The Dark Crusader

CHAPTER ONE

Fellow-passengers on the plane, the old hands on the America-Australia run, had spoken of the Grand Pacific Hotel in Viti Levu as the finest in the Western Pacific, and a very brief acquaintance with it had persuaded me that they were probably right. Old-fashioned but magnificent and shining like a newly-minted silver cein, it was run with a quiet and courteous efficiency that would have horrified the average English hotelier. The bedrooms were luxurious, the food superb-the memory of the seven-course dinner we'd had that night would linger for years-and the view from the verandah of the haze-softened mountains across the moonlit bay belonged to another world.

But there's no perfection in a very imperfect world: the locks on the bedroom doors of the Grand Pacific Hotel were just no good at all.

My first intimation of this came when I woke up in the middle of the night in response to someone prodding my shoulder. But my first thought was not of the door-locks but of the finger prodding me. It was the hardest finger I'd ever felt. It felt like a piece of steel. I struggled to open my eyes against weariness and the glare of the overhead light and finally managed to focus them on my left shoulder. It was a piece of steel. It was a dully-gleaming.38 Colt automatic and, just in case I should have made any mistake in identification, whoever was holding it shifted the gun as soon as he saw me stir so that my right eye could stare down the centre of the barrel. It was a gun all right. My gaze travelled up past the gun, the hairy brown wrist, the white-coated arm to the brown cold still face with the battered yachting cap above, then back to the automatic again.

"O.K., friend," I said. I meant it to sound cool and casual but it came out more like the raven-the hoarse one- croaking on the battlements of Macbeth's castle. "I can see it's a gun. Cleaned and oiled and everything. But take it away, please. Guns are dangerous things."

"A wise guy, eh?" he said coldly. "Showing the little wife what a hero he is. But you wouldn't really like to be a hero, would you, Bentall? You wouldn't really like to start something?"

I would have loved to start something. I would have loved to take his gun away and beat him over the head with it. Having guns pointed at my eye gives me a nasty dry mouth, makes my heart work overtime and uses up a great deal of adrenalin. I was just starting out to think what else I would like to do to him when he nodded across the bed.

"Because if you are, you might have a look there first."

I turned slowly, so as not to excite anyone. Except only for the yellow of his eyes, the man on the other side of the bed was a symphony in black. Black suit, black sailor's jersey under it, black hat and one of the blackest faces I had ever seen: a thin, taut, pinch-nosed face, the face of a pure Indian. He was very narrow and very short but he didn't have to be big on account of what he held in his hands, a twelve-bore shotgun which had had almost two-thirds of its original length sawn off at stock and barrels. It was like looking down a couple of unlit railway tunnels. I turned away slowly and looked at the white man.

"I see what you mean. Can I sit up?"

He nodded and stepped back a couple of feet. I swung my leg over the bed and looked across to the other side of the room where Marie Hopeman, with a third man, also black, standing beside her, was sitting in a rattan chair by her bed. She was dressed in a blue and white sleeveless silk dress and because it was sleeveless I could see the four bright marks on the upper arm where someone had grabbed her, not too gently.

I was more or less dressed myself, all except for shoes, coat and tie, although we had arrived there several hours earlier after a long and bumpy road trip forced on us by a lack of accommodation at the airfield at the other end of the island. With the unexpected influx of stranded aircraft passengers into the Grand Pacific Hotel the question of separate rooms for Mr. and Mrs. John Bentall had not ever arisen, but the fact that we were almost completely dressed had nothing to do with modesty, false or otherwise: it had to do with survival. The unexpected influx was due to an unscheduled stopover at the Suva airfield: and what the unscheduled stopover was due to was something that exercised my mind very much indeed. Primarily, it was due to a medium-scale electrical fire that had broken out in our DC-7 immediately after the fuelling hoses had been disconnected, and although it had been extinguished inside a minute the plane captain had quite properly refused to continue until airline technicians had flown down from Hawaii to assess the extent of the damage: but what I would have dearly loved to know was what had caused the fire.

I am a great believer in coincidences, but belief stops short just this side of idiocy. Four scientists and their wives had already disappeared en route to Australia: the chances were even that the fifth couple, ourselves, would do likewise, and the fuelling halt at the Suva airfield in Fiji was the last chance to make us vanish. So we'd left our clothes on, locked the doors and taken watches: I'd taken the first, sitting quietly in the darkness until three o'clock in the morning, when I'd given Marie Hopeman a shake and lain down on my own bed. I'd gone to sleep almost immediately and she must have done exactly the same for when I now glanced surreptitiously at my watch I saw it was only twenty minutes past three. Either I hadn't shaken her hard enough or she still hadn't recovered from the effects of the previous sleepless night, a San Francisco-Hawaii hop so violent that even the stewards had been sick. Not that the reasons mattered now.

