Maiden Voyage

FIFTY-ONE

Harry had already tried once that morning to gain access to the after hold, next to the ship's laundry and immediately beneath the swimming pool, where the motorcars were stored during the voyage. The hold was below the water-line, and the only door was marked NO ENTRY WATERTIGHT DOOR. He had asked one of the crew if it was possible for him to see inside, but the crewman had shaken his head and said that it was more than his life was worth to let a passenger into the hold. "Just supposing she rolled, and you got yourself crushed to death," the seaman had said. "What the 'ell would I do then?"

The purser had a key, the seaman had told him. If the purser said it was all right for him to take a look, then it was all right for him to take a look, but otherwise no.

It simply hadn't occurred to Harry that he would find it almost impossible to get into the motorcar hold. He stood for a long while in the passageway outside the hold, his hand held over his mouth, looking like a character from a Mack Sennett house party in his borrowed morning suit with rumpled trousers and sausage-tight vest. It was just his luck that the one man who could give him admission to the hold was the one man aboard the Arcadia whom he disliked the most, and who was least likely to assist him. What would a third-class passenger like you want with all those first-class motors, squire? he would ask. No good ogling them, squire. You'll never be able to afford even one wheel off one of them.

That was why Harry went back to the steerage deck and looked for Philly and Lydia.

It was breakfast time in the third-class dining room. The passengers sat at long tables covered with red and white gingham cloths, while the stewards served them with a choice of fruit juices, bacon, eggs, porridge, kippers and toast. For an extra threepence you could have a meatball, or kotleti; and for sixpence you could have black pudding, baked beans, and tried potatoes. The surcharges were not company policy, but the stewards and the chefs made a regular practice of offering the steerage a few little extra tidbits at reasonable prices. If any of the teachers or students or Polish immigrants had been able to afford it, they could have had glasses of champagne at three shillings the glass, or poached turbot (damaged during serving, but otherwise perfect) for two and twopence.

Most of the third class, however, were travelling on a tightly restricted budget, and those who had few extra shillings to spend were either too embarrassed to eat a plateful of black pudding and potatoes in front of those who only had a small kipper in oatmeal, or preferred to save their money for tonight's beer.

Harry bumped into Philly just as she was coming out of the women's room with her nose and her knees powdered, and her lipstick freshly painted. She was wearing a short emerald-green frock and a cheap green feathery hat.

"Harry!" she said, "I thought you were travelling with the nobs now."

"Well, I'm supposed to be," Harry told her. "But the trouble is that I need some help."

"Help?" said Philly suspiciously, lifting up one leg so that she could adjust her rolled-down stockings.

"It's nothing difficult," said Harry. "It's just that it's slightly shady. Do you know what I mean?"

"Shady?" asked Philly.

"Ssh," Harry told her, sealing his lips with his finger. "The fact is, I'm something of a bootlegger. I'm trying to ship some contraband liquor into New York. I was given a contract to supply a speak called Hoyle's Homelike Club on Second Avenue. They're a top-class place, and they asked me for some good Scotch whisky and London gin."

"Well, so?" asked Philly. Like most American college students, she was unimpressed by hooch, or the men who dealt in it. Hooch was a way of life.

"Well, the fact is that one of the fellows in first-class is a contraband agent. I wouldn't have known about him unless they'd let me go up there. He's had a tip-off from someone in Liverpool that I hid the liquor in one of the automobiles which is parked in the hold, and when we dock at New York he's going to be waiting beside that car to arrest me."

"Is it really beautiful in first class?" asked Philly irrelevantly.

"It's wonderful," said Harry impatiently.

"But is it really beautiful?"

"It's the bee's knees. But, please, will you help me?"

"You're worried because some cop is going to be waiting by some no to pull you in? Well, you're ridiculous. You shouldn't. All you have to do is walk straight off the ship, and leave the cop to wait by that car until his beard grows. How can he ever prove it's yours?"

