The Screaming Gull Page 8

  However Sir David’s last words through the telephone had been:

  “Take care, Maureen, for God’s sake! ‘The Screaming Gull’ have the cunning of centuries behind them!”

  I longed to communicate with Aunt Jane and my sister Annie, to relieve their anxiety. But I dared not attempt it. I reflected, however, that the wireless message, and the very fact that Aunt Jane believed the dead man not to be Merriman, would give both my relations new hope… For a long time that day my thoughts were occupied with my aunt’s courage. Despite her primness and conventionality she must possess a strain of bravery that I had not before perceived.

  We took a bus from Drymen and arrived in Glasgow about six o’clock. Peter and I made an immediate round of the shops and bought new clothes. The precaution, I believed, was urgently necessary, for Wotherspoon and his friends at least had recognized us in our former garments.

  I exchanged the blatant tweeds which I had been wearing for a grey lounge suit, while Peter adorned himself as a pupil of Glasgow Academy. Maureen approved the change and declared that it would be a smart individual who would recognize us. Contrary to my wishes, however, she herself continued to wear her shabby costume.

  In the morning we took the 8.35 train from Glasgow to Gourock, where we boarded the Kilkerran for Campbeltown in Kintyre. I thought that for a time at least we were safely rid of our enemies — both ‘The Screaming Gull’ and the police. But the eventful voyage of the Kilkerran down the Firth of Clyde brought sad disillusionment.

  *

  The weather was rare for January, bright and full of sunshine; and though the air felt crisp and cold it was more invigorating than chilling. Maureen, Peter, and I stood in the bluff bows of the steamer — the fastest single-screw vessel in Britain — watching the Cowal hills recede in the blue distance and keeping a watchful eye for Arran round the Garroch Head. There was scarcely a ripple on the waters of Kilbrannan Sound when we neared the Cock of Arran, and a sheen lay over the oily swell, like the winking sheen of quicksilver.

  We had few passengers aboard, for the season was not one in which holiday-makers visit Kintyre. But as the voyage continued I began to wonder why three of the trippers were evincing so much interest in one another’s doings.

  One was a grey-haired young gentleman who had carried a violin case aboard with him at Gourock and seemed to be a musician. Another was an elderly lady with a lorgnette who might have been an old maid travelling on business connected with the S.W.R.I. The third was a dark-coated, lanky parson wearing a clerical collar.

  When a certain member of this queerly assorted trio would appear through an alleyway the other two would be certain to emerge close behind. Once or twice I saw them stand forward singly and study the bridge, as if they were photographers intent upon getting a suitable focus.

  I mentioned their strange behaviour to Maureen, and for a long time, standing with her back against one of the cross-rails in the bow, she studied them with care. Peter took no notice of them whatsoever, being more interested at the moment in the doings of a porpoise which had suddenly appeared under the bows of the Kilkerran and was now trying its paces against the steamer.

  For myself I must admit that though the strangers had to some extent aroused my curiosity I was more intrigued by the delicate colour which the winter air had caused to appear in Maureen’s cheeks.

  “Funny crowd, aren’t they?” she said at last. She half-closed her right eye as she regarded them, and for the first time I realized that this little action was a common habit of hers. “They don’t seem to know one another, and yet I could swear that a second ago the musician nudged the parson on the elbow and inclined his head towards us.”

  Peter had moved off a considerable distance by this time; for apparently the porpoise was lagging behind in the race and its fervid supporter on the steamer had fallen back with it to give moral assistance.

  “Probably we’re being too suspicious,” I said. “This kind of job doesn’t tend to improve one’s nerves.”

  “I know,” she answered. “But it’s also the kind of job on which it pays to be suspicious.”

  “Yet you believed in me.”

  I saw the fresh colour deepening in her cheeks, but she had her reply ready in a twinkling. She was as quick-witted and courageous as I was hesitant and afraid.

  “Instinct, Bill,” she said. “Womanly instinct. Nothing else. My father says it is my most valuable asset as his second-in-command.”

