White was exactly as I had left him, still vibrating away like a tuning fork. I opened his desk, returned key, screw driver, and torch. The earphones I kept. And the gun.

They were into their third cocktails by the time I returned to the drawing room. I didn’t need to count empty bottles to guess that; the laughter, the animated conversation, the increase in the deciBel ratio was proof enough. Captain Bullen was still chatting away to Cerdan. The tall nurse was still knitting. Tommy Wilson was over by the bar. I rubbed my cheek and he crushed out the cigarette he was holding. I saw him say something to Miguel and Tony Carreras at twenty feet, in that racket, it was impossible to hear a word he said — saw Tony Carreras lift a half-amused, half-questioning eyebrow, then all three of them moved towards the bar.

I joined Captain Bullen and Cerdan. Long speeches weren’t going to help me here, and only a fool would throw away his life by tipping off people like those. “Good evening, Mr. Cerdan,” I said. I pulled my left hand out from under my jacket and tossed the earphones onto his rug-covered lap. “Recognise them?”

Cerdan’s eyes stared wide, then he flung himself forwards and sideways as if to clear his encumbering wheel chair, but old Bullen had been waiting for it and was too quick for him. He hit Cerdan with all the pent-up worry and fury of the past twenty-four hours behind the blow, and Cerdan toppled over the side of his chair and crashed heavily to the carpet.

I didn’t see him fall; I only heard the sound of it. I was too busy looking out for myself. The nurse with the sherry glass in her hand, quick as a cat, flung the contents in my face at the same instant as Bullen hit Cerdan. I flung myself sideways to avoid being blinded, and as I fell I saw the tall, thin nurse flinging her knitting to one side and thrusting her hand deep into the string knitting bag.

With my right hand I managed to tug the Colt clear of my belt before I hit the ground and squeezed the trigger twice. It was my right shoulder that hit the carpet first, just as I fired, and I didn’t really know where the bullets went, nor, for that one nearly blinding instant of agony as the shock of falling was transmitted to my injured neck, did I care; then my head cleared and I saw that the tall nurse was on her feet. Not only on her feet but raised high on her toes, head and shoulders arched sharply forwards, ivory-knuckled hands pressed deep into her midriff; then she swayed forward, in macabre slow-motion action, and crumpled over the fallen Cerdan. The other nurse hadn’t moved from her seat: with Captain Bullen’s Colt only six inches from her face, and his finger pretty white on the trigger, she wasn’t likely to, either.

The reverberations of my heavy Colt, painful and deafening in their intensity in that confined metal-walled space, faded away into a silence that was deathly in more ways than one, and through that silence came a soft highland voice saying gently: “If either of you move I will kill you.”

Carreras senior and junior, who must have had their backs to the bar, were now turned round halfway towards it, staring at the gun in Macdonald’s hand. Miguel Carreras’ face was unrecognisable, his expression changed from that of a smooth, urbane, and highly prosperous businessman into something very ugly indeed. His right hand, as he had whirled round, had come to rest on the bar near a cut-glass decanter.

Archie Macdonald wasn’t wearing any of his medals that night, and Carreras had no means of knowing the long and bloodstained record the bo’sun had behind him, or he would never have tried to hurl that decanter at Macdonald’s head. Carreras’ reactions were so fast, the movement so unexpected, that against another man he might have made it; against Macdonald he didn’t even manage to get the decanter off the counter and a split second later was left staring down at the shattered bloody mess that had been his hand. For the second time in a few seconds the crashing roar of a heavy gun, this time intermingled with the tinkle of smashed and flying glass, died away and again Macdonald’s voice came, almost regretfully: “I should have killed you, but I like reading about those murder trials. We’re saving you for the hangman, Mr. Carreras.”

I was climbing back to my feet when someone screamed, a harsh, ugly sound that drilled piercingly through the room. Another woman took it up, a sustained shriek like an express, whistle wide open, heading for a level crossing, and the stage seemed all set for mass hysteria.

“Stop that damned screaming,” I snarled. “Do you hear? Stop it at once. It’s all over now.”

The screaming stopped. Silence again, a weird, unnatural silence that was almost as bad as the racket that had gone before. And then Beresford was coming towards me, a bit unsteadily, his lips forming words that didn’t come, his face white. I couldn’t blame him; in his well-ordered and wealth cushioned world the entertainments offered his guests couldn’t often have ended up with bodies strewn all over the floor.

“You’ve killed her, Carter,” He said at length. His voice was harsh and strained. “You’ve killed her. I saw it; we all saw it. Aba defenceless woman.” He stared at me, and if he had any thought of offering me a job again I couldn’t see it in his face. “You murdered her.”

“Woman my foot!” I said savagely. I bent down, yanked off the nurse’s hat, then ruthlessly ripped away a glued wig to show a black close-cropped crew cut. “Attractive, isn’t it? The very latest from Paris. And defenceless!” I grabbed her bag, turned it upside down, emptied the contents on the carpet, stooped, and came up with what had originally been a full-length double-barrelled shotgun: the barrels had been sawn off until there was no more than six inches of them left, the wooden stock removed and a roughly made pistol-type grip fitted in its place. “Ever seen one of those before, Mr. Beresford? Native product of your own country, I believe. A whippet or some such name. Fires lead shot, and from the range our nurse friend here intended to use it, it would have blown a hole clear through my middle. Defenceless!” I turned to where Bullen was standing, his gun still trained on the other nurse. “Is that character armed, sir?”

“We’ll soon find out,” Bullen said grimly. “You carrying a gun, my friend?”

The “nurse” swore at him, two words in basic Anglo-Saxon, in a low, snarling voice. Bullen gave him no warning; he swept up the Colt and struck the barrel heavily across the man’s face and temple. He staggered and swayed, out on his feet. I caught him, held him with one hand, while with the other I ripped the dress down the front, pulled out a snub-nosed automatic from a felt holster under the left arm, then let him go. He swayed some more, collapsed on the settee, then rolled to the floor.

“Is’s all this necessary?” Beresford’s voice was still hoarse and strained.

“Stand back, everyone,” Bullen said authoritatively. “Keep well over to the windows and clear of these two men, our two Carreras friends. They are highly dangerous and might try to jump in among you for cover. Macdonald, that was splendidly done. But next time shoot to kill. That’s an order. I accept full responsibility. Dr. Marston, bring the necessary equipment, please, and attend to Carreras’ hand.”

He waited till Marston had left, then turned to Beresford with a wry smile. “Sorry to ruin your party, Mr. Beresford. And all this, I assure you, is highly necessary.”

“But — but the violence, the — the killing…”

“They murdered three of my men in twenty-four hours.”

“They what?”

“Benson, Brownell, and Fourth Officer Dexter. Murdered them. Brownell was strangled; Benson was strangled or shot; Dexter’s lying dead in the wireless office with three bullets in his stomach, and god knows how many more men would have died if chief officer Carter hadn’t got on to them.”