The Depths Read online

  There was a tap at the door. Palfrey opened it cautiously, saw a waiter and the chunky-faced sergeant-at-arms outside; this was all right. He waited until the man had opened the table and put out the food, locked the door on him, then took the shiny silver coloured lid off the steak. It looked delicious. He ate too quickly, and afterwards felt sluggish and tired; he had slept very little the night before. It was absurd to tell himself that he alone must keep vigil by Leah’s side, but for the time being that was how he felt. He needed more agents from London, agents who could be sent anywhere at a moment’s notice, whom he could be sure would protect this girl with their lives.

  First, talk to Andromovitch.

  “No,” Palfrey said sharply. “I’ll talk to Merritt.” He put in a call at once, but there was some delay. As he waited, his eyes seemed very heavy. It wasn’t surprising, he told himself, but he didn’t often feel as tired as this. He half dozed. Then he woke up with a jerk, and thought almost in panic: “Have I been drugged?”

  Could anyone have got at his food? Was it worth trying to check?

  Then he thought: This is how she began to lose consciousness.

  He was standing in the middle of the big room, alarmed because of what might be happening to him, when the telephone bell rang. It seemed to break through the tension. He strode across and whipped the receiver off.

  “Your call to London, m’sieu.”

  “Ah,” Palfrey said. “Thank you.” In a moment he heard Merritt’s voice. “Alec – how are things with you?”

  “How are things with you is more the question,” Merritt said gruffly. “Sap – I’ve just finished a telephone conversation with a madman.”

  Palfrey didn’t speak.

  “He wouldn’t give his name,” Merritt went on. “He seems to think that you’ve kidnapped his daughter. He told me that unless I can persuade you to do what he told you to do, he’ll give a demonstration of power which will terrify you.” After a pause, Merritt went on: “He was mad, wasn’t he?” The question was almost pleading.

  “I hope so,” Palfrey said. “I certainly hope so.” He was thinking: “So he knows Z5’s number. Could he have an agent with us?”

  “Alec, I want the latest reports on all phenomena at sea, and especially on any sight of a small fast moving craft, silver in colour – particularly any midget submarines or amphibious craft.”

  “Oh,” said Merritt. “Then he wasn’t mad.”

  “I think he meant whatever he said,” replied Palfrey. “Now, this is even more urgent. I would like either Dr Smythe-Paterson or Dr Ephraim Higgins standing by for an emergency consultation which might have to be here in Nice, or might be anywhere between here and London. See what you can arrange, will you? I’ve a case of hypnotic coma, and need the best opinion I can get.”

  “All right, Sap. What do you think is on?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Palfrey said. Thoughts, fears and recollections were crowding into his mind, and he went on: “Do you remember Professor Garri-Garri?”

  “Garri,” repeated Merritt. “Garri-Garri. You mean the live-for-ever Hindu who died ten years ago?”

  “I mean the man who boasted that he had found the secret of extending human life indefinitely,” Palfrey said. “He disappeared off the coast of Portugal, and was presumed dead.”

  “My God,” breathed Merritt.

  “Get all you can about him. Find out who worked with him. Find out whether any of his assistants have developed ideas of their own. Put our best men onto this. Call New York and ask them to get busy on the same inquiry.” Now that the idea was sprouting in his mind, Palfrey could not give instructions quickly enough. “I can’t be sure that I’m on the right lines but if I am the quicker we know all there is to know, the better. Now—”

  He broke off.

  The first he knew of the horror that was about to descend upon that harbour was a screaming voice and the thudding of footsteps on the passage outside. Next moment, the ship’s hooter roared the six short, six long blasts which told of fierce alarm. Almost at once, whistles shrilled out.

