Night Over Water

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Diana Lovesey stepped onto the dock at Foynes and felt patheti cally grateful for the feeling of solid ground under her feet.

She was sad but calm. She had made her decision: she was not going to get back on the Clipper, she was not going to fly to America and she was not going to marry Mark Alder.

Her knees seemed wobbly, and for a moment she was afraid she might fall, but the sensation passed and she walked along the dock to the customs shed.

She put her arm through Mark’s. She would tell him as soon as they were alone. It would break his heart, she thought with a stab of grief: he loved her very much. But it was too late to think of that now.

The passengers had disembarked, all except the odd couple sitting near Diana, handsome Frank Gordon and bald Ollis Field. Lulu Bell had not stopped chatting to Mark. Diana ignored her. She no longer felt angry with Lulu. The woman was intrusive and overbearing, but she had enabled Diana to see her true situation.

They passed through customs and left the dock. They found themselves at the western end of a one-street village. A herd of cows was being driven along the street, and they had to wait while the beasts passed.

Diana heard Princess Lavinia say loudly: “Why have I been brought to this farm?”

Davy, the little steward, replied in a soothing voice: “I’ll take you into the terminal building, Princess.” He pointed across the road to a large building like an old inn with ivy growing up the walls. “There’s a very comfortable bar, called Mrs. Walsh’s pub, where they sell excellent Irish whiskey.”

When the cows had gone, several of the passengers followed Davy to Mrs. Walsh’s pub. Diana said to Mark: “Let’s walk through the village.” She wanted to get him on his own as soon as possible. He smiled and agreed. However, some other passengers had the same idea, Lulu among them; and it was a small crowd that strolled along the main street of Foynes.

There were a railway station, a post office and a church, then two rows of gray stone houses with slate roofs. Some of the houses had shop fronts. There were several pony carts parked along the street but only one motorized truck. The villagers, dressed in tweeds and homespun, stared at the visitors in silk and furs, and Diana felt as if she were in a procession. Foynes had not yet got used to being a stopover for the world’s wealthy and privileged elite.

She was hoping that the party would split up, but they stayed together in a knot, like explorers afraid of getting lost. She began to feel trapped. Time was passing. They went by another bar, and she suddenly said to Mark: “Let’s go in there.”

Lulu immediately said: “What a great idea—there’s nothing to see in Foynes.”

Diana had had quite enough of Lulu. “I’d really like to talk to Mark alone,” she said crossly.

Mark was embarrassed. “Honey!” he protested.

“Don’t worry!” Lulu said immediately. “We’ll walk on, and leave you lovers alone. There’ll be another bar, if I know anything at all about Ireland!” Her tone was gay, but her eyes were cold.

Mark said: “I’m sorry, Lulu—”

“Don’t be!” she said brightly.

Diana did not like Mark apologizing for her. She turned on her heel and went into the building, leaving him to follow at his leisure.

The place was dim and cool. There was a high bar, with bottles and barrels racked behind it. In front were a few wooden tables and chairs on a plank floor. Two old men sitting in the comer stared up at Diana. She was wearing an orange-red silk coat over her dotted dress. She felt like a princess in a pawnshop.

A small woman in an apron appeared behind the bar. Diana said: “May I have a brandy, please?” She wanted some Dutch courage. She sat down at a small table.

Mark came in—probably having apologized some more to Lulu, Diana thought sourly. He sat beside her and said: “What was all that about?”

“I’ve had enough of Lulu,” Diana said.

“Why did you have to be so rude?”

“I wasn’t rude. I simply said I wanted to talk to you alone.”

“Couldn’t you have found a more tactful way of saying so?”

“I think she’s probably oblivious to hints.”

He looked annoyed and defensive. “Well, you’re wrong. She’s actually a sensitive person, although she seems brash.”

“It doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“How can it not matter? You’ve just offended one of my oldest friends!”

The barmaid brought Diana’s brandy. She drank some quickly to steel her nerve. Mark ordered a glass of Guinness. Diana said: “It doesn’t matter because I’ve changed my mind about this whole thing, and I’m not coming to America with you.”

He went pale. “You can’t mean that.”

“I’ve been thinking. I don’t want to go. I’m going back to Mervyn—if he’ll have me.” But she felt sure he would.

“You don’t love him. You told me that. And I know it’s true.”

“What do you know? You’ve never been married.” He looked hurt, and she softened. She put her hand on his knee. “You’re right. I don’t love Mervyn the way I love you.” She felt ashamed of herself, and took her hand away. “But it’s no good.”

“I’ve been paying too much attention to Lulu,” Mark said penitently. “I’m sorry, honey. I apologize. I guess I got wrapped up in her because it’s so long since last I saw her. I’ve been ignoring you. This is our big adventure, and I forgot that for an hour. Please forgive me.”

He was sweet when he felt he had been wrong: he had a sorrowful expression that looked boyish. Diana forced herself to remember how she had been feeling an hour ago. “It’s not just Lulu,” she said. “I think I’ve been foolhardy.”

The barmaid brought Mark’s drink but he did not touch it.

Diana went on. “I’ve left everything I know: home, husband, friends and country. I’m on a flight across the Atlantic, which is dangerous in itself. And I’m going to a strange country where I have no friends, no money, nothing.”

Mark looked distraught. “Oh, God, I see what I’ve done. I abandoned you just when you were feeling vulnerable. Baby, I feel such a horse’s ass. I promise I’ll never do that again.”

Perhaps he would keep such a promise, and perhaps he would not. He was loving, but he was also easygoing. It was not in him to stick to a plan. He was sincere now, but would he remember his vow next time he ran into an old friend? It was his playful attitude to life that had attracted Diana in the first place; and now, ironically, she saw that that very attitude made him unreliable. One thing you could say for Mervyn was that he was reliable: good or bad, his habits never changed.

“I don’t feel I can rely on you,” she said.

He looked angry. “When have I ever let you down?”

She could not think of an instance. “You will, though,” she said.

“Anyway, you want to leave all these things behind. You’re unhappy with your husband, your country’s at war, and you’re bored with your home and your friends—you told me that.”

“Bored, but not frightened.”

“There’s nothing to be frightened of. America is like England. People speak the same language, go to the same movies, listen to the same jazz bands. You’re going to love it. I’ll take care of you, I promise.”

She wished she could believe him.

“And there’s another thing,” he went on. “Children.”

That shaft went home. She did so long to have a baby, and Mervyn was adamant that he would not. Mark would be such a good father, loving and happy and tender. Now she felt confused, and her determination weakened. Maybe she should give up everything, after all. What was home and security to her if she could not have a family?

But what if Mark were to abandon her halfway to California? Suppose another Lulu turned up in Reno, just after the divorce, and Mark went off with her? Diana would be stranded with no husband, no children, no money and no home.

She wished now that she had been slower to say yes to him. Instead of throwing her arms around him and agreeing to everything right away, she should have discussed the future carefully and thought of all the snags. She should have asked for some kind of security, even just the price of a ticket home, in case things went wrong. But that might have offended him, and anyway it was going to take more than a ticket to get across the Atlantic once the war started in earnest.

I don’t know what I should have done, she thought miserably, but it’s too late for regrets. I’ve made my decision and I won’t be talked out of it.

Mark took her hands in his own, and she was too sad to withdraw them. “You changed your mind once. Now change it back,” he said persuasively. “Come with me, and be my wife, and we’ll have children together. We’ll live in a house right on the beach, and take our toddlers paddling in the waves. They’ll be blond and suntanned, and grow up playing tennis and surfing and riding bicycles. How many kids would you like? Two? Three? Six?”

But her moment of weakness had passed. “It’s no good, Mark,” she said wistfully. “I’m going back home.”

She could see from his eyes that now he believed her. They looked at one another sadly. For a while neither of them spoke.

Then Mervyn walked in.

Diana could not believe her eyes. She stared at him as if he were a ghost. He could not be here. It was impossible!

“So there you are,” he said in his familiar baritone voice.

Diana was swamped by contrary emotions. She was appalled, thrilled, frightened, relieved, embarrassed and ashamed. She realized her husband was looking at her holding hands with another man. She snatched her hands out of Mark’s grasp.

Mark said: “What is it? What’s the matter?”

Mervyn came up to their table and stood with his hands on his hips, staring at them.

Mark said: “Who the hell is this jerk?”

“Mervyn,” Diana said weakly.

“Christ Jesus!”

Diana said: “Mervyn ... how did you get here?”

“Flew,” he said with his customary terseness.

She saw he was wearing a leather jacket and carrying a helmet. “But ... but how did you know where to find us?”

“Your letter said you were flying to America, and there’s only one way to do that,” he said with a note of triumph.

She could see that he was pleased with himself for having worked out where she was and intercepted her, somewhat against the odds. She had never imagined he could catch up with them in his own plane: it had simply never occurred to her. She found herself weak with gratitude to him for caring enough to chase after her this way.

He sat down opposite them. “Bring me a large Irish whiskey,” he called to the barmaid.

Mark picked up his beer glass and sipped nervously. Diana looked at him. At first he had seemed intimidated by Mervyn, but now he evidently realized Mervyn was not going to start a fistfight, and he just looked uneasy. He moved his chair back from the table an inch, as if to distance himself from Diana. Perhaps he too felt ashamed at being caught holding hands.

Diana drank some brandy to give her strength. Mervyn was watching her anxiously. His expression of bewilderment and hurt made her want to throw herself into his arms. He had come all this way without knowing what sort of reception he would get. She reached out and touched his arm reassuringly.

To her surprise, he looked uncomfortable and threw a worried glance at Mark, as if he felt disconcerted at being touched by his wife in front of her lover. His Irish whiskey came and he drank it quickly. Mark looked wounded, and moved his chair closer to the table again.

Diana felt flustered. She had never been in a situation like this. They both loved her. She had been to bed with both of them—and they both knew it. It was unbearably embarrassing. She wanted to comfort them both, but she was afraid to. Feeling defensive, she leaned back, putting more space between herself and them. “Mervyn,” she said, “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

He looked hard at her. “I believe you,” he said evenly.

“Do you ... ? Can you understand what happened?”

“I can grasp the broad outlines, simple soul though I am,” he said sarcastically. “You’ve run off with your fancy man.” He looked at Mark and leaned toward him aggressively. “An American, I gather, the weedy type who’ll let you have your own way.”

Mark leaned back and said nothing, but stared intently at Mervyn. Mark was not a confronter. He did not look offended, just intrigued. Mervyn had been a major figure in Mark’s life, although they had never met. All these months Mark must have been consumed with curiosity about the man Diana slept with every night. Now he was finding out, and he was fascinated. Mervyn, by contrast, was not the least interested in Mark.

Diana watched the two men. They could hardly have been more different. Mervyn was tall, aggressive, bitter, nervy; Mark was small, neat, alert, open-minded. The thought occurred to her that Mark would probably use this scene in a comedy script one day.

Her eyes were heavy with tears. She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “I know I’ve been imprudent,” she said.

“Imprudent!” Mervyn snapped, mocking the inadequacy of the word. “You’ve been bloody daft.”

Diana winced. His scorn always cut her to the quick. But on this occasion she deserved it.

The barmaid and the two men in the corner were following the conversation with unabashed interest. Mervyn waved to the barmaid and called out: “Could I have a plate of ham sandwiches, love?”

“With pleasure,” she said politely. Barmaids always liked Mervyn.

Diana said: “I just ... I’ve been so miserable lately. I was only looking for a little happiness.”

“Looking for happiness! In America—where you’ve no friends, no relations, no home.... Where’s your sense?”

She was grateful to him for coming, but she wished he would be kinder. She felt Mark’s hand on her shoulder. “Don’t listen to him,” he said quietly. “Why shouldn’t you be happy? There’s nothing wrong with that.”

She looked fearfully at Mervyn, afraid of offending him further. He might yet reject her. How humiliating it would be if he should spurn her in front of Mark (and, she thought in the back of her mind, while the horrible Lulu Bell was on the scene). He was capable of it: that was the kind of thing he did. She wished now that he had not followed her. It meant he would have to make a spot decision. Given more time, she could have soothed his wounded pride. This was too rushed. She picked up her glass and put it to her lips, then set it down untasted. “I don’t want this,” she said.

Mark said: “I expect you’d like a cup of tea.”

That was just what she wanted. “Yes, I’d love it.”

Mark went to the bar and ordered it.

Mervyn would never have done that: to his way of thinking, tea was got by women. He gave Mark a look of contempt. “Is that what’s wrong with me?” he asked her angrily. “I don’t fetch your tea—is that it? You want me to be housemaid as well as breadwinner?” His sandwiches came but he did not eat any.

Diana did not know how to answer him. “There’s no need for a row,” she said softly.

“No need for a row? When is there need for one, then, if not now? You run off with this little pillock, without saying goodbye, leaving me a silly bloody note....” He took a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket and Diana recognized her letter. She blushed scarlet, feeling humiliated. She had shed tears over that note: how could he wave it about in a bar? She moved back from him, feeling resentful.

The tea came and Mark picked up the pot. He looked at Mervyn and said: “Would you like a cup of tea poured by a little pillock?” The two Irishmen in the comer burst out laughing, but Mervyn glared stonily and said nothing.

Diana began to feel angry with him. “I may be bloody daft, Mervyn, but I’ve got a right to be happy.”

He pointed an accusing finger at her. “You made a vow when you married me and you’ve no right to leave.”

She felt mad with frustration. He was so completely unyielding. It was like explaining something to a block of wood. Why couldn’t he be reasonable? Why did he have to be so damn certain he was always right and everyone else was wrong?

Suddenly she realized this feeling was very familiar. She had had it about once a week for five years. During the last few hours, in her panic on the plane, she had forgotten how awful he could be, and how unhappy he could make her. Now it all came back like the horror of a remembered nightmare.