I pulled on my shoes and looked across at her. For the moment she no longer looked serene and remote and aloof, she just looked tired and pale and there were faint blue shadows under her eyes: she was a poor traveller and had suffered badly the previous night. She saw me looking at her and began to speak.

"— I'm afraid I-"

"Be quiet!" I said savagely.

She blinked as if she had been struck across the face, then tightened her lips and stared down at her stockinged feet. The man with the yachting cap laughed with the musical sound of water escaping down a wastepipe.

"Pay no attention, Mrs. Bentall. He doesn't mean a thing. The world's full of Bentalls, tough crusts and jelly inside, and when they're nervous and scared they've just got to lash out at someone. Makes them feel better. But, of course, they only lash out in a safe direction." He looked at me consideringly and without much admiration. "Isn't that so, Bentall?"

"What do you want?" I asked stiffly. "What is the meaning of this-of this intrusion? You're wasting your time. I have only a very few dollars in currency, about forty. There are traveller's cheques. Those are no good to you. My wife's jewellery-"

"Why are you both dressed?" he interrupted suddenly.

I frowned and stared at him. "I fail to see-"

Something pressed hard and cold and rough against the back of my neck, whoever had hacksawed off the barrels of that twelve-bore hadn't been too particular about filing down the outside edges.

"My wife and I are priority passengers," I said quickly. It is difficult to sound pompous and scared at the same time. "My business is of the greatest urgency. I–I have impressed that on the airport authorities. I understand that planes make overnight refuelling stops in Suva and have asked that I should be notified immediately of any vacancies on a westbound plane. The hotel staff has also been told, and we're on a minute's notice." It wasn't true, but the hotel day staff were off duty and there would be no quick way of checking. But I could see he believed me.

"That's very interesting," he murmured. "And very convenient. Mrs. Bentall, you can come and sit by your husband here and hold his hand-it doesn't look any too steady to me." He waited till she had crossed the room and sat down on the bed, a good two feet from me and staring straight ahead, then said: "Krishna?"

"Yes, captain?" This from the Indian who had been watching Marie.

"Go outside. Put a call through to the desk. Say you're speaking from the airport and that there's an urgent call for Mr. and Mrs. Bentall, that there's a K.L.M. plane with two vacant seats just stopped over for refuelling. They've to go at once. Got it?"

"Yes, captain." A gleam of white teeth and he started for the door.

"Not that way, fool!" The white man nodded to the French doors leading to the outside verandah. "Want everyone to see you? When you've put the call through pick up your friend's taxi, come to the main door, say you've been phoned for by the airport and come upstairs to help carry the bags down."

The Indian nodded, unlocked the French doors and disappeared. The man with the yachting cap dragged out a cheroot, puffed black smoke into the air and grinned at us. "Neat, eh?"

"Just what is it that you intend to do with us?" I asked tightly.

"Taking you for a little trip." He grinned, showing irregular and tobacco-stained teeth. "And there'll be no questions- everyone will think you have gone on to Sydney by plane. Ain't it sad? Now stand up, clasp your hands behind your head and turn round."

With three gun barrels pointing at me and the furthest not more than eighteen inches away, it seemed a good idea to do what he said. He waited till I had a bird's eye view of the two unlit railway tunnels, jabbed his gun into my back and went over me with an experienced hand that wouldn't have missed even a book of matches. Finally, the pressure of the gun in my spine eased and I heard him taking a step back.

"O.K., Bentall, sit. Bit surprising, maybe-tough-talking pansies like you often fancy themselves enough to pack a gun. Maybe it's in your grips. We'll check later." He transferred a speculative glance to Marie Hopeman. "How about you, lady?"

"Don't you dare touch me, you-you horrible man!" She'd jumped to her feet and was standing there erect as a guardsman, arms stretched stiffly at her sides, fists clenched, breathing quickly and deeply. She couldn't have been more than five feet four in her stockinged soles but outraged indignation made her seem inches taller. It was quite a performance. "What do you think I am? Of course I'm not carrying a gun on me."

Slowly, thoughtfully, but not insolently, his eyes followed every curve of the more than adequately filled silk sheath dress. Then he sighed.

"It would be a miracle if you were," he admitted, regretfully. "Maybe in your grip. But later-neither of you will be opening those bags till we get where we're going." He paused for a thoughtful moment. "But you do carry a handbag, don't you, lady?"

"Don't you touch my handbag with your dirty hands!" she said stormily.

"They're not dirty," he said mildly. He held one up for his own inspection. "At least, not really. The bag, Mrs. Bentall?"

"In the bedside cabinet," she said contemptuously.

