The Golden Rendezvous

Chapter 8

It was late afternoon when I awoke, round four o’clock: still a good four hours short of sunset, but already the surgery lights were on and the sky outside dark, almost, as night. Driving, slanting rain was sheeting down torrentially from the black lowering clouds, and even through closed doors and windows I could hear the high, thin sound, part whine, part whistle, of a gale-force wind howling through the struts and standing rigging.

The Campari was taking a hammering. She was still going fast, far, far too fast for the weather conditions, and was smashing her way through high, heavy rolling seas bearing down on her starboard bow. That they weren’t mountainous waves, or waves of even an unusual size for a tropical storm, I was quite sure; it was the fact that the Campari was battering her way at high speed through quartering seas that seemed to be almost tearing her apart. She was corkscrewing viciously, a movement that applies the maximum possible strain to a ship’s hull. With metronomic regularity the Campari was crashing, starboard bow first, into a rising sea, lifting bows and rolling over to port as she climbed up the wave, hesitating, then pitching violently forward and rolling over to starboard as she slid down the far shoulder of the vanishing wave to thud with a teeth-rattling, jolting violence into the shoulder of the next sea, a shaking, shuddering collision that made the Campari vibrate for seconds on end in every plate and rivet throughout her entire length. No doubt but that the Clyde yard that had built her had built her well, but they wouldn’t have constructed her on the assumption that she was going to fall into the hands of maniacs. Even steel can come apart.

“Dr. Marston,” I said, “Try to get Carreras on that phone.”

“Hello, awake?” He shook his head. “I’ve been on to him myself, an hour ago. He’s on the bridge and he says he’s going to stay there all night, if need be. And he won’t reduce speed any further: he’s taken her down to fifteen knots already, he says.”

“The man’s mad. Thank god for the stabilisers. If it weren’t for them, we’d be turning somersaults.”

“Can they stand up to this sort of thing indefinitely?”

“I should think it highly unlikely. The captain and bo’sun how are they?”

“The captain’s still asleep, still delirious, but breathing easier. Our friend Mr. Macdonald you can ask for yourself.”

I twisted in my bed. The bo’sun was indeed awake, grinning at me. Marston said, “Seeing you’re both awake, do you mind if I have a kip down in the dispensary for an hour? I could do with it.” He looked as if he could, too, pale and exhausted. “We’ll call you if anything goes wrong.”

I watched him go, then said to Macdonald, “You like your sleep, don’t you?” “Just naturally idle, Mr. Carter.” He smiled. “I was wanting to get up, but the doctor wasn’t keen.”

“Surprised? You know your kneecap is smashed and it’ll be weeks before you can walk properly again.” He’d never walk properly again.

“Aye, it’s inconvenient. Dr. Marston has been talking to me about this fellow Carreras and his plans. The man’s daft.”

“He’s all that. But daft or not, what’s to stop him?”

“The weather, perhaps. It’s pretty nasty outside.”

“The weather won’t stop him. He’s got one of those fanatic one-track minds. But I might have a small try at it myself.”

“You?” Macdonald had raised his voice, now lowered it to a murmur. “You! With a smashed thighbone. How in the…”

“It’s not broken.” I told him of the deception. “I think I can get around on it if I don’t have too much climbing to do.”

“I see. And the plan, sir?”

I told him. He thought me as daft as Carreras. He did his best to dissuade me, finally accepted the inevitable, and had his own suggestions to make. We were still discussing it in low voices when the sick-bay door opened and a guard showed Susan Beresford in, closed the door, and left.

“Where have you been all day?” I said accusingly. “I saw the guns.” She was pale and tired and seemed to have forgotten that she had been angry with me for cooperating with Carreras. “He’s got a big one mounted on the poop and a smaller one on the fo'c'sle. Covered with tarpaulins now. The rest of the day I spent with mummy and daddy and the others.”

“And how are our passengers?” I enquired. “Hopping mad at being shanghaied, or do they regard it as yet another of the attractions of the Campari — a splendid adventure thrown in at no extra charge that they can talk about to the end of their days? I’m sure most of them must be pretty relieved that Carreras is not holding them all to ransom.”

“Most of them are not caring one way or another,” she said.

“They’re so seasick they couldn’t care if they lived or died. I feel a bit the same way myself, I can tell you.”