Harry took Philly's arm. "Philly," he said, "you don't understand. I spent all of my money on that liquor. Everything I made in three years of hard work is invested in it. If I can't hide it, and sell it in a York, then I'm going to be down on my backside again. Nothing between me and the sidewalk except a red cotton patch."

"But what can I do?" asked Philly.

"It's very easy," said Harry. "All you have to do is distract the purser while I slip into his office and borrow his key."

"Distract?" asked Philly suspiciously.

"You know what I mean. Act all vampish. Seduce him."

Philly wrinkled up her nose. She was one of the free and rebellious young jazz babies, one of the dancers in the dark, but she didn't like her morals to be taken for granted. She wasn't what her grandmother would have called "a scarlet harlot."

Harry took out a cigarette. "There's a century in it for you, if we pull it off. How does that sound?"

"A hundred?"

"You're hearing me."

Philly said, "Well, okay. But only for distracting, right? Nothing else. I'm not losing my purity for a lousy hundred."

"Your purity?" asked Harry. "What do you think we were doing the other night, washing out our smalls and singing spirituals?"

"We didn't do anything," said Philly. "Just because a girl plays around a bit, that doesn't have to mean that she's deflowered, does it? I had a good time, that's all. You can't blame a girl for having a good time. But I'll still go to the altar pure. That's when I do go to the altar."

"So you'll tell your fiance you're a virgin?"

"Of course I will."

"So what's it eventually going to take to deflower you?" Harry asked. "'Dynamite?"

Almost immediately, he wished he hadn't said that. It was the kind of circumstantial evidence that juries adored, especially since the yellow press had made everybody, housewives and roof-painters and janitors alike? into shrewd legal experts. "Anarchist talked of dynamite before luxury liner blast." Mind you, he thought, it was doubtful if anybody would survive the sudden sinking of the Arcadia, himself included. If he ever appeared in any kind of court, it would probably be in Purgatory.

Philly pouted. "You don't really care for me at all, do you? You're the kind that just uses a girl, then throws her away like a cigarette butt. Dynamite, indeed. The nerve!"

"I'm sorry," said Harry, bunking behind his spectacles. "I didn't mean to be sarcastic."

"You're really sure you can pay me a hundred?"

Harry nodded. "As soon as I get paid for the liquor. If you give me your address, I'll mail you a certified cheque."

"Well... it would help with schoolbooks."

He took her hands, and squeezed them. "You're terrific. I knew you'd understand."

They went up in the lift to the bridge deck. Philly was nervous about entering the exclusive and perfumed domain of the cabin-class passenger, but Harry put his arm around her waist and reassured her. "I'm a hero. They'll let me do anything."

He led her along to Monty Willowby's office. Monty (although they couldn't have known it) had just returned from an unsuccessful foray to Baron Zawisza's stateroom, in an attempt to unscrew her lavatory seat. To his chagrin, he had been interrupted by Krysia, her maid, who had returned to the stateroom to fetch the baroness her freshwater pearl earrings (the baroness often changed her jewels four or five times a day). Monty had blustered out the excuse to Krysia that he was checking a complaint about noises in the plumbing, and rapidly left, his round stomach bobbing up and down like a beachball at an English seaside resort. He wasn't in a very good humour when Harry knocked at his door.

"Ah, our gallant hero," he said, snappily. "Not at breakfast? Grand breakfast this morning. Something worth dressing up for."

"Um, I was just wondering if it would be possible for me to take this young lady into breakfast," said Harry.

Monty said, "What? This young lady? From steerage, is she?"

"I do think the company prefer to call it third class these days?" Harry told him.

Monty glanced at him with an expression that plainly meant, Don't get clever with me, squire. You may be a hero, but you're steerage, and if I want to call you steerage, then I will.

Out loud, though, he said, "I don't think that's going to be possible, squire, on account of the catering arrangements."

"Oh, I'm sure they'll have enough bacon and eggs to go round," said Harry. "She doesn't eat much, do you, love?"