He moved to the other side of the room, never quite taking his eye off us. I had an idea that he didn't have too much faith in the lad with the blunderbuss. He took the grey lizard handbag from the cabinet, slipped the catch and held the bag upside down over the bed. A shower of stuff fell out, money, comb, handkerchief, vanity case and all the usual camouflage kit and warpaint. But no gun. Quite definitely no gun.

"You don't really look the type," he said apologetically. "But that's how you live to be fifty, lady, by not even trusting your own mother and-" He broke off and hefted the empty bag in his hand. "Does seem a mite heavy, though, don't it?"

He peered inside, fumbled around with his hand, withdrew it and felt the outside of the bag, low down. There was a barely perceptible click and the false bottom fell open, swinging on its hinges. Something fell on the carpet with a thud. He bent and picked up a small flat snub-nosed automatic.

"One of those trick cigarette lighters," he said easily. "Or it might be for perfume or sand-blasting on the old face powder. Whatever will they think of next?"

"My husband is a scientist and a very important person in his own line," Marie Hopeman said stonily. "He has had two threats on his life. I–I have a police permit for that gun."

"And I'll give you a receipt for it so everything will be nice and legal," he said comfortably. The speculative eyes belied the tone. "All right, get ready to go out. Rabat"-this to the man with the sawn-off gun-"over the verandah and see that no one tries anything stupid between the main door and the taxi."

He'd everything smoothly organised. I couldn't have tried anything even if I'd wanted to and I didn't, not now: obviously he'd no intention of disposing of us on the spot and I wasn't going to find any answers by just running away.

When the knock came to the door he vanished behind the curtains covering the open French windows. The bell-boy came in and picked up three bags: he was followed by Krishna, who had in the meantime acquired a peaked cap: Krishna had a raincoat over his arm-he had every excuse, it was raining heavily outside-and I could guess he had more than his hand under it. He waited courteously until we had preceded him through the door, picked up the fourth bag and followed: at the end of the long corridor I saw the man in the yachting cap come out from our room and stroll along after us, far enough away so as not to seem one of the party but near enough to move in quick if I got any funny ideas. I couldn't help thinking that he'd done this sort of thing before.

The night-clerk, a thin dark man with the world-weary expression of night clerks the world over, had our bill ready. As I was paying, the man with the yachting cap, cheroot sticking up at a jaunty angle, sauntered up to the desk and nodded affably to the clerk.

"Good morning, Captain Fleck," the clerk said respectfully. "You found your friend?"

"I did indeed." The cold hard expression had gone from Captain Fleck's face to be replaced with one that was positively jovial. "And he tells me the man I really want to see is out at the airport. Call me a taxi, will you?"

"Certainly, sir." Fleck appeared to be a man of some consequence in those parts. He hesitated. "Is it urgent, Captain Heck?"

"All my business is urgent," Fleck boomed. "Of course, of course." The clerk seemed nervous, anxious to ingratiate himself with Fleck. "It just so happens that Mr. and Mrs. Bentall here are going out there, too, and they have a taxi-"

"Delighted to meet you, Mr.-ah-Bentall," Fleck said heartily. With his right hand he crushed mine in a bluff honest sailorman's grip while with his left he brought the complete ruin of the. shapeless jacket he was wearing another long stage nearer by thrusting his concealed gun so far forward against the off-white material that I thought he was going to sunder the pocket from its moorings. "Fleck's my name. I must get out to the airport at once and if you would be so kind-share the costs of course-I'd be more than grateful…"

No doubt about it, he was the complete professional, we were wafted out of that hotel and into the waiting taxi with all the smooth and suave dexterity of a head-waiter ushering you to the worst table in an overcrowded restaurant: and had I had any doubts left about Fleck's experienced competence they would have been removed the moment I sat down in the back seat between him and Rabat and felt something like a giant and none too gentle pincers closing round my waist. To my left, Rabat's twelve-bore: to my right, Fleck's automatic, both digging in just above the hip-bones, the one position where it was impossible to knock them aside. I sat still and quiet and hoped that the combination of ancient taxi springs and bumpy road didn't jerk either of the forefingers curved round those triggers.

Marie Hopeman sat in front, beside Krishna, very erect, very still, very aloof. I wondered if there was anything left of the careless amusement, the quiet self-confidence she had shown in Colonel Raine's office two days ago. It was impossible to say. We'd flown together, side by side, for 10,000 miles, and I still didn't even begin to know her. She had seen to that.

I knew nothing at all about the town of Suva, but even if I had I doubt whether I would have known where we were being taken. With two people sitting in front of me, one on either side, and what little I could see of the side-screens blurred and obscured by heavy rain, the chances of seeing anything were remote. I caught a glimpse of a dark silent cinema, a bank, a canal with scattered faint lights reflecting from its opaque surface and, after turning down some narrow unlighted streets and bumping over railway tracks, a long row of small railway wagons with C.S.R. stamped on their sides. All of those, especially the freight train, clashed with my preconceptions of what a south Pacific island should look like, but I had no time to wonder about it. The taxi pulled up with a sudden jerk that seemed to drive the twelve-bore about halfway through me, and Captain Fleck jumped out, ordering me to follow.