“You’ll get used to it,” I said callously. “You’ll all get used to it. I want you to do something for me.” “Yes, John.” The dutiful murmur in the voice which was really tiredness, the use of the first name had me glancing sharply across at the bo’sun, but he was busy examining a part of the deckhead that was completely devoid of anything to examine. “Get permission to go to your cabin. Say you’re going for blankets, that you felt too cold here last night. Your father’s dinner suit — slip it between the blankets. Not the tropical one, the dark one. For heaven’s sake, see you’re not observed. Have you any dark-coloured dresses?”

“Dark-coloured dresses?” She frowned. “Why “for Pete’s sake!”

I said in low-voiced exasperation. I could hear the murmur of voices outside. “Answer me!”

“A black cocktail dress…”

“Bring it also.”

She looked at me steadily. “Would you mind telling me…”

The door opened and Tony Carreras came in, balancing easily on the swaying, dipping deck. He carried a rain-spattered chart under his arm.

“Evening, all.” He spoke cheerfully enough, but for all that he looked rather pale. “Carter, a small job from my father. Course positions of the Fort Ticonderoga at eight a.m., noon, and four p.m.

To-day. Plot them and see if the Conderoga is on its predicted course.”

“Fort Ticonderoga being the name of the ship we have to intercept?”

“What else?”

“But — but the positions,” I said stupidly. “The course positions of — how the devil do you know? Don’t tell me the Ticonderoga is actually sending you her positions? Are the are the radio operators on that ship?”

“My father thinks of everything,” Tony Carreras said calmly.

“Literally everything. I told you he was a brilliant man. You know we’re going to ask the Ticonderoga to stand and deliver. Do you think we want it sending out SOSs when we fire a warning shot across its bows? The Ticonderoga’s own radio officers had a slight accident before the ship left England and had to be replaced by ah — more suitable men.”

“A slight accident?” Susan said slowly. What with seasickness and emotion, her face was the colour of paper, but she wasn’t scared of Carreras any, that I could see. “What kind of accident?”

“A kind that can so easily happen to any of us, Miss Beresford.” Tony Carreras was still smiling, but somehow he no longer looked charming and boyish. I couldn’t really see any expression on the face at all; all I could see were the curiously flattened eyes. More than ever I was sure that there was something wrong with young Carreras’ eyes, and more than ever I was sure that the wrongness lay not in the eyes alone but was symptomatic and indicative of a wrongness that lay

Ill much deeper than the eyes. “Nothing serious, I assure you.” Meaning that they hadn’t been killed more than once. “One of the replacements is not only a radioman but an expert navigator. We saw no reason why we should not take advantage of this fact to keep us informed as to the exact position of the Ticonderoga. Every hour, on the hour.”

“Your father leaves nothing to chance,” I admitted. “Except that he seems to be depending on me as the expert navigator on this ship.”

“He didn’t know — we weren’t to know — that all the other deck officers on the Campari were going to be — ah — so foolish. We — both my father and I — dislike killing of any kind.” Again the unmistakable ring of sincerity, but I was beginning to wonder if the bell hadn’t a crack in it. “My father is also a competent navigator, but unfortunately he has his hands very full at the moment. He happens to be the only professional seaman we have.”

“Your other men aren’t?”

“Alas, no. But they are perfectly adequate to the task of seeing that professional seamen — your men — do their duties as they should.” This was cheering news. If Carreras persisted in pushing the Campari through the storm at this rate, practically everyone who wasn’t a professional seaman was going to be feeling very ill indeed. That might help to ease my night’s labours.

I said, “What’s going to happen to us after you’ve hijacked this damned bullion?”

“Dump you all on the Ticonderoga,” he said lazily. “What else?”

“Yes?” I sneered. “So that we can straight away notify every ship that the Campari had…”

“Notify whoever you like,” he said placidly. “Think we’re crazy? We’re abandoning the Campari the same morning: another vessel is already standing by. Miguel Carreras does think of everything.”

I said nothing and turned my attention to the charts while Susan made her request to be allowed to bring blankets. He smilingly said he would accompany her and they left together. When they returned in five minutes time I had entered the course positions on the chart and found that the Fort Ticonderoga was really on course. I handed the chart to Carreras with that information; he thanked me and left.