Mark said: “She can do what she likes, Mervyn. You can’t make her do a single thing. She’s a grown-up. If she wants to go home with you, she will. And if she wants to come to America and marry me, she’ll do that.”

Mervyn banged his fist on the table. “She can’t marry you. She’s already married to me!”

“She can divorce you.”

“On what grounds?”

“You don’t need grounds in Nevada.”

Mervyn turned his angry eyes on Diana. “You’re not going to Nevada. You’re coming back to Manchester with me.”

She looked at Mark. He smiled gently at her. “You don’t have to obey anyone,” he said. “Do what you want.”

Mervyn said: “Get your coat on.”

In his blundering way, Mervyn had given Diana back her sense of proportion. She now saw her fear of the flight and her anxieties about living in America as minor worries by comparison with the all-important question: Who did she want to live with? She loved Mark, and Mark loved her, and all other considerations were marginal. A tremendous sense of relief came over her as she made her decision and announced it to the two men who loved her. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Mervyn,” she said. “I’m going with Mark.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Nancy Lenehan enjoyed a minute of jubilation as she looked down from Mervyn Lovesey’s Tiger Moth and saw the Pan American Clipper floating majestically on the calm water of the Shannon estuary.

The odds had been against her, but she had caught up with her brother and foiled at least part of his plan. You’ve got to get up very early in the morning to outsmart Nancy Lenehan, she thought, in a rare moment of self-congratulation.

Peter was going to have the shock of his life when he saw her.

As the little yellow plane circled, and Mervyn searched for a place to land, Nancy began to feel tense about the forthcoming confrontation with her brother. She still found it hard to believe that he had deceived and betrayed her with such complete ruthlessness. How could he? As children they had been bathed together. She had put Band-Aids on his knees, told him how babies were made, and always given him a chew of her gum. She had kept his secrets and told him her own. After they grew up she had nursed his ego, never letting him be embarrassed because she was so much smarter even though she was a girl.

All their lives she had taken care of him. And when Pa died she had allowed Peter to become chairman of the company. That had cost her dearly. Not only had she suppressed her own ambition to make way for him: at the same time she had stifled a budding romance; for Nat Ridgeway, Pa’s deputy, had resigned when Peter took charge. Whether anything would have come of that romance, she would never know, for Ridgeway had since married.

Her friend and lawyer, Mac MacBride, had advised her not to let Peter be chairman, but she had gone against his counsel, and her own best interests, because she knew how wounded Peter would be that people thought he was not fit to fill his father’s shoes. When she remembered all she had done for him, and then thought of how he had tried to cheat her and lie to her, she wanted to weep with resentment and rage.

She was desperately impatient to find him and stand in front of him and look into his eyes. She wanted to know how he would act and what he would say to her.

She was also eager to join battle. Her catching up with Peter was only the first step. She had to get on the plane. That might be straightforward; but if the Clipper was full, she would have to try to buy someone else’s seat, or use her charm on the captain, or even bribe her way on board. When she got to Boston, she had to persuade the minority shareholders, her aunt Tilly and her father’s old lawyer, Danny Riley, to refuse to sell their holdings to Nat Ridgeway. She felt she could do that, but Peter would not give up without a fight, and Nat Ridgeway was a formidable opponent.

Mervyn brought the plane down on a farm track at the edge of the little village. In an uncharacteristic display of good manners, he helped Nancy get out and climb down onto the ground. As she set foot on Irish soil for the second time she thought of her father who, although he talked constantly of the old country, never actually went there. She felt that was sad. He would have been pleased to know that his children had made it to Ireland. But it would have broken his heart to know how the company that had been his life had been run down by his son. Better that he was not here to see that.

Mervyn roped the plane down. Nancy was relieved to leave it behind. Pretty though it was, it had almost killed her. She still shivered every time she remembered flying toward that cliff. She did not intend to get into a small plane again for the rest of her life.

They walked briskly into the village, following a horse-drawn wagon loaded with potatoes. Nancy could tell that Mervyn, too, was feeling a mixture of triumph and apprehension. Like her, he had been deceived and betrayed, and had refused to take it lying down; and like her, he got great satisfaction from defying the expectations of those who had plotted against him. But for both of them the real challenge was still ahead.

A single street led through Foynes. Halfway along it they met a group of well-dressed people who could only be Clipper passengers: they looked as if they had wandered onto the wrong set at a film studio. Mervyn approached them and said: “I’m looking for Mrs. Diana Lovesey—I believe she’s a passenger on the Clipper.”

“She sure is!” said one of the women; and Nancy recognized the movie star Lulu Bell. There was a note in her voice that suggested she did not like Mrs. Lovesey. Once again Nancy wondered what Mervyn’s wife was like. Lulu Bell went on. “Mrs. Lovesey and her—companion?—went into a bar just along the street here.”

Nancy said: “Could you direct me to the ticket office?”

“If I ever get cast as a tour guide, I won’t need to rehearse!” said Lulu, and the passengers with her laughed. “The airline building is at the far end of the street, past the railroad station, opposite the harbor.”

Nancy thanked her and walked on. Mervyn had already started out, and she had to run to catch up with him. However, he stopped suddenly when he caught sight of two men strolling up the street, deep in conversation. Nancy looked curiously at the men, wondering why they had stopped Mervyn in his tracks. One was a silver-haired swell in a black suit with a dove gray waistcoat, obviously a passenger from the Clipper. The other was a scarecrow of a man, tall and bony, with hair so short he almost looked bald, and the expression of someone who has just woken up from a nightmare. Mervyn went up to the scarecrow and said: “You’re Professor Hartmann, aren’t you?”

The man’s reaction was quite shocking. He jumped back a pace and held up his hands defensively, as if he thought he was about to be attacked.

His companion said: “It’s all right, Carl.”

Mervyn said: “I’d be honored to shake your hand, sir.”

Hartmann dropped his arms, although he still looked wary. He shook hands.

Nancy was surprised at Mervyn’s behavior. She would have said that Mervyn Lovesey thought nobody in the world was his superior, yet here he was acting like a schoolboy asking a baseball star for his autograph.

Mervyn said: “I’m glad to see you got out. We feared the worst, you know, when you disappeared. By the way, my name is Mervyn Lovesey.”

Hartmann said: “This is my friend Baron Gabon, who helped me to escape.”

Mervyn shook hands with Gabon, then said: “I won’t intrude anymore. Bon voyage, gentlemen.”

Hartmann must be something very special, Nancy thought, to have distracted Mervyn, even for a few moments, from his single-minded pursuit of his wife. As they walked on through the village she asked: “So who’s he?”

“Professor Carl Hartmann, the greatest physicist in the world,” Mervyn replied. “He’s been working on splitting the atom. He got into trouble with the Nazis for his political views, and everyone thought he was dead.”

“How do you know about him?”

“I did physics at university. I thought of becoming a research scientist, but I haven’t the patience for it. I still keep up with developments, though. It so happens there have been some amazing discoveries in the field over the last ten years.”

“Such as?”

“There’s an Austrian woman—another refugee from the Nazis, by the way—called Lise Meitner, working in Copenhagen, who managed to break the uranium atom into two smaller atoms, barium and krypton.”

“I thought atoms were indivisible.”

“So did we all, until recently. That’s what’s so amazing. It makes a very big bang when it happens, which is why the military are so interested. If they can control the process, they’ll be able to make the most destructive bomb ever known.”

Nancy looked back over her shoulder at the frightened, shabby man with the burning gaze. The most destructive bomb ever known, she said to herself, and she shivered. “I’m surprised they let him walk around unguarded,” she said.

“I’m not sure he is unguarded,” Mervyn said. “Look at that chap.”

Following the direction of Mervyn’s nod, Nancy looked across the street. Another Clipper passenger was idling along on his own: a tall, hefty man in a bowler hat and a gray suit with a wine red waistcoat. “Do you think that’s his bodyguard?” she said.

Mervyn shrugged. “The man looks like a copper to me. Hartmann may not know it, but I’d say he’s got a guardian angel in size twelve boots.”

Nancy had not thought Mervyn was that observant.

“I think this must be the bar,” Mervyn said, switching from the cosmic to the mundane without pausing for breath. He stopped at the door.

“Good luck,” Nancy said. She meant it. In a funny way she had grown to like him, despite his infuriating ways.

He smiled. “Thanks. Good luck to you, too.”

He went inside and Nancy continued along the street.

At the far end, across the road from the harbor, was an ivy-grown building larger than anything else in the village. Inside, Nancy found a makeshift office and a good-looking young man in a Pan American uniform. He looked at her with a twinkle in his eye, even though he had to be fifteen years her junior.

“I want to buy a ticket to New York,” she told him.

He was surprised and intrigued. “Is that so! We don’t generally sell tickets here—in fact, we don’t have any.”

That did not sound like a serious problem. She smiled at him: a smile always helped in overcoming trivial bureaucratic obstacles. “Well, a ticket is only a piece of paper,” she said. “If I give you the fare, I guess you’ll let me on the plane, won’t you?”

He grinned. She figured he would oblige her if he could. “I guess so,” he said. “But the plane is full.”

“Hell!” she muttered. She felt crushed. Had she gone through all this for nothing? But she was not yet ready to give up, not by a long shot. “There must be something,” she said. “I don’t need a bed. I’ll sleep in a seat. Even a crew seat would do.”

“You can’t take a crew seat. The only thing vacant is the honeymoon suite.”

“Can I take that?” she said hopefully.

“Why, I don’t even know what price to charge—”

“But you could find out, couldn’t you?”

“I guess it has to cost at least as much as two regular fares, and that would make it seven hundred and fifty bucks one way, but it could be more.”

She didn’t care if it cost seven thousand dollars. “I’ll give you a blank check,” she said.

“Boy, you really want to ride this airplane, don’t you?”

“I have to be in New York tomorrow. It’s ... very important.” She could not find words to express how important it was.

“Let’s go check with the captain,” the boy said. “This way please, ma’am.”

Nancy followed him, wondering whether she had been wasting her efforts on someone who did not have the authority to make a decision.

He led her to an upstairs office. Six or seven of the Clipper’s crew were there in their shirtsleeves, smoking and drinking coffee while they studied charts and weather reports. The young man introduced her to Captain Marvin Baker. When the handsome captain shook her hand, she had the oddest feeling that he was going to take her pulse, and she realized it was because he had a doctor’s bedside manner.

The young fellow said: “Mrs. Lenehan needs to get to New York real bad, Captain, and she’s willing to pay for the honeymoon suite. Can we take her?”

Nancy waited anxiously for the reply, but the captain asked another question. “Is your husband with you, Mrs. Lenehan?”

She fluttered her eyelashes, always a useful move when you were hoping to persuade a man to do something. “I’m a widow, Captain.”

“I’m sorry. Do you have any baggage?”

“Just this overnight case.”

“We’ll be glad to take you to New York, Mrs. Lenehan,” he said.

“Thank God,” Nancy said fervently. “I can’t tell you how important it is to me.” For a moment her knees felt weak. She sat in the nearest chair. She was embarrassed about feeling so emotional. To cover up, she rummaged in her handbag and took out her checkbook. With a shaky hand she signed a blank check and gave it to the young man.

Now it was time to confront Peter.

“I saw some passengers in the village,” she said. “Where would the rest of them be?”

“Most are in Mrs. Walsh’s pub,” the young man said. “It’s a bar in this building. The entrance is around the side.”

She stood up. The shaky spell had passed. “I’m much obliged to you,” she said.

“Glad to be able to help.”

She went out.

As she closed the door she heard a buzz of comment break out, and she knew they were making ribald remarks about an attractive widow who could afford to sign blank checks.

She went outside. It was a mild afternoon with weak sunlight, and the air was pleasantly damp with the salty taste of the sea. Now she had to look for her faithless brother.

She went around to the side of the building and entered the bar.

It was the kind of place into which she would never normally go: small, dark, roughly furnished, very masculine. Clearly it was originally intended to serve beer to fishermen and farmers, but now it was full of millionaires drinking cocktails. The atmosphere was stuffy, and the noise level was high in several languages: there was something of a party atmosphere among the passengers. Was it her imagination, or was there a faintly hysterical note in the laughter? Did the jollification mask anxiety about the long flight over the ocean?

She scanned the faces and spotted Peter.

He did not notice her.

She stared at him for a moment, anger boiling up inside her. She felt her cheeks flush with rage. She had a powerful urge to slap his face. But she suppressed her fury. She would not show him how upset she was. It was always smarter to play it cool.

He was sitting in a comer, and Nat Ridgeway was with him. That was another shock. Nancy had known Nat was in Paris for the collections, but it had not occurred to her that he might fly back with Peter. She wished he were not here. The presence of an old flame just complicated matters. She would have to forget that she had once kissed him. She put the thought out of her mind.

She pushed through the crowd and went up to their table. Nat was the first to look up. His face showed shock and guilt, which gave her some satisfaction. Noticing his expression, Peter looked up.

Nancy met his eye.

He went pale and started up out of his chair. “Good Christ!” he exclaimed. He looked scared to death.

“Why are you so frightened, Peter?” Nancy said contemptuously.

He swallowed hard and sank back into his seat.

Nancy said: “You actually paid for a ticket on the S.S. Oriana, knowing you weren’t going to use it; you came to Liverpool with me and checked into the Adelphi Hotel, even though you weren’t going to stay there; and all because you were afraid to tell me you were taking the Clipper!”

He stared back at her, white-faced and silent.

She had not planned to make a speech but the words just came. “You slunk out of the hotel yesterday and rushed all the way to Southampton, hoping I wouldn’t find out!” She leaned on the table, and he shrank away from her. “What are you so scared of? I’m not going to bite you!” As she said the word bite he flinched, as if she might really do it.