I climbed down and stood there rubbing my aching sides while I looked around me. It was as dark as a tomb, the rain was still sluicing down and at first I could see nothing except the vague suggestion of one or two angular structures that looked like gantry cranes. But I didn't need my eyes to tell me where I was, my nose was all that was required. I could smell smoke and diesel and rust, the tang of tar and hempen ropes and wet cordage, and pervading everything the harsh flat smell of the sea.

What with the lack of sleep and the bewildering turn of events my mind wasn't working any too well that night, but it did seem pretty obvious that Captain Fleck hadn't brought us down to the Suva docks to set us aboard a K.L.M. plane for Australia. I made to speak, but he cut me off at once, flicked a pencil torch at two cases that Krishna had carefully placed in a deep puddle of dirty and oily water, picked up the other two cases himself and told me softly to do the same and follow him. There was nothing soft about the confirmatory jab in the ribs from Rabat's twelve-bore. I was getting tired of Rabat and his ideas as to what constituted gentle prods, Fleck probably fed him on a straight diet of American gangster magazines.

Fleck had either better night eyes than I had or he had a complete mental picture of the whereabouts of every rope, hawser, bollard and loose cobble on that dockside, but we didn't have far to go and I hadn't tripped and fallen more than four or five times when he slowed down, turned to his right and began to descend a flight of stone stairs. He took his tune about it and risked using his flash and I didn't blame him: the steps were green-scummed and greasy and there was no handrail at all on the seaward side. The temptation to drop one of my cases on top of him and then watch gravity taking charge was strong but only momentary; not only Were there still two guns at my back but my eyes were now just sufficiently accustomed to the dark to let me make out the vague shape of some vessel lying alongside the low stone jetty at the foot of the steps. If he fell now, all Fleck would suffer would be considerable bruising and even greater damage to his pride which might well make him pass up his desire for silence and secrecy in favour of immediate revenge. He didn't look like the kind of man who would miss so I tightened my grip on the cases and went down those steps with all the care and delicate precision of a Daniel picking his way through a den of sleeping lions. And there wasn't all that difference here, just that the lions were wide awake. A few seconds later Marie Hopeman and the two Indians were on the jetty behind me.

We were now only about eight feet above water level and I peered at the vessel to try to get a better idea of her shape and size, but the backdrop of that rain-filled sky was scarcely less dark than that of the land and sea. Broad-beamed, maybe seventy feet long-although I could have been twenty feet out either way-a fairly bulky midships superstructure and masts, whether two or three I couldn't be sure. That was all I had time to see when a door in the superstructure opened and a sudden flood of white light completely destroyed what little night sight I'd been able to acquire. Someone, tall and lean, I thought, passed quickly through the bright rectangle of light and closed the door quickly behind him.

"Everything O.K., boss?" I'd never been to Australia but I'd met plenty of Australians: this one's accent was unmistakable.

"O.K. Got 'em. And watch that damned light. We're coming aboard."

Boarding the ship was no trick at all. The top of the gunwale, amidships where we were, was riding just level with the jetty and all we had to do was jump down the thirty inches to the deck below. A wooden deck, I noticed, not steel. When we were all safely down Captain Fleck said: "We are ready to receive guests, Henry?" He sounded relaxed now, relieved to be back where he was.

"Stateroom's all ready, boss," Henry announced. His voice was a hoarse and lugubrious drawl. "Shall I show them to their quarters?"

"Do that. I'll be in my cabin. All right, Bentall, leave your grips here. I'll see you later."

Henry led the way aft along the deck, with the two Indians close behind. Once clear of the superstructure, he turned right, flicked on a torch and stopped before a small square raised hatch. He bent down, slipped a bolt, heaved the hatch-cover up and back and pointed down with his torch.

"Get down there, the two of you."

I went first, ten rungs on a wet, clammy and vertical steel ladder, Marie Hopeman close behind. Her head had hardly cleared the level of the hatch when the cover slammed down and we heard the scraping thud of a bolt sliding home. She climbed down the last two or three steps and we stood and looked round our stateroom.