Philly tittered. Harry thought, God, I told you to be vampish, not squirm and giggle around like a nine-year-old.

Monty said, "It's a question of seating, squire. And timing. And it's a question of dress, too. First-class ladies were asked this morning to dress in white or pink, to suit the decor. White or pink. Whereas him young lady—" he looked Philly up and down, eyeing the cheap emerald frock and bedraggled feather hat, as if she had worn them on purpose to offend him—"well, this young lady is in green. Very distinctly green."

Harry was looking around the office for keys. He wasn't sure, but he thought he could glimpse a varnished wooden key board on the wall of the small office at the back, where the ship's safe and deposit boxes were kept. He could see the gleam of metal through the crack in the door, and what looked like part of a name tag.

"Green?" he said to Monty Willowby. "Well, I can tell you something. If there's one thing this young lady isn't, it's green."

Either Monty didn't see the humour in this remark, or else he didn't want to. He picked up a heap of papers, shuffled them noisily, and then looked up at Harry and Philly as if he couldn't understand why they were still there.

"It's not on, you know, squire. I'm sorry. It's not me, nor the management. We wouldn't object. It's the other passengers. They don't pay first-class fares to sit next to third-class people."

Philly, trying to be coquettish, said, "Couldn't you make a teentsy-weentsy exception, just for me?"

Monty shook his jowls in a treble negative.

Philly perched herself on the edge of Monty's desk, so that her skirt, already scandalously short by the standards of 1924, rose above her knees and revealed several pale inches of inner thigh. "You're such a cutie," she said, and let out a high-pitched giggle. "If I thought you weren't already surrounded by adoring women, do you know what I'd do?"

Monty stared up her skin with eyes as suspicious as a hermit crab. "I don't know," he said, "What would you do?"

"Why, I'd smother you all over with kisses," giggled Philly, and leaned forward to stick a large bow-shaped kiss of fresh sticky lipstick on Monty's forehead.

Monty looked up at her, startled. The kiss seemed to have awakened him, like the Frog Prince. "You can't do that, miss," he said, clamping his hand over his forehead in horror.

"What do you mean, I can't? I just did!"

Monty said, "Listen, this is all very well. But rules are rules. And it doesn't matter what you do—"

Philly giggled again, hopped down from the table, and immediately sat herself in Monty's lap. "You're so sweet!" she told him, plinking the tip of his nose with her fingertip. "How come you have to worry about regulations, a sweet guy like you?"

Monty tried to wrestle her off his lap without actually touching her anywhere embarrassing. But all she did was cling around his neck, kick her legs in the air, and shriek with laughter. Harry, meanwhile, smiling and nodding with as much innocence and dumbness as he could manage, sidestepped his way around to the back of Monty's chair, towards the open door of the inner office. As Philly plastered Monty's cheek with another kiss, and another, he quickly glanced behind him and saw that the ship's keys were indeed all hanging there, scores of them, and each one labelled.

"Miss, please!" exploded Monty. "Listen, please! Listen, get off!"

"She's quite incorrigible, Mr Willowby, isn't she?" said Harry, in him slyest, most cretinous-sounding Bootle accent. "Can't do a thing with her.'

But Monty, at last, gripped hold of both of Philly's wrists and managed to prize them free from his neck. He stood up, and she rolled off his lap on to the floor, where she sprawled with her skirt right up to her frilly pink step-ins. With an exaggerated expression of stage chivalry, Monty averted his eyes while she collected herself.

"Well, you're a flat tyre," complained Philly.

"I may well be just what you say I am, miss," said Monty. "But I'm afraid I've got far too much on my plate taking care of this ship and her passengers, not to mention the stewards and the stewardesses and God knows what else, and I simply can't—"

Monty suddenly turned and stared at Harry. Harry had been just about to shuffle himself sideways into the inner office, so that he could get a better look at the key board. Monty didn't say anything, but the look on his face was enough. You keep out, squire. Harry had to grin, and retreat towards the main cabin door like a schoolboy who has been caught near a greenhouse with a catapult in his hand.

