The Golden Rendezvous

Chapter 7

I survived all right, but no credit for that was due to the handling I received on the way down to the sick bay. The sick bay was on the port side, two decks below the drawing room; on the second companionway one of the two men who were carrying me slipped and fell and I was aware of nothing more until I woke up in bed.

Like every compartment on the Campari, the sick bay was fitted out regardless of cost. A large room, twenty feet by sixteen, it had the usual wall-to-wall Persian carpeting and pastel walls decorated with murals depicting water skiing, skin-diving, swimming, and other such sporting activities symbolic of fitness and good health, craftily designed to encourage to get on their feet and out of there with all possible speed any patient unfortunate enough to be confined to any of the three beds. The beds themselves, with their heads close up to the windows in the ship’s side, struck a jarring note: they were just plain standard iron hospital beds, the only concession to taste being that they were painted in the same pastel tints as the bulkheads. In the far corner of the room, remote from the door, was old Marston’s consulting desk, with a couple of chairs; further along the inner bulkhead, nearer the door, was a flat-topped couch that could be raised for examinations or, if need be, the carrying out of minor operations. Between couch and desk a door led to two smaller compartments, a dispensary and a dentist’s surgery. I knew that because I had recently spent three quarters of an hour in that dentist’s chair, with Marston attending to a broken tooth; the memory of the experience would stay with me the rest of my days.

The three beds were occupied. Captain Bullen was in the one nearest to the door, the bo’sun next to him, and myself in the corner, opposite Marston’s desk, all of us lying on rubber sheets placed over the beds. Marston was bent over the middle bed, examining the bo’sun’s knee; beside him, holding a metal tray with bowls, sponges, instruments, and bottles containing some unidentifiable liquids, was Susan Beresford. She looked very pale. I wondered vaguely what she was doing here. Seated on the couch was a young man, badly in need of a shave: he was wearing green trousers, a green sweat-stained Epauletted shirt, and green beret. He had his eyes half-closed against the smoke spiralling up from the cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth and carried an automatic carbine in his hand. I wondered how many men with how many automatic carbines were posted all over the Campari. Detailing a man to guard three broken-down crocks like Macdonald, Bullen, and myself showed that Carreras had plenty of men to spare or was excessively cautious. Or maybe both.

“What are you doing here, Miss Beresford?” I asked. She looked up, startled, and the instruments rattled metallically on the tray in her hands.

“Oh, I am glad,” she said. She sounded almost as if she meant it.

“I thought how do you feel?”

“The way I look. Why are you here?” “Because I needed her.” Doc Marston straightened slowly and rubbed his back. “Dealing with wounds like these — well, I must have a helper. Nurses, John, are usually young and female and there are only two on the Campari in that category. Miss Beresford and Miss Harcourt.”

“I don’t see any signs of Miss Harcourt.” I tried to visualise the glamorous young actress in the real-life role of Florence Nightingale, but my imagination was in no shape to cope with absurdities like that. I couldn’t even see her playing it on the screen. “She was here,” he said curtly. “She fainted.”

“That helps. How’s the bo’sun?”

“I must ask you not to talk, John,” he said severely. “You’ve lost a great deal of blood and you’re very weak. Please conserve your strength.”

“How’s the bo’sun?” I repeated. Dr. Marston sighed.

“He’ll be all right. That is, he’s in no danger. Abnormally thick skull, I should say; that saved him. Concussion, yes, but not fractured, I think. Hard to say without an X-ray. Respiration, pulse, temperature, blood pressure — none of them shows any signs pointing to extensive brain injury. It’s his leg I’m worried about.”

“His leg?”

“Patella. Kneecap to you. Completely shattered, beyond repair. Tendons sliced, tibia fractured. Leg sawn in half. Must have been hit several times. The damned murderers!”

“Amputation? you don’t think — "

“No amputation.” he shook his head irritably. “I’ve removed all the broken pieces I can find. Bones will either have to be fused, so shortening the leg, or a metal plate. Too soon to say. But this I can say: he’ll never bend that knee again.”

“You’re telling me he’s crippled? for life?”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re very friendly.”

“So he’s finished with the sea?”

“I’m sorry,” Marston repeated. Medical incompetence apart, he was really a pretty decent old buffer. “Your turn now, John.”

“Yes.” I wasn’t looking forward to my turn. I looked at the guard. “Hey, you! Yes, you. Where’s Carreras?”

