Doctor Who: The Sea-Devils (4 page)

Jo produced their passes and Trenchard read them all again as though he had never seen them before, then produced a rubber stamp and an ink pad and stamped them. ‘Satisfied with how we look after him?’

The Doctor was buried in thought again, but even so turned. ‘What? Oh, yes. Just one thing, though, that made me curious...’

Trenchard was handing the stamped passes back to Jo, and avoided the Doctor’s eyes as he spoke. ‘Oh? What’s that?’

‘The prison officer whom we saw on the monitor screen,’ said the Doctor, ‘he asked if the Master was ready to change his book yet.’

For the first time Trenchard did not seem completely at ease. ‘Well, a prisoner has a right to have something to read, you know.’ He seemed to have a sudden idea, one that might take them off the subject of the Master. ‘They deprived Sir Thomas More of his books when he was a prisoner of King Henry in the Tower, you know! That was jolly cruel of them. They were a lot of savages in those days.’

But the Doctor was not to be deflected on to a general conversation about the treatment of prisoners. ‘Since he has wall-to-wall carpeting and coloured television, why doesn’t he have a library of books down there in his room?’

Trenchard was momentarily thrown by this question. Then he rallied. ‘Prison regulations, old chap! Got to keep to the rules, you know.’

‘I agree,’ said the Doctor. ‘It’s just that the two things don’t seem to fit.’

‘If you really want to know,’ said Trenchard, as though taking both the Doctor and Jo into a great confidence, ‘when they gave me this job I read the rule book from cover to cover. You see, there’s nothing to say that a prisoner
mustn’t
have the little comforts that we’ve provided. Therefore I used my own discretion. But there is a rule laid down by the Prison Department about the issue of books to prisoners, so I had to keep to it.’

‘Very crafty of you,’ said the Doctor with a smile. ‘Well, we shall be on our way. It’s been most pleasant to meet you, Mr. Trenchard.’

Trenchard summoned the Minimoke to the front door of the chateau, and within a few minutes the Doctor and Jo were being slowly driven back to the main gates by Prison Officer Snellgrove.

Jo asked, ‘What was all that about books?’

Out of Snellgrove’s vision, the Doctor put his fingers to his lips to keep Jo quiet. He said, loud enough for Snellgrove to hear: ‘I was just glad that they gave him plenty to read, to keep his mind occupied.’

Once outside the big gates, and back on the road leading to the quayside, Jo tried again. ‘I still didn’t understand your interest in the Master getting books to read.’

‘I think Mr. Trenchard may have misread the prison rules,’ explained the Doctor. ‘A prisoner is allowed three books per fortnight, not one at a time.’

‘Does it matter?’ asked Jo, hurrying to keep up with the Doctor’s long strides.

‘I’ve no idea,’ said the Doctor. ‘It just struck me as being strange.’

Meanwhile Trenchard was talking to the Master about the incident of Prison Officer Wilson and the book.

‘I think we fooled them nicely,’ said Trenchard. ‘Wouldn’t you agree?’

‘I hope so,’ said the Master, pouring himself a small whisky from the concealed drinks cabinet in his room, and not offering any to Trenchard.

‘That hypnotism wheeze really took them in,’ Trenchard went on. ‘Remember, I was watching them while they were watching you.’

‘Let’s hope you’re right.’ The Master raised his glass to Trenchard. ‘Cheers. Now, do you
really
think he came here to see me?’

Trenchard was puzzled. ‘Why else would he come?’

The Master tried to restrain his impatience with Trenchard. He regarded the prison governor as a fool, but had to be careful not to show it. ‘The sinking ships, of course.’

‘Oh,
that
,’ said Trenchard, as though the recent deaths of a great many mariners was of no importance. ‘He didn’t seem particularly interested.’

The Master studied Trenchard, forcing himself to hide his low regard for the man’s intelligence. ‘What do you mean, “he didn’t seem particularly interested”? Did he talk about it?’

‘He didn’t,’ said Trenchard. ‘But I did just mention it.’

‘You did
what
?’

Trenchard laughed foolishly. ‘Just to make conversation. No harm done.’

If any harm had been done, there was nothing the Master could do to stop it now. So curbing his anger, he tried to put a good face on it. ‘I suppose not,’ he said, finishing his whisky. ‘When am I going to get these Admiralty charts?’

Trenchard felt on safe ground again, and looked relieved. ‘They will be here this afternoon—absolutely for certain.’

‘Splendid,’ said the Master. ‘Time may not be on our side.’