Harry tried to appear nonchalant, but he was sweating with muscular tension. It was ten o'clock already, and if he couldn't get into that cargo hold by noon, the chances were high that Maurice Peace or George Welterman would discover his sticks of dynamite, and the Arcadia would sail into New York as smugly and as elegantly as she had left Liverpool, a floating triumph for decadence and oppression. Admittedly, Harry had learned some surprising new things about the rich since he had been travelling in first class. They had appeared to him for the first time to be almost as human, and a as idiosyncratic, and often as comradely, as any of the workers he had known. They were, despite their wealth, no more than people. But he knew that he couldn't allow his political ideals to be compromised by his personal susceptibility to first-class comfort and to individual gestures of friendship and generosity. No matter how pleasant the rich may be, they upheld a society which Harry believed to be criminal. The ark of Mammon, her passengers and crew, would have to go to the bottom.

"I, er—I suppose that absolutely means I can't take this young lady into breakfast?" Harry asked.

"Sorry, squire," Monty told him. "Just not possible. Now, if you'll please excuse me...?"

There was a moment of hiatus, a moment in which all three of them were posed in a tableau, as if waiting for fate or fortune to supply them with their next line. And fate, or fortune, did. Because Dick Charles suddenly appeared at the door, his face white, and said, "Mr. Willowby! Wanted urgently forward!"

"What's wrong?" asked Monty.

"C-can't tell you," stuttered Dick. "But quick! On the duh, on the dun, on the double, Mr Deacon said."

Monty clenched his teeth at Harry and Philly and said, "You'll excuse me." Then he was off along the deck, waddling after Dick Charles like the walrus following the carpenter.

Harry spread his hands. "For one time in my life, I've actually had some luck," he said. "He's gone, and he's left his office open. I'm beginning to feel there might be a God up there after all."

Philly was busy adjusting her lipstick, screwing up her nose at herself in the mirror of her powder compact. "What a toad! If I'd known how ugly he was, I wouldn't even have agreed to do it! But you won't forget my hundred, will you?"

"Fifty."

"Fifty? What kind of bunk is that? You said a hundred."

"I said a hundred if it worked. It didn't work. It's only an accident he's gone off now, and left the place unattended. You're lucky to get fifty."

"If you don't give me a hundred I'll scream rape."

"Go ahead, scream rape."

"All right. Rape!"

"That wasn't loud enough," said Harry. He was scanning the keyboard now, his fingers touching each hook in turn, looking for the label which read AFTER CARGO HOLD.

"What do you mean, that wasn't loud enough?" demanded Philly.

"You heard me," said Harry. Laundry, Library, Linen Store (1st); Linen Store (2nd); Linen Store (3rd).

"How about this, then? Rape! I say, rape!"

Louder," Harry urged her.

"Okay, smart buns. Rape!"

Claude Graham-White, who happened to have been passing the purser's office on his way forward, put his head through the door, and said, "I say, is everything all right?"

Philly said indignantly, "No, everything is not all right. This man's raping me."

Claude Graham-White looked first at Philly, with her fists planted indignantly on her hips, and then across into the inner office at Harry, him had his back to both of them.

"I don't like to split hairs," he said, "but that gentleman is standing eight feet away from you with his back turned. I rather fail to see how he can be—well, interfering with you in any way."

"Take my word for it," said Philly. "He's interfering with me."

"But how?"

"He said he'd pay me a hundred and now he says only fifty."

"Well,' said Claude Graham-White, "I'm afraid I can scarcely intrude on a commercial transaction. Not really my business."

"Are you trying to suggest—" squawked Philly. But Harry interrupted her by saying, "All right. A hundred. Now, just keep quiet."