She had not troubled to lower her voice. The people nearby had gone quiet. Peter looked around the room with an embarrassed expression. Nancy said: “I’m not surprised you feel foolish. After all I’ve done for you! All these years I’ve protected you, covered up for your stupid mistakes, and let you go on being chairman of the company even though you couldn’t organize a church bazaar! After all that, you tried to steal the business from me! How could you do it? Doesn’t it make you feel like a worm?”

He flushed crimson. “You’ve never protected me—you’ve always looked after yourself,” he protested. “You always wanted to be boss—but you didn’t get the job! I got it, and you’ve been scheming to take it away from me ever since.”

This was so unjust that Nancy did not know whether to laugh, cry or spit in his face. “You idiot, I’ve been scheming ever since to let you keep the chairmanship.”

He pulled some papers from his pocket with a flourish. “Like this?”

Nancy recognized her report. “You bet like that,” she said. “That plan is the only way for you to keep your job.”

“While you take control! I saw through it right away.” He looked defiant. “That’s why I came up with my own plan.”

“Which hasn’t worked,” Nancy said triumphantly. “I’ve got a seat on the plane and I’m coming back for the board meeting.” For the first time she turned to Nat Ridgeway and spoke to him. “I guess you still can’t take control of Black’s Boots, Nat.”

Peter said: “Don’t be so sure.”

She looked at him. He was petulantly aggressive. Surely he could not have something up his sleeve? He was not that smart. She said: “You and I own forty percent each, Peter. Aunt Tilly and Danny Riley hold the balance. They’ve always followed my lead. They know me and they know you. I make money and you lose it, and they understand that, even if they’re polite to you for Pa’s sake. They’ll vote the way I ask them to.”

“Riley will vote with me,” Peter said obstinately.

There was something in his mulishness that worried her. “Why would he vote with you, when you’ve practically run the company into the ground?” she said scornfully, but she was not as confident as she made herself sound.

He sensed her anxiety. “I’ve got you scared now, haven’t I?” he sneered.

Unfortunately, he was right. She was beginning to feel worried. He did not look as crushed as he should. She had to find out whether there was anything behind this bluster. “I guess you’re just talking through your hat,” she jeered.

“No, I’m not.”

If she kept taunting him he would feel compelled to prove her wrong, she knew. “You always pretend to have something up your sleeve but it generally amounts to nothing at all.”

“Riley has promised.”

“And Riley is as trustworthy as a rattlesnake,” she said dismissively.

Peter was stung. “Not if he gets ... an incentive.”

So that was it: Danny Riley had been bribed. That worried Nancy. Danny was nothing if not corruptible. What had Peter offered him? She had to know, so that she could either spoil the bribe or offer more. She said: “Well, if your plan hinges on Danny Riley’s reliability, I guess I don’t have anything to worry about!” and she laughed derisively.

“It hinges on Riley’s greed,” Peter said.

She turned to Nat and said: “If I were you I’d be very skeptical about all this.”

“Nat knows it’s true,” Peter said smugly.

Nat clearly would have preferred to remain silent, but when they both stared at him, he gave a reluctant nod of assent.

Peter said: “He’s giving Riley a big chunk of General Textiles’s work.”

That was a blow, and Nancy’s breath caught in her throat. There was nothing Riley would have liked better than to get a foot in the door of a major corporation such as General Textiles. To a small New York law firm it was the opportunity of a lifetime. For a bribe like that, Riley would sell his mother.

Peter’s shares plus Riley’s came to fifty percent. Nancy’s plus Aunt Tilly’s also amounted to fifty percent. With the votes divided equally, the issue would be decided by the casting vote of the chairman—Peter.

Peter could see he had trumped Nancy, and he allowed himself a smile of victory.

Nancy was not yet willing to concede defeat. She pulled out a chair and sat down. She turned her attention to Nat Ridgeway. She had sensed his disapproval all the way through the argument. She wondered if he knew that Peter had been working behind her back. She decided to put it to him. “I suppose you knew Peter was lying to me about this?”

He stared at her, tight-lipped; but she could do that too, and she simply waited, looking expectant. Finally she outstared him, and he said: “I didn’t ask. Your family quarrels are none of my concern. I’m not a social worker. I’m a businessman.”

But there was a time, she thought, when you held my hand in restaurants, and kissed me good night; and once you caressed my breasts. She said: “Are you an honest businessman?”

“You know I am,” he said stiffly.

“In that case, you won’t approve of dishonest methods being used on your behalf.”

He thought for a moment, then said: “This is a takeover, not a tea party.”

He was going to say more, but she jumped in. “If you’re willing to gain by my brother’s dishonesty, you’re dishonest yourself. You’ve changed since you worked for my father.” She turned back to Peter before Nat could reply. “Don’t you realize you could get twice the price for your shares if you let me implement my plan for a couple of years?”

“I don’t like your plan.”

“Even without restructuring, the company is going to be worth more because of the war. We’ve always supplied soldiers’ boots—think of the extra business if the U.S. gets into the war!”

“The U.S. won’t get into this war.”

“Even so, the war in Europe will be good for business.” She looked at Nat. “You know that, don’t you? That’s why you want to buy us out.”

Nat said nothing.

She turned back to Peter. “But we’d do better to wait. Listen to me. Have I ever been wrong about this sort of thing? Have you ever lost money by following my advice? Have you ever made money by disregarding it?”

“You just don’t understand, do you?” Peter said.

Now she could not imagine what was coming. “What don’t I understand?”

“Why I’m merging the company, why I’m doing this.”

“All right, why?”

He stared at her in silence, and she saw the answer in his eyes.

He hated her.

She was shocked rigid. She felt as if she had run headlong into an invisible brick wall. She wanted to disbelieve it, but the grotesque expression of malevolence on his distorted face could not be ignored. There had always been tension between them, natural sibling rivalry; but this, this was awful, weird, pathological. She had never suspected this. Her little brother, Peter, hated her.

This is what it must be like, she thought, when the man you have been married to for twenty years tells you he’s having an affair with his secretary and he doesn’t love you anymore.

She felt dizzy, as if she had banged her head. It was going to take a while to adjust to this.

Peter was not merely being foolish, or mean, or spiteful. He was actually doing himself harm in order to ruin his sister. That was pure hatred.

He had to be at least a little bit crazy.

She needed to think. She decided to leave this hot, smoky bar and get some air. She stood up and left them without saying goodbye.

As soon as she stepped outside she felt a little better. There was a cool breeze blowing in off the estuary. She crossed the road and walked along the dockside, listening to the seagulls cry.

The Clipper was out in midchannel. It was bigger than she had imagined: the men refueling it looked tiny. She found its huge engines and enormous propellers reassuring. She would not feel nervous on this plane, she thought, not after surviving a trip across the Irish Sea in a single-engined Tiger Moth.

But what would she do when she got home? Peter, would never be talked out of his plan. There were too many years of hidden anger behind his behavior. She felt sorry for him, in a way: he had been so unhappy all this time. But she was not going to give in to him. There might still be a way to save her birthright.

Danny Riley was the weak link. A man who could be bribed by one side could be bribed by the other. Perhaps Nancy could think of something else to offer him, something that would tempt him to change sides. But that would be tough. Peter’s bribe, a chunk of General Textiles’s law business, was hard to top.

Maybe she could threaten him. It would be cheaper. But how? She could take away some family and personal business from his firm, but that would not amount to much, nothing compared to the new business he would get from General Textiles. What Danny would like best would be straight cash, of course, but her fortune was mostly tied up in Black’s Boots. She could lay her hands on a few thousand dollars without much trouble, but Danny would want more, maybe a hundred grand. She could not get hold of that much cash in time.

While she was deep in thought, her name was called. She turned around to see the fresh young Pan American employee waving at her. “There’s a telephone call for you,” he shouted. “A Mr. MacBride from Boston.”

She felt suddenly hopeful. Maybe Mac could think of a way out of this. He knew Danny Riley. Both men were like her father, second-generation Irish who spent all their time with other Irishmen and were suspicious of Protestants even if they were Irish. Mac was honest and Danny was not, but otherwise they were alike. Pa had been honest, but he had been willing to turn a blind eye to a little sharp practice, especially if it would help a buddy from the old country.

Pa had saved Danny from ruin once, she recalled, as she hurried back along the dock. It was just a few years ago, not long before Pa died. Danny had been losing a big and important case, and in desperation he had approached the judge at their golf club and tried to bribe him. The judge had not been bribable, and he had told Danny to retire or be disbarred. Pa had intervened with the judge and persuaded him that it was a momentary lapse. Nancy knew all about it: Pa had confided in her a lot toward the end of his life.

That was Danny: slippery, unreliable, rather foolish, easily swayed. Surely she could win him back to her own side.

But she only had two days.

She went into the building, and the young man showed her the phone. She put the earpiece to her ear and picked up the stand. It was good to hear Mac’s familiar, affectionate voice. “So you caught up with the Clipper,” he said jubilantly. “Attagirl!”

“I’ll be at the board meeting—but the bad news is that Peter says he’s got Danny’s vote tied up.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Yes. General Textiles is giving Danny a chunk of corporate business.”

Mac’s voice became despondent. “Are you sure it’s true?”

“Nat Ridgeway is here with him.”

“That snake!”

Mac had never liked Nat, and had hated him when he started dating Nancy. Even though Mac was happily married, he was jealous of anyone who showed a romantic interest in Nancy.

“I pity General Textiles, having Danny do their law work,” Mac added.

“I guess they’ll give him the low-grade stuff. Mac, is it legal for them to offer him this incentive?”

“Probably not, but the violation would be hard to prove.”

“Then I’m in trouble.”

“I guess so. I’m sorry, Nancy.”

“Thanks, old friend. You warned me not to let Peter be the boss.”

“I sure did.”

That was enough crying over spilled milk, Nancy decided. She adopted a brisker tone. “Listen, if we were relying on Danny, we’d be worried, right?”

“You bet we would—”

“Worried that he’d change sides, worried that the opposition would make him a better offer. So what do we think his price is?”

“Hmm.” There was silence on the line for a few moments, then Mac said: “Nothing springs to mind.”

Nancy was thinking about Danny trying to bribe a judge. “Do you remember that time Pa got Danny out of a hole? It was the Jersey Rubber case.”

“I sure do. No details on the phone, okay?”

“Yes. Can we use that case somehow?”

“I don’t see how.”

“To threaten him?”

“With exposure, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Do we have proof?”

“Not unless there’s something in Pa’s old papers.”

“You have all those papers, Nancy.”

There were several cartons of Pa’s personal records in the cellar of Nancy’s house in Boston. “I’ve never looked through them.”

“And there’s no time for that now.”

“But we could pretend,” she said thoughtfully.

“I’m not following you.”

“I’m just thinking aloud. Bear with me for a minute. We could pretend to Danny that there is something, or might be something, in Pa’s old papers—something that would bring that whole business out into the open.”

“I don’t see how that—”

“No, listen to me, Mac. This is an idea,” Nancy said, her voice rising with excitement as she began to see possibilities. “Suppose the Bar Association, or whoever it is, decided to open an inquiry into the Jersey Rubber case.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Someone could tell them it was fishy.”

“All right, what then?”

Nancy began to feel she might have the makings of a workable plan. “Suppose they heard that there was crucial evidence among Pa’s stuff?”

“They would ask you if they could examine the papers.”

“Would it be up to me whether I let them?”

“In a simple bar inquiry, yes. If there was a criminal inquiry, you could be subpoenaed, and then of course you’d have no choice.”

A scheme was forming in Nancy’s mind faster than she could explain it aloud. She hardly dared to hope that it might work. “Listen, I want you to call Danny,” she said urgently. “Ask him the following question—”

“Let me pick up a pencil. Okay, go ahead.”

“Ask him this. If there were a bar inquiry into the Jersey Rubber case, would he want me to hand over Pa’s papers?”

Mac was puzzled. “You think he’ll say no.”

“I think he’ll panic, Mac! He’ll be scared to death. He doesn’t know what’s there—notes, diaries, letters, could be anything.”

“I’m beginning to see how this might work,” Mac said, and Nancy could hear hope creeping into his voice. “Danny would think you have something he wants—”

“He’ll ask me to protect him, as Pa did. He’ll ask me to refuse the bar permission to look at the papers. And I’ll agree—on the condition he votes with me against the merger with General Textiles.”

“Wait a minute. Don’t open the champagne yet. Danny may be venal but he’s not stupid. Won’t he suspect that we’ve cooked this whole thing up to pressure him?”

“Of course he will,” Nancy said. “But he won’t be sure. And he won’t have long to think about it.”

“Yeah. And right now it’s our only chance.”

“Want to give it a try?”

“Okay.”

Nancy was feeling much better: full of hope and the will to win. “Call me at our next stop.”

“Where’s that?”

“Botwood, Newfoundland. We should be there in seventeen hours.”

“Do they have phones there?”

“They must, if there’s an airport. You should book the call in advance.”

“Okay. Enjoy the flight.”

“ ’Bye, Mac.”

She put the earpiece on the hook. Her spirits were high. There was no telling whether Danny would fall for it, but she felt immensely cheered up just to have a ploy.

It was twenty past four, time to board the plane. She left the room and passed through an office in which Mervyn Lovesey was speaking on another telephone. He put out his hand to stop her as she went by. Through the window she could see the passengers on the dockside boarding the launch, but she paused for a moment. He said into the phone: “I can’t be bothered with that now. Give the buggers the rate they’re asking for, and get on with the job.”

She was surprised. She recalled that there had been some kind of industrial dispute at his factory. He sounded as if he was giving in, which did not seem characteristic of him.

The person he was talking to seemed to be surprised too, for after a moment Mervyn said: “Yes, I do bloody well mean it. I’m too busy to argue with toolmakers. Goodbye!” He hung up the earpiece. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said to Nancy.

“Were you successful?” she asked him. “Did you persuade your wife to come back?”