It was a dark and noisome dungeon. Well, not quite dark, there was a dim yellow glowworm of a lamp behind a steel-meshed glass on the deckhead, enough so that you didn't have to paw your way around, but it was certainly noisome enough. It smelled like the aftermath of the bubonic plague, stinking to high heaven of some disgusting odour that I couldn't identify. And it was all that could have been asked for in the way of a dungeon. The only way out was the way we had come in. Aft, there was a wooden bulkhead clear across the width of the vessel. I located a crack between two planks and though I couldn't see anything I could sniff diesel oil: the engine-room, without a doubt. In the for'ard bulkhead were two doors, both unlocked: one led to a primitive toilet and a rust-stained wash-basin supplied by a tap that gave a good flow of brown and brackish water, not sea-water: the other opened on to a tiny six by four cabin where nearly all the floor space was occupied by a low made-up bunk without sheets but with what seemed, in the sputtering light of a match, to be fairly clean blankets. Near the two for'ard corners of the hold were six-inch diameter holes in the deckhead: I peered up those, but could see nothing. Ventilators, probably, and they could hardly have been called a superfluous installation: but on that windless night and with the ship not under way they were quite useless.

Heavy spaced wooden battens, held in place by wooden slots in deck and deckhead, ran the whole fore-and-aft length of the hold. There were four rows of those battens, and behind the two rows nearest the port and starboard sides wooden boxes and open-sided crates were piled to the very top, except where a space had been left free for the air from the ventilators to find its way in. Between the outer and inner rows of battens other boxes and sacks were piled half the height of the hold: between the two inner rows, extending from the engine-room bulkhead to the two small doors in the for'ard bulkhead, was a passage perhaps four feet wide. The wooden floor of this alleyway looked as if it had been scrubbed about the time of the Coronation.

I was still looking slowly around, feeling my heart making for my boots and hoping that it was not too dark for Marie Hopeman to see my carefully balanced expression of insouciance and intrepidity, when the overhead light dimmed to a dull red glow and a high-pitched whine came from aft: a second later an unmistakable diesel engine came to life, the vessel began to vibrate as it revved up, then as it slowed again I could just hear the patter of sandalled feet on the deck above-casting off, no doubt-just before the engine note deepened as gear was engaged. It didn't require the slight list to starboard as the vessel sheered off from the jetty wall to tell us that we were under way.

I turned away from the after bulkhead, bumped into Marie Hopeman in the near darkness and caught her arm to steady her. The arm was goose-fleshed, wet and far too cold. I fumbled a match from a box, scratched it alight and peered at her as she screwed her eyes almost shut against the sudden flare. Her fair bedraggled hair was plastered over her forehead and one cheek, the saturated thin silk of her dress was a clammy cocoon that clung to every inch and she was shivering constantly. Not until then did I realise just how cold and dank it was in that airless hole. I waved the match to extinction, removed a shoe, started hammering the after bulkhead and, when that had no effect, climbed a few steps Up the ladder and started beating the hatch.

"What on earth do you imagine you're doing?" Marie Hopeman asked.

"Room service. If we don't get our clothes soon I'm going to have a pneumonia case on my hands."

"Wouldn't it suit you better to look round for some kind of weapon?" she said quietly. "Has it never occurred to you to ask why they've brought us out here?"

"To do us in? Nonsense." I tried out my carefree laugh to see how it went, but it didn't, it sounded so hollow and unconvincing that it lowered even my morale. "Of course they're not going to knock us off, not yet, at least. They didn't bring me all the way out here to do that-it could have as easily been done in England. Nor was it necessary to bring you that I should be knocked off. Thirdly, they didn't have to bring us out on this boat to do it-for instance that dirty canal we passed and a couple of heavy stones would have been all that was needed. And, fourthly, Captain Fleck strikes me as a ruffian and a rogue, but no killer." This was a better line altogether, if I repeated it about a hundred times I might even start believing it myself. Marie Hopeman remained silent, so maybe she was thinking about it, maybe there was something in it after all.

After a couple of minutes I gave the hatch up as a bad job, went for'ard into the tiny cabin and hammered against the bulkhead there. Crew quarters must have been on the other side for I got reaction within half a minute. Someone heaved open the hatch-cover and a powerful torch shone down into the hold.

"Will you kindly quit that flamin' row?" Henry didn't sound any too pleased. "Can't you sleep, or somethin'?"

"Where are our cases?" I demanded. "We must have dry clothes. My wife is soaked to the skin."

"Comin’, comin'," he grumbled. "Move right for'ard, both of you."

We moved, he dropped down into the hold, took four cases from someone invisible to us then stepped aside to make room for another man to come down the ladder. It was Captain Fleck, equipped with a torch and gun, and enveloped in an aroma of whisky. It made a pleasant change from the fearful stink in that hold.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," he boomed cheerfully. "Locks on those cases were a mite tricky. So you weren't carrying a gun after all, eh, Bentall?"

"Of course not," I said stiffly. I had been, but k was still under the mattress of my bed back in the Grand Pacific Hotel. "What's the damnable smell down here?"