  “What’s happening there?” Merritt called urgently. “I can hear—”

  “Listen,” Palfrey said. “If anything goes wrong, try to stop this girl Leah from being taken away. If there’s a ghost of a chance of—”

  A great eeeeeehhhhh of sound smashed across his words. As it came he felt a tremendous jolt. The ship was hurled against the quayside. He felt it shudder, heard the crashing of heavy weights, heard a crunching sound. He was flung off his feet. He did not try to save himself but turned his back to the wall, and took the worst of the impact on his buttocks. He fell down. The door swung open, both hinges smashed. The bedroom door banged. The whole ship seemed to be shuddering, and the noise was of thunder echoing and echoing about the passages, on deck, on the stricken harbour beyond.

  Chapter Eleven

  ACT OF TERROR

  Very slowly, Palfrey picked himself up. There was sharp pain in his right leg from the thigh downwards, and his whole body seemed bruised and tender. He stretched out a hand to touch a chair, staggered, and quickly took his weight off that bruised leg. The room was in chaos. Chairs upturned, pictures on the floor, drawers out and contents strewn all over the floor, cushions off the chairs in an untidy heap; oddments from the writing table were at his feet.

  He could hear shouting, the crash of falling debris; and screaming.

  He tried to walk again, testing his leg gingerly, found that he could put a little weight on it, and limped towards the bedroom door. He was almost frightened of what he might find, but need not have been. The head of the bed had been jammed against the wall by the dressing table, and had not shifted much. The girl-woman lay on it. She was further over on one side than the other, the bedclothes had been shaken off as if a giant hand had snatched at them. Her slender legs, bare from the thighs, were on one side, the feet over the edge of the bed; but she was still unconscious.

  A man came running.

  “Are you all right, sir? Are you—”

  Palfrey turned to the outer door, and his leg gave way. He pitched forward almost into the arms of the chunky sergeant- at-arms, whose face was bleeding from a cut on the forehead, and whose uniform was rumpled and covered in dust.

  “Sir!”

  Palfrey picked himself up.

  “Nothing much,” he said. “What’s the damage?”

  “God knows, sir!”

  “Like that, is it?”

  “Blimey, it shoved me a hundred feet down the passage, and every door’s open. Looks like a bloody battlefield. What’s happening, Dr Palfrey?”

  Palfrey said bleakly: “That was a simple, ruthless act of terror.” He was thinking how often such a thing as this had happened in the past, when one man or a group of men had believed that they could impose their will upon the world. Once thwarted, even if seriously challenged, all they could usually do was to attack with this kind of blind savagery.

  “There must be hundreds dead.” The sergeant-at-arms gulped. “God knows how many have been swept out to sea, that must have hit the beach good and proper.”

  Palfrey half closed his eyes.

  The hateful, hurtful noise was greater; people were moaning, more were shouting, one woman was screaming. Horns were blowing, whistles shrilling, and men and women were moving about the ship. He stepped into the passage. Right and left he could see the mess – two girls were on their backs, one of them bleeding from a cut on the leg, another from the nose. Stewards were making their way about, shakily. He saw a nurse with blood splashed all over her uniform.

  “You go and see what you can do to help,” Palfrey said.

  “My orders are to stay with you, sir.”

  Palfrey said: “Yes, of course. All right.” He limped back into the room. His leg felt easier, and he could walk with reaso
nable comfort, although he probably wouldn’t be able to run for a long time. He stood looking at Leah. He kept hearing that voice in his head, feeling quite sure that if he had agreed to do what the man had said, this would not have happened. He, Palfrey, was responsible for what had come about; or rather, he could have stopped it.

  The beach crowds, the happy children, the sun-bathers, the sea-bathers, the young and the old—oh, God. It was anguish.

  Footsteps sounded, and he turned to see the Captain, big, bluff, burly, very pale.

  “Are you all right, Palfrey?”

  “Yes. Thanks.”

  “What’s happening?”

  Palfrey said simply: “We’re being blackmailed.”

  “Blackmailed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen,” the Captain interrupted, “I’ve just had a message from a reliable source. I’m told that this happened because you are keeping a girl here against her will. I said that it was nonsense, but I would check. Miss Shawn’s not being kept against her will, is she?”