“No. But I didn’t put it to her right.”

“That’s too bad. Is she out there now?”

He looked through the window. “That’s her in the red coat.” Nancy saw a blond woman in her early thirties. “Mervyn, she’s beautiful!” she said. She was surprised. Somehow she had imagined Mervyn’s wife as a tougher, less cute type: Bette Davis rather than Lana Turner. “I can see why you don’t want to lose her.” The woman was holding on to the arm of a man in a blue blazer, presumably the boyfriend. He was not nearly as handsome as Mervyn. He was a little below average height and his hair was beginning to recede. But he had a pleasant, easygoing look about him. Nancy could see instantly that the woman had gone for Mervyn’s opposite. She felt sympathy for Mervyn. “I’m sorry, Mervyn,” she said.

“I haven’t given up,” he said. “I’m coming to New York.”

Nancy smiled. This was more like Mervyn. “Why not?” she said. “She looks like the kind of woman a man might chase all the way across the Atlantic.”

“The thing is, it’s up to you,” he said. “The plane is full.”

“Of course. So how can you come? Why is it up to me?”

“You own the only remaining seat. You’ve taken the honeymoon suite. It seats two. I’m asking you to sell me the spare seat.”

She laughed. “Mervyn, I can’t share a honeymoon suite with a man. I’m a respectable widow, not a chorus girl!”

“You owe me a favor,” he said insistently.

“I owe you a favor, not my reputation!”

His handsome face took on an obstinate expression. “You didn’t think about your reputation when you wanted to fly across the Irish Sea with me.”

“That didn’t involve our spending the night together!” She wished she could help him: there was something touching about his determination to get his beautiful wife back. “I’m sorry. I really am,” she said. “But I can’t be involved in a public scandal at my age.”

“Listen. I’ve inquired about this honeymoon suite, and it’s not that much different from the rest of the plane. There’s two separate bunk beds. If we leave the door open at night, we’ll be in exactly the same situation as two total strangers who happen to be allocated adjoining bunks.”

“But think what people would say!”

“Who are you worried about? You’ve no husband to get offended, and your parents aren’t alive. Who cares what you do?”

He could be extremely blunt when he wanted something, she thought. “I’ve got two sons in their early twenties,” she protested.

“They’ll think it’s a lark, I bet.”

They probably would, she thought ruefully. “I’m also worried about the whole of Boston society. Something like this would be sure to get around.”

“Look. You were desperate when you came to me on that airfield. You were in trouble and I saved your bacon. Now I’m desperate—you can see that, can’t you?”

“Yes, I can.”

“I’m in trouble and I’m appealing to you. This is my last chance to save my marriage. You can do it. I saved you, and you can save me. All it will cost you is a whiff of scandal. That never killed anybody. Please, Nancy.”

She thought about that “whiff” of scandal. Did it really matter if a widow was faintly indiscreet on her fortieth birthday? It would not kill her, as he said, and it probably would not even damage her reputation. The matrons of Beacon Hill would think her “fast,” but people of her own age would probably admire her nerve. It’s not as if I’m supposed to be a virgin, she thought.

She looked at his hurt, stubborn face, and her heart went out to him. To hell with Boston society, she thought; this is a man in pain. He helped me when I needed it. Without him I wouldn’t be here. He’s right. I owe him.

“Will you help me, Nancy?” he begged. “Please?”

Nancy took a deep breath. “Hell, yes,” she said.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Harry Marks’s last sight of Europe was a white lighthouse, standing proud on the north bank of the mouth of the Shannon, while the Atlantic Ocean angrily lashed the foot of the cliff below. A few minutes later there was no land in sight: whichever way he looked he saw nothing but the endless sea.

When I get to America I’m going to be rich, he thought.

Being this close to the famous Delhi Suite was so tantalizing as to be almost sexy. Somewhere on this plane, no more than a few yards from where he sat, was a fortune in jewelry. His fingers itched to touch it.

A million dollars in gems would be worth at least a hundred thousand from a fence. I could buy a nice flat and a car, he thought, or maybe a house in the country with a tennis court. Or perhaps I should invest it and live on the interest. I’d be a toff with a private income!

But first he had to get hold of the stuff.

Lady Oxenford was not wearing the jewelry; therefore it had to be in one of two places: the cabin baggage, right here in the compartment, or the checked baggage in the hold. If it were mine I’d keep it really close, Harry thought: I’d have it in my cabin bag. I’d be scared to let it out of my sight. But there was no telling how her mind worked.

He would check her cabin bag first. He could see it, under her seat, an expensive burgundy leather case with brass comers. He wondered how he might get inside it. Perhaps there would be a chance during the night, when everyone was asleep.

He would find a way. It would be risky: thieving was a dangerous game. But somehow he always got away with it, even when things went wrong. Look at me, he thought: yesterday I was caught red-handed, with stolen cuff links in my trousers pocket; I spent last night in jail; and now here I am going to New York on the Pan American Clipper. Lucky? It’s not the word!

He had once heard a joke about a man who jumped out of a tenth-floor window, and falling past the fifth floor was heard to say: “So far, so good.” But that was not him.

The steward, Nicky, brought the dinner menu and offered him a cocktail. He did not need a drink, but he ordered a glass of champagne just because it seemed like the right thing to do. This is the life, Harry boy, he said to himself. His elation at being on the world’s most luxurious plane vied with his anxiety about flying across the ocean, but as the champagne took effect, elation won out.

He was surprised to see that the menu was in English. Did the Americans not realize that posh menus were supposed to be in French? Perhaps they were just too sensible to print menus in a foreign language. Harry had a feeling he was going to like America.

The dining room seated only fourteen, so dinner would be served in three sittings, the steward explained. “Would you like to dine at six, seven thirty, or nine o’clock, Mr. Vandenpost?”

This might be his chance, Harry realized. If the Oxenfords ate earlier or later than he, he might be left alone in the compartment. But which sitting would they choose? Harry mentally cursed the steward for starting with him. A British steward would automatically have spoken to the titled people first, but this democratic American was probably going by seat numbers. He would have to guess what the Oxenfords would choose. “Let me see,” he said to gain time. Rich people ate their meals late, in his experience. A laborer might have breakfast at seven, dinner at noon and tea at five, but a lord would breakfast at nine, have lunch at two and dine at eight thirty. The Oxenfords would eat late, so Harry picked the first sitting. “I’m kinda hungry,” he said. “I’ll eat at six.”

The steward turned to the Oxenfords, and Harry held his breath.

Lord Oxenford said: “Nine o’clock, I think.”

Harry suppressed a smile of satisfaction.

But Lady Oxenford said: “That’s too long for Percy to wait—let’s make it earlier.”

All right, Harry thought uneasily, but not too early, for heaven’s sake.

Lord Oxenford said: “Seven thirty, then.”

Harry felt a little glow of pleasure. He was one step nearer the Delhi Suite.

Now the steward turned to the passenger opposite Harry, the guy in the wine red waistcoat who looked like a policeman. His name was Clive Membury, he had told them. Say seven thirty, Harry thought, and leave me alone in the compartment. But to his disappointment Membury was not hungry, and chose nine o’clock.

What a pain, Harry thought. Now Membury would be here while the Oxenfords were eating. Maybe he would step out for a few minutes. He was a restless type, always up and down. But if he would not go of his own accord Harry would have to find a way to get rid of him. That would have been easy if they had not been on a plane: Harry would have told him he was wanted in another room, or there was a telephone call for him, or there was a naked woman in the street outside. Here it might be harder.

The steward said: “Mr. Vandenpost, the engineer and the navigator will join you at your table, if that’s agreeable.”

“Sure is,” Harry said. He would enjoy talking to some of the crew.

Lord Oxenford ordered another whiskey. There was a man that had a thirst, as the Irish would say. His wife was pale and quiet. She had a book in her lap, but she never turned a page. She looked depressed.

Young Percy went forward to talk to the off-duty crew, and Margaret came and sat next to Harry. He caught a breath of her scent and identified it as Tosca. She had taken off her coat, and he was able to see that she had her mother’s figure: she was quite tall, with square shoulders and a deep bust, and long legs. Her clothes, good quality but plain, did not do her justice: Harry could imagine her in a long evening dress with a plunging neckline, her red hair up and her long white neck graced by drop earrings in carved emeralds by Louis Cartier in his Indian period.... She would be stunning. Obviously that was not how she saw herself. She was embarrassed about being a wealthy aristocrat, so she dressed like a vicar’s wife.

She was a formidable girl, and Harry was a little intimidated by her, but he could also see her vulnerable side, and he found that endearing. He thought: Never mind endearing, Harry boy—just remember that she’s a danger to you and you need to cultivate her.

He asked her if she had flown before. “Only to Paris, with Mother,” she said.

Only to Paris, with Mother, he thought wonderingly. His mother would never see Paris or fly in a plane. “What was it like?” he asked. “To be so privileged?”

“I hated those trips to Paris,” she said. “I had to have tea with boring English people when I wanted to go to smoky restaurants that had Negro bands.”

“My ma used to take me to Margate,” Harry said. “I used to paddle in the sea, and we had ice cream and fish-and-chips.”

As the words came out he realized that he was supposed to lie about this, and he felt panicky. He should be mumbling something vague about boarding school and a remote country house, as he normally did when forced to talk about his childhood to upper-class girls. But Margaret knew his secret, and no one else could hear what he was saying above the hum of the Clipper’s engines. All the same, as he found himself spilling out the truth, he felt as if he had jumped out of the plane and was waiting for his parachute to open.

“We never went to the seaside,” Margaret said wistfully. “Only the common people went paddling in the sea. My sister and I used to envy the poor children. They could do anything they liked.”

Harry was amused. Here was further proof that he had been born lucky: the wealthy children, driving in big black cars, wearing coats with velvet collars and eating meat every day, had envied him his barefoot freedom and his fish-and-chips.

“I remember the smells,” she went on. “The smell outside a pie-shop door at lunchtime; the smell of the oiled machinery as you go past a fairground; the cozy smell of beer and tobacco that comes out when a pub door opens on a winter evening. People always seemed to be having such fun in those places. I’ve never been in a pub.”

“You haven’t missed much,” said Harry, who did not like pubs. “The food is better at the Ritz.”

“We each prefer the other’s way of life,” she said.

“But I’ve tried both,” Harry pointed out. “I know which is best.”

She looked thoughtful for a minute, then said: “What are you going to do with your life?”

It was a peculiar question. “Enjoy myself,” Harry said.

“No, but really.”

“What do you mean, ‘really’?”

“Everyone wants to enjoy themselves. What will you do?”

“What I do now.” Impulsively, Harry decided to tell her something he had never revealed before. “Did you ever read The Amateur Cracks-man, by Homung?” She shook her head. “It’s about a gentleman thief called Raffles, who smokes Turkish cigarettes and wears beautiful clothes and gets invited to people’s houses and steals their jewelry. I want to be like him.”

“Oh, come on, don’t be silly,” she said brusquely.

He was a little hurt. She could be brutally direct when she thought you were talking nonsense. But this was not nonsense; this was his dream. Now that he had opened his heart to her, he felt the need to convince her that he was telling the truth. “It’s not silly,” he snapped.

“But you can’t be a thief all your life,” she said. “You’ll end up growing old in jail. Even Robin Hood got married and settled down eventually. What would you really like?”

Harry normally answered this question with a shopping list: a flat, a car, girls, parties, Savile Row suits and fine jewels. But he knew she would pour scorn on that. He resented her attitude; but all the same it was true that his ambitions were not quite so materialistic. He very much wanted her to believe in his dreams; and to his surprise he found himself telling her things he had never admitted before. “I’d like to live in a big country house with ivy growing up the walls,” he said.

He stopped. Suddenly he felt emotional. He was embarrassed, but for some reason he wanted very badly to tell her this. “A house in the country with a tennis court and stables, and rhododendrons all up the drive,” he went on. He could see it in his mind, and it seemed like the safest, most comfortable place in the world. “I’d walk around the grounds in brown boots and a tweed suit, talking to the gardeners and the stable boys, and they’d all think I was a real gent. I’d have all my money in rock-solid investments and never spend half the income. I’d give garden parties in the summer, with strawberries and cream. And five daughters all as pretty as their mother.”

“Five!” she laughed. “You’d better marry someone strong!” But she became serious immediately. “It’s a lovely dream,” she said. “I hope it comes true.”

He felt very close to her, as if he could ask her anything. “What about you?” he said. “Have you got a dream?”

“I want to be in the war,” she said. “I’m going to join the A.T.S.”

It still seemed funny, to talk about women joining the army, but of course it was common now. “What would you do?”

“Drive. They need women to be dispatch riders and ambulance drivers.”

“It will be dangerous.”

“I know. I don’t care. I just want to be in the fight. This is our last chance to stop Fascism.” Her jaw was set firm and there was a reckless look in her eye, and Harry thought she was terribly brave.

He said: “You seem very determined.”

“I had a ... friend who was killed by the Fascists in Spain, and I want to finish the work he began.” She looked sad.

On impulse, Harry said: “Did you love him?”

She nodded.

He could see that she was close to tears. He touched her arm in sympathy. “Do you still love him?”

“I always will, a little bit.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “His name was Ian.”

Harry felt a lump in his throat. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her, and he would have done so had it not been for her red-faced father sitting on the far side of the compartment drinking whiskey and reading The Times. He had to be content with giving her hand a quick, discreet squeeze. She smiled gratefully, seeming to understand.

The steward said: “Dinner is served, Mr. Vandenpost.”

Harry was surprised that it was six o’clock already. He was sorry to break off his conversation with Margaret.

She read his mind. “We’ve got lots more time to talk,” she said. “We’re going to be together for the next twenty-four hours.”

“Right.” He smiled. He touched her hand again. “See you later,” he murmured.