Dinner came at eight o’clock. It wasn’t much of a meal as Campari dinners went; Antoine was never at his best when the elements were against him, but it was fair enough for all that. Susan ate nothing. I suspected that she had been sick more than once but had made no mention of it; millionaire’s daughter or not, she was no cry-baby and had no self-pity, which was only what I would have expected from the daughter of the Beresfords. I wasn’t hungry myself. There was a knot in my stomach that had nothing to do with the motion of the Campari, but again on the principle that I was going to need all the strength I could find, I made a good meal. Macdonald ate as if he hadn’t seen food for a week. Bullen still slept under sedation, restless against the securing straps that held him to his bed, breathing still distressed, mumbling away continuously to himself.

At nine o’clock Marston said, “Time now for coffee, John?”

“Time for coffee,” I agreed. Marston’s hands, I noticed, weren’t quite steady. After too many years of consuming the better part of a bottle of rum every night, his nerves weren’t in any too fit a condition for this sort of thing. Susan brought in five cups of coffee, one at a time the wild pitching of the Campari, the jarring, jolting shocks as we crashed down into the troughs, made the carrying of more than one at a time impossible. One for herself, one for Macdonald, one for Marston, one for me — and one for the sentry, the same youngster as had been on guard the previous night. For the four of us, sugar; for the sentry, a spoonful of white powder from Marston’s dispensary. Susan took his cup outside.

“How’s our friend?” I asked when she returned.

“Almost as green as I am.” She tried to smile, but it didn’t come off. “Seemed glad to get it.”

“Where is he?”

“In the passage. Sitting on the floor, jammed in a corner, gun across his knees.”

“How long before that stuff acts, doctor?”

“If he drinks it all straight away, maybe twenty minutes. And don’t ask me how long the effects will last. People vary so much that I’ve no idea. Maybe half an hour, maybe three hours. You can never be certain with those things.”

“You’ve done all you can. Except the last thing. Take off those outside bandages and those damned splints, will you?”

He looked nervously at the door. “If someone comes…”

“We’ve been through all that,” I said impatiently. “Even by taking a chance and losing, we’ll be no worse off than we were before. Take them off.”

Marston fetched a chair to give himself steadier support, sat down, eased the point of his scissors under the bandages holding the splints in place and sliced through them with half a dozen swift, clean cuts. The bandages fell away; the splints came loose, and then the door opened. Half a dozen long strides and Tony Carreras was by my bedside, staring down thoughtfully. He looked even paler than the last time I’d seen him.

“The good healer on the night shift, eh? Having a little patient trouble, doctor?”

“Trouble?” I said hoarsely. I’d my eyes screwed half shut, lips compressed, fists lying on the coverlet tightly clenched. Carter in agony. I hoped I wasn’t overdoing it. “Is your father mad, Carreras?” I closed my eyes completely and stifled — nearly — a moan as the Campari lurched forward and down into an abnormally deep trough with a shuddering, jarring impact that all but threw Carreras off his feet. Even through closed doors, even above the Eldritch Howl of the wind and the lash of the gale-driven rain, the sound of the impact was like gunfire and not distant gunfire at that. “Does he want to kill us all? Why in god’s name can’t he slow down?”

“Mr. Carter is in very great pain,” doc Marston said quietly.

Whatever his faults as a doctor, he was fast at catching on, and when you looked into those steady, wise blue eyes beneath the magnificent mane of white hair, it was impossible not to believe him. “Agony would be a better word. He has, as you know, a compound fracture of the femur.” With delicate fingers he touched the bloodstained bandages that had been concealed by the splints so that Carreras could see just how compound it was. “Every time the ship moves violently the broken ends of the bone grind together. You can imagine what it’s like no, I doubt if you can. I am trying to rearrange and tighten the splints so as to immobilise the leg completely. Difficult job for one man in those conditions. Care to give me a hand?”

In one second flat I revised my estimate of Marston’s shrewdness. No doubt he’s just been trying to allay any suspicions that Carreras might have had, but he couldn’t have thought up a worse way. Not, that is, if Carreras offered his help, for the chances were that if he did delay to help he’d find the sentry snoring in the passageway outside when be left.

“Sorry.” Beethoven himself never sounded half as sweet as the music of that single word from Carreras. “Can’t wait. Captain Carreras making his rounds and all that. That’s what Miss Beresford is here for anyway. Failing all else, just shoot him full of morphia.” Five seconds later he was gone.

Marston raised an eyebrow.