“Senor Carreras.” The young man dropped his cigarette on the Persian carpet and ground it out with his heel. Lord Dexter would have gone off his rocker. “It is not my business to know where Senor Carreras is.” That settled that. He spoke English. I couldn’t have cared less at the moment where Carreras was. Marston had his big scissors out, was preparing to slit up my trouser leg.

“Captain Bullen?” I asked. “What chance?”

“I don’t know. He’s unconscious now.” He hesitated. “He was wounded twice. One bullet passed clean through below the shoulder, tearing the pectoral muscle. The other entered the right chest a little lower, breaking a rib, then must have gone through the lung near the apex. The bullet is still lodged inside the body, almost certainly in the vicinity of the shoulder blade. I may decide to operate later to remove it.”

“Operate.” The thought of old Marston hacking round inside an unconscious Bullen made me feel even paler than I looked. I choked down the next few words I thought of and said, “Operate? You would take the grave chance, you would be willing to risk your lifetime’s professional reputation.”

“A man’s life is at stake, John,” he said solemnly.

“But you might have to penetrate the chest wall. A major operation, Dr. Marston. Without assistant surgeons, without skilled nurses, without a competent anaesthetist, no X-rays, and you might be removing a bullet that’s plugging a vital gap in the lung or pleura, or whatever you call it. Besides, the bullet might have been deflected anywhere.” I took a deep breath. “Dr. Marston, I cannot say how much I respect and admire you for even thinking of operating in such impossible conditions. But you will not run the risk. Doctor, as long as the captain is incapacitated I am in command of the Campari in nominal command, anyway,” I added bitterly. “I absolutely forbid you to incur the very heavy responsibility of operating in such adverse conditions. Miss Beresford, you are a witness to that.”

“Well, John, you may be right,” old Marston said weightily. He was suddenly looking five years younger. “You may indeed be right. But my sense of duty…”

“It does you great credit, doctor. But think of all those people who have been carrying a bullet about inside their chests since the first world war and still going strong.”

“There’s that, of course, there’s that.” I had rarely seen a man looking so relieved. “We’ll give nature a chance, hey?”

“Captain Bullen’s as strong as a horse.” The old man had at least a fighting chance now; I felt as if I’d just saved a life.

I said weakly, “You were right, doctor. I’m afraid I have been talking too much. Could I have some water, please?”

“Of course, my boy, of course.” He brought some, watched me drink it, and said, “that feel better?” “Thank you.” My voice was very faint. I moved my lips several times, as if speaking, but no words came. Marston, alarmed, put his ear close to my mouth to make out what I was trying to say, and I murmured, slowly and distinctly, “My thighbone is not broken, but pretend it is.”

He started, eyes reflecting astonishment, opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. He wasn’t all that slow, the old boy. He nodded slightly and said, “Ready for me to begin?”

He began. Susan Beresford helped him. My leg was a gory sight but looked worse than it was. One bullet had passed directly through the leg, but the other two had just torn superficial gashes on the inside, and it was from those that most of the blood had come. All the while he was working Dr. Marston kept up, for the sake of the guard, a running commentary on the extent and severity of my wounds, and if I hadn’t known he was lying fluently he would have made me feel very ill indeed. He certainly must have convinced the guard. When he’d cleaned and bound the wounds, a process I bore with stoic fortitude only because I didn’t want to start yelling in front of Susan Beresford, he fixed some splints to my leg and bound those on also. This done, he propped up my leg on a pile of pillows, went into the dispensary and reappeared with a couple of screwed pulleys, a length of wire with a heavy weight attached to the end, and a leather strap. The strap he fitted to my left ankle.

“What’s this in aid of?” I demanded.

“I’m the medical officer, please remember,” He said curtly. His left eyelid dropped in a slow wink. “Traction, Mr. Carter. You don’t want your left leg to be permanently shortened for life?”

“Sorry,” I muttered. Maybe I had been misjudging old Marston, just a little. Nothing would ever make me reconsider my opinion of him as a doctor, but he was shrewd enough in other things: the first thing a man like Carreras would have asked was why a man with a broken bone in his thigh was not in traction. Marston screwed the two hooks into holes in the deckhead, passed the wire through, attached the weight to one end and the strap to the other. It didn’t feel too uncomfortable. He then picked up the length of trouser leg that had been cut off, checked quickly to see if the guard was watching, splashed some water on it, and then wrung it out on top of my bandages. Even to myself I had to admit that I’d seldom seen a more convincing sight, a patient more completely and thoroughly immobilised.

