Slinger shook his head. “I’m sorry but our plans are made and I couldn’t upset them if you promised me a million. I radioed the announcement about the bathysphere having burst at four o’clock this afternoon and ten minutes later every wireless station in the world will have known of the Duchess’s death and that of her whole party except Sally.”
“Please—please,” moaned the Doctor. “Think what this means for science.”
“Come on, Slinger,” urged the McKay. “Now the Doctor has proved his point you might give him a chance. You know we are completely helpless against your men. If we had thought there was any chance of upsetting your apple cart we should have started something long before this. What’s it matter giving him a few days anyhow before running us down to the Falklands.”
“It’s no good,” said Slinger firmly. “I’ve got to catch the weekly boat from Horta to-morrow morning, so as to see things through in New York. We are sailing right now.”
Count Axel’s head appeared above the banisters of the companion-way. His headache had apparently disappeared. He smiled his lazy indolent smile.
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken Slinger. This ship is not sailing anywhere for some considerable time.”
He gave a quick glance at his watch, grabbed the banisters with both hands, and shouted:
“Hang on everybody and be ready for the shock.”
Nobody but the McKay heeded his warning and for thirty seconds there was a tense silence as they tried to grasp his meaning.
Then the deck seemed to rise up and hit them, the whole ship shuddered violently and, as they were flung off their feet a deafening explosion shattered the silence like the crack of a twelve inch gun.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MCKAY MAKES A GRAND SLAM
The first to recover was one of Slinger’s gunmen who fell sprawling in the doorway. Quick as a cat he rolled over on his stomach, fired a warning shot through the skylight before the reverberation of the explosion had died away, and bellowed:
“Put ’em up all of you—Put ’em up or I’ll drill you!”
The McKay was still standing and, as he raised his arms under the threat of the pistol, he whipped round on Count Axel:
“God man! Have you holed the ship?”
A confused shouting and the sound of people clattering down ladders came from outside on the deck.
Slinger staggered to his feet and glared in the same direction. “What the hell have you been up to—what have you done eh?”
“I don’t quite know yet,” the Count admitted, lifting his hands to the level of his head. “We were a little anxious that you should not leave us so I took steps to ensure that the ship would be quite unable to proceed to Horta.”
“Damn you, what have you done?” snarled Slinger.
The Count smiled with considerable enjoyment. “I’ve had no chance to investigate the extent of the damage but I stole half a dozen of the good Doctor’s depth charges when I was helping him in the bathysphere yesterday and, this afternoon, I inserted them in the machinery. Unfortunately, I know very little about engines but I trust you will find that the propeller shaft is beyond repair.”
“Hell!” exclaimed Slinger turning to the doorway. “Here Bozo, keep these people covered and let them have it if they play any monkey tricks.” Then he dashed below to find out what had happened.
The ship had steadied, the whole party were on their feet again but Bozo and his companion held them motionless under the muzzles of their guns.
Suddenly the McKay began to hum with quiet enjoyment:
“What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
What shall we do with a drunken sailor?
Put him in a boat until he’s sober.
Early—in the—morn—ing.”
Sally giggled and joined in the chorus.
“Hi! Hi! up she rises
Hi! Hi! up she rises
Hi! Hi! up—she—rises
Early—in the—morn—ing.”
Nicky stared angrily at the gunmen. “I wish to God you birds would go away so we could have a drink.”
“Keep ’em up,” said Bozo, without the shadow of a smile.
The clamour outside had died down and a silence fell which became monotonous. Camilla broke it by turning the battery of her limpid blue eyes on Axel and saying softly:
“I always knew you had brains, Count. I think you’re simply marvellous.”
He gave his elegant little bow. “Madame, it is a half measure only, but I hope that it will serve our purpose for the moment.”
“Why the deuce did you go and say that it was you who’d done it?” asked the McKay.
“My dear Captain, they were bound to know that one of us was responsible and, if I had not admitted it, they would probably have suspected you.”