He had started out befriending her in order to manipulate her, he remembered. He had ended up telling her all his secrets. She had a way of overturning his plans that was kind of worrying. Worst of all was that he liked it.

He went into the next compartment. He was a little startled to see that it had been completely transformed, from a lounge into a dining room. There were three tables each for four people, plus two smaller serving tables. It was set out like a good restaurant, with linen tablecloths and napkins, and bone china crockery, white with the blue Pan American symbol. He noticed that the walls in this area were papered with a design showing a map of the world and the same winged Pan American symbol.

The steward showed him to a seat opposite a short, thickset man in a pale gray suit that Harry rather envied. His tie was fixed with a stickpin that had a large, genuine pearl. Harry introduced himself, and the man stuck out a hand and said: “Tom Luther.” Harry saw that his cuff links matched the tiepin. Here was a man who spent money on jewelry.

Harry sat down and unfolded his napkin. Luther had an American accent with something else at the bottom of it, some European intonation. “Where are you from, Tom?” Harry said, probing.

“Providence, Rhode Island. You?”

“Philadelphia.” Harry wished to hell he knew where Philadelphia was. “But I’ve lived all over. My father was in insurance.”

Luther nodded politely, not much interested. That suited Harry. He did not want to be questioned about his background: it was too easy to slip up.

The two crew members arrived and introduced themselves. Eddie Deakin, the engineer, was a broad-shouldered, sandy-haired type with a pleasant face: Harry got the impression he would have liked to undo his tie and take off his uniform jacket. Jack Ashford, the navigator, was dark-haired and blue-chinned, a regular, precise man who looked as if he had been born in a uniform.

As soon as they sat down, Harry sensed hostility between Eddie the engineer and Luther the passenger. That was interesting.

The dinner started with shrimp cocktail. The two crew members drank Coke. Harry had a glass of hock and Tom Luther ordered a martini.

Harry was still thinking about Margaret Oxenford and the boyfriend killed in Spain. He looked out of the window, wondering how much she still felt for the boy. A year was a long time, especially at her age.

Jack Ashford followed his look and said: “We’re lucky with the weather, so far.”

Harry noticed that the sky was clear and the sun was shining on the wings. “What’s it usually like?” he said.

“Sometimes it rains all the way from Ireland to Newfoundland,” Jack said. “We get hail, snow, ice, thunder and lightning.”

Harry remembered something he had read. “Isn’t ice dangerous?”

“We plan our route to avoid freezing conditions. But in any event the plane is fitted with rubber deicing boots.”

“Boots?”

“Just rubber covers that fit over the wings and tail where they tend to ice up.”

“So what’s the forecast for the rest of the trip?”

Jack hesitated momentarily, and Harry saw that he wished he had not mentioned the weather. “There’s a storm in the Atlantic,” he said.

“Bad?”

“In the center it’s bad, but we’ll only touch the skirt of it, I expect.” He sounded only half convinced.

Tom Luther said: “What’s it like in a storm?” He was smiling, showing his teeth, but Harry saw fear in his pale blue eyes.

“It gets a little bumpy,” Jack said.

He did not elaborate, but the engineer, Eddie, spoke up. Looking directly at Tom Luther, he said: “It’s kind of like trying to ride an unbroken horse.”

Luther blanched. Jack frowned at Eddie, plainly disapproving of his tactlessness.

The next course was turtle soup. Both stewards were serving now, Nicky and Davy. Nicky was fat and Davy was small. In Harry’s estimation they were both homosexual—or “musical,” as the Noel Coward set would say. Harry liked their informal efficiency.

The engineer seemed preoccupied. Harry studied him covertly. He did not look the sulky type: he had an open, good-natured face. In an attempt to draw him out, Harry said: “Who’s flying the plane while you’re eating dinner, Eddie?”

“The assistant engineer, Mickey Finn, is doing my job,” Eddie said. He spoke pleasantly enough, although he did not smile. “We carry a crew of nine, not counting the two stewards. All except the captain work alternate four-hour shifts. Jack and I have been on duty since we took off from Southampton at two o’clock, so we stood down at six, a few minutes ago.”

“What about the captain?” Tom Luther said worriedly. “Does he take pills to stay awake?”

“He naps when he can,” Eddie said. “He’ll probably take a long break when we pass the point of no return.”

“So we’ll be flying through the sky and the captain will be asleep?” Luther said, and his voice was a little too loud.

“Sure,” said Eddie with a grin.

Luther was looking terrified. Harry tried to steer the conversation into calmer waters. “What’s the point of no return?”

“We monitor our fuel reserves constantly. When we don’t have enough fuel to get back to Foynes, we’ve passed the point of no return.” Eddie spoke brusquely, and Harry now had no doubt the engineer was trying to scare Tom Luther.

The navigator broke in, trying to be reassuring. “Right now we have enough fuel to reach our destination or to return home.”

Luther said: “But what if you don’t have enough to get there or get back?”

Eddie leaned across the table and grinned humorlessly at Luther. “Trust me, Mr. Luther,” he said.

“It would never happen,” the navigator said hastily. “We’d turn back for Foynes before we reached that point. And for extra safety, we make the calculations based on three engines instead of four, just in case something should go wrong with one engine.”

Jack was trying to restore Luther’s confidence, but of course talk of engines going wrong only made the man more frightened. He tried to drink some soup but his hand was shaking and he spilled it on his tie.

Eddie sank back into silence, apparently satisfied. Jack tried to make small talk, and Harry did his best to help out, but there was an awkward atmosphere. Harry wondered what the hell was going on between Eddie and Luther.

The dining room filled up rapidly. The beautiful woman in the dotted dress came to sit at the next table with her blue-blazered escort. Harry had found out that their names were Diana Lovesey and Mark Alder. Margaret should dress like Mrs. Lovesey, Harry thought: she could look even better. However, Mrs. Lovesey did not look happy—in fact she looked as miserable as sin.

The service was fast and the food was good. The main course was filet mignon with asparagus hollandaise and mashed potatoes. The steak was about twice as big as would have been served in an English restaurant. Harry did not eat it all and he refused another glass of wine. He wanted to be alert. He was going to steal the Delhi Suite. The thought thrilled him but also made him apprehensive. It would be the biggest job of his career, and it could be the last, if he so chose. It could buy him that ivy-grown country house with a tennis court.

After the steak they served a salad, which surprised Harry. Salad was not often served in fancy restaurants in London, and certainly not as a separate course following the main dish.

Peach melba, coffee and petits-fours came in rapid succession. Eddie, the engineer, seemed to realize he was being unsociable, and made an effort to converse. “May I ask what’s the purpose of your trip, Mr. Vandenpost?”

“I guess I want to stay out of the way of Hitler,” Harry said. “At least until America gets into the war.”

“You think that will happen?” Eddie asked skeptically.

“It did last time.”

Tom Luther said: “We have no quarrel with the Nazis. They’re against communism, and so are we.”

Jack nodded in agreement.

Harry was taken aback. In England everyone thought America would come into the war. But around this table there was no such assumption. Perhaps the British were kidding themselves, he thought pessimistically. Maybe there was no help to be had from America. That would be bad news for Ma, back in London.

Eddie said: “I think we may have to fight the Nazis.” There was an angry note in his voice. “They’re like gangsters,” he said, looking directly at Luther. “In the end, people of that type just have to be exterminated, like rats.”

Jack stood up abruptly, looking worried. “If we’re through, Eddie, we’d better get a little rest,” he said firmly.

Eddie looked startled at this sudden demand, but after a moment he nodded assent, and the two crew members took their leave.

Harry said: “That engineer was kind of rude.”

“Was he?” said Luther. “I didn’t notice.”

You bloody liar, Harry thought. He practically called you a gangster!

Luther ordered a brandy. Harry wondered if he really was a gangster. The ones Harry knew in London were much more showy, with multiple rings and fur coats and two-tone shoes. Luther looked more like a self-made millionaire businessman, a meat packer or shipbuilder, something industrial. On impulse Harry asked him: “What do you do for a living, Tom?”

“I’m a businessman in Rhode Island.”

It was not an encouraging reply, and a few moments later Harry stood up, gave a polite nod and left.

When he reentered his compartment, Lord Oxenford said abruptly: “Dinner any good?”

Harry had enjoyed it thoroughly, but upper-class people were never too enthusiastic about food. “Not bad,” he said neutrally. “And there’s a drinkable hock.”

Oxenford grunted and went back to his newspaper. There’s no one as rude as a rude lord, Harry thought.

Margaret smiled and looked pleased to see him. “What was it like, really?” she said in a conspiratorial murmur.

“Delicious,” he replied, and they both laughed.

Margaret looked different when she laughed. In repose she was pale and unremarkable, but now her cheeks turned pink and she opened her mouth, showing two rows of even teeth, and tossed her hair; and she let out a throaty chuckle that Harry found sexy. He wanted to reach across the narrow aisle and touch her. He was about to do so when he caught the eye of Clive Membury, sitting opposite him, and for some reason that made him resist the impulse.

“There’s a storm over the Atlantic,” he told her.

“Does that mean we’ll have a rough ride?”

“Yes. They’ll try to fly around the edge of it, but all the same it’s going to be bumpy.”

It was hard to talk to her because the stewards were constantly passing along the aisle between them, carrying food to the dining room and returning with trays of dirty dishes. Harry was impressed that just two men were able to do the cooking and serving for so many diners.

He picked up a copy of Life magazine that Margaret had discarded and began to leaf through it while he waited impatiently for the Oxenfords to go to dinner. He had not brought any books or magazines: he was not much of a reader. He liked to see what was in the newspaper, but for entertainment he preferred the radio and the cinema.

At last the Oxenfords were called for dinner, and Harry was left alone with Clive Membury. The man had sat in the main lounge, playing cards, on the first leg of the trip, but now that the lounge had become the dining room he had settled in his seat. Perhaps he’ll go to the carsey, Harry thought; and perhaps I’d better remember to call it the john before I get caught out.

He wondered again whether Membury was a policeman, and if so what he was doing on the Pan American Clipper. If he was following a suspect, the crime would have to be a major one, for the British police force to fork out for a Clipper ticket. But perhaps he was one of those people who save up for years and years to take some dream trip, a cruise down the Nile or a ride on the Orient Express. He might be an aircraft fanatic who just wanted to make the great transatlantic flight. If that’s true, I hope he’s enjoying it, Harry thought. Ninety quid is a hell of a lot of money for a copper.

Patience was not Harry’s strong point, and when after half an hour Membury had not moved, he decided to take matters into his own hands. “Have you seen the flight deck, Mr. Membury?” he asked.

“No—”

“Apparently it’s really something. They say it’s as big as the entire interior of a Douglas DC-3, and that’s a pretty big airplane.”

“Goodness.” Membury was only politely interested. He was not an aircraft enthusiast, then.

“We ought to go look at it.” Harry stopped Nicky, who was going by with a tureen of turtle soup. “Can passengers visit the flight deck?”

“Yes, sir, and welcome!”

“Is now a good time?”

“It’s a very good time, Mr. Vandenpost. We’re not landing or taking off, the crew aren’t changing watches, and the weather is calm. You couldn’t pick a better moment.”

Harry had been hoping he would say that. He stood up and looked expectantly at Membury. “Shall we?”

Membury looked as if he were about to refuse. He was not the type to be easily bullied. On the other hand, it might seem churlish to refuse to go and see the flight deck; and perhaps Membury would not want to seem disagreeable. After a moment’s hesitation, he got to his feet, saying: “By all means.”

Harry led him forward, past the kitchen and the men’s room, and turned right, mounting the twisting staircase. At the top he emerged onto the flight deck. Membury was right behind him.

Harry looked around. It was nothing like his picture of the cockpit of an airplane. Clean, quiet and comfortable, it looked more like an office in a modem building. Harry’s dinner companions, the navigator and the engineer, were not present, of course, as they were off duty; this was the alternative shift. However, the captain was here, sitting behind a small table at the rear of the cabin. He looked up, smiled pleasantly and said: “Good evening, gentlemen. Would you like to look around?”

“Sure would,” said Harry. “But I gotta get my camera. Is it okay to take a picture?”

“You bet.”

“I’ll be right back.”

He hurried back down the stairs, pleased with himself but tense, too. He had got Membury out of the way for a while, but his search would have to be very quick.

He returned to the compartment. One steward was in the galley and the other in the dining room. He would have liked to wait until both were busy serving at tables, so that he could feel confident they would not pass through the compartment for a few minutes; but he did not have time. He would just have to take a chance on being interrupted.

He pulled Lady Oxenford’s bag out from under her seat. It was too big and heavy for a cabin bag, but she probably did not carry it herself. He put it on the seat and opened it. It was not locked: that was a bad sign—even she was not likely to be so innocent as to leave priceless jewelry in an unlocked case.

All the same he rummaged through it quickly, watching out of the comer of his eye in case anyone should walk in. There was scent and makeup, a silver brush-and-comb set, a chestnut-colored dressing gown, a nightdress, dainty slippers, peach-colored silk underwear, stockings, a sponge bag containing a toothbrush and the usual toiletries, and a book of Blake’s poems—but no jewels.

Harry cursed silently. He had felt this was the likeliest place the suite would be. Now he began to doubt his whole theory.

The search had taken about twenty seconds.

He closed the case quickly and put it back under the seat.

He wondered whether she had asked her husband to carry the jewels.

He looked at the bag under Lord Oxenford’s seat. The stewards were still busy. He decided to push his luck.

He pulled out Oxenford’s bag. It was like a carpetbag, but leather. It was fastened with a zipper at the top, and the zipper had a little padlock. Harry carried a penknife with him for moments such as this. He used the knife to snap the padlock, then unzipped the bag.

As he was rifling through the contents, the little steward, Davy, came through, carrying a tray of drinks from the galley. Harry looked up at him and smiled. Davy looked at the bag. Harry held his breath and kept his frozen smile. The steward passed on into the dining room. He had naturally assumed the bag was Harry’s own.