"Damnable? Damnable?" Fleck sniffed the foul atmosphere with the keen appreciation of a connoisseur bent over a brandy glass of Napoleon. "Copra and shark's fins. Mainly copra. Very health-giving, they say."

"I dare say," I said bitterly. "How long are we to stay in this hell-hole?"

"There's not a finer schooner-" Fleck began irritably, then broke off. "We'll see. Few more hours, I don't know. You'll get breakfast at eight." He shone his torch around the hold and went on apologetically: "We don't often have ladies aboard, ma'am, especially not ones like you. We might have cleaned it up more. But there's a bunk there, quite clean. Don't either of, you sleep with your shoes off."

"Why?" I demanded.

"Cockroaches," he explained briefly. "Very partial to the soles of the feet." He flicked the torch beam suddenly to one side and picked up a couple of brown monstrous beetle-like insects at least a couple of inches in length that scuttled out of sight almost immediately.

"As-as big as that?" Marie Hopeman whispered.

"It's the copra and diesel oil," Henry explained lugubriously. "Their favourite food, except for D.D.T. We give them gallons of that. And them were only the small ones, their parents know better than to come out when there are people around."

"That's enough," Fleck said abruptly. He thrust the torch into my hand. "Take this. You'll need it. See you in the morning."

Henry waited till Fleck's head was clear of the hatch, then pushed back some of the sliding battens that bordered the central aisle. He nodded at the four foot high platform of cases exposed by this.

"Sleep here," he said shortly. "There's more than cockroaches down this hold. And keep that light on."

"Why? What is there here that-"

"I don't know," he interrupted. "I've never spent the night here. There's not enough money to pay me to." With that he was gone and moments later the hatch shut to behind him.

"Spreads sweetness and light wherever he goes, doesn't he?" I asked. "I wonder what he does mean? But I'd take any money they're not hired assassins. Murderers don't-"

"Do you mind?" she interrupted. "My suitcase. I'd like to change."

"Sorry." I passed it to her, along with the torch. "Did you pack any slacks?" She nodded.

"Then wear them." I rummaged in one of my own cases, brought out a couple of pairs of socks. "Pull these over them. Anti-cockroach. You can change up in the cabin there."

"You didn't think I was going to do it here," she said coldly. No gratitude. I grinned at her, but no answering smile. She closed the cabin door behind her, not gently.

I'd finished changing by the faint glow of the overhead light and was tapping a cigarette out of its packet when a sudden scream of pure terror from the cabin froze me immobile for a second. But only for a second: four steps and I was at the cabin door just as it was torn violently open and Marie Hopeman came stumbling frantically out, struck her head a glancing blow against the low overhead doorway and literally fell into my arms. She grabbed me and clung on desperately, a young koala bear stranded on its first eucalyptus tree had nothing on Marie Hopeman at that moment. At any other time it would have been very pleasant but just then it wasn't getting us anywhere.

"What happened?" I demanded quickly. "What on earth is it?"

"Take me away from here!" she sobbed. She twisted in my arms and looked over her shoulder with wide horror-filled eyes. "Please. At once! Away." Her eyes widened still further, she took that deep breath that is so often prelude to a scream, so I picked her up hurriedly, walked the ten feet to where Henry had pushed the battens aside and sat her there, her back propped up against the inner battens.

"What was it?" I asked urgently. "Quickly."

"It was horrible, horrible!" She didn't know what I was saying, her breath was coming in long quivering gasps and she was trembling violently. She felt me straightening and sunk her fingers deep into my arms. "Don't leave me. Don't!"

"I'll only be a moment," I said soothingly. I pointed to where a beam of light lay angled across the floor of the cabin. "I want that torch."

I broke away from her desperate grip and almost literally flung myself through the small cabin door. This wasn't courage, it was the lack of it, I didn't know what the fauna of the South Pacific was but it might have ranged from nests of cobras to colonies of black widow spiders and if I'd stopped to think of all the unpleasant possibilities it might have taken me a very long time indeed to cross that threshold.

I picked the blazing torch off the floor and swung it round in a complete circle, all in one movement. Nothing. Another, a much slower and more thorough inspection. Still nothing, nothing except a pile of damp clothes and a couple of my socks on the bed. I went out, taking the socks with me, and pulled the door tight shut behind me.

Her breathing had quietened but she was still trembling badly when I got back. The change from the cool, self-sufficient and rather aloof young lady who had flown out to Fiji with me to this panic-stricken defenceless girl was just within the limits of credibility and it gave me no pleasure at all. Her fair hair was in wild disorder. She was wearing a matched jumper and cardigan and a pair of light blue slacks. On her left foot she wore two of my socks: the right foot was bare.

I turned the torch on this bare foot, leaned forward suddenly and swore. On the outside of the foot, just behind the little toe, were two narrow deep punctures from which blood was slowly welling.