“Less affable than of yore, John, you would say. A shade lacking in the sympathy he so often professes?”

“He’s worried,” I said. “He’s also a little frightened and perhaps, heaven be praised, even more than a little seasick. But still very tough for all that. Susan, go and collect the sentry’s cup and see if friend Carreras has really gone.”

She was back in fifteen seconds. “He’s gone. The coast is clear.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

A moment later I had fallen heavily to the floor, my head just missing the iron foot of Macdonald’s bed. Four things were responsible for this: the sudden lurch of the deck as the Campari had fallen into a trough, the stiffness of both legs, the seeming paralysis of my left leg, and the pain that had gone through my thigh like a flame as soon as my foot had touched the deck. Hands gripping the bo’sun’s bed, I dragged myself to my feet and tried again. Marston had me by the right arm and I needed all the support I could get. I made it to my own bed and sat down heavily.

Macdonald’s face was expressionless. Susan looked as if she were about to cry. For some obscure reason that made me feel better. I lurched to my feet like an opening jack-knife, caught hold of the foot of my own bed, and had another go.

It was no good. I wasn’t made of iron. The lurching of the Campari I could cope with and the first stiffness was slowly beginning to disappear. Even that frightening weakness in my left leg I could in some measure ignore; I could always hop along. But that pain I couldn’t ignore. I wasn’t made of iron. I have a nervous system for transmitting pain, just like anyone else’s, and mine was operating in top gear at the moment. Even the pain I believe I could have coped with; but every time I set my left foot on the deck, the shooting agony in my left thigh left me dizzy and lightheaded, barely conscious. A few steps on that leg and I just wouldn’t be conscious at all. I supposed vaguely it must have had something to do with all the blood I had lost.

I sat down again. “Get back into bed,” Marston ordered. “This is madness. You’re going to have to lie on your back for at least the next week.”

“Good old Tony Carreras,” I said. I was feeling a bit light-headed, and that’s a fact. “Clever lad, Tony. He’d the right idea. Your hypodermic, doctor. Painkiller for the thigh. Shoot me full of it. You know, the way a football player with a gammy leg gets an injection before the game.”

“No football player ever went out on a field with three bullet holes through his leg,” Marston said grimly.

“Don’t do it, Dr. Marston,” Susan said urgently. “Please don’t do it. He’ll surely kill himself.”

“Bo’sun?” Marston queried.

“Give it to him, sir,” the bo’sun said quietly. “Mr. Carter knows best.”

“Mr. Carter knows best,” Susan mimicked furiously. She crossed to the bo’sun and stared down at him. “It’s easy for you to lie there and say he knows best. You don’t have to go out there and get killed, to be shot down or die from the loss of blood.”

“Not me, Miss.” The bo’sun smiled up at her. “You won’t catch me taking risks like that.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Macdonald.” She sat down wearily on his bedside. “I’m so ashamed. I know that if your leg wasn’t smashed up but look at him! He can’t even stand, far less walk. He’ll kill himself, I tell you, kill himself!”

“Perhaps he will. But then he will only be anticipating by about two days, Miss Beresford,” Macdonald said quietly. “I know, Mr. Carter knows. We both know that no one on the Campari has very long to live not unless someone can do something. You don’t think, Miss Beresford,” he went on heavily, “that Mr. Carter is doing this just for the exercise?” Marston looked at me, face slowly tightening. “You and the bo’sun have been talking? Talking about something I know nothing about?”

“I’ll tell you when I come back.”

“If you come back.” He went to his dispensary, came back with a hypodermic, and injected some pale fluid. “Against all my instincts, this. It’ll ease the pain, no doubt about that, but it will also permit you to overstrain your leg and cause permanent damage.”

“Not half as permanent as being dead.” I hopped across into the dispensary, pulled old man Beresford’s suit out from the pile of folded blankets Susan had fetched, and dressed as quickly as my bad leg and the pitching of the Campari would allow. I was just turning up the collar and tying the lapels together with a safety pin when Susan came in. She said, abnormally calm, “it suits you very well. Jacket’s a bit tight, though.”

“It’s a damned sight better than parading about the upper deck in the middle of the night wearing a white uniform. Where’s this black dress you spoke of?”

“Here.” she pulled it out from the bottom blanket. “Thanks.”

