When Eight Bells Toll

When Eight Bells Toll
Alistair MacLean

From the acclaimed master of action and suspense. The all time classicMillions of pounds in gold bullion are being pirated in the Irish Sea. Investigations by the British Secret Service, and a sixth sense, have bought Philip Calvert to a bleak, lonely bay in the Western Highlands. But the sleepy atmosphere of Torbay is deceptive. The place is the focal point of many mysterious disappearances. Even the unimaginative Highland Police Sergeant seems to be acting a part. But why?This story is Alistair MacLean at his enthralling best. It has all the edge-of-the-seat suspense, and dry humour that millions of readers have devoured for years.

ALISTAIR MACLEAN

When Eight Bells Toll

Copyright (#ulink_bf0a0d32-c76e-5c4c-b21a-04c23c7824e3)

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1966

Copyright © Devoran Trustees Ltd 1966

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780006158110

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 9780007289479

Version: 2017-05-03

To Paul and Xenia

Contents

Cover (#u6f15b903-0eab-5c88-a789-93cf5b72bc6b)

Title Page (#u7e15042c-2105-52d1-a438-a1de20b429c5)

Copyright (#u6b661de4-c044-5973-ac47-63494cd116af)

ONE - Dusk Monday – 3 a.m. Tuesday (#ua885bcde-4f45-5195-a973-1cced5615f69)

TWO - Tuesday: 3 a.m. – dawn (#ue80e75c2-5ca0-52b0-bbb8-1154af805b15)

THREE - Tuesday: 10 a.m. – 10 p.m. (#u72ef3ecb-20b9-5502-b69d-11e5222835a5)

FOUR - Wednesday: 5 a.m. – dusk (#litres_trial_promo)

FIVE - Wednesday: dusk – 8.40 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)

SIX - Wednesday: 8.40 p.m. – 10.40 p.m. (#litres_trial_promo)

SEVEN - Wednesday: 10.40 p.m. – Thursday: 2 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)

EIGHT - Thursday: 2 a.m. – 4.30 a.m. (#litres_trial_promo)

NINE - Thursday: 4.30 a.m. – dawn (#litres_trial_promo)

TEN - Thursday: noon – Friday: dawn (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Alistair MacLean (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

ONE (#ulink_d8d0d285-4d87-56f5-a02b-8aa2a6f0fba9)

Dusk Monday – 3 a.m. Tuesday (#ulink_d8d0d285-4d87-56f5-a02b-8aa2a6f0fba9)

The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century. Buy one to-day and it would be indistinguishable from the one Wyatt Earp wore when he was the Marshal of Dodge City. It is the oldest hand-gun in the world, without question the most famous and, if efficiency in its designated task of maiming and killing be taken as criterion of its worth, then it is also probably the best hand-gun ever made. It is no light thing, it is true, to be wounded by some of the Peacemaker’s more highly esteemed competitors, such as the Luger or Mauser: but the high-velocity, narrow-calibre, steel-cased shell from either of those just goes straight through you, leaving a small neat hole in its wake and spending the bulk of its energy on the distant landscape whereas the large and unjacketed soft-nosed lead bullet from the Colt mushrooms on impact, tearing and smashing bone and muscle and tissue as it goes and expending all its energy on you.

In short when a Peacemaker’s bullet hits you in, say, the leg, you don’t curse, step into shelter, roll and light a cigarette one-handed then smartly shoot your assailant between the eyes. When a Peacemaker bullet hits your leg you fall to the ground unconscious, and if it hits the thigh-bone and you are lucky enough to survive the torn arteries and shock, then you will never walk again without crutches because a totally disintegrated femur leaves the surgeon with no option but to cut your leg off. And so I stood absolutely motionless, not breathing, for the Peacemaker Colt that had prompted this unpleasant train of thought was pointed directly at my right thigh.