"Rat!" I said. "You've been bitten by a rat."

"Yes," she said shakily. Her eyes darkened in remembered terror. "It was horrible, horrible, horrible! A black rat, huge, as big as a cat. I tried to shake it off but it hung on and on and on-"

"It's all over now," I said.sharply. The hysteria had been climbing back into her voice. "Just a moment."

"Where-where are you going?" she asked fearfully.

"First aid kit in my case." I fetched it, squeezed out the wounds and soaked up all the blood with cotton-woof, used iodine liberally, applied a plaster dressing and pulled on the socks. "You won't come to any harm from that."

I lit and gave her a cigarette, ripped a spar off one of the wooden crates, used it as a lever to rip off a larger spar from another crate and finally used that to wrench off a three-foot long three by one from the biggest crate I could see: with three three-inch nails sticking out from the far end it made quite a weapon, more than a match for the fangs of any rat. As big as a cat, Marie Hopeman had said, but I took that with a pinch of salt-they might be as long as a cat but never as big-but for all that black ships' rats could be vicious, especially in numbers. I went into the cabin again, peered around cautiously for the enemy, found none, picked up the two pillows and blankets from the bunk, went out again, shook the blankets ostentatiously to demonstrate that there were no rats concealed in the folds, wrapped them tightly round her, put the pillows behind her back, dug out a spare jacket from one of my cases, made her put it on and stepped back to admire my handiwork.

"Not bad at all," I admitted. "I have the touch. Mirror and comb, perhaps? They tell me it does wonders for a woman's morale."

"No." She smiled shakily at me. "As long as I can't see it, I don't worry. You know, I don't really think you're tough at all."

I smiled back at her, very enigmatic I thought, then used my tie to hang the torch from a batten, close by the deck-head. I pulled back some battens across the aisle from her and hoisted myself up on a platform of wooden boxes, the three by one ready to hand.

"You can't sleep there," she protested. "It's too hard and- and you'll fall off." This was something new, Marie Hopeman showing any concern for me.

"I've no intention of going to sleep," I said. "That's for you. Rat-catcher Bentall, that's me. Goodnight."

We must have been well clear of the land by this time, for the schooner was beginning to roll, not much, but enough to be perceptible. The timbers creaked, the torch swung to and fro throwing huge black moving shadows and, all the time, now that our movements and voices had ceased, I could hear a constant sibilant rustle, either our rodent pals on safari or a cockroach battalion on the march. The combination of the creaking, the rustling and the black ominous shifting shadows was hardly calculated to induce a mood of soporific tranquillity, and I was hardly surprised when, after ten minutes, Marie Hopeman spoke.

"Are-are you asleep? Are you all right?"

"Sure I'm all right," I said comfortably. "Goodnight."

Another five minutes then:

"John!" It was the first time she'd ever called me that except when company had made it necessary to keep up the fiction of our marriage.

"Hullo?"

"Oh, damn it!" There was vexation in her voice, a small reluctant anger at herself, but there was nervousness, too, and the nervousness had the upper hand. "Come and sit beside me."

"Right," I said agreeably. I jumped down to the deck, swung myself up on the other side and seated myself as comfortably as I could with my feet propped against the outboard battens. She made no move or stir to acknowledge my arrival, she didn't even look at me. But I looked at her, I looked and I thought of the change a couple of short hours could make. On the four-stage hop from London airport to Suva she'd hardly acknowledged my existence as a human being, except in airport terminals and conspicuous seats in a plane, where she'd smiled at me, taken my arm and sweet-talked me as any bride of ten weeks ought to have done. But the moment we had been alone or secure from observation her normal cool aloof remote personality had dropped between us like a portcullis with a broken hoist-rope. The previous afternoon, waking out of a short sleep on the Hawaii-Suva hop and drowsily forgetting that we weren't being watched, I'd incautiously taken her hand: she'd taken my right wrist in her right hand, slowly-far too slowly- withdrawn her left hand, at the same time giving me the kind of look that stays with you for a long time to come: if I could have hidden under the seat I'd have done just that and with the size I'd felt it would have been no trick at all. I didn't make the same mistake again, I'd sworn to myself that I wouldn't make the same mistake again, so now, sitting beside her in the dank and chilly hold of that gently rolling schooner, I reached down and took her hand in mine.

Her hand was ice-cold and stiffened immediately at my touch: next second it was clamped round mine and doing its best to give an imitation of a small but powerful vise. I hadn't taken all that of a chance, she wasn't scared, she was terrified, and that was all out of character with Marie Hope-man: I could feel her shiver from time to time and it wasn't all that cold down in the hold.

"Why did you bawl me out back in the hotel room?" she said reproachfully. "It wasn't nice."

