, it’s important to remember that he only wrote elevenBlack Magic novels out of more than sixty bestsellers, and readers were just as keen on his other stories. In fact, invariably when I meet people who ask if there is any connection, they tell me that they read ‘all his books’.

  Dennis had a full and eventful life, even by the standards of the era he grew up in. He was expelled from Dulwich College and sent to a floating navel run school, HMS Worcester. The conditions on this extraordinary ship were Dickensian. He survived it, and briefly enjoyed London at the pinnacle of the Empire before war was declared and the fun ended. That sort of fun would never be seen again.

  He went into business after the First World War, succeeded and failed, and stumbled into writing. It proved to be his calling. Immediate success opened up the opportunity to read and travel, fueling yet more stories and thrilling his growing band of followers.

  He had an extraordinary World War II, being one of the first people to be recruited into the select team which dreamed up the deception plans to cover some of the major events of the war such as Operation Torch, Operation Mincemeat and the D-Day landings. Here he became familiar with not only the people at the very top of the war effort, but also a young Commander Ian Fleming, who was later to write the James Bond novels. There are indeed those who have suggested that Gregory Sallust was one of James Bond’s precursors.

  The aftermath of the war saw Dennis grow in stature and fame. He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I’m not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place.

  Dominic Wheatley, 2013

  CHAPTER I

  A STRANGE CRAFT

  Funchal, the capital of Madeira, is on the south coast of the island. Its leisurely dealings in wine and sugar, lace and basketwork, hardly disturb the serenity of the little town. Its buildings, straggling out along a wide blue bay and up the foot of the mountain which rises steeply from the shore, white, cream, and lemon among the greenery of vineyards and cane brakes, face a limitless waste of sparkling waters and, for the most part, lie sleeping in the sun.

  The western end of the bay is dominated by a high cliff upon which stands Reids Palace Hotel. That is the real centre of the island’s life. Often, when a calling liner allows its passengers a few hours in which to stretch their legs ashore, two hundred extra places are laid for luncheon there, and all the year round holiday-makers come and go, basking for a week or two in certain sunshine, since the climate of the fortunate island rarely drops below seventy or rises above ninety in the shade.

  Palms, oleanders, bougainvilia and magnolia trees rise from the semi-tropical gardens to screen the lower balconies of the hotel, then the cliff drops almost sheer, and a cactus-fringed stairway leads down to a rocky promontory upon which the hotel guests sunbathe between dips in the blue waters of the Atlantic.

  The McKay had had his morning swim and baked the lean body, to which he was pleased to refer as “the imperial carcass,” a slightly deeper shade of golden brown. Now, with his Chinese robe girt tightly round him, he stood with his eyes glued to a pair of binoculars, watching a ship that had just come to anchor in the bay.

  He was a shortish man but very upright, square-shouldered and square headed. His hair, thick, wiry and close cut, except where it was brushed up from his broad forehead, had once been a violent red but was now only faintly sandy, the colour having been bleached from it until it had become almost white.

  A girl with candid grey eyes and ripe-corn coloured hair was seated on the rocks near him.

  “What do you make of her?” she enquired. “I’ve never seen a queerer-looking yacht.”

  “She’s not a yacht, m’dear.” The McKay lowered his glasses and offered them. “Take a look yourself. Fine feathers make fine birds they say but for all her brass and paintwork she’s a tramp—
or has been. It takes more than the addition of a few deck houses to deceive your old sailor man.”

  “Thanks.” Sally Hart took the glasses and focused them upon the gaily painted ship with its unusual super-structure of white cabins forward and even stranger tangle of cranes, and massed machinery aft. “But why,” she went on after a moment, “do you persist in referring to yourself as if you had captained the Ark? You’re not really old at all.”

  An appreciative grin spread over the McKay’s face. It was lined from exposure to cutting wind, driving spray, and torrid sun-glare on the bridges of the many ships in which he had served, but the webs of little wrinkles which creased up round the corners of his blue eyes were due to an irrepressible sense of humour.