Claude Graham-White went off, slightly bewildered, to his cabin. He had eaten one too many bloaters and felt a desire to return to his room and meditate on the meaning of digestion. Philly said, "Huh!" and crossed her arms as emphatically as she knew how. She felt cheated, although she wasn't quite sure why. It was probably because Monty Willowby had denied her entrance to the first-class dining lounge for breakfast, and despite the fact that Harry hadn't really intended to take her there at all, she had been made to feel distinctly steerage.

But Harry was more interested in the ship's keys. At last, he found a label which identified the long key which depended from the hook beneath it as belonging to the after carriage hold. He said to Philly, "Carriage? Do you think they could have used "carriage" as a fancy word for "automobile"?"

"How should I know?"

Harry bit his lip. Then he said, "I don't know. I suppose I'll just have to risk it," and he lifted the key off its hook. He also took the key which opened the door of the after cargo hold, just in case.

"Right," said Harry, ushering Philly out of the purser's cabin, and onto the deck. "You go back to the third-class deck. I'll see what I can do with these keys."

"But you won't forget the money? You won't go back on your promise? A hundred?"

Harry kissed her cheek. "A hundred it is. Just as soon as I sell my liquor. Now, you take the forward lift. I'll go down the stairs."

Harry was so intent on what he was doing that he didn't notice the strange feverish atmosphere on the deck. He collided with one or two passengers hurrying forward, and said, "Pardon me," because even after four years he still wasn't English enough to say, "Excuse me," in that particularly frosty tone that the English used; but he didn't stop long enough to realise that anything unusual was happening.

He reached the first-class stairway and made his way down to the entrance to the first-class lounge. From there, he walked quickly along the corridor aft to the double doors which led down to the first-class cabin deck. Then down again, and again, and again, and again, until at least he reached the orlop deck, and jogged along to the door of the hold where the automobiles were stored. Gasping for breath, he tried the key in the lock, and it turned smoothly. He opened the heavy door, and swung it forward with a deep feeling of relief. In his anxiety about finding the key, he had almost forgotten the magnitude of what he was about to do, or the danger to himself.

The hold was lit only by a dim row of inspection lamps on the bulkheads. It echoed to the deep drumming of the Arcadia's turbines, and it smelled of heavy grease and automobile polish. Harry closed the door behind him, and cautiously crossed the metal floor to the first row of automobiles—seven Rolls-Royces, all shining as if they were strange religious trophies being ferried from one land to another. Then another row of Pierce-Arrows and Austro-Daimlers.

It took him nearly ten minutes to locate Mark Beeney's Marmon. It was parked right against the rivet-studded wall of the ship's side, and for Harry that was perfect. The explosion would have maximum effect, so close to the plates of the hull, and would probably blast the ship open so wide that nobody would be able to staunch the flow of seawater in time. The Arcadia would sink to the bottom of the Atlantic like a brick.

Dennis had been right; it wasn't difficult to open the Marmon's trunk. All Harry needed was a short length of bent wire, and a wide-bladed screwdriver (which he had found conveniently lying on the dashboard of a nearby Minerva Laundaulet). There was an odd springing noise, and the trunk dropped down flat, banging loudly on to its hinges. Alarmed by the bang, Harry crouched where he was for almost half a minute, listening. But the hold was silent, except for the vibration of the ship's engines. Harry sniffed. His nose always used to run when he was excited.

He took the clock which regulated his bomb out of the Marmon's trunk, and peered at it carefully in the lamplight. Then he wound a up, turn by turn, until the spring was as tight as it could go. He set it for twelve o'clock noon. He was just about to put it back when he heard a sound a little way away from him, a scuffling sound, like a football. He quickly raised his head and froze.

For almost a minute, there was nothing. But then he heard a high-pitched sneeze, and he gradually stood up, the bomb's clock mechanism still held in his hand. His chest was constricted with fear, and his heart seemed to be running and tumbling at three times its normal rate.

"Who's there?" he said, hoarsely.