"I seldom am," I agreed. "But that was different. You were about to start apologising to me for falling asleep."

"It was the least I could do. I–I'm sorry."

"Didn't it strike you that our friend Fleck might have found it rather curious?" I asked. "Innocent people with nothing to hide don't strive to keep awake all night along. My one thought at the moment was that the less reason Fleck had to suspect us of being anything other than we claimed the greater would be our later freedom of movement.

"I'm sorry," she repeated.

"It doesn't matter. No harm done." A pause. "Did you ever read George Orwell's '1984'?"

" '1984'?" Her voice was surprised and wary at the same time. "Yes, I have?"

"Remember how the authorities finally broke the resistance of the central character?"

"Don't!" She jerked her hand from mine and covered her face with her hands. "It's-it's too horrible."

"All sorts of different people have all sorts of different phobias," I said gently. I took one of her hands away from her face. "Yours just happens to be rats."

"It-it's not a phobia," she said defensively. "Not liking things is not a phobia. All sorts of people, especially women, hate rats."

"And mice," I agreed. "They yell and they scream and they dance about and they make for the highest piece of furniture they can reach. But they don't have the pink fits, not even if bitten. They're not still shaking like a broken bed-spring half an hour after it happens. What started all this off?"

She was silent for half a minute, then abruptly pushed up the tousled blonde hair at the side of her neck. Even in the dim half-light I had no difficulty in seeing the scar behind the right ear.

"It must have been a mess at the time," I nodded. "Rat, I take it. How?"

"After my parents were drowned on the way to England I was brought up by my uncle and aunt. On a farm." Her voice was not that of a person discussing the faraway green fields of treasured memories. "There was a daughter three or four years older than I was. She was nice. So was her mother, my aunt."

"And he was the wicked uncle?"

"Don't laugh. It's not funny. He was all right at first, until my aunt died about eight years after I came to them. Then he started drinking, lost the farm and had to move to a smaller place where the only room for me was an attic above the barn.",

"Okay, that's enough," I interrupted. "I can guess the rest."

"I used to lie awake at night with a torch in my hand," she whispered. "A ring of eyes round the room, red and pink and white. Watching me, just watching me. Then I'd light a candle before going to sleep. One night the candle went out and when I woke up this-this-it was caught in my hah" and biting and it was dark and I screamed and screamed-"

"I told you, that's enough," I said harshly. "Do you like hurting yourself?" Not nice, but necessary.

"I'm sorry," she said in a low voice. "That's all. I was three weeks in hospital, not with my neck but because I was a bit out of my mind and then they let me out again." All this in a very matter-of-fact voice. I wondered what it cost her to say it. I tried not to feel sorry for her, not to feel pity: involvement with any person was the one thing I couldn't afford. But I couldn't help myself from saying: "Your unpleasant experiences weren't just confined to the rats, were they?"

She twisted to look at me, then said slowly: "You are more shrewd than I had thought."

"Not really. When you find women behaving in the hands-off down the nose snooty superciliousness affected by some, it's because they think it's an interesting attitude or a mark of superiority, or provocative, or simply because it's a cover-up for the fact that they haven't sufficient intelligence or common sense to behave and converse like a human being. We include you out. How about the wicked uncle?"

"He was wicked all right," she said, unsmiling. "By and by my cousin ran away because she couldn't stand him any longer. A week later I did the same, but for different reasons, some neighbours found me crying in the woods in the dark. I was taken to some institution, then put in care of a guardian." She didn't like any of this and neither did I. "He had a sick wife and a full-grown son and-and they fought over me. Then another institution and another and another. I had no family, I was young, a foreigner and had no money: some people think the combination entitles them to-"

"All right," I said. "You don't like rats. And you don't like men."

"I've never had any reason to change my mind about either."

It was hardly the time to point out that with her face and her figure she had as much chance of escaping attention as a magnet would have of moving untouched through a heap of iron filings. Instead, I cleared my throat and said: "I'm a man, too."

"So you are. I'd quite forgotten." The words meant nothing but the little smile that went with them made me feel ten feet tall. "I'll bet you're just as bad as the rest."

"Worse," I assured her. " 'Ravening' would be a weak word to describe me."

"That's nice," she murmured. "Put your arm around me."

I stared at her. "Come the dawn," I said, "you'll regret this weakness."

"Let the dawn look after itself," she said comfortably. "You'll stay here all night?"

"What's left of it."

"You won't leave me?" This with a child-like persistence. "Not even for a moment?"

"Nary a minute." I rattled my club against the battens. "I'll sit here and I'll keep awake and I'll fight off every rat in the South Pacific. Every man in the South Pacific, too, if it conies to that."

"I'm quite sure you would," she said peacefully. She was asleep inside a minute.