He finished just in time. He and Susan Beresford were just clearing away when the door opened and Tony Carreras came in. He looked at Bullen, Macdonald, and myself, slowly, consideringly he wasn’t a man who would miss very much — then came to my bedside.

“Good evening, Carter,” he said pleasantly. “How are you feeling?”

“Where’s that murderous parent of yours?” I asked.

“Murderous parent? You do my father an injustice. Asleep, at the moment, as it happens: his hand was giving him great pain after Marston had finished with it” — I wasn’t surprised at that.” So he was given a sleeping draught. The good ship Campari is all buttoned up for the night and captain Tony Carreras in charge. You may all sleep easy. You’ll be interested to hear that we’ve just picked up Nassau on the radarscope — port forty, or some such nautical term — so you weren’t playing any funny tricks with that course after all.”

I grunted and turned my head away. Carreras walked across to Marston. “How are they, doctor?”

“How do you expect them to be after your thugs have riddled them with bullets?” Marston demanded bitterly. “Captain Bullen may live or die, I don’t know. Macdonald, the bo’sun, will live, but he’ll be a stiff-legged cripple for life. The chief officer has a compound fracture of the femur — the thighbone. Completely shattered. If we don’t get him to hospital in a couple of days, he also will be crippled for life; as it is, he’ll never be able to walk properly again.”

“I am genuinely sorry,” Tony Carreras said. He actually sounded as if he meant it. “Killing and crippling good men is an unforgivable waste. Well, almost unforgivable. Some things justify it.”

“Your humanity does you credit,” I sneered from my pillow.

“We are humane men,” he said.

“You’ve proved that all right.” I twisted to look at him. “But you could still show a little consideration for a very sick man.”

“Indeed?” He was very good at lifting eyebrows. “Indeed. Dan’l boone, here.”

I nodded towards the sentry with the gun. “You permit your men to smoke on duty?”

“Jose?” He smiled. Jose is an inveterate chain smoker. Take his cigarettes away and he’d probably go on strike. This isn’t the grenadier uards, you know, Carter. Why the sudden concern?”

“You heard what Dr. Marston said. Captain Bullen. He’s in a critical condition with a hole through his lung.”

“Ah, I think I understand. You agree, doctor?”

I held my breath. The chances were that the old boy hadn’t even the faintest idea what we were talking about. But again I’d underrated ills astuteness.

“For a man with a ruptured lung,” he said gravely, “there can be nothing worse than a smoke-laden atmosphere.”

“I see. Jose!” Carreras spoke rapidly in Spanish to the guard, who grinned amiably, got to his feet, and made for the door, picking up a chair en route. The door swung to behind him.

“No discipline.” Tony Carreras sighed. “None of this brisk sentry-go marching and countermarching like Buckingham palace, Mr. Carter. A chair tilted against a wall. Our Latin blood, I fear. But, I warn you, nonetheless effective a guard for all that. I see no harm in his keeping a watch outside; apart from jumping out through one of the windows into the sea below not that you are in any condition to do that anyway can’t see what mischief you can get up to.” He paused, looked at me consideringly. “You are singularly incurious, Mr. Carter. Far from being in character. Makes one suspicious, you know.”

“Curious about what?” I growled. “Nothing to be curious about. How many of those armed thugs do you have aboard the Campari?”

“Forty. Not bad, eh? Well, thirty-eight effectives. Captain Bullen killed one and you seriously damaged the hand of another. Where did you learn to shoot like that, Carter?”

“Luck. Cerdan recovered yet?”

“Yes,” he said briefly. He didn’t seem to want to talk about Cerdan.

“He killed Dexter?” I persisted.

“No. Werner, the nurse — the one you killed to-night.” For a professed humanitarian, the death of one of his colleagues in crime left him strangely unmoved. “A steward’s uniform and a tray of food at face level. Your head steward, White, saw him twice and never suspected, not that he went within thirty feet of White. And it was just Dexter’s luck that he saw this steward unlocking the radio room.”

“I suppose that same murderous devil got Brownell?”

“And Benson. Benson caught him coming out of the radio room after disposing of Brownell and was shot. Werner was going to dump him straight over the side, but there were people directly underneath. He dragged him across to the port side. Again crew beneath. So he emptied a life jacket locker and put Benson inside.” Carreras grinned. “And just your bad luck that you happened to be standing right beside that locker when we sent Werner up to dispose of the body, just before midnight last night.”

“Who dreamed up this scheme of having the false Marconi man in Kingston drill through from the wireless office to the cold-air trunking in Cerdan’s room below and buttoning the earphones permanently into the wireless officer’s receiving circuit? Cerdan, your old man, or you?”