“Oh—ay! Very decent of you,” the McKay nodded his appreciation. “I only hope they won’t bear you too much of a grudge. It was a thunderin’ good idea.”
“Well—anyway I hit him—didn’t I? Right on the nose,” Nicky muttered in an endeavour to recapture some of his fast vanishing glory.
“My arms,” sighed Camilla. “They’ll drop off if I’m not allowed to lower them soon.”
“Better keep ’em up, sister,” the muscular looking thug who answered to the name of Bozo advised her seriously, “or it’s you who’ll be dropping.”
To their relief Slinger came panting back up the companion-way a moment later.
“It would serve you damn well right if I had you put in irons,” he snapped at Axel. “Anyhow I’m not trusting any of you an inch after this. My two men will keep you company from now on and none of you are to move out of the lounge until you go down to dinner. You can put your hands down now.”
“Aren’t we to be allowed to change?” asked Camilla. “We’re late to-night as it is.”
“No you’ll dine as you are and be locked in your cabins immediately afterwards.” With a worried frown Slinger stamped angrily away to find Captain Ardow.
“Well—that’s that,” said the McKay, moving over to a wheeled tray which one of the stewards had brought in just before the explosion. Two of the bottles on it had fallen over but all were corked and only one glass had been smashed. “Anyone like a drink?”
“Thank you—I would,” Sally replied as she flopped down on a settee.
“Nicky darling, will you do things for us,” Camilla said sweetly as she took the opposite corner to Sally.
Under cover of the rattle made by the ice in Nicky’s cocktail shaker the McKay remarked to Count Axel: “It was a darn fine idea, but why by all that’s holy didn’t you tell us what you meant to do—we might have jumped the gunmen if we’d had a little warning.”
The Count shook his head. “That would have been dangerous and useless. For one thing I did not know that these two would be here and even if the four of us had succeeded in gaining possession of their weapons there are so many more of them outside. They have a machine gun in the wireless house and another on the bridge. What could be easier than for them to push the machine guns through the skylight and massacre us all.”
“True,” the McKay agreed taking the glass of froth topped mixture that Nicky offered him, “but we might have held Slinger and these two birds as hostages.”
“I doubt if that would have had much effect. No one of them is more than a cog in Oxford Kate’s machine. I have prevented the ship from leaving this area and Slinger from reaching Horta by to-morrow morning so I am content—for the moment.”
“Yes, it was a good show and you’re mighty lucky to have escaped being put in irons in my opinion.”
Count Axel smiled. “I agree, I had to take that risk, but I considered this creation of delay worth it.”
The cocktails had passed round. Bozo and his friend had settled themselves in chairs, each guarding one of the deck entrances. The McKay glanced from one to another of them.
“You chaps care for anything,” he asked affably.
Bozo replied fo
r both of them. “We’ll help ourselves if we feel like a shot, but we got plenty of liquor aft an’ the orders about our being dumb to your crowd stand—so you’d best forget us.”
To ignore their presence was easier suggested than carried out so conversation among Camilla’s party became a little halting, but, when dinner had been announced, and the guards had accompanied them below, they saw that if they were to be driven to their cabins immediately afterwards their only chance to discuss the possible effect of this new development on their own situation was between the soup and the savoury—even if it necessitated being overheard by Bozo and his friend.
Doctor Tisch was entirely one minded on the matter; full of praise for Count Axel and in a high good humour. What ever might follow he felt that the wrecking of the engine had ensured him at least one, if not more opportunities to explore the sunken capital of Atlantis.
The McKay agreed, and stated that since he had seen the crew casting out kedge anchors from the deck house windows while they were drinking their cocktails it was reasonably certain that the ship would remain in much the same position considering that the evening had produced an almost glassy sea but, he added, “Things won’t be half so funny if it begins to blow. A ship that lacks power is like a man who’s lost the use of his legs. Neither can either fight or run, they’ve just got to take what’s coming to them. If a sea gets up we’re going to roll like blazes, so make up your minds to that, and although the chances are against it, we might quite well be piled up on the rocks of Pico.”