Harry breathed again. He was a master at disarming suspicion, but every time he did it he was scared to death.

Oxenford’s bag contained the masculine equivalent of what his wife was carrying: shaving tackle, hair oil, striped pajamas, flannel underwear and a biography of Napoleon. Harry zipped it up and replaced the padlock. Oxenford would find it broken and wonder how it had happened. If he was suspicious he would check to see whether anything was missing. Finding everything in place, he would imagine the lock had been faulty.

Harry put the bag back in its place.

He had got away with it, but he was no nearer the Delhi Suite.

It was unlikely the children were carrying the jewels, but, recklessly, he decided to go through their luggage.

If Lord Oxenford had decided to be sly and put his wife’s jewelry in his children’s luggage, he would be more likely to pick Percy, who would be thrilled by the conspiracy, than Margaret, who was disposed to defy her father.

Harry picked up Percy’s canvas holdall and put it on the seat just where he had placed Oxenford’s bag, hoping that if Davy, the steward, passed through again, he would think it was the same bag.

Percy’s things were so neatly packed that Harry was sure a servant had done it. No normal fifteen-year-old boy would fold his pajamas and wrap them in tissue paper. His sponge bag contained a new toothbrush and a fresh tube of toothpaste. There was a pocket chess set, a small bundle of comics and a packet of chocolate biscuits—put there, Harry imagined, by a fond cook or housemaid. Harry looked inside the chess set, riffled through the comics and broke open the biscuit packet, but he found no jewels.

As he was replacing the bag, a passenger walked through on the way to the men’s room. Harry ignored him.

He could not believe Lady Oxenford had left the Delhi Suite behind, in a country that might be invaded and conquered within a few weeks. But she was not wearing it or carrying it, as far as he could tell. If it was not in Margaret’s bag, it had to be in the checked baggage. That would be tough to get at. Could you get into the hold while the plane was in the air? The alternative might be to follow the Oxenfords to their hotel in New York....

The captain and Clive Membury would be wondering how he could take so long to fetch his camera.

He picked up Margaret’s bag. It looked like a birthday present: a small, round-cornered case made of soft cream leather with beautiful brass fittings. When he opened it he smelled her perfume, Tosca. He found a cotton nightdress with a pattern of small flowers, and tried to picture her in it. It was too girlish for her. Her underwear was plain white cotton. He wondered whether she was a virgin. There was a small framed photograph of a boy about twenty-one, a handsome fellow with longish dark hair and black eyebrows, wearing a college gown and a mortarboard hat: the boy who died in Spain, presumably. Had she slept with him? Harry rather thought she might have, despite her schoolgirl underpants. She was reading a novel by D. H. Lawrence. I bet her mother doesn’t know about that, Harry thought. There was a little stack of linen handkerchiefs embroidered “M.O.” They smelled of Tosca.

The jewels were not here. Damn it to hell.

Harry decided to take one of the scented handkerchiefs as a souvenir; and just as he picked it up, Davy passed through carrying a tray stacked high with soup bowls.

He glanced at Harry and then stopped, frowning. Margaret’s bag looked quite different from Lord Oxenford’s, of course. It was plain that Harry could not be the owner of both bags; therefore he had to be looking in other people’s.

Davy stared at him for a moment, obviously suspicious but also frightened of accusing a passenger. Eventually he stammered: “Sir, is that your case?”

Harry showed him the little handkerchief. “Would I blow my nose in this?” He closed the case and replaced it.

Davy still looked worried. Harry said: “She asked me to fetch it. The things we do ...”

Davy’s expression changed and he looked embarrassed. “I’m sorry, sir, but I hope you understand—”

“I’m happy you’re on your toes,” Harry said. “Keep up the good work.” He patted Davy’s shoulder. Now he had to give the damn handkerchief to Margaret, in order to lend credence to his story. He stepped into the dining room.

She was at a table with her parents and her brother. He held the handkerchief out to her, saying: “You dropped this.”

She was surprised. “Did I? Thank you!”

“You bet.” He got out fast. Would Davy check his story by asking her whether she had told Harry to fetch her a clean handkerchief? He doubted it.

He went back through his compartment, passed the galley where Davy was stacking the dirty dishes, and climbed the spiral staircase. How the hell was he going to get into the baggage hold? He did not even know where it was: he had not watched the luggage being loaded. But there had to be a way.

Captain Baker was explaining to Clive Membury how they navigated across the featureless ocean. “Most of the time we’re out of range of the radio beacons, so the stars provide our best guide—when we can see them.”

Membury looked up at Harry. “No camera?” he said sharply.

Definitely a copper, Harry thought. “I forgot to load it with film,” he said. “Dumb, huh?” He looked around. “How can you see the stars from in here?”

“Oh, the navigator just steps outside for a moment,” the captain said, straight-faced. Then he grinned. “Just kidding. There’s an observatory. I’ll show you.” He opened a door at the rear end of the flight deck and stepped through. Harry followed and found himself in a narrow passage. The captain pointed up. “This is the observation dome.” Harry looked up without much interest: his mind was still on Lady Oxenford’s jewelry. There was a glazed bubble in the roof, and a folding ladder hung on a hook to one side. “He just climbs up there with his octant any time there’s a break in the cloud. This is also the baggage loading hatch.”

Harry was suddenly attentive. “The baggage comes in through the roof?” he said.

“Sure. Right here.”

“And then where is it stowed?”

The captain pointed to the two doors on either side of the narrow passage. “In the baggage holds.”

Harry could hardly believe his luck. “So all the bags are right here, behind those doors?”

“Yes, sir.”

Harry tried one of the doors. It was not locked. He looked inside. There were the suitcases and trunks of the passengers, carefully stacked and roped to the struts so they would not move in flight.

Somewhere in there was the Delhi Suite, and a life of luxury for Harry Marks.

Clive Membury was looking over Harry’s shoulder. “Fascinating,” he murmured.

“You can say that again,” said Harry.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Margaret was in high spirits. She kept forgetting that she did not want to go to America. She could hardly believe she had made friends with a real thief! Ordinarily, if someone had said to her, “I’m a thief,” she would not have believed him; but in Harry’s case she knew it was true because she had met him in a police station and seen him accused.

She had always been fascinated by people who lived outside the ordered social world: criminals, bohemians, anarchists, prostitutes and tramps. They seemed so free. Of course, they might not be free to order champagne or fly to New York or send their children to a university—she was not so naïve as to overlook the restrictions of being an outcast. But people such as Harry never had to do anything just because they were ordered to, and that seemed wonderful to her. She dreamed of being a guerrilla fighter, living in the hills, wearing trousers and carrying a rifle, stealing food and sleeping under the stars and never having her clothes ironed.

She never met people like that; or if she met them she did not recognize them for what they were—had she not sat on a doorstep in “the most notorious street in London” without realizing she would be taken for a prostitute? How long ago that seemed, although it was only last night.

Getting to know Harry was the most interesting thing that had happened to her for ages. He represented everything she had ever longed for. He could do anything he liked! This morning he had decided to go to America, and this afternoon he was on his way. If he wanted to dance all night and sleep all day, he just did. He ate and drank what he liked, when he felt like it, at the Ritz or in a pub or on board the Pan American Clipper. He could join the Communist party and then leave it without explaining himself to anyone. When he needed money, he just took some from people who had more than they deserved. He was a complete free spirit!

She longed to know more about him, and resented the time she had to waste having dinner without him.

There were three tables of four in the dining room. Baron Gabon and Carl Hartmann were at the table next to that of the Oxenfords. Father had thrown a dirty look at them when they came in, presumably because they were Jewish. Sharing their table were Ollis Field and Frank Gordon. Frank Gordon was a boy a bit older than Harry, a handsome devil, though with something of a brutal look to his mouth; and Ollis Field was a washed-out-looking older man, completely bald. These two had attracted some comment by remaining on board the plane when everyone else had disembarked at Foynes.

At the third table were Lulu Bell and Princess Lavinia, who was loudly complaining that there was too much salt in the sauce on the shrimp cocktail. With them were two people who had joined the plane at Foynes, Mr. Lovesey and Mrs. Lenehan. Percy said the new people were sharing the honeymoon suite although they were not married. Margaret was surprised that Pan American allowed that. Perhaps they were bending the rules because so many people were desperate to get to America.

Percy sat down to dinner wearing a black Jewish skullcap. Margaret giggled. Where on earth had he got that? Father snatched it off his head, growling furiously: “Foolish boy!”

Mother’s face had the glazed look it had shown ever since she stopped crying over Elizabeth. She said vaguely: “It seems awfully early to be dining.”

“It’s half past seven,” Father said.

“Why isn’t it getting dark?”

Percy answered: “It is, back in England. But we’re three hundred miles off the Irish coast. We’re chasing the sun.”

“But it will get dark eventually.”

“About nine o’clock, I should think,” Percy said.

“Good,” Mother said vaguely.

“Do you realize that if we went fast enough, we would keep up with the sun and it would never get dark?” said Percy.

Father said condescendingly: “I don’t think there’s any chance men will ever build planes that fast.”

The steward Nicky brought their first course. “Not for me, thank you,” Percy said. “Shrimps aren’t kosher.”

The steward shot him a startled look but said nothing. Father went red.

Margaret hastily changed the subject. “When do we reach the next stop, Percy?” He always knew such things.

“Journey time to Botwood is sixteen and a half hours,” he said. “We should arrive at nine a.m. British Summer Time.”

“But what will the time be there?”

“Newfoundland Standard Time is three and a half hours behind Greenwich Mean Time.”

“Three and a half?” Margaret was surprised. “I didn’t know there were places that took odd half hours.”

Percy went on. “And Botwood is on daylight saving, like Britain; so the local time when we land will be five thirty in the morning.”

“I shan’t be able to wake up,” Mother said tiredly.

“Yes, you will,” Percy said impatiently. “You’ll feel as if it’s nine o’clock.”

Mother murmured: “Boys are so good at technical things.”

She irritated Margaret when she pretended to be dumb. She believed it was not feminine to understand technicalities. “Men don’t like girls to be too clever, dear,” she had said to Margaret, more than once. Margaret no longer argued with her but she did not believe it. Only stupid men felt that way, in her opinion. Clever men liked clever girls.

She became conscious of slightly raised voices at the next table. Baron Gabon and Carl Hartmann were arguing, while their dinner companions looked on in bemused silence. Margaret realized that Gabon and Hartmann had been deep in discussion every time she noticed them. Perhaps it was not surprising: if you were talking to one of the greatest brains in the world, you wouldn’t make small talk. She heard the word “Palestine.” They must be discussing Zionism. She shot a nervous glance at Father. He too had heard, and was looking bad-tempered. Before he could say anything, Margaret said: “We’re going to fly through a storm. It could get bumpy.”

“How do you know?” Percy said. There was a jealous note in his voice: he was the expert on flight details, not Margaret.

“Harry told me.”

“And how would he know?”

“He dined with the engineer and the navigator.”

“I’m not scared,” Percy said, in a tone which suggested that he was.

It had not occurred to Margaret to worry about the storm. It might be uncomfortable, but surely there was no real danger?

Father drained his glass and asked the steward irritably for more wine. Was he frightened of the storm? He was drinking even more than usual, she had observed. His face was flushed and his pale eyes seemed to stare. Was he nervous? Perhaps he was still upset over Elizabeth.

Mother said: “Margaret, you should talk more to that quiet Mr. Membury.”

Margaret was surprised. “Why? He seems to want to be left alone.”

“I expect he’s just shy.”

It was not like Mother to take pity on shy people, especially if they were, like Mr. Membury, unmistakably middle class. “Out with it, Mother,” said Margaret. “What do you mean?”

“I just don’t want you to spend the entire flight talking to Mr. Vandenpost.”

That was exactly what Margaret was going to do. “Why on earth shouldn’t I?” she said.

“Well, he’s your age, you know, and you don’t want to give him ideas.”

“I might rather like to give him ideas. He’s frightfully good-looking.”

“No, dear,” she said firmly. “There’s something about him that isn’t quite quite.” She meant he was not upper class. Like many foreigners who married into the aristocracy, Mother was even more snobbish than the English.

So she had not been completely taken in by Harry’s impersonation of a wealthy young American. Her social antennae were infallible. “But you said you knew the Philadelphia Vandenposts,” Margaret said.

“I do, but now that I think about it I’m sure he’s not from that family.”

“I may cultivate him just to punish you for being such a snob, Mother.”

“It’s not snobbery, dear. It’s breeding. Snobbery is vulgar.”

Margaret gave up. The armor of Mother’s superiority was impenetrable. It was useless to reason with her. But Margaret had no intention of obeying her. Harry was far too interesting.

Percy said: “I wonder what Mr. Membury is? I like his red waistcoat. He doesn’t look like a regular transatlantic traveler.”

Mother said: “I expect he’s some kind of functionary.”

That’s just what he looks like, Margaret thought. Mother had the sharpest eye for that sort of thing.

Father said: “He probably works for the airline.” “More like a civil servant, I should say,” Mother said.

The stewards brought the main course. Mother refused the filet mignon. “I never eat cooked food,” she said to Nicky. “Just bring me some celery and caviar.”

From the next table Margaret heard Baron Gabon say: “We must have a land of our own—there’s no other solution!”

Carl Hartmann replied: “But you’ve admitted that it will have to be a militarized state—”

“For defense against hostile neighbors!”

“And you concede that it will have to discriminate against Arabs in favor of Jews—but militarism and racism combined make Fascism, which is what you’re supposed to be fighting against!”

“Hush, not so loud,” Gabon said, and they lowered their voices.