I looked at the label. Balenciaga. Should make a fair enough mask. I caught the hem of the dress between my hands, glanced at her, saw the nod, and ripped, a dollar a stitch. I tore out a rough square, folded it into a triangle, and tied it round my face, just below the level of my eyes. Another few rips, another square, and I had a knotted cloth covering head and forehead until only my eyes showed. The pale glimmer of my hands I could always conceal.

“Nothing is going to stop you then?” She said steadily.

“I wouldn’t say that.” I eased a little weight onto my left leg, used my imagination and told myself that it was going numb already. “Lots of things can stop me. Any one of forty-two men, all armed with guns and submachine guns, can stop me. If they see me.”

She looked at the ruins of the Balenciaga. “Tear off a piece for me while you’re at it.”

“For you?” I looked at her. She was as pale as I felt. “What for?”

“I’m coming with you.” She gestured at her clothes, the navy blue sweater and slacks. “It wasn’t hard to guess what you wanted daddy’s suit for. You don’t think I changed into these for nothing?”

“I don’t suppose so.” I tore off another piece of cloth. “Here you are.”

“Well.” she stood there with the cloth in her hand. “Well. Just like that, eh?”

“It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

she gave me a slow, old-fashioned up-from-under, shook her head, and tied on the cloth. I hobbled back to the sick bay, Susan following. “Where’s Miss Beresford going?” Marston demanded sharply. “Why is she wearing that hood?”

“She’s coming with me,” I said. “So she says.”

“Going with you? And you’d let her?” He was horrified. “She’ll get herself killed.”

“It’s likely enough,” I agreed. Something, probably the anaesthetic, was having a strange effect on my head: I felt enormously detached and very calm. “But, as the bo’sun says, what’s a couple of days early? I need another pair of eyes, somebody who can move quickly and lightly to reconnoitre, above all a lookout. Let’s have one of your torches, doctor.”

“I object. I strongly protest against “get him the torch,” Susan interrupted.

He stared at her, hesitated, sighed, and turned away. Macdonald beckoned me.

“Sorry I can’t be with you, sir, but this is the next best thing.” He pressed a seaman’s knife into my hand, wide hinged blade on one side, shackle-locking marlinespike on the other; the marline came to a needle point. “If you have to use it, hit upward with the spike, the blade under your hand.”

“Take your word for it any time.” I hefted the knife, saw Susan staring at it, her eyes wide.

“You you would use that thing?”

“Stay behind if you like. The torch, Dr. Marston.” I pocketed the flash, kept the knife in my hand, and passed through the surgery door. I didn’t let it swing behind me; I knew Susan would be there.

The sentry, sitting wedged into a corner of the passage, was asleep. His automatic carbine was across his knees. It was an awful temptation, but I let it go. A sleeping sentry would call for a few curses and kicks, but a sleeping sentry without his gun would start an all-out search of the ship.

It took me two minutes to climb up two companionways to the level of “A” deck. Nice wide, flat companionways, but it took me two minutes.

My left leg was very stiff, very weak, and didn’t react at all to autosuggestion when I kept telling myself it was getting less painful by the minute. Besides, the Campari was pitching so violently now that it would have been a full-time job for a fit person to climb upwards without being flung off.

Pitching. The Campari was pitching, but with a now even more exaggerated corkscrew motion, great sheets of flying water breaking over the bows and being hurled back against the superstructure. At some hundreds of miles from the centre of a hurricane — and I didn’t need any barometers or weather forecasts to tell me what was in the calling it is the outspreading swell that indicates the direction of the centre of a hurricane; but closer in, and we were getting far too close for comfort, it is the wind direction that locates the centre. We were heading roughly twenty degrees east of north and the wind blowing from dead ahead. That meant the hurricane was roughly to the east of us, with a little southing, still keeping pace with us, travelling roughly northwest, a more northerly course than was usual, and the Campari and the hurricane were on more of a collision course than ever. The strength of the wind I estimated at force eight or nine on the old Beaufort scale: that made the centre of the storm less than a hundred miles away. If Carreras kept on his present course at his present speed, everybody’s troubles, his as well as ours, would soon be over.

At the top of the second companionway I stood still for a few moments to steady myself, took Susan’s arm for support, then lurched aft in the direction of the drawing room, twenty feet away. I’d hardly started lurching when I stopped. Something was wrong.