“Can’t they keep the rudder straight,” asked Sally ingenuously.
He stared at her from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “A rudder m’dear can’t steer a gig unless there’s pressure against it by the boat being forced through the water. We’ll be just like a cork in a whirlpool if a storm does get up but fortunately there is little likelihood of that.”
“I wish you wrong,” declared Vladimir. “If the weather remits a storm we take ourselves to the boats. The sand of Pico is hospitable to our nearness. Then, this conspiracy of bandits is wrecked by crikey and we put our thumbs to our eyebrows.”
“That possibility did occur to me,” announced Count Axel modestly.
“How long do you think it will take to repair the engines?” Camilla asked.
The McKay shrugged. “It’s difficult to say since we don’t know the extent of the damage, but if the Count is right and he has wrecked the propeller shaft it’s not a question of days but complete refitting in dry dock. As a first move, if that’s happened, they’ve probably wireless Punta Delgarda for a tender to tow us in. There wouldn’t be one at a little place like Horta.”
“Then Slinger will be able to leave the ship after all to-morrow.” Nicky’s voice held grievous disappointment.
“Yes, but he’ll have missed his boat for New York so he is stuck in the Azores for another week and that, I take it, was the Count’s principal object.”’
“True,” the Count bowed, “that, I think we agreed, was our most immediate necessity.”
“But it won’t prevent Kate coming out to us,” said Sally miserably.
“How?” asked the McKay. “How can he, even if he wants to, and I’ve never seen any reason why he should.”
“We were all reported dead this afternoon. Fifty people will have been on the long distance to Camilla’s lawyers by this time pressing for particulars of her will. Kate will get wise to it somehow things aren’t going to run as smoothly as he thinks for him. Then he’ll come back here just as fast as he can. That’s the sort of man he is.”
“But what are you afraid he is going to do if he does?”
“Heaven knows,” Sally dug viciously into her biscuit ice, “I don’t—but I’ve a feeling that he’ll make things horribly unpleasant for us all.”
“Leastways,” Vladimir commented. “If this defence you sit upon so forcibly is made by our so beautiful Duchess’s lawyer why should we sad ourselves. For a week more her fortune is reserved and in that space Nicky our probation shall accept to give Slinger a blue-eye.”
“You missed it,” said Nicky, “but the others saw. I hit him, didn’t I—right on the nose.”
“How unfortunate,” remarked the Prince with a flash of his white teeth, “that I was lying still in my cabin this time. Otherwise that poor Slinger’s thick ears would now be standing out on the backside of his head.”
Bozo, sitting by the doorway of the dining room coughed. It was not that he had the least interest in Slinger’s ears, in fact the conversation was almost unintelligible to him, but he did want his own dinner, and knew that he would not get it as long as the people at the table talked stupid nonsense instead of eating up their food.
The reminder of his presence, and that of his friend at the far end of the apartment stilled conversation and five minutes after coffee had been served he was able to stand up, cough again, and see his charges to their cabins. Vladimir taking the Kummel bottle with him as he said, “To be a safe guarding against revisiting pains in the old knob.”
As they went below the McKay got next to Sally and murmured under his breath, “Don’t worry m’dear. Unless Captain Ardow’s mad he’ll have to get us towed to safe anchorage by a tender. When it comes alongside I’ll chuck them my tin box with the letter to the Police. Then we’ll have Mr Slinger cornered and your friend Kate too if he turns up in time for the party.”
Sally wished him a loud good-night but gave his hand a grateful squeeze as she turned with new cheerfulness towards her cabin.
Slinger had far more cause for worry than his prisoners that evening. He knew that his chief would not take at all a good view of this new situation and would call upon him to answer for not having kept his charges more closely under guard. Over dinner with Captain Ardow he aired his anxiety and the Russian was neither comforting or helpful.
