"You haven't explained, still, the coconut-shy and the drowning —"
"Oh, heavens!" Wright interrupted. "I should have thought that was clear enough: to throw suspicion on that tomfool yokel the girl was supposed to be engaged to, in the first place; again for tidiness in the second. Mason lured him aboard our cutter by saying he'd discovered a love nest in a cove just beyond Coverack where half the V.I.P.s for the West Country took their secretaries for weekends! Of course the little worm reached for his camera and his flashgun and came running! So far as the coconut-shy goes, I'd hit the girl with my binoculars and I had to mask the wound in case they could have been traced from it."
There was a confused noise in the tiny receiver, ending in the clink of glass on glass. April realised that the table on which the bowl of azalea was resting had been moved and that someone was now pouring out drinks on it.
Wright was saying something, but his words were lost in the glugging of liquid, monstrously distorted by the proximity of the glass to the microphone. Then came the voice of the chauffeur, Mason: "Boat's ready on the slip, sir, and the sub will be standing off at eleven sharp to receive us."
"Right, Mason," the self-satisfied voice drawled. "And what about our impetuous young friend? Is he a little more subdued now?"
The chauffeur gave a vicious chuckle. "You could say that, sir. Jacko gave him a bit of a going over... We had to — Hah! — wipe the Slate clean afterwards, if you know what I mean! "Again he uttered the short, sharp bark of laughter.
April stiffened. Her worst fears were realised. They had got Mark — although at least it sounded as though he was still alive. But Jacko must be the giant she had injected with the knock out drops that afternoon: she shuddered to think what a "going over" from him might imply.
"He's secure, is he, Mason?" the woman was asking.
"Yes, madam. As secure as it's humanly possible to be."
"Really?" She sounded mildly amused. "And how secure is that?"
"Well, the chair he's sitting on is cemented to the rock floor, for one thing. That'll be dry now, and I'll defy anyone to move that!"
"You could saw through the legs above the cement."
"Not this one: it's wrought iron!"
"Oh. Oh, that was thoughtful of you, I must say. And how is he attached to it?"
"By wire, madam."
"Wire?"
"Yes, madam. Not the thin fuse-wire type. A determined man can snap that if he's strong enough and courageous enough to stand the pain. No — this is the thicker kind, the sort they use to bind fencing to its posts, or to tie up shrubs and small trees, and to do up crates. With that —"
"But surely it's not bendy enough to tie knots in?"
"No, it isn't. You don't tie knots: you twist it. You get a man tied to something with that wire looped around his ankles and knees and wrists, and the ends of each loop twisted automatically by a packager — just tight enough to sink into the skin — nothing on earth will free that man except by slowly and patiently untwisting the wire! With a crate, you can slip a screwdriver or a wrench between the wire and the wood — and she'll snap. But you can't do that with flesh: it's not hard enough. No more can you get a pair of wire-cutters between the bonds and the skin, if it bites in enough."
"In other words," Wright butted in, "when the victim is thus wired to an iron chair concreted into the floor, even if rescuers arrive they can't take him away with them — not even complete with chair — until they've got a pair of pliers and untwisted the lot... Thank you, Mason. You've done well."
"All this is very ingenious, Gerry," the woman said dubiously. "But in aid of exactly what?"
"It all ties in with the little device we took off Slate," her husband replied. "And with my not unusable talent for mimicry. You were cross about the girl escaping; this will not only bring her back: it will effectively dispose both of her and of her partner — and by her own hand, too." He laughed pleasantly. "Another Martini, my dear?"
The hairs on the nape of April's neck were pricking. What devilry could this mean? How was she to be brought back to the thatched house on the moors and made to kill both herself and the helpless Mark Slate?
"When the big mast goes," the man was saying over the noise of ice in glasses, "it should fall — if our little Satrap in the station has done its homework — diagonally across the control bunker and put the whole place out of action for weeks!"
"And the charge in the chamber where Slate is...?"
"Lies directly under that mast. It's all very neat. As soon as I have called her, I shall set the hour glass in the chamber. The charge will go up when she opens the door — or when the sand has run out of the glass — whichever happens first. By which time, we shall be on the high seas with our final batch of photos, nice and safe and out of harm's way!"
In the cave below the cliffs, April Dancer shivered as she heard this plot unfold. But the maddening thing was — although she had managed to eavesdrop on the whole plan, it still meant little to her; she couldn't act.
"Now, I'll show you exactly what I mean..." Sir Gerald was saying, when suddenly the girl totally lost interest in what it was that he was about to demonstrate.
The Communicator in her handbag was bleeping!
Feverishly, she groped for the pen-shaped device and thumbed the switch. "Channel open," she called huskily.
"April, sweetie — they got me!" Mark Slate's voice came strongly from the instrument. "Look, I've got to talk fast. I may have to pull out at any moment if someone comes... I'm held prisoner in an old smuggler's hide-out — an underground cave in the rock below the radar station. Here's how you find the entrance..."
The girl listened dully. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong indeed.
And then suddenly she had it: the voice! It was coming at her twice: she could hear Slate's voice not only from the Communicator but also through the transistorized receiver in her ear...
In other words, it wasn't Mark's voice at all, but Wright's! This was the "talent for mimicry" of which he had spoken... and it was a talent, too! She might easily have been fooled if she hadn't known of the deception.
The voice completed the directions and broke off. "Quick! I must go off the air now," it said. "Did you get that? Can you make it? Where are you — in the caravan?"
"Yes... yes, in the caravan," the girl replied mechanically, her mind racing. "Hold on, Mark: I'll be there. I'll be there as soon as I can…"
The Communicator went dead, but Wright's chuckle continued in her ear. "Right, my dear," he said. "I'm off to the chamber with the hour-glass."
April looked up to meet the astonished gaze of Ernie Bosustow. "It's all right, Ernie," she said. "I haven't gone mad and started talking to myself! This little thing is a two way radio. Mr. Slate and I use them for talking to one another when we are apart. Wright has just tried to decoy me into coming to the house by pretending to be Mr. Slate."
"They have captured him, then?"
"Yes, I'm afraid they have. From what I've just heard — I left a bug in their living room, and I can hear what it transmits on this little ear plug, see? — From what I've just heard, it seems that Wright and his wife have been spying on the secret station at Trewinnock Tor, taking photographs from their house, collecting secret information from accomplices inside, and picking up gossip from everyone they meet at all the military messes they visit."