  “I see,” I replied, disappointed. Then, following a sudden impulse, I continued: “Maureen! It doesn’t matter about the old hat or the old costume, or the old shoes. You’re perfectly lovely.”

  As I spoke I shivered at my impertinence. I cursed myself for being a fool and called myself all sorts of names for imagining that because I had proved myself to be a little less of a molly-coddle than I had appeared four days ago I could say such things to the most adorable girl in the world.

  Maureen, however, didn’t seem to mind particularly, though I saw her start and a queer, far-away look came into her eyes.

  “D’you think so, Bill?” she asked, and I was surprised to detect a certain wistfulness in her voice. “I’m glad.”

  “Of course I think so,” I returned, brave again. “But please don’t look on me as an infernally cheeky blighter.”

  “You’re not cheeky, Bill. You’re — you’re rather a dear. Lots of fellows have told me I’m lovely; but I didn’t quite believe any of them — until now.”

  She said it so frankly and naively that I was taken unawares.

  “Oh, Maureen!” I exclaimed. “I could tell you other things. I could tell you how much I — ”

  I stopped abruptly. Peter was talking excitedly behind us. I heard him say:

  “Hey, mister, leave go of my arm!”

  Maureen’s eyes met mine seriously for a moment; and I had time to see in them a strange light which I could not understand. Then we both turned to discover the reason for Peter’s shout.

  *

  I was both surprised and annoyed at what I saw. The parson was holding Peter tightly by the elbow and telling him to go amidships at once, while the old maid and the musician, the latter of whom was still carrying carefully his violin case, stood nearby on the raised deck, watching operations.

  “Look here, sir!” I shouted, letting anger take the place of the vastly different emotion which I had crushed down a moment before. “Will you stop molesting my son? Your impudence is a disgrace to your cloth!”

  As I hastened forward Peter apparently decided to make a bold bid on his own account for liberty. He kicked out and I saw his shoe miss the parson’s shin by a hair-breath. But Peter’s courage was of little avail. The parson did, indeed, release his arm, but as quick as light he had drawn back his open hand and had sent Peter spinning along the deck with a cruel slap. He laughed shortly as he acted, and it struck me that for a minister of the Gospel his expression of satisfied cruelty was a strange one.

  Maureen gasped and I saw red. I leapt at the parson; but the elderly lady interposed herself between us. In her right hand she held a blue-black automatic which glinted brightly in the winter sun.

  “Get back behind the bridge!” ordered this person roughly, and, hearing the deep voice, I suddenly realized that despite outward appearances the ‘lady’ was actually a man. “Get back out of danger — you and your scarecrow of a wife and your weed of a son! If you won’t move from the bows of your own accord we’ll have to use force. There’s going to be trouble. See!”

  I don’t think the skipper and the helmsman on the bridge realized that anything serious was amiss until Maureen, Peter, and I had been shepherded amidships over the forward hold gangway by the ‘old maid’, and the musician, assisted by the parson, had begun to unpack the contents of the violin case. And then it was too late; for instead of a violin the young man with the grey hair had been carrying about with him a Gatling-gun. They mounted it on the foredeck just in front of the windlass and pointed it up at the brid
ge.

  I was humiliated and frightened. I tried to think of something I could do to stop this outrage; but my mind refused to act. I remained trembling and irresolute between Maureen and Peter in the port alleyway, watching the tense little drama taking place for’ard.

  A number of other passengers and deck-hands crowded behind us; but none of them ventured across the gangways which spanned the hold. The three strangers had worked so quickly that everyone on the steamer was unbalanced and dumbfounded.

  Like the rattle of hail on corrugated iron came the sound of the Gatling as the musician fired perhaps half a dozen rounds into the air. On either side of him now stood the parson and the ‘old maid’, both swinging revolvers. I heard some women behind me scream and one little girl began to cry in a strange, hysterical fashion. I learned afterwards that an old man — a lay missionary travelling to preach in Campbeltown — had fainted on the deck soon after the Gatling had been taken from its case.