Another thing about the Peacemaker: because of the very heavy and varying trigger pressure required to operate the semi-automatic mechanism, it can be wildly inaccurate unless held in a strong and steady hand. There was no such hope here. The hand that held the Colt, the hand that lay so lightly yet purposefully on the radio-operator’s table, was the steadiest hand I’ve ever seen. It was literally motionless. I could see the hand very clearly. The light in the radio cabin was very dim, the rheostat of the angled table lamp had been turned down until only a faint pool of yellow fell on the scratched metal of the table, cutting the arm off at the cuff, but the hand was very clear. Rock-steady, the gun could have lain no quieter in the marbled hand of a statue. Beyond the pool of light I could half sense, half see the dark outline of a figure leaning back against the bulkhead, head slightly tilted to one side, the white gleam of unwinking eyes under the peak of a hat. My eyes went back to the hand. The angle of the Colt hadn’t varied by a fraction of a degree. Unconsciously, almost, I braced my right leg to meet the impending shock. Defensively, this was a very good move, about as useful as holding up a sheet of newspaper in front of me. I wished to God that Colonel Sam Colt had gone in for inventing something else, something useful, like safety-pins.

Very slowly, very steadily, I raised both hands, palms outward, until they were level with my shoulders. The careful deliberation was so that the nervously inclined wouldn’t be deceived into thinking that I was contemplating anything ridiculous, like resistance. It was probably a pretty superfluous precaution as the man behind that immobile pistol didn’t seem to have any nerves and the last thought I had in my head was that of resistance. The sun was long down but the faint red after-glow of sunset still loomed on the northwest horizon and I was perfectly silhouetted against it through the cabin doorway. The lad behind the desk probably had his left hand on the rheostat switch ready to turn it up and blind me at an instant’s notice. And there was that gun. I was paid to take chances. I was paid even to step, on occasion, into danger. But I wasn’t paid to act the part of a congenital and suicidal idiot.

I hoisted my hands a couple of inches higher and tried to look as peaceful and harmless as possible. The way I felt, that was no feat.

The man with the gun said nothing and did nothing. He remained completely still. I could see the white blur of teeth now. The gleaming eyes stared unwinkingly at me. The smile, the head cocked slightly to one side, the negligent relaxation of the body – the aura in that tiny cabin of a brooding and sardonic menace was so heavy as to be almost palpable. There was something evil, something frighteningly unnatural and wrong and foreboding in the man’s stillness and silence and cold-blooded cat-and-mouse indifference. Death was waiting to reach out and touch with his icy forefinger in that tiny cabin. In spite of two Scots grandparents I’m in no way psychic or fey or second-sighted, as far as extra-sensory perception goes I’ve about the same degree of receptive sensitivity as a lump of old lead. But I could smell death in the air.

‘I think we’re both making a mistake,’ I said. ‘Well, you are. Maybe we’re both on the same side.’ The words came with difficulty, a suddenly dry throat and tongue being no aid to clarity of elocution, but they sounded all right to me, just as I wanted them to sound, low and calm and soothing. Maybe he was a nut case. Humour him. Anything. Just stay alive. I nodded to the stool at the front corner of his desk. ‘It’s been a hard day. Okay if we sit and talk? I’ll keep my hands high, I promise you.’

The total reaction I got was nil. The white teeth and eyes, the relaxed contempt, that iron gun in that iron hand. I felt my own hands begin to clench into fists and hastily unclenched them again, but I couldn’t do anything about the slow burn of anger that touched me for the first time.

I smiled what I hoped was a friendly and encouraging smile and moved slowly towards the stool. I faced him all the time, the cordial smile making my face ache and the hands even higher than before. A Peacemaker Colt can kill a steer at sixty yards, God only knew what it would do to me. I tried to put it out of my mind, I’ve only got two legs and I’m attached to them both.

I made it with both still intact. I sat down, hands still high, and started breathing again. I’d stopped breathing but hadn’t been aware of it, which was understandable enough as I’d had other things on my mind, such as crutches, bleeding to death and such-like matters that tend to grip the imagination.

The Colt was as motionless as ever. The barrel hadn’t followed me as I’d moved across the cabin, it was still pointing rigidly at the spot where I’d been standing ten seconds earlier.

I moved fast going for that gun-hand, but it was no breakneck dive. I didn’t, I was almost certain, even have to move fast, but I haven’t reached the advanced age in which my chief thinks he honours me by giving me all the dirtiest jobs going by ever taking a chance: when I don’t have to.

I eat all the right foods, take plenty of exercise and, even although no insurance company in the world will look at me, their medical men would pass me any time, but even so I couldn’t tear that gun away. The hand that had looked like marble felt like marble, only colder. I’d smelled death all right, but the old man hadn’t been hanging around with his scythe at the ready, he’d been and gone and left this lifeless shell behind him. I straightened, checked that the windows were curtained, closed the door noiselessly, locked it as quietly and switched on the overhead light.