  “No,” said Palfrey. “Not Miss Shawn. What was this reliable source?”

  “A highly-placed Customs official in Nice.”

  “What is his name?”

  “What the devil does that matter?” demanded the Captain. He pushed past Palfrey to the door of the bedroom, and stared at the girl-woman on the bed. “That’s not Miss Shawn.” There was a note of accusation in his voice.

  “No.”

  “Palfrey, are you keeping—”

  “I wonder if you’ll do something for me,” Palfrey said. “Send a message by radio telephone to your main office in London. Ask them to check with the Admiralty. I think you’ll find that they will instruct you to do whatever I—” he hesitated, almost said “say”, but substituted “ask”.

  “There have been earlier attempts at blackmail, you know. Hitler, for instance.”

  “I know all about Hitler,” the Captain said roughly. “But thousands have been killed. Don’t you understand? The beaches are absolute shambles. Thousands—”

  “Keep your head!” Palfrey said, sharply. “We’re not children.”

  The Captain looked as if he would explode, somehow kept silent, glared at Palfrey, turned on his heel and said over his shoulder:

  “The Admiralty had better back you up.”

  He went out.

  Palfrey was not worried about the Admiralty. He was wondering how to get this girl-woman away from here. He had been wrong before. The ship was too vulnerable. True, the attack might never have been launched had the Patriarch known Leah was on board, but that wasn’t the point; the point was that he had to keep her alive. The safest place was one of the radiation shelters, but the difficulty now was to get her to one. Duval was his main hope. The telephone lines would be down, though, and it would not be easy to get in touch with the local chief of Z5. He was not likely to be allowed to take the girl-woman out of the cabin, certainly not off the ship, until the Captain had received his confirmation from the Admiralty.

  He could start getting her ready.

  If he had to carry her out again, if anyone had to carry her out—

  It would be easy! There must be dozens of injured people on board, ambulances would be outside – or vans or private cars, anything which could be converted into ambulances. He hated the picture of the scene, but in the confusion there should surely be no difficulty in getting the girl out of this place, and to one where not even a freak wave could hurt her.

  But it could hurt plenty of others.

  He turned back into the bedroom, and began to dress the girl. Her body was limp, but the flesh was firm and warm – this was sleep which seemed quite natural. In the midst of all the chaos, the woman Leah was at peace.

  The Captain came back.

  “I am to give you all the help I can,” he said, almost humbly. “If I lost my temper, I’m sorry.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” asked Palfrey. “Thanks. I need a car or preferably a van—”

  “There is a man named Duval waiting along the passage,” said the Captain. “He tells me that he has a car at your disposal. Seems worried about you, too. Will you see him?”

  “I can’t see him soon enough,” Palfrey said.

  Duval, whom he knew fairly well, was a short, rather plump man, very French even to a pointed beard, but otherwise smooth-shaven, looking rather as if he had just been powdered and pomaded. The plump hand was very firm when he gripped. He searched Palfrey’s face, as if looking for signs of injury, and said:

  “I am glad you are no worse. I think perhaps you need to move the woman.”

  “I do,” said Palfrey.

  “Against such emergency I have arranged for one of the radiation shelters to be made ready,” Duval said. “It is beyond Grasse. I have the car outside, and if you wish we can start at once. I warn you that it will be difficult at first, there is so much—damage, so much injury. But we shall get through. I have arranged for the police to clear a way for us, and once we are at the back of the town it will not be so difficult. We must go along the Promenade des Anglais for some distance, however – a number of lorries crashed into each other when the wave struck the sea wall. They burst into flames. So we cannot drive to the back of the town from here.”

  Palfrey said: “Let’s go whichever way we can.”