“My father.”

“And the Trojan horse idea. Your father also?”

“He is a brilliant man. Now I know why you were not curious. You knew.”

“It wasn’t hard to guess,” I said wearily. “Not, that is, when it was too late. All our troubles really started in Carracio. And we loaded those huge crates in Carracio. Now I know why the stevedores were so terrified when one of the crates almost slipped from its slings. Now I know why your old man was so damned anxious to inspect the hold not to pay his respects to the dead men in their coffins, but to see how his men were placed for smashing their way out of the crates. And then they broke out last night and forced the battens of the hatch. How many men in a crate, Carreras?” “Twenty. Rather uncomfortably jammed, poor fellows. I think they had a rough twenty-four hours.”

“Twenty. Two crates. We loaded four of those. What’s in the other crates?”

“Machinery, Mr. Carter, just machinery.”

“One thing I am really curious about.”

“Yes?”

“What’s behind all this murderous business? Kidnap? Ransom?”

“I am not at liberty to discuss those things with you.” He grinned. “At least, not yet. You remaining here, Miss Beresford, or do you wish me to escort you up to your parents in the drawing room?”

“Please leave the young lady,” Marston said. “I want her to help me keep a twenty-four-hour watch on Captain Bullen. He might have a relapse at any moment.”

“As you wish.” He bowed to Susan Beresford. “Good night, all.”

The door closed. Susan Beresford said, “So that’s how they came aboard. How in the world did you know?”

“How in the world did I know? You didn’t think they had forty men hidden up inside the funnel, did you? Once we knew it was Carreras and Cerdan, it was obvious. They came aboard at Carracio. So did those huge crates. Two and two, Miss Beresford, have never failed to add up to four.” She flushed and gave me a very old-fashioned look, but I ignored it and went on: “You both see what this means, don’t you?”

“Let him tell us, doctor,” Miss Beresford said acidly. “He’s just dying to tell us.”

“It means that there’s something very, very big behind it all,” I said slowly. “All cargoes, except those in free ports and under certain transhipment conditions, which don’t apply here, have to be inspected by customs. Those crates passed the Carracio customs — which means that the customs know what’s inside. Probably explains, too, why our Carracio agent was so nervous. But the customs let it pass. Why? Because they had orders to let those crates pass. And who gave them the orders? Their government. And who gave the government its orders? Who but the Generalissimo? After all, he is the government. The Generalissimo,” I went on thoughtfully, “is directly behind all this. And we know he’s desperate for money. I wonder, I wonder?”

“You wonder what?” Marston asked.

“I don’t really know. Tell me, doctor, have you the facilities for making tea or coffee here?”

“Never yet seen a dispensary that hadn’t, my boy.” “What an excellent idea!” Susan Beresford jumped to her feet.

I’d love a cup of tea.”

“Coffee.”

“Tea.”

“Coffee. Humour a sick man. This should be quite an experience for Miss Beresford. Making her own coffee, I mean. You fill the percolator with water…”

“Please stop there.” She crossed to my bedside and looked down at me, her face without expression, her eyes very steady. “You have a short memory, Mr. Carter. I told you the night before last that I was sorry very sorry. Remember?”

“I remember,” I acknowledged. “Sorry, Miss Beresford.”

“Susan.” She smiled. “If you want your coffee, that is.”

“Blackmail.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, call her ‘Susan’ if she wants,” Dr. Marston interrupted irritably. “What’s the harm?”

“Doctor’s orders,” I said resignedly. “O.k. Susan, bring the patient his coffee.” The circumstances were hardly normal: I could get back to calling her Miss Beresford later on.

Five minutes passed, then she brought the coffee. I looked the tray and said, “What? Only three cups? There should be four.”

“Four?”

“Four. Three for us and one for our friend outside.”

“Our friend you mean the guard?”

“Who else?”

“Have you gone mad, Mr. Carter?”

“Fair’s fair,” Marston murmured. “‘John’ to you.” She looked coldly at him, glared at me, and said icily, “have you gone mad? Why should I bring that thug coffee. I’ll do nothing.”

“Our chief officer always has a reason for his actions,” Marston said in sharp and surprising support. “Please do as he asks.”

she poured a cup of coffee, took it through the outside door, and was back in a few seconds.

“He took it?” I asked. “Didn’t he just. Seems he’s had nothing except a little water to drink in the past day or so.”