  “That’s nice of you, m’dear,” he murmured, “but I’m old enough to be your daddy and too old at forty-six to be given another ship. At least, that was the opinion formulated by their noble lordships of the Admiralty when they retired me last year—the blithering idiots.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll bet that wasn’t the real reason. The British Admiralty like their sailors to be respectably married and have money when they reach captain’s rank, so they can throw parties when they’re in foreign stations. Naturally they axed a professional bad man like you who refuses to grow old and has no money or official wife—but a girl in every port.”

  “If you’re not careful I’ll run you for infringing the official secrets act,” he countered quickly. “You know too much young woman—especially for a Yankee.”

  Without removing the glasses from her eyes she shot out one bare foot and kicked him on the behind. “How dare you call me a Yankee you ill-bred oaf. I come from California and don’t you forget it. Now tell me please, what’s that great ball thing hanging out from the rear of the ship?”

  “Stern, dearie, stern, the word ‘rear’ makes a sailor blush. I’m not certain what the ball thing is myself. It looks like the grandfather of all the buoys that ever were at this distance, but judging by photographs I’ve seen I’d hazard a guess that it’s a bathyspheres.”

  “And what’s a bathysphere, Nelson Andy McKay?”

  “A bathysphere, oh child of ignorance and sin, is a hollow steel ball constructed to resist enormous pressure. Adventurous souls like Dr. William Beebe, who invented it, climb inside; then their pals lower them into the depths of the ocean so that they can make long noses at giant octopuses through the super-thick portholes.”

  “Of course—I remember hearing about Beebe’s book ‘Half Mile Down’. Would this be his research ship, then, I wonder?”

  “No, I don’t think she’s Beebe’s hooker. His bathysphere is quite a small affair. It holds only two divers and it’s hoisted on and off the deck with a fair sized derrick—whereas that thing could hold half a dozen people and must weigh a hundred ton. That’s why they ship it on those steel girders abaft the starn right down on the waterline I expect. It is about one third submerged already as you can see and they probably run it straight off the steel tracks so that the water carries part of its immense weight before it has to be taken up by that complicated system of cranes overhead.”

  “Oh look!” Sally turned and pointed suddenly. “Camilla and her boy friends are going off in the speed-boat to investigate.”

  As she followed the foaming track of the speed-boat in its graceful curve towards the anchored mystery ship the McKay settled himself on his lean haunches and studied her excited young face at his leisure.

  Sally’s skin was good, her nose straight, her mouth full and red, her teeth excellent, her eyes wide set but not large enough to give her face distinction. She was attractive but not a real beauty.

  Her cheeks were just a shade too full and nothing, she knew, could alter that any more than the most skilful plucking would ever convert her golden eyebrows from semi-circular arches to the long narrow Garboish sweeps which she would have liked. Besides, shame of all shames, her otherwise quite perfect figure was marred by thick ankles.

  The McKay was not thinking of her ankles, only that she was a darned decent healthy girl, and a thundering sight more fun to be with than her really beautiful multi-millionairess cousin, Camilla, newly divorced Duchess da Solento-Ragina, née Hart, who was speeding out to the strange vessel in the bay with a little bodyguard of would-be second husbands.

  “Wonder which of ’em will hook her?” The McKay remarked, airing his thoughts aloud. “If I were her I’d pick the Swede—at least he’s got some brains.”

  “Oh, but Count Axel’s so old!” Sally protested.

  “Nonsense, he’s not much over forty, just the age to deal with a fly-by-night young creature like your lovely cousin. Still she hasn’t the sense to see that’s he’s worth three of the Roumanian Prince—or ten of that little filth Master Nicolas Costello.”

  “Nicky’s not so bad. He’s rather fun I think, and quite a famous film star. You’ve only got a hate against him because you don’t like crooners—you said so the other day.”

  “I’d croon him if I had him in a ship with me,” said the McKay grimly. “I took a dislike to that young man before I even knew what brand of idiocy he indulged in. I suppose the odds are really on the Prince. Vladimir is a handsome looking bounder and she’d like another title, wouldn’t she?”