Even in my fuzzy state it didn’t take long to find out what was wrong. On a normal night at sea the Campari was like an illuminated Christmas tree; tonight every deck light was off. Another example of Carreras taking no chances, although this was an unnecessary and exaggerated example. Sure, he didn’t want anyone to see him, but in a black gale like this no one could have seen him anyway, even had any vessel been heading on the same course, which was hardly possible, unless its master had taken leave of his senses. But it suited me well enough. We staggered on, making no attempt to be silent. With the shriek of the wind, the thunderous drumming of the torrential rain, and the repeated pistol-shot explosions as the earing Campari’s bows kept smashing into the heavy rolling ombers ahead no one could have heard us a couple of feet way.

The smashed windows of the drawing room had been roughly boarded up. Careful not to cut a jugular or put an eye out on one of the jagged splinters of glass, I pressed my face close to the boards and peered through one of the cracks. The curtains were drawn inside, but with the gale whistling through the gaps between the boards, they were blowing and flapping wildly most of the time. One minute there and I’d seen all I wanted to see and it didn’t help me at ail. The passengers were all herded together at one end of the room, most of them huddled down on close-packed mattresses, a few sitting with their backs to the bulkhead. A more miserably seasick collection of millionaires I had never seen in my life: their complexions ranged from a faintly greenish shade to a dead-white pallor. They were suffering all right. In one corner I saw some stewards, cooks, and engineer officers, including Mcllroy, with Cummings beside him; seaman’s branch apart, it looked as if every off-duty man was imprisoned there with the passengers. Carreras was economising on his guards: I could see only two of them, hard-faced, unshaven characters with a Tommy gun apiece. For a moment I had the crazy idea of bursting in the door and rushing them, but only for a moment. Armed with only a clasp knife, and with a top speed of about that of a fairly active tortoise, I wouldn’t have got a yard.

Two minutes later we were outside the wireless office. No one had challenged us; no one had seen us; the decks were entirely deserted. It was a night for deserted decks.

The wireless office was in darkness. I pressed one ear to the metal of the door, closed a had over the other ear to shut out the clamour of the storm, and listened as hard as I could. Nothing. I placed a gentle hand on the knob, turned, and pushed. The door didn’t budge a fraction of an inch. I eased my hand off that doorknob with all the wary caution and thistledown delicacy of a man withdrawing the Kohinoor from a basket of sleeping cobras. “What’s the matter?” Susan asked. “Is that was as far as she got before my hand closed over her mouth, not gently. We were fifteen feet away from that door before I took my hand away.

“What is it? What is it?” her low whisper had a shake in it; she didn’t know whether to be scared or angry or both. “The door was locked.”

“Why shouldn’t it be? Why should they keep watch…”

“The door is locked by a padlock. From the outside. We put a new one there yesterday morning. It’s no longer there. Somebody has shut the catch on the inside.” I didn’t know how much of this she was getting: the roar of the sea, the drum fire of the rain, the wind rushing in from the darkness of the north and playing its high-pitched threnody in the rigging seemed to drown and snatch away the words even as I spoke them. I pulled her into what pitiful shelter was offered by a ventilator, and her next words showed that she had indeed heard and understood most of what I had said.

“They have left a sentry? Just in case anyone tried to break in? How could anyone break in? We’re all under guard and lock and key.”

“It’s as Carreras junior says — his old man never takes a chance.” I hesitated then, because I didn’t know what else to say. I went on: “I’ve no right to do this. But I must. I’m desperate. I want you to be a stalking -hors help get that character out of there.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Good girl.” I squeezed her arm. “Knock at the door. Pull that hood off and show yourself at the window. He’ll almost certainly switch on a light or flash a torch, and when he sees it’s a girl — well, he’ll be astonished but not scared. He’ll want to investigate.”

“And then you — you “that’s it.”

“With only a clasp knife.”

The tremor in her voice was unmistakable. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

“I’m not sure at all. But if we don’t make a move until we’re certain of success we might as well jump over the side now. Ready?”

“What are you going to do? Once you get inside?” She was scared and stalling. Not that I was happy myself.

“Send an SOS on the distress frequency. Warn every vessel within listening range that the Campari has been seized by force and is intending to intercept a bullion-carrying vessel at such and such a spot. Within a few hours everyone in North America will know the situation. That’ll get action all right.”

“Yes.” A long pause. “That’ll get action. The first action it will get is that Carreras will discover that his guard is missing -and where had you thought of hiding him?” “In the Atlantic.”