  Between them, they carried Leah. Many men were carrying or helping to carry women and girls. Some were being carried on improvised stretchers, some on chairs. Many were limping. As he walked off the ship Palfrey saw thousands of injured people, saw the wreckage of hundreds of small boats floating on a sea which was now peaceful. Soon, they were out in the open, away from the docks. Everywhere it sounded as if a great lament was rising from the throats of the people. On the landward side of the great promenade, the hotels were hardly damaged, but instead of people sitting at their leisure with the orchestras playing, emergency dressing stations littered every terrace. More and more injured were being taken into the hotels. On the other side, all the chairs were on the road; some must have been dragged back into the sea when the wave had subsided. On the wet sidewalks, dotted with puddles, were the wooden rests on which people sun-bathed, the gay umbrellas, the tiny wooden dressing cabinettes, the wreckage of small boats – and people.

  It was one of the most awful sights Palfrey had ever seen.

  There were people, floating, face downwards; dead by drowning. There were many hundreds. Their stillness as they lay on the still water was in strange, awful contrast to the movement of swimmers, of men in pedalos, men searching for their lost ones, for any who were not dead. All along the beach, hundreds of people close to the water’s edge were bending over hundreds of others. They were giving artificial respiration, all in various stages of hope and of despair.

  Duval said: “It is the worst day we have ever known here, Dr Palfrey.”

  “I can believe it,” Palfrey said. “Do you know the chief Customs officer?”

  “He talked to me after he had talked to the Captain of the Seafarer,” Duval interrupted. “He told me that he had received a telephone message just before the wave came. He said that a man had told him that what was about to happen was because you had kidnapped a woman, and would not release her. He did not know whether to believe it or not, but when the wave actually came—” Duval broke off. “I saw it.”

  Palfrey caught his breath.

  “There was a flash,” went on Duval, in an awed voice. “It seemed to ride along the sea, which was so calm after the early morning wind. Then for a mile in each direction a great wall of water rose. It was like a series of bombs going off beneath the sea. A long wave rose up out of a perfectly calm sea. I saw it, Dr Palfrey. What kind of man can do this thing? What kind of man would be prepared to do it?”

  Palfrey said: “That is what we’re going to find out.”
>
  “And this is the woman he wants?”

  “Yes,” Palfrey said.

  “I have tried to make sure that we cannot be followed,” said Duval, after a pause. “I have given instructions that any car or anything on wheels which comes after us be delayed for at least fifteen minutes. We can only hope that the effort succeeds. But—” he paused again, looked sideways at Palfrey, and then asked in a hushed voice: “If it does, if we take this woman to a place where this man cannot find her – what will he do, Palfrey? Where next will the horror strike?”

  Chapter Twelve

  LIMBO

  Palfrey did not attempt to answer the question. Duval seemed to expect no answer. Soon, they passed out of the area of destruction, but at once ran into another complication. Traffic which had been coming along the coast road from Cannes and from the airport was held up in one enormous block. Crowds of people were moving along the promenades, thronging towards the scene of disaster. Small ships and large were heading for the scene, too, and the sea was a mass of small craft. A few ambulances and fire engines, summoned from Cannes to help with the chaos, were jammed in with the traffic.

  At last Palfrey and Duval turned off.

  Palfrey looked round, and saw Leah, stretched out on the back seat; sleeping.

  It was nearly an hour before they passed through Grasse. In the perfume city excitement was at fever pitch, but on the lonely mountain roads everything was calm. Near the valley where the shelter was built, Duval’s men and some military personnel had been warned, and preparation had been made for the new arrivals. There was no delay once Duval established their identity. They were escorted into a huge man-made cave, lit dimly by electricity generated from a plant inside the mountains, and then into a big steel lift. Once they were inside this, steel doors closed about them, and they began to move down slowly; twice, Palfrey saw that great doors closed above them, they were being sealed off at several points, so that there was no risk at all of radiation. Soon, they reached the bottom of the shelter. They stepped out into a wide passage, in a big, bare place which was unusual only because there were no windows. A few soldiers stood about, on duty.