  Sally shrugged and regarded the McKay with mild amusement. “She doesn’t tell me much. I’m only the female counterpart of Rene P. Slinger—just a paid companion she trots round with her to do her chores. I don’t think she’ll be in any hurry to take a second husband though. We only unloaded the Duke three months ago and her experience with him would last most girls a lifetime.”

  The McKay began to chuckle to himself.

  “What are you laughing at?” Sally asked suspiciously.

  “Just the story of Camilla and her Duke,” he confessed. “Most men in his situation would have spent the rest of their lives tagging round after wealthy wifey like a kind of super footman on any pocket money she cared to dole out to them, but Ragina had the sense to fix things up properly before taking her to church. Then, when she started her tantrums, he was able to quit the party with enough cash to keep him in clover for the rest of his days as some compensation for the trouble she had put him to.”

  “Trouble!” exclaimed Sally hotly. “Not many men find it any trouble to make love to a pretty girl.”

  “True,” the McKay agreed slowly, “but Camilla’s got a temper and her education is pathetic, despite all the thousands her guardians must have spent on it, whereas Ragina, I’m told, is a peace-loving cultured sort of chap so he probably found her a most awful bore to live with after the first fortnight.”

  Sally flushed and hastened to the defence of her cousin. “How can you! He was a rotten little blackguard who trapped her into that wicked marriage settlement by trading on the fact that she had fallen for him.”

  “Fiddlesticks! Camilla wanted large coronets on her silk undies and the Duke was getting a bit weary of ye ancient family overdraft so they made a deal of it.”

  “That’s not true. Before she was twenty-one her guardians would hardly allow her to see a man so she was horribly inexperienced and developed one of those wild short-lived passions the very moment she met him, just as any girl might who had been cooped up that way. He was terribly in love with her too—to begin with.”

  The McKay’s blue eyes twinkled beneath their bushy, sandy-white, caterpillar brows. “Steady m’dear, you’re getting almost as excited as if it had happened to you.”

  “Well I certainly feel that way at times. You see, I’ve been with Camilla ever since she left school, and I’ll never forget those months that she was married. D’you know that little swine used actually to beat her—with his braces.”

  The McKay suddenly sat back and roared with laughter.

  With an angry frown Sally stood up but he stretched out a detaining hand and caught at her bathrobe. “Now, now, don’t run away. Camilla doesn’t seem to have had any bones broken and lots of girls enjoy a p
layful hiding sometimes. It probably did her a power of good to learn that she could not carry her millions into the bedroom.”

  “You brute,” exclaimed Sally her grey eyes wide with indignation but as he struggled to his feet she had difficulty in repressing a smile.

  “Come on young woman,” he said firmly. “It’s time for the odd spot before lunch so if you will deign to accompany the imperial carcass up to the hotel I’ll buy you a sherry cobbler.”

  “Thanks.” She turned with him, then paused as she saw the speedboat hurtling towards them across the water. “Here come the others. They haven’t been long have they? Do let’s wait for a moment and learn the mystery about this queer ship.”

  They stood silent until the speed-boat drew alongside. The tall, dark, Roumanian Prince sprang on to the landing steps. Nicolas Costello, the film star, jumped out beside him. The Swedish Count took the golden-haired Camilla’s hand to assist her ashore. Rene P. Slinger, a bald-headed thin-nosed man who was the Duchess’s confidential adviser, followed and after him came a fat puffing stranger who mopped his bare head, from which thick fair hair sprouted like the bristles of a brush, with a red bandana handkerchief.

  “Darling!” shrilled Camilla as she landed, “meet Herr Doktor Tisch. We just caught him leaving his wonder-ship and brought him ashore to lunch with us.”

  The perspiring German thrust his handkerchief into his pocket and bowed stiffly from the waist.

  “Isn’t it too thrilling,” Camilla hurried on. “The Herr Doktor is out to rediscover the biggest hoard of gold there’s ever been in the world. With that ball thing on his boat he plans to go a mile deep in the sea and dig up all the vast treasure from the lost continent of Atlantis.”