She shivered briefly, then said obliquely, “I think perhaps Carreras knows you better than I do… The guard’s missing. They’ll know it must be one of the crew responsible. They’ll soon find out that the only guard keeping an eye on the crew who wasn’t awake all the time is the boy outside the sick bay.” She was silent for a moment, then went on so softly that I could hardly hear her above the storm: “I can just see Carreras ripping those bandages off your leg and finding out that your thigh is not broken. You know what will happen then?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.” She said the words calmly, matter-of-factly, as if they were of no particular significance. “Another thing. You said everybody would know the setup within a few hours. The two radio operators Carreras has planted on the Ticonderoga will know immediately. They will immediately radio the news back to the Campari to Carreras.”

“After I’m finished in the wireless office no one will ever be able to send or receive on that set again.”

“All right. So you’ll smash it up. That itself would be enough to let Carreras know what you’ve done. And you can’t smash up every radio receiver on the Campari. You can’t, for instance, get near the ones in the drawing room. Everybody will know, you say. That means the Generalissimo and his government will know also, and then all the stations on the island will do nothing but keep up a non-stop broadcast of the news. Carreras is bound to hear it.”

I said nothing. I thought vaguely that I must have lost a great deal of blood. Her mind was working about ten times as quickly and clearly as mine. Not that that made her very smart. She went on: “you and the bo’sun seem very sure that Carreras won’t let us — the passengers and crew — live. Perhaps you think it’s because he can’t have any witnesses, that whatever advantage the Generalissimo gained from getting this money would be offset over and over again by the world-wide reaction against him if the world knew what he had done. Perhaps…”

“Reaction!” I said. “Reaction! He’d find the American and British navies and air forces on his doorstep the following morning, and that would be the end of the Generalissimo. Not even Russia would raise a hand to help him; they wouldn’t as much as rattle a rocket. Of course he can’t afford to let anyone know. He’d be finished.”

“In fact, he couldn’t even afford to let anyone know he’d made the attempt? So, as soon as Carreras picks up the news of your SOS, he gets rid of all the witnesses — permanently — and sheers off, tranships to this other vessel that’s waiting and that’s that.”

I stood there, saying nothing. My mind felt dull and heavy and tired, my body even more so. I tried to tell myself it was just the drug Marston had pumped into me, but it wasn’t that; I knew it wasn’t that. The sense of defeat is the most powerful opiate of all. I said, hardly knowing what I was saying, “Well, at least we would have saved the gold.” “The gold!” You had to be a millionaire’s daughter before you could put all that scorn into your voice when you mentioned the word “gold.”

“Who cares a fig for all the gold in the world? What’s gold compared to your life and my life, my mother’s and father’s and the lives of everyone on the Campari? How much money did Carreras say the Fort Ticonderoga was carrying?”

“You heard him. A hundred and fifty million dollars.”

“A hundred and fifty million! Daddy could raise that in a week and still have as much again left.”

“Lucky daddy,” I muttered. Light-headed, that’s what I was getting.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. Nothing. It all seemed such a good idea when Macdonald and I worked it out, Susan.”

“I’m sorry.” She caught my right hand in both of hers and held it tight. “I’m truly sorry, Johnny.”

“Where did you get this ‘Johnny’ business from?” I mumbled.

“I like it. What’s good enough for Captain Bullen — your hands are like ice!” She exclaimed softly. “And you’re shivering.” Gentle fingers pushed up under my hood. “And your forehead is burning. Running a temperature and fever. You’re not well, oh, you’re not well. Come on back down to the sick bay, Johnny. Please.”

“No.”

“Please!”

“Don’t nag at me, woman.” I pushed myself wearily off the ventilator. “Come on.”

“Where are you going?” She was quickly beside me, her arm in mine, and I was glad to hang on.

“Cerdan. Our mysterious friend Mr. Cerdan. Do you realise that we know practically nothing about Mr. Cerdan except that he seems to be the one who lies back and lets the others do all the work? Carreras and Cerdan they seem to be the kingpins, and maybe Carreras isn’t the boss after all. But I do know this: if I could get a knife sticking into the throat or a gun jabbing into the back of either of those men I would have a big card to play in this game.”

“Come on, Johnny,” she pleaded. “Come on down below.”