‘I fully recognise the urgency of the situation,’ said Trenchard. ‘You’ve convinced me of that. Now if you’ll excuse me, I really must hurry along.’

‘I quite understand,’ said the Master. He put down his glass and returned to his rowing machine. As Trenchard was leaving, he looked up and said, ‘By the way, Trenchard, do congratulate Prison officer Wilson on his excellent performance during our little charade.’

‘I already have done,’ said Trenchard. ‘As a matter of fact, he confesses that you did in fact nearly hypnotise him. That would have been a laugh, what?!’

‘A big laugh,’ agreed the Master.

Trench ard hurried out and the door was closed. The Master thought for a moment and then smiled... Then he applied himself with vigour to his rowing exercise. For what he planned to do, he had to keep in first-rate physical condition.

*
SEE DOCTOR WHO AND THE DAEMONS

‘All three ships,’ said Mr. Robbins, the boatman, ‘they just vanished, like they never was there in the first place.’

The Doctor and Robbins were seated in the quayside cafe having a cup of tea while Jo was away looking for picture postcards.

‘I’m afraid that a lot of ships “just vanish”,’ said the Doctor. ‘On average seven ships vanish without trace somewhere in the world every year—they leave a port, and are never seen again.’

‘I don’t know about any of them,’ said Robbins, totally unimpressed by the statistic of marine losses. ‘But I do know about these three.’

‘Then why didn’t I?’ said the Doctor thoughtfully.

Robbins was confused. ‘Eh?’

‘Why didn’t I, and millions of other newspaper readers, know about them,’ said the Doctor.

Robbins at last got the point. ‘It’s all been hushed up, see?’

‘Why did they go down?’

‘That’s the mystery, isn’t it?’ said Robbins. ‘It was only the most recent that even sent a radio-message asking for help.’

‘Did they say why they were sinking?’

Robbins scratched his head. ‘It’s all garbled gossip what exactly they said, only I did hear they were screaming out “Bottom of ship ripped out—men pulled into the sea”. It sounded a lot of nonsense to me and the rest of the lifeboat men.’

The Doctor looked across the teacups at Robbins with renewed interest. ‘You are a lifeboat man?’

‘That’s right,’ said Robbins. ‘Almost every able-bodied man on this little island is in the lifeboat.’ He continued, ‘We went out, of course, but that ship had gone down so fast there wasn’t nothing of it left. Except for the lifeboat.’

Now the Doctor was confused. ‘
Your
lifeboat?’

‘No,’ said Robbins, ‘one of this ship’s lifeboats. It was upside down in the water. And I’ll tell you a funny thing about it: the underside was all charred, sort of burnt like, in a pattern.’

By now the Doctor was keenly interested in what had been going on just off the shore here over the last couple of months. ‘Had the ship been on fire?’

‘Don’t think so,’ said Robbins. ‘We’d have seen the flames. That’s what made me think it odd, this little lifeboat being charred.’

Robbins went on to say that the Navy had impounded the lifeboat, and now had it at what Robbins called ‘the Base’—a top security Naval Base a couple of miles along the coastline of the island.

The Doctor asked, ‘How can I get to this Naval Base?’

‘On the coast road,’ replied Robbins, ‘Strike out in the opposite direction to where you went before. Of course, it would be quicker by boat.’

The Doctor took the hint and stood up. ‘Then you’d better take me there straight away.’

‘Not to the Naval Base!’ Robbins protested. ‘If I sailed in there, they’d have me in irons.’

The Doctor thought for a moment. Then he Iooked at his watch. ‘All right. But I wonder if you could go and see what’s happened to my young friend? She said she was only going away for five minutes to buy some picture postcards.’

Robbins looked at the Doctor in disbelief. ‘I don’t know where to look for her.’ By his voice he suggested that if the Doctor wanted to find her, the Doctor could go and look.

‘There must be a picture postcard shop somewhere here,’ said the Doctor. ‘You live here—you must know where she could have gone. I’d go if it weren’t for my leg hurting again. I got wounded in the Crimea.’

‘The Crimean War?’ said Robbins, astounded because that war took place over a hundred and twenty years ago.

The Doctor shrugged. ‘Perhaps it was Gallipoli. Anyway, be a good fellow and go and find her. I’ll pay for our cups of tea.’