In normal circumstances Margaret would have been interested in the argument: she had discussed it with Ian. Socialists were divided about Palestine. Some said it was an opportunity to create an ideal state; others that it belonged to the people who lived there and could not be “given” to the Jews any more than Ireland, or Hong Kong, or Texas. The fact that so many socialists were Jewish only complicated the issue.

However, now she just wished Gabon and Hartmann would calm down so that Father would not hear.

Unfortunately, it was not to be. They were arguing about something close to their hearts. Hartmann raised his voice again and said: “I don’t want to live in a racist state!”

Father said loudly: “I didn’t know we were traveling with a pack of Jews.”

“Oy vey,” said Percy.

Margaret looked at her father in dismay. There had been a time when his political philosophy had made a kind of sense. When millions of able-bodied men were unemployed and starving, it had seemed courageous to say that both capitalism and socialism had failed and that democracy did the ordinary man no good. There had been something appealing about the idea of an all-powerful State directing industry under the leadership of a benevolent dictator. But those high ideals and bold policies had now degenerated into this mindless bigotry. She had thought of Father when she found a copy of Hamlet in the library at home and read the line: “O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!”

She did not think the two men had heard Father’s crass remark, for he had his back to them, and they were absorbed in the debate. To get Father off the subject, she said brightly: “What time should we all go to bed?”

Percy said: “I’d like to go early.” That was unusual, but of course he was looking forward to the novelty of sleeping on a plane.

Mother said: “We’ll go at the usual time.”

“But in what time zone?” Percy said. “Shall I go at ten thirty British Summer Time, or ten thirty Newfoundland Daylight Saving Time?”

“America is racist!” Baron Gabon exclaimed. “So is France—England—the Soviet Union—all racist states!”

Father said: “For God’s sake!”

Margaret said: “Half past nine would suit me fine.”

Percy noticed the rhyme. “I’ll be more dead than alive by ten oh five,” he countered.

It was a game they had played as children. Mother joined in. “You won’t see me again after quarter to ten.”

“Show me your tattoo at a quarter to.”

“I’ll be the last at twenty past.”

“Your turn, Father,” said Percy.

There was a moment of silence. Father had played the game with them, in the old days, before he became bitter and disappointed. For an instant his face softened, and Margaret thought he would join in.

Then Carl Hartmann said: “So why set up yet another racist state?”

That did it. Father turned around, red-faced and spluttering. Before anybody could do anything to stop him he burst out: “You Jewboys had better keep your voices down.”

Hartmann and Gabon stared at him in astonishment.

Margaret felt her face flush bright red. Father had spoken loudly enough for everyone to hear, and the room had gone completely quiet. She wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. She was mortified that people should look at her and know she was the daughter of the coarse, drunken fool sitting opposite her. She caught Nicky’s eye, and saw by his face that he felt sorry for her, and that made her feel worse.

Baron Gabon turned pale. For a moment it seemed that he would say something in return, but then he changed his mind and looked away. Hartmann gave a twisted grin, and the thought flashed through Margaret’s mind that to him, coming from Nazi Germany, this sort of thing probably seemed mild.

Father had not finished. “This is a first-class compartment,” he added.

Margaret was watching Baron Gabon. In an attempt to ignore Father, he picked up his spoon, but his hand was shaking and he spilled soup on his dove gray waistcoat. He gave up and put down the spoon.

This visible sign of his distress touched Margaret’s heart. She felt fiercely angry with her father. She turned to him and for once she had the courage to tell him what she thought. She said furiously: “You have just grossly insulted two of the most distinguished men in Europe!”

He said: “Two of the most distinguished Jews in Europe.”

Percy said: “Remember Granny Fishbein.”

Father rounded on him. Wagging a finger, he said: “You’re to stop that nonsense—do you hear me?”

“I need to go to the toilet,” Percy said, getting up. “I feel sick.” He left the room.

Margaret realized that both Percy and she had stood up to Father, and he had not been able to do anything about it. That had to be some kind of milestone.

Father lowered his voice and spoke to Margaret. “Remember that these are the people who have driven us out of our home!” he hissed. Then he raised his voice again. “If they want to travel with us they ought to learn manners.”

“That’s enough!” said a new voice.

Margaret looked across the room. The speaker was Mervyn Lovesey, the man who had got on at Foynes. He was standing up. The stewards, Nicky and Davy, stood frozen still, looking scared. Lovesey came across the dining room and leaned on the Oxenfords’ table, looking dangerous. He was a tall, authoritative man in his forties with thick graying hair, black eyebrows and chiseled features. He wore an expensive suit but spoke with a Lancashire accent. “I’ll thank you to keep those views to yourself,” he said in a quietly threatening tone.

Father said: “None of your damn business—”

“But it is,” said Lovesey.

Margaret saw Nicky leave hastily, and guessed he was going to summon help from the flight deck.

Lovesey went on. “You wouldn’t know anything about this, but Professor Hartmann is the leading physicist in the world.”

“I don’t care what he is—”

“No, you wouldn’t. But I do. And I find your opinions as offensive as a bad smell.”

“I shall say what I please,” Father said, and he made to get up.

Lovesey held him down with a strong hand on his shoulder. “We’re at war with people like you.”

Father said weakly: “Clear off, will you?”

“I’ll clear off if you’ll shut up.”

“I shall call the captain—”

“No need,” said a new voice, and Captain Baker appeared, looking calmly authoritative in his uniform cap. “I’m here. Mr. Lovesey, may I ask you to return to your seat? I’d be much obliged to you.”

“Aye, I’ll sit down,” said Lovesey. “But I’ll not listen in silence while the most eminent scientist in Europe is told to keep his voice down and called a Jewboy by this drunken oaf.”

“Please, Mr. Lovesey.”

Lovesey returned to his seat.

The captain turned to Father. “Lord Oxenford, perhaps you were misheard. I’m sure you would not call another passenger the word mentioned by Mr. Lovesey.”

Margaret prayed that Father would accept this way out, but to her dismay he became more belligerent. “I called him a Jewboy because that’s what he is!” he blustered.

“Father, stop it!” she cried.

The captain said to Father: “I must ask you not to use such terms while you’re on board my aircraft.”

Father was scornful. “Is he ashamed of being a Jewboy?”

Margaret could see that Captain Baker was getting angry. “This is an American airplane, sir, and we have American standards of behavior. I insist that you stop insulting other passengers, and I warn you that I am empowered to have you arrested and confined to prison by the local police at our next port of call. You should be aware that in such cases, rare though they are, the airline always presses charges.”

Father was shaken by the threat of imprisonment. For a moment he was silenced. Margaret felt deeply humiliated. Although she had tried to stop her father, and protested against his behavior, she felt ashamed. His oafishness reflected on her: she was his daughter. She buried her face in her hands. She could not take any more.

She heard Father say: “I shall return to my compartment.” She looked up. He was getting to his feet. He turned to Mother. “My dear?”

Mother stood up, Father holding her chair. Margaret felt that all eyes were on her.

Harry suddenly appeared out of nowhere. He rested his hands lightly on the back of Margaret’s chair. “Lady Margaret,” he said with a little bow. She stood up, and he drew back her chair. She felt deeply grateful for this gesture of support.

Mother walked away from the table, her face expressionless, her head held high. Father followed her.

Harry gave Margaret his arm. It was only a little thing, but it meant a great deal to her. Although she was blushing furiously, she felt able to walk out of the room with dignity.

A buzz of conversation broke out behind her as she passed into the compartment.

Harry handed her to her seat.

“That was so gracious of you,” she said with feeling. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I could hear the row from in here,” he said quietly. “I knew you’d be feeling bad.”

“I’ve never been so humiliated,” she said abjectly.

But Father had not yet finished. “They’ll be sorry one day, the damn fools!” he said. Mother sat in her corner and stared blankly at him. “They’re going to lose this war, you mark my words.”

Margaret said: “No more, Father, please.” Fortunately only Harry was present to hear the tirade continue: Mr. Membury had disappeared.

Father ignored her. “The German army will sweep across England like a tidal wave!” he said. “And then what do you think will happen? Hitler will install a Fascist government, of course.” Suddenly there was an odd light in his eye. My God, he looks crazy, Margaret thought; my father is going insane. He lowered his voice, and his face took on a crafty expression. “An English Fascist government, of course. And he will need an English Fascist to lead it!”

“Oh, my God,” said Margaret. She saw what he was thinking and it made her despair.

Father thought Hitler was going to make him dictator of Britain.

He thought Britain would be conquered, and Hitler would call him back from exile to be the leader of a puppet government.

“And when there’s a Fascist prime minister in London—then they’ll dance to a different tune!” Father said triumphantly, as if he had won some argument.

Harry was staring at Father in astonishment. “Do you imagine ... do you expect Hitler to ask you ... ?”

“Who knows?” Father said. “It would have to be someone who bore no taint of the defeated administration. If called upon ... my duty to my country ... fresh start, no recriminations ...”

Harry looked too shocked to say anything.

Margaret was in despair. She had to get away from Father. She shuddered when she recalled the ignominious upshot of her last attempt to run away; but she should not let one failure discourage her. She had to try again.

It would be different this time. She would learn by Elizabeth’s example. She would think carefully and plan ahead. She would make sure she had money, friends and a place to sleep. This time she would make it work.

Percy emerged from the men’s room, having missed most of the drama. However, he appeared to have been in a drama of his own: his face was flushed and he looked excited. “Guess what!” he said to the compartment in general. “I just saw Mr. Membury in the washroom—he had his jacket undone and he was tucking his shirt into his trousers—and he’s got a shoulder holster under his jacket—and there’s a gun in it!”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Clipper was approaching the point of no return.

Eddie Deakin, distracted, nervy, unrested, went back on duty at ten p.m., British time. By this hour the sun had raced ahead, leaving the aircraft in darkness. The weather had changed, too. Rain lashed the windows, cloud obscured the stars, and inconstant winds buffeted the mighty plane disrespectfully, shaking up the passengers.

The weather was generally worse at low altitudes, but despite this, Captain Baker was flying at close to sea level. He was “hunting the wind,” searching for the altitude at which the westerly head wind was least strong.

Eddie was worried because he knew the plane was low on fuel. He sat down at his station and began to calculate the distance the plane could travel on what remained in the tanks. Because the weather was a little worse than forecast, the engines must have burned more fuel than anticipated. If there was not sufficient left to carry the plane to Newfoundland, they would have to turn back before reaching the point of no return.

And then what would happen to Carol-Ann?

Tom Luther was nothing if not a careful planner, and he must have considered the possibility that the Clipper would be delayed. He had to have some way of contacting his cronies to confirm or alter the time of the rendezvous.

But if the plane turned back, Carol-Ann would remain in the hands of the kidnappers for at least another twenty-four hours.

Eddie had sat in the forward compartment, fidgeting restlessly and looking out of the window at nothing at all, for most of his off-duty shift. He had not even tried to sleep, knowing it would be hopeless. Images of Carol-Ann had tormented him constantly: Carol-Ann in tears, or tied up, or bruised; Carol-Ann frightened, pleading, hysterical, desperate. Every five minutes he wanted to put his fist through the fuselage, and he had fought constantly against the impulse to run up the stairs and ask his replacement, Mickey Finn, about the fuel consumption.

It was because he was so distracted that he had allowed himself to needle Tom Luther in the dining room. His behavior had been very dumb. A piece of real bad luck had put them at the same table. Afterward, the navigator, Jack Ashford, had lectured Eddie, and he realized how stupid he had been. Now Jack knew something was going on between Eddie and Luther. Eddie had refused to enlighten Jack further, and Jack had accepted that—for now. Eddie had mentally vowed to be more careful. If Captain Baker should even suspect that his engineer was being blackmailed, he would abort the flight, and then Eddie would be powerless to help Carol-Ann. Now he had that to worry about as well.

Eddie’s attitude to Tom Luther had been forgotten, during the second dinner sitting, in the excitement of the near-fight between Mervyn Lovesey and Lord Oxenford. Eddie had not witnessed it—he had been in the forward compartment, worrying—but the stewards had told him all about it soon afterward. To Eddie, Oxenford seemed a brute who needed to be brought down a peg or two, and that was what Captain Baker had done. Eddie felt sorry for the boy, Percy, being raised by such a father.

The third sitting would be coming to an end in a few minutes, and then things would start to go quiet on the passenger deck. The older ones would go to bed. The majority would sit for a couple of hours, riding the bumps, too excited or nervous to feel sleepy; then, one by one, they would succumb to nature’s timetable and retire to bed. A few diehards would start a card game in the main lounge, and they would continue drinking, but it would be the quiet, steady kind of all-night drinking that rarely led to trouble.

Eddie anxiously plotted the plane’s fuel consumption on the chart they called “the Howgozit Curve.” The red line that showed actual consumption was consistently above the pencil line of his forecast. That was almost inevitable, since he had faked his forecast. But the difference was greater than he had expected, because of the weather.

, He got more worried as he worked out the plane’s effective range with the remaining fuel. When he made the calculations on the basis of three engines—which he was obliged to do by the safety rules—he found that there was not enough fuel to take them to Newfoundland.

He should have told the captain immediately, but he did not.

The shortfall was very small: with four engines there would be enough fuel. Furthermore, the situation might change in the next couple of hours. The wind might be lighter than forecast, so the plane would use less fuel than anticipated, and there would be more left for the rest of the journey. And finally, if worse came to worst, they could change their route and fly through the heart of the storm, thereby shortening the distance. The passenger would just have to suffer the bumps.

On his left the radio operator, Ben Thompson, was transcribing a Morse code message, his bald head bent over his console. Hoping it would be a forecast of better weather, Eddie stood behind him and read over his shoulder.

The message astonished and mystified him.

It was from the F.B.I., addressed to someone called Ollis Field. It read:THE BUREAU HAS RECEIVED INFORMATION THAT ASSOCIATES OF KNOWN CRIMINALS MAY BE ON YOUR FLIGHT. TAKE EXTRA PRECAUTIONS WITH THE PRISONER.