There was another long, aching silence. Then, hesitantly, one foot in front of the other, Lucille Foster appeared from behind the rear mudguard of a Rolls-Royce, dressed in a yellow summer frock and wearing a white straw hat with yellow flowers around it.

"Lucille?" asked Harry. "What are you doing down here?"

Lucille didn't appear to be at all abashed. "I was just coming out from breakfast with Mrs. Hall. I saw you running off down the stairs and I went after you."

"But why?"

"I don't know," she said. 'You look peculiar, that's all. I thought you might need me."

"You should still be in bed."

"I'm all right now. Honestly. Even Dr. Fields said I was all right. I was only suffering from shock."

"But won't Mrs. Hall be looking for you? She'll be worried."

Lucille came closer and stood demurely with her white-gloved hands in front of her, dangling a small yellow purse with a gold clasp. "Of course she'll be looking for me. But that's not the point. The point is, I came to see what was the matter with you."

"There's nothing the matter with me."

"Then what are you doing with that clock?"

"Clock?"

"The one you're holding in your hand."

"Ah, this clock. Well, this clock—this clock is a present."

"A present? For whom? Is it someone's birthday?"

"'Sort of. One of the people I met in first-class last night... well, he was so generous to me. I decided to make him a gift."

"But why are you putting it in his car?"

Harry couldn't think why Lucille was asking him all these appalling questions. But then he thought: calm down, she's only a child. She's just curious. She likes me, she feels indebted to me. Naturally she wants to know what I'm doing in such blatantly odd circumstances. She's not trying to trick me or trap me. At least I hope to hell that she isn't.

"I, er—well, I was embarrassed," said Harry.

"Why were you embarrassed?"

"Well, it's a pretty cheap dock. I couldn't afford anything else. I didn't have the nerve to give it to him face to face. So I decided to hide it in the trunk of his car, and write a note on it, saying thanks. He might keep it, he might decide to throw it away. But at least he won't have the embarrassment of having to pretend that he likes it... and that's what would happen if I gave it to him in person."

Lucille smiled. "For a Communist, you know, you're a very considerate person."

"Well, that's what Communism is all about. Being considerate to other people. At least, that's what it's ideally all about. It doesn't often seem that way."

"That's because you're only considerate to poor people. You don't think that wealthy people might have feelings as well."

"You're wrong," said Harry. "I believe that everybody has feelings."

"Mother would have said that you're deceiving yourself."

"Maybe she would. Everybody deceives themselves sometimes. Some people deceive themselves pretty much all of the time."

Lucille came forward and took Harry's arm. She looked up at him a eyes were as clear and as confident as two flawless sapphires. "You don't deceive me, you know," she told him. "Not for a single minute."

He was uncomfortably conscious of the timing mechanism ticking away in his hand. "I don't?" he asked her.

"Not for a single minute," she said, shaking her head. "I knew when a met you that you were the sort of person who could never hurt anybody. Mother used to know lots of men who hurt her. She was always saying, "Oh, Friedrich, you have hurt me so badly." Or, "Oh, Jean, what you have done to me." But you're not that type of man. I know you're not. Otherwise you wouldn't have climbed all the way up that crane and rescued me."

Harry looked away. "Well," he said, "I only did that because I like you."

"You would have done it for anybody. You're one of those very, very, very kind people. I know you are."

Harry looked at Lucille for a long speechless moment. She was smiling at him with such brightness and trust that he could scarcely speak. She always acted so sophisticated; she talked and walked and behaved with all the blase manners of the rich; and yet beneath her act she was utterly innocent, utterly uncritical of him, and she had invested in him all of her confidence, and so much of her affection. Perhaps such trust in the world and the people in it was the greatest a that the rich could give to their children; a gift which the workers could never afford. Freedom from fear, freedom from want, and freedom from uncertainty. Always to feel safe, always to feel content, and always to be quite sure of the future—what a child's mind couldn't do if it was blessed with those three reassurances right from the beginning! Most working-class children could never hope to raise their minds above the plain relentless demands of having to earn their own living.