It seemed that despite his lack of knowledge of machinery Count Axel had succeeded in completely disabling the ship without injuring any member of the crew. A reconstruction of his sabotage showed that he must have managed to reach the after hold without being spotted while pretending to be ill in his cabin that afternoon; stacked his dynamite round the propeller shaft, waited until the bathysphere had been hauled up in case the force of the explosion wrecked the crane on the deck above; then lighted a time fuse and gone forward. The engine room remained unharmed and, as the hold was empty the explosion was not sufficiently confined to blow a hole in the bottom of the vessel, but the propeller shaft was cracked and twisted so that they were now completely at the mercy of the ocean. Captain Ardow explained with brief and bitter feeling that only the kedge anchors that he had thrown out prevented the ship being washed up on the shores of Pico or drifting, completely helpless, down to the South Pole.
Slinger declared that he did not give a cuss what happened to the ship. The all important thing was that he should reach New York at the earliest possible moment.
“So,” said Captain Ardow. “Well, I have already wirelessed Punta Delgarda for a tender.”
“The devil you have,” exclaimed Slinger. “That’s a mighty risky thing to have done. The radio about the Duchess’s death only went out this afternoon and we made no request for assistance then. It was not suggested that there had been an accident in the ship but stated clearly that the bathysphere had suddenly caved in under the immense pressure a mile below the water. Don’t you see that the news of a second big calamity in the space of a few hours may make people suspect that there’s something fishy going on.”
Ardow shrugged. “There was no alternative. The ship must be towed to safe anchorage otherwise we perhaps become a wreck. Later the tender can run you in to Horta.”
“How long d’you think she’ll take to reach us?”
“It is an unusual call upon the resources of so small a port so it is unlikely that they will be ready to leave before midnight. Then it is from a nine to twelve hour trip.”
“She may be here any time from nine o’clock on then, but that’s too la
te for me to catch the Horta boat. Even if the tender left you to run me in I’d not get there before midday. God! How livid Kate’s going to be when he hears about this mess. It means a week’s delay and he’s depending on my personal testimony to quash any suggestion of contesting that will.”
“When the tender has towed me to a safe anchorage you can return by her to Punta Delgarda,” Ardow suggested. “There you might catch a cargo boat calling before it proceeds to an American port, and perhaps save yourself a day or two.”
“Yes, that’s an idea, but what are you going to do? It’s impossible now for you to run these people down to the Falklands as planned.”
“My engineer has not yet reported the full extent of the damage. It may be that we shall have to go into dry dock before we can fit a new shaft. If not so bad and repairs are possible we shall lie up and wait delivery of new pieces from the States, refit ourselves and proceed south.”
Slinger angrily stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. “We’re in a fine mess either way as far as I can see. I think the best thing would be for Kate to charter a new hooker, have it handed over to you and your crew in Horta or Punta Delgarda then you could collect the passengers and guards off this one and abandon it. The cash doesn’t matter if only we can carry the big deal through, but Kate must decide himself, of course.”
“Yes. Kate will decide. I have already reported in our code to him and anticipate a wireless at any time. I have said too that the accident makes it impossible for you to catch the Horta boat—so also he will direct if you are to wait or try Punta Delgarda.”
“Nice of you to let him know before I had a chance to think things over,” remarked Slinger sarcastically. “If you want me I’ll be on deck.”
The night was peaceful and starlit. The only sound was the gentle lapping of the water against the vessel’s sides. She was rolling very slightly having no cruising speed to steady her, but Slinger was used to that from their frequent dead stops in the last week to operate the bathysphere. His nose was still a little sore and uncomfortable from the blow Nicky had landed on it the day before and as he paced up and down chewing the butt of his cigar he brooded unhappily upon the unpleasant possibilities of Kate’s cold hard rage when he heard of the way in which his carefully laid plans had been temporarily but very seriously disorganised.
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