“All right, so I’m loopy. But it’s still true. If I could shove either of those men into the drawing room ahead of me and threaten the two guards with his death if they didn’t drop their guns, I rather think they would. With two machine guns and all the men in there to help, I could do a lot on a night like this. I’m not crazy, Susan, just desperate, like I said.”

“You can hardly stand.” There was a note of desperation in her voice now. “That’s why you’re here. To hold me up. Carreras is out of the question. He’ll be on the bridge and that’ll be the most heavily guarded place on the ship, because it’s the most important place.” I winced and shrank back into a corner as a great blue-white jagged streak of forked lightning, almost directly ahead, flickered and stabbed through the black wall of cumulo-nimbus clouds and the driving rain, momentarily illuminating every detail of the Campari’s decks in its blinding glare. The curiously flat explosive clap of thunder was muffled, lost in the teeth of the gale.

“That helps,” I muttered. “Thunder, lightning, a tropical rainstorm, and moving into the heart of a hurricane. King Lear should have seen this little lot. He’d never have complained of his blasted heath again.”

“Macbeth,” she said. “That was Macbeth.”

“Oh hell,” I said. She was getting as nutty as I was. I took her arm, or she took mine, I forget which. “Come on. We’re too exposed here.”

A minute later we were down on “A” deck, crouched against a bulkhead. I said, “Finesse will get us nowhere. I’m going into the central passageway, straight into Cerdan’s cabin. I’ll stick my hand in my pocket, pretend I have a gun. Stay at the entrance to the passageway; warn me if anyone comes.”

“He’s not in,” she said. We were standing at the starboard forward end of the accommodation, just outside Cerdan’s sleeping cabin. “He’s not at home. There’s no light on.”

“The curtains will be drawn,” I said impatiently. “The ship’s fully darkened. I’ll bet Carreras hasn’t even got the navigation lights on.” we shrank against the bulkhead as another lightning flash reached down from the darkened clouds, seemed almost to dance on the tip of the Campari’s mast. “I won’t be long.”

“Wait!” she held me with both hands. “The curtains aren’t drawn. That flash — I could see everything inside the cabin.”

“You could see,“ for some reason I’d lowered my voice almost to a whisper. “Anyone inside?”

“I couldn’t see all the inside. It was just for a second.” I straightened, pressed my face hard against the window, and stared inside. The darkness in the cabin was absolute — absolute, that is, until another forked finger of lightning lit up the entire upper works of the Campari once more. Momentarily I saw my own hooded face and staring eyes reflected back at me in the glass, then exclaimed involuntarily, for I had seen something else again.

“What is it?” Susan demanded huskily. “What’s wrong?”

“This is wrong.” I fished out Marston’s torch, hooded it with my hand, and shone it downwards through the glass.

The bed was up against the bulkhead, almost exactly beneath the window. Cerdan was lying on the bed, clothed and awake, his eyes staring up as if hypnotised by the beam of the torch. Wide eyes, staring eyes. His white hair was not just where his white hair had been; it had slipped back, revealing his own hair beneath. Black hair, jet-black hair, with a startling streak of iron-grey almost exactly in the middle. Black hair with an iron-grey streak? where had I seen somebody with hair like that? When had I ever heard of somebody with hair like that? All of a sudden I knew it was “when,” not “where”; I knew the answer. I switched off the light.

“Cerdan!” There was shock and disbelief and utter lack of comprehension in Susan’s voice. “Cerdan! bound hand and foot and tied to his bed so that he can’t move an inch. Cerdan! but no, no!” She was ready to give up. “Oh, Johnny, what does it all mean?”

“I know what it all means.” No question now but that I knew what it all meant and wished to heaven I didn’t. I’d only thought I’d been afraid before, the time I’d only been guessing. But the time for guessing was past; oh, my god, it was past. I knew the truth now, and the truth was worse than I had ever dreamed. I fought down the rising panic and said steadily through dry lips, “Have you ever robbed a grave, Susan?”

“Have I ever…“ She broke off, and when her voice came again there were tears in it. “We’re both worn out, Johnny. Let’s get down below. I want to go back to the sick bay.”

“I have news for you, Susan. I’m not mad. But I’m not joking. And I hope to god that grave’s not empty.” I caught her arm to lead her away, and as I did the lightning flashed again and her eyes were wild and full of fear. I wondered what mine looked like to her.