Without a word Robbins got to his feet and shuffled out. The Doctor went to the counter and settled the bill, and then looked out of the cafe. Robbins was already out of sight. The Doctor quickly hurried to the quayside, unloosed Robbins’ boat, jumped into it, started the noisy little outboard motor, and headed out to.sea. An old man on the quayside mending fishing nets looked up but did nothing to stop the Doctor.

Five minutes later Robbins returned to the spot with Jo. He had grumbled all the way. ‘All you and that fellow asked me to do was to take you from the mainland and bring you here, and then take you back again, not to go searching in postcard shops—’ He stopped dead as he saw that his boat was missing. He called to the man mending nets, ‘Where’s my boat?’

The net mender looked up: ‘A fellow went off with it,’ he called, then pointed off to a headland jutting out into the sea. ‘He’s making for over there.’

‘The Naval Base!’ Robbins exploded.

‘The what?’ said Jo.

Robbins dug into the pockets of his overcoat to find something. ‘He wanted me to take him to the Naval Base, and I wouldn’t. I’m going to get the police.’ At last he found what his hands were looking for—a key to a bicycle padlock. He went over to a bicycle chained to a quayside railing, and unlocked the padlock. ‘You wait here, Miss,’ he told Jo. ‘When I come back here with the policeman, he’s likely to ask you a few questions about that friend of yours.’

Robbins was about to mount the machine. Jo thought quickly. ‘Look!’ she called, ‘isn’t that your boat coming back now? Maybe he only wanted a little joy-ride.’ She pointed out to sea.

Robbins propped his bicycle against the railing, and crossed to where Jo was standing. ‘Where is it?’

‘Over there,’ Jo said, pointing. ‘If you screw your eyes up you can just see your boat heading back here.’

Robbins screwed up his eyes to look. Jo ran silently towards the railing, jumped on to Robbins’s bicycle and started to pedal away furiously.

‘Hey!’ Robbins shouted. ‘Stop thief!’

‘I’ll bring it back,’ Jo cried over her shoulder. Already she was well away from the quayside, and heading for the Naval Base by the coastal road.

Captain Hart, RN, commanding officer of the Naval Shore Establishment called HMS
Foxglove
, was a worried man. With an excellent service record behind him, and, he hoped, an equally excellent career ahead of him, he did not like having to report that he had failed to find out why three merchant ships had mysteriously sunk within five miles of his headquarters in the past two months. When Doctor Who first came to his notice, he was painfully dictating a letter to a W.R.N. Writer, Jane Blythe. The letter was addressed to their Lordships at the Admiralty, London.

‘ “
I regret to inform you,
” ’ he started, then paused. ‘No, change that to “
I very much regret to inform you that as yet our investigations have revealed no clue as to the cause of these sinkings. The charred ship’s lifeboat will be sent to our laboratories at Portsmouth for investigation and analysis, and we can only hope that this may answer some of our questions. Meanwhile, we are keeping careful watch...
” ’

It was at this point that he noticed the Doctor. While dictating the letter he had been standing at the window of his first-floor office, overlooking the concrete roadways, outbuildings and quayside of this most top security Naval base. No one could possibly enter the base without a special pass, unless they came in from the sea. And that’s just what had happened. At the captain watched, a fishing-boat with a small outboard motor had zoomed in from the sea, driven by a tall man with a lot of fair hair and a long black frock coat. The man made up the boat, jumped ashore, and within no time was busily inspecting the upturned charred lifeboat which had been left on the quayside.

Jane looked up from her notebook. ‘Is something the matter, sir?’

Captain Hart didn’t answer. He scooped up a telephone and bellowed into it: ‘
Master-at-Arms, we have an intruder! Kindly arrest him and bring him to my office immediately!
’

Hart went back to the window to watch, and Jane joined him there. ‘Perhaps he’s lost,’ said Jane.

‘Then why,’ said Hart, ‘did he go straight for the lifeboat?!’

Within seconds of the captain’s call to the Master-at-Arms, they saw a petty officer and six ratings bearing down on the stranger. The petty officer yanked the Doctor to his feet. There was a brief exchange of words, and then the Doctor was marched off, hemmed in by the six Naval ratings.

Three minutes later there was a knock on Captain Hart’s door, and the Doctor was brought in under escort. Captain Hart was already seated behind his desk to ‘receive’ the unwanted visitor.

‘Intruder found and detained, sir,’ said the petty-officer.

‘Look, I’m terribly sorry about all this,’ the Doctor began, but was allowed to go on no further.

‘Are you aware,’ said Captain Hart severely, ‘that you have trespassed on Government property, and that that is a very serious offence?’