  “Skipper,” shouted the musician, “stop your steamer, or I’ll riddle your helmsman and the passengers full of holes!”

  I looked about us.

  We were ploughing through the narrow northern entrance to Kilbrannan Sound, and the rhythmic thud of the engines sounded heavy in the stillness. On our port side were the bleak, rugged slopes of Arran, soaring brown and scarred from the water’s edge. To starboard the flat, desolate mainland stretched into the grey haze of distance, and a thin line of white marked the meeting of the sea and land.

  Neither a village nor a dwelling-house was in sight, though I knew that on the Arran side, nestling round the bluff headland, the houses of Lochranza lay scattered in the valley. Ahead and astern the sea shimmered and heaved; but no other vessel seemed to be sailing within miles of our position.

  “What is it?” I whispered to Maureen through the chatter of the crowd. “They don’t seem to be after us anyway, or they’d have finished us off in the bows.”

  Maureen was pale, but I was surprised at her rigid composure. She had put her hand on my arm and was holding it tightly. Peter stood straddle-legged in front of us, regarding the parson with smouldering eyes.

  “No,” she answered. “But… I think this has to do with ‘The Screaming Gull’.”

  Peter turned and looked at us, having overheard our conversation.

  “Ay,” he said tersely. “It’s got tae dae wi’ ‘The Screaming Gull’. That meenister has got a gull mark on his airm. I seen it when he was strugglin’ wi’ me an’ his sleeve rolled back.”

  I saw the skipper come forward and look down over the canvas dodger in front of the bridge. He was a squat, stout, jolly-faced little man, with heavy clean-shaven brown cheeks; but at the moment his expression was a mixture of amazement and annoyance. His protruding eyes seemed ready to leap out, propelled by the pent-up rage in his mind.

  “What the hell are ye doing with a gun aboard my ship?” he bellowed. But in spite of the loudness of his voice I detected in it an undercurrent of fear.

  “Stop your steamer!” repeated the musician. He pressed the trigger of the Gatling and two bullets struck the wood behind the helmsman’s head.

  It was at that moment that I realized that the Kilkerran, being a coastal steamer, was not fitted with a wireless transmitting set.

  Chapter 7

  The stout skipper’s face was weather-beaten and dark; but as the bullets from the Gatling-gun struck the planking all the colour seemed to drain from it. Where I stood beneath the dodger I could see his lower jaw slacken and his mouth remain slightly open.

  The man at the wheel, a thin and withered old sailor with sloping shoulders and clear, puckered eyes, flinched from the cruel swat of the bullets and looked at his skipper doubtfully, his broad brow furrowed. But his hands still clutched the little brass wheel, keeping the Kilkerran on her course.

  For a time the skipper hesitated, and I imagined I could follow his line of thought. That such an outrage should occur on his ship must almost have been beyond the range of his comprehension. Every second day for years he had brought the Kilkerran down the Clyde with nothing worse to contend with than a stiff sou’-westerly gale. The question of foul play on board had never entered his head as he placidly guided the fast steamer on its course. Now that disaster had overtaken him and his charge, in a fashion devastatingly simple and easy, he was stunned and half-incredulous.

  Then, as if he at last realized the significance of the order from the musician, he resigned himself to the inevitable and walked unsteadily to the port side of the bridge, directing the indicator of the engine-room telegraph to ‘Full stop’. Where we stood, pressed among a throng of passengers and crew, we heard the sharp clang of the bell far below the deck. The thud of the engines suddenly ceased.

  “Reverse her!” commanded the musician. “Quickly!”

  Again the telegraph clanged, and when at last she lost leeway and the engines were finally stopped, the Kilkerran was surrounded by a frothing, hissing stream of foam, lashed up by her churning screw. She lay motionless on the sea, swaying only very gently on the scarcely perceptible swell.