What did it mean? Did it have something to do with the kidnapping of Carol-Ann? For a moment Eddie’s head spun with the possibilities.

Ben tore the page off his pad and said: “Captain! You’d better take a look at this.”

Jack Ashford glanced up from his chart table, alerted by the urgent note in the radioman’s voice. Eddie took the message from Ben, showed it to Jack for a moment, then passed it to Captain Baker, who was eating steak and mashed potatoes from a tray at the conference table at the rear of the cabin.

The captain’s face darkened as he read. “I don’t like the look of this,” he said. “Ollis Field must be an F.B.I., agent.”

“Is he a passenger?” Eddie asked.

“Yes. I thought there was something strange about him. Drab character, not a typical Clipper passenger. He stayed on board during the stopover at Foynes.”

Eddie had not noticed him, but the navigator had. “I think I know who you mean,” said Jack, scratching his blue chin. “Bald guy. There’s a younger fellow with him, kind of flashily dressed. They seem like an odd couple.”

The captain said: “The kid must be the prisoner. I think his name is Frank Gordon.”

Eddie’s mind was working fast. “That’s why they stayed on board at Foynes: the F.B.I., man doesn’t want to give his prisoner a chance to escape.”

The captain nodded grimly. “Gordon must have been extradited from Britain—and you don’t get extradition orders for shoplifters. The guy must be a dangerous criminal. And they put him on my plane without telling me!”

Ben, the radio operator, said: “I wonder what he did.”

“Frank Gordon,” Jack mused. “It rings a bell. Wait a minute—I bet he’s Frankie Gordino!”

Eddie remembered reading about Gordino in the newspapers. He was an enforcer for a New England gang. The particular crime he was wanted for involved a Boston nightclub owner who refused to pay protection money. Gordino had burst into the club, shot the owner in the stomach, raped the man’s girlfriend, then torched the club. The guy died, but the girl escaped the fire and identified Gordino from pictures.

“We’ll soon find out if it’s him,” said Baker. “Eddie, do me a favor. Go and ask this Ollis Field to come up here.”

“Sure thing.” Eddie put on his cap and uniform jacket and went down the stairs, turning this new development over in his mind. He was sure there was some connection between Frankie Gordino and the people who had Carol-Ann, and he tried frantically to figure it out, without success.

He looked into the galley, where a steward was filling a coffee jug from the massive fifty-gallon urn. “Davy,” he said, “where’s Mr. Ollis Field?”

“Compartment number four, port side, facing the rear,” the steward said.

Eddie walked along the aisle, keeping his balance on the unsteady floor with a practiced gait. He noticed the Oxenford family, looking subdued in number 2 compartment. In the dining room the last sitting was just about finished, after-dinner coffee spilling into the saucers as the gathering storm buffeted the plane. He went through number 3, then up a step to number 4.

In the rear-facing seat on the port side was a bald man of about forty, looking sleepy, smoking a cigarette and staring through the window at the darkness outside. This was not Eddie’s picture of an F.B.I., agent: he could not see this man with a gun in his hand bursting into a room full of bootleggers.

Opposite Field was a younger man, much better dressed, with the build of a retired athlete putting on weight. That would have to be Gordino. He had the puffy, sulky face of a spoiled child. Would he shoot a man in the stomach? Eddie wondered. Yes, I think he would.

Eddie spoke to the older man. “Mr. Field?”

“Yes.”

“The captain would like a word, if you can spare him a moment.”

A slight frown crossed Field’s face, followed by a look of resignation. He had guessed that his secret was out, and he was irritated, but his look said in the long run it was all the same to him. “Of course,” he said. He crushed out his cigarette in the wall-mounted ashtray, unfastened his seat belt and stood up.

“Follow me, please,” Eddie said.

On the way back, passing through number 3 compartment, Eddie saw Tom Luther, and their eyes met. In that instant Eddie had a flash of inspiration.

Tom Luther’s mission was to rescue Frankie Gordino.

He was so struck by the explanation that he stopped, and Ollis Field bumped into his back.

Luther stared at him with a panicky look in his eyes, obviously afraid Eddie was going to do something that would give the game away.

“Pardon me,” Eddie said to Field, and he walked on.

Everything was becoming clear. Frankie Gordino had been forced to flee the States, but the F.B.I., had tracked him down in Britain and got him extradited. They had decided to fly him back, and somehow his partners in crime had found out about it. They were going to try to get Gordino off the plane before it reached the United States.

That was where Eddie came in. He would bring the Clipper down in the sea off the Maine coast. There would be a fast boat waiting. Gordino would be taken off the Clipper and would speed away in the boat. A few minutes later he would go ashore at some sheltered inlet, possibly on the Canadian side of the border. A car would be waiting to whisk him into hiding. He would have escaped justice—thanks to Eddie Deakin.

As he led Field up the spiral staircase to the flight deck, Eddie felt relieved that at last he understood what was going on, and horrified that in order to save his wife he had to help a murderer go free.

“Captain, this is Mr. Field,” he said.

Captain Baker had put on his uniform jacket and was seated behind the conference table with the radio message in his hand. His dinner tray had been taken away. His cap covered his blond hair, and gave him an air of authority. He looked up at Field, but did not ask him to sit down. “I’ve received a message for you—from the F.B.I.,” he said.

Field held out his hand for the paper, but Baker did not give it to him.

“Are you an agent of the F.B.I.?” the captain asked.

“Yes.”

“And are you on Bureau business right now?”

“Yes, I am.”

“What is that business, Mr. Field?”

“I don’t think you need to know that, Captain. Please give me the message. You did say it was addressed to me, not to you.”

“I’m the captain of this vessel, and it’s my judgment that I do need to know what business you’re on. Don’t argue with me, Mr. Field. Just do as I say.”

Eddie studied Field. He was a pale, tired man with a bald head and watery blue eyes. He was tall, and had once been powerfully built, but now he was round-shouldered and slack-looking. Eddie judged him to be arrogant rather than brave, and this judgment was confirmed when Field immediately caved in under pressure from the captain.

“I’m escorting an extradited prisoner back to the United States for trial,” he said. “His name is Frank Gordon.”

“Also known as Frankie Gordino?”

“That’s right.”

“I want you to know, mister, that I object to your bringing a dangerous criminal on board my airplane without telling me.”

“If you know the man’s real name, you probably also know what he does for a living. He works for Raymond Patriarca, who is responsible for armed robberies, extortion, loan-sharking, illegal gambling and prostitution from Rhode Island to Maine. Ray Patriarca has been declared Public Enemy Number One by the Providence Board of Public Safety. Gordino is what we call an enforcer: he terrorizes, tortures and murders people on Patriarca’s orders. We couldn’t warn you about him, for security reasons.”

“Your security is shit, Field.” Baker was really angry: Eddie had never known him to swear at a passenger. “The Patriarca gang knows all about it.” He handed over the radio message.

Field read it and turned gray. “How the hell did they find out?” he muttered.

“I have to ask which passengers are the ‘associates of known criminals,’ ” said the captain. “Do you recognize anyone on board?”

“Of course not,” Field said irritably. “If I had, I would have alerted the Bureau already.”

“If we can identify the people I’ll put them off the plane at the next stop.”

Eddie thought: I know who they are—Tom Luther and me.

Field said: “Radio the Bureau with a complete list of passengers and crew. They’ll run a check on every name.”

A shiver of anxiety ran through Eddie. Was there any risk that Tom Luther would be exposed by this check? That could ruin everything. Was he a known criminal? Was Tom Luther his real name? If he was using a false name he needed a forged passport too—but that might not be a problem if he was in league with big-time racketeers. Surely he would have taken that precaution? Everything else he had done had been well organized.

Captain Baker bristled. “I don’t think we need to worry about the crew.”

Field shrugged. “Please yourself. The Bureau will get the names from Pan American in a minute.”

Field was a tactless man, Eddie reflected. Did F.B.I.., agents get advice on how to be unpleasant from J. Edgar Hoover?

The captain picked up the passenger manifest and crew list from his table and handed it to the radio operator. “Send that right away, Ben,” he said. He paused, then added: “Include the crew.”

Ben Thompson sat at his console and began to tap out the message in Morse.

“One more thing,” the captain said to Field. “I’ll have to relieve you of your weapon.”

That was smart, Eddie thought. It had not even occurred to him that Field might be armed—but he had to be, if he was escorting a dangerous criminal.

Field said: “I object—”

“Passengers are not allowed to carry firearms. There are no exceptions to this rule. Hand over your gun.”

“If I refuse?”

“Mr. Deakin and Mr. Ashford will take it from you, anyway.”

Eddie was surprised by this announcement, but he played the part and moved threateningly closer to Field. Jack did the same.

Baker continued. “And if you oblige me to use force, I will have you put off the plane at our next stop, and I will not permit you to reboard.”

Eddie was impressed at how the captain maintained his superiority despite the fact that his antagonist was armed. This was not how it happened in the movies, where the man with the gun was able to boss everyone else around.

What would Field do? The F.B.I., would not approve of his giving up his gun, but on the other hand it would surely be worse to get thrown off the plane.

Field said: “I’m escorting a dangerous prisoner—I need to be armed.”

Eddie saw something out of the corner of his eye. The door at the rear of the cabin, which led to the observation dome and the cargo holds, was ajar, and behind it something moved.

Captain Baker said: “Take his gun, Eddie.”

Eddie reached inside Field’s jacket. The man did not move. Eddie found the shoulder holster, unbuttoned the flap and withdrew the gun. Field looked ahead stonily.

Then Eddie stepped to the rear of the cabin and threw open the door.

Young Percy Oxenford stood there.

Eddie was relieved. He had half imagined that some of Gordino’s gang would be waiting there with machine guns.

Captain Baker stared at Percy and said: “Where did you come from?”

“There’s a ladder next to the ladies’ powder room,” Percy said. “It leads up into the tail of the plane.” That was where Eddie had inspected the rudder trim control cables. “You can crawl along from there. It comes out by the baggage holds.”

Eddie was still holding Ollis Field’s gun. He put it in the navigator’s chart drawer.

Captain Baker said to Percy: “Go back to your seat, please, young man, and don’t leave the passenger cabin at any time during the remainder of the flight.” Percy turned to go back the way he had come. “Not that way,” Baker snapped. “Down the stairs.”

Looking a little scared, Percy hurried through the cabin and scuttled off down the stairs.

“How long had he been there, Eddie?” asked the captain.

“I don’t know. I guess he probably heard the whole thing.”

“There goes our hope of keeping this from the passengers.” For a moment Baker looked weary, and Eddie had a flash of insight into the weight of responsibility the captain carried. Then Baker became brisk again. “You may return to your seat, Mr. Field. Thank you for your cooperation.” Ollis Field turned around and left without speaking. “Let’s get back to work, men,” the captain finished.

The crew returned to their stations. Eddie checked his dials automatically, although his mind was in turmoil. He observed that the fuel tanks in the wings, which fed the engines, were getting low, and he proceeded to transfer fuel from the main tanks, which were located in the hydrostabilizers, or sea-wings. But his thoughts were on Frankie Gordino. Gordino had shot a man and raped a woman and burned down a nightclub, but he had been caught, and would be punished for his horrible crimes—except that Eddie Deakin was going to save him. Thanks to Eddie, that girl would see her rapist get away scot-free.

Worse still, Gordino would almost certainly kill again. He was probably no good for anything else. So a day would come when Eddie would read in the papers of some ghastly crime—it might be a revenge murder, the victim tortured and mutilated before being finished off, or perhaps a building torched with women and children burned to death inside, or a girl held down and raped by three different men—and the police would link it with Ray Patriarca’s gang, and Eddie would think: Was that Gordino? Am I responsible for that? Did those people suffer and die because I helped Gordino escape?

How many murders would he have on his conscience if he went ahead with this?

But he had no choice. Carol-Ann was in the hands of Ray Patriarca. Every time he thought of it he felt cold sweat dampen his temples. He had to protect her, and the only way he could do that was to cooperate with Tom Luther.

He looked at his watch: it was midnight.

Jack Ashford gave him the plane’s current position, as best he could estimate it: he had not yet been able to shoot a star. Ben Thompson produced the latest weather forecasts: the storm was a bad one. Eddie read off a new set of figures from the fuel tanks and began to update his calculations. Perhaps this would resolve his dilemma: if they did not have enough fuel to reach Newfoundland, they would have to turn back, and that would be the end of it. But the thought was no consolation to him. He was no fatalist: he had to do something.

Captain Baker sang out: “How goes it, Eddie?”

“Not quite done,” he replied.

“Look sharp—we must be close to the point of no return.”

Eddie felt a bead of sweat drip down his cheek. He wiped it away with a quick, surreptitious movement.

He finished the arithmetic.

The remaining fuel was not enough.

For a moment he said nothing.

He bent over his scratch pad and his tables, pretending he had not yet finished. The situation was worse than it had been at the start of his shift. Now there was not enough fuel to finish the journey, on the route the captain had chosen, even on four engines: the safety margin had disappeared. The only way they could make it was to shorten the journey by flying through the storm instead of skirting it; and even then, if they should lose an engine, they would be finished.

All these passengers would die, and he would too; and then what would happen to Carol-Ann?

“Come on, Eddie,” said the captain. “What’s it to be? On to Botwood or back to Foynes?”

Eddie gritted his teeth. He could not bear the thought of leaving Carol-Ann with the kidnappers for another day. He would rather risk everything.

“Are you prepared to change course and fly through the storm?” he asked.

“Do we have to?”

“Either that, or turn back.” Eddie held his breath.

“Damn,” said the captain. They all hated turning back halfway across the Atlantic: it was such a letdown.

Eddie waited for the captain’s decision.

“Heck with it,” said Captain Baker. “We’ll fly through the storm.”