The thought gave Harry a sharp taste in his mouth, of defeat and regret, and of bitter jealousy. Yet he was so touched by Lucille's obvious trust in him that he was brought, by surprise, to the very brink of changing his mind about sinking the Arcadia.

"You're not unhappy about something, are you, not still?' asked Lucille.

Harry shook his head. "No. You couldn't call it unhappy."

"I am fond of you, you know."

"Yes, I'm beginning to realise that."

"When I was stuck up that crane, I didn't want anybody but you. Not anybody. Especially not Mrs. Hall."

"No, I know you didn't. And I'm flattered. I'm pleased, too."

Lucille looked around. "Are you going to stay down here, or are you going to come upstairs for elevenses? There's going to be a Punch-and-Judy for the children."

"Punch-and-Judy? I haven't seen a Punch-and-Judy for years."

"This is going to be a super one. With music."

Harry said, "Why don't you go on ahead of me? I won't be a minute. I just have to wrap up this clock nicely, and write a note, and close up the car's trunk."

"This is Mr. Beeney's car, isn't it?"

'You know it?'

"Of course. It's been in all the magazines. Was it Mr. Beeney who was so nice to you?"

Harry nodded.

"What if I tell Mr. Beeney that you've hidden a present in his car?"

"No, you mustn't do that. This is supposed to be a surprise."

"But what if I do?"

"Then I'll put you over my knee and spank you."

Lucille laughed brightly. "You'll have to catch me first!"

She ran round behind a large green Daimler. Harry dodged after her, around the other way. But she guessed what he was doing, and skipped across to the next row of cars. It was only because he quickly doubled back on himself and crept the length of a beige Pierce-Arrow, his head bent so that she wouldn't see him coming, that he was able to creep up behind her and catch her. "Got you!" he grinned.

He held her with his one free hand. She didn't try enough to struggle, but instead raised her own hand so that it rested gently on his. She said, in a soft and reflective voice, "Sometimes I have dreams that it's the end of the world."

"What do you mean by that?" He could hear the ticking of the clock, with less than two hours to run.

She smiled. "I don't know. I suppose I'm being silly."

Then she suddenly pulled free from him, and danced away him the cars, laughing a clear bell-like laugh. Harry tried to chase her, but he collided with the rear wing of a Rolls-Royce, and his timing clock was knocked from his hand and onto the metal-plated deck.

He picked the clock up, terrified that it might have stopped. But when he put it to his ear, the ticking was as strong as before.

"You haven't broken it?" asked Lucille.

"No, it's still going."

You really would have been embarrassed if you'd given it to him, and it didn't even go!"

"Yes," said Harry. Then, "Yes, I guess I would."

"Are you coming up for elevenses?" asked Lucille.

"Yes. Just give me a minute or two. I'll see you by the Palm Court."

"All right. And just remember I love you!"

Harry stood where he was, beside the Rolls-Royce, his timing clock in his hand, as Lucille danced away across the automobile hold, and waved to him at the door. When she had gone, he looked down at the clock and it said twenty after ten. Just remember I love you, she had said. A little girl who was already richer than he could ever dream of being. Just remember I love you.

He walked back to Mark Beeney's Marmon, and knelt down beside the open trunk. Quickly, expressionlessly, he wired up the timing clock and tucked it back into the trunk beside the sticks of dynamite.

He closed the trunk, and then he wedged the end of the screwdriver into the lock so that it would be almost impossible to open, even if somebody did come down here before twelve and attempt to check over the car.

Then he walked quickly back to the door of the hold, closed it, and locked it. The Arcadia is doomed, he thought. Nothing can save her now. In a few hours, she'll be down where she belongs, beside the Titanic. And that's the way all of these vainglorious barges should go, until the capitalists stop building them, and give their wealth away to the people who really deserve it.