  For a moment no one seemed to be moving on board the vessel, the crowd of us in the alleyway being cowed and awed by the three still, strangely forbidding figures grouped around the Gatling in the bows. Then the grey-headed musician, who, in spite of his youth, appeared to be the leader of the little party, spoke slowly and with great distinctness.

  “We have reason to believe,” he said, “that on this steamer is a certain member of the Secret Service, intent upon a mission which need not be specified. It is our intention to borrow a lifeboat from the skipper and to convey that person to the mainland, where we shall deal with him — or her — as we think fit. Will the individual to whom I refer step forward immediately? I may say that if our request is not complied with, I shall be reluctantly compelled to fire upon all the passengers.”

  Maureen’s hand gripped my arm so tightly and convulsively that it hurt; while Peter, his little old face anxious and strained, looked up at us both as if to indicate that whatever happened he was our friend.

  “Wait,” I whispered to Maureen, and somehow my arm slipped round her waist. “They may not be meaning you.”

  But no other person stirred among the crowd. A big, florid woman behind us, however, began to scream.

  “My bairns! My bairns!” she cried. “Step out, you coward, whoever you are! We’ll be killed! My bairns will be killed!”

  A little man, whom I took to be a Jew, told her tersely to be quiet, his tiny black moustache seeming to bristle with impatience.

  “What you vant to scream for?” he demanded. “Vait — and see!”

  He was quick-witted, that little Jew. He stood close to my side and out of the corner of his mouth he said:

  “See the ship — she is drifting to the Arran rocks. Another half-minute and she vill strike. These scoundrels, they are not looking. They vill be overbalanced. Then I at least vill spring for them.”

  “I’m with you!” I said with a pretence at calm. “I’m nearer the hold gangway. I’ll jump first.”

  “Oh, take care!” whispered Maureen. “Bill, take care! I’d rather — ”

  “You’d rather — nothing, Maureen! They haven’t spotted you and they’re not going to.”

  As I spoke I could have bitten out my tongue. I had forgotten that the little Jew stood at my other side and must have heard each word. But though I glanced quickly in his direction, he gave no sign of interest or surprise.

  “Come on, then!” It was the deep, resonant voice of the man dressed as a maiden lady. “We’ll give you another minute to make a decision. Come forward or the blood of the innocent will be on your head.”

  The backs of the trio, each one of whom was intent upon watching the movements of the men on the bridge and of the crowd in the alleyways, were towards the rocks. The strangers seemed to have no suspicion of how close the rugged Arran shore was looming. At the time that the ‘lady’ spoke one could have thrown a stone ashor
e from the deck of the steamer.

  Slowly, bows first, the Kilkerran swung closer to the rocks. The skipper, as his subsequent actions proved, was well aware of what was happening, though few of the passengers and crew, most of whom were staring at the unknown men as if mesmerized, seemed to realize the situation. The water, right up to its meeting with the rocks, was deep and unruffled, and I was glad to think that there would be little danger of the vessel sustaining damage to her keel.

  The little dark Jew beside me was nudging my arm frantically.

  “Soon now!” he whispered. “Soon now!”

  “We’ll give you ten seconds,” said the musician in his bold, clear voice. “If no one comes forward then I’ll use the Gatling!”

  A youngster behind me started to blubber, and his faded-looking mother followed suit. A red-faced white-moustached individual, who appeared to be a retired colonel, swore horribly, and his swearing was directed at the cowardice of the Secret Service agent who refused to step forward.

  “Sir,” said the Jew, “if there is a Secret Service man in this ship it is not in the interests of your country that he should come forward, until all hopes of saving lives has been abandoned.”

  At the time I was only vaguely conscious of the altered accent employed by the Jew, and my surprise was immediately forgotten in the excitements of the moment. I saw Maureen’s admiring glance rest on the little man, and Peter had the temerity to whisper:

  “Atta boy, Ikey!”

  Somebody — a man — yelled suddenly from the rear of the crowd.