“I can believe it. I should imagine that they weren’t too well equipped in the catering line in those crates.” I took the cup of coffee she offered me, drained it, and set it down. It tasted just the way coffee ought to taste.”

“How was it?” Susan asked.

“Perfect. Any suggestion I made that you didn’t even know how to boil water I withdraw unreservedly.”

She and Marston looked at each other and then Marston said, “No more thinking or worrying to do to-night, John?”

“Nary a bit. All I want is a good night’s sleep.”

“And that’s why I put a pretty powerful sedative in your coffee.”

He looked at me consideringly. “Coffee has a remarkable quality of disguising other flavours, hasn’t it?”

I knew what he meant and he knew I knew what he meant.

I said, “Dr. Marston, I do believe I have been guilty of underestimating you very considerably.”

“I believe you have, John,” he said jovially. “I believe you have indeed.”

I became drowsily aware that my left leg was hurting, not badly, but badly enough to wake me up. Someone was pulling it, giving it a strong, steady tug every few seconds, letting go, then tugging it again. And he kept on talking all the time he was doing it. I wished that that someone, whoever he was, would give it up. The tugging and the talking. Didn’t he know I was a sick man?

I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was the clock on the opposite bulkhead. Ten o’clock. Ten o’clock in the morning, for broad daylight was coming in through uncurtained windows. Dr. Marston had been right about the sedative; “powerful” was hardly the word for it.

Someone was talking, sure enough; old Bullen was babbling away incoherently in a drugged and troubled sleep, but there was no one tugging at my leg. It was the traction weight suspended from the ceiling that was doing the tugging. The Campari, in spite of her stabilisers, was rolling through a ten-to-fifteen-degree arc, which meant that there must be a pretty heavy and steep beam sea or swell running. Whenever the ship came to the end of a roll, the suspended pulley, reaching the limit of its pendulum swing, would give a pronounced jerk, a few seconds later another jerk. Now that I was fully awake, it was more painful than I had at first thought. Even if I had had a genuinely fractured femur, that sort of thing wouldn’t be doing me any good at all. I looked round to see Dr. Marston and to ask him to remove it.

But the first person who caught my eye was not Dr. Marston but Miguel Carreras. He was standing near the top of my bed; maybe he had been shaking me awake. He was newly shaven, looked fresh and rested, had his neatly bandaged right hand in a sling, and carried some charts under his arm. He gave me a slight smile.

“Good morning, Mr. Carter. How do you feel now?” I ignored him. Susan Beresford was sitting at the doctor’s desk. She looked pretty tired to me and there were dark smudges under the green eyes. I said, “Susan, where’s doc Marston?”

“Susan?” Carreras murmured. “How swiftly contiguity breeds familiarity.”

I ignored him again. Susan said, “in the dispensary, asleep. He’s been up most of the night.”

“Wake him, will you? Tell him I want this damned weight off. It’s tearing my leg in two.”

She went into the dispensary and Carreras said, “Your attention, Mr. Carter, if you please.”

“When I get that weight off,” I said surlily. “Not before.” Dr. Marston appeared, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and started to remove the weight without a word.

“Captain Bullen and the bo’sun?” I asked. “How are they?”

“The captain’s holding his ownust.” The old boy looked tired and sounded tired. “The bo’sun’s recovering fast. Both of them came to early this morning; I gave them sedatives. The longer they sleep, the better.”

I nodded, waited till he had lifted me to a sitting position and adjusted my leg, then said curtly, “What do you want, Carreras?”

He unrolled a chart and spread it over my knees. “A little navigational assistance cross-checking, shall we call it? You will co-operate?”

“I’ll cooperate.”

“What?” Susan Beresford crossed from the desk and stared down at me. “You you’re going to help this man?”

“You heard me, didn’t you? What do you want me to be a hero?” I nodded at my leg. “Look where being heroic’s got me.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it!” Patches of colour flared in the pale cheeks. “You. Going to help this — this monster, this murderer.”

“If I don’t,” I said wearily, “He’ll like as not start on you. Maybe break a linger at a time or yank out a tooth at a time with Dr. Marston’s forceps — and without anaesthetic. I’m not saying he’d like doing it, but he’d do it.”

“I’m not afraid of Mr. Carreras,” she said defiantly. But she was paler than ever.

“Then it’s time you were,” I said curtly. “Well, Carreras?” “You have sailed the north Atlantic, Mr. Carter? Between Europe and America, I mean?”

“Many times.”

“Good.” He jabbed at the chart. “A vessel leaving the Clyde and sailing for Norfolk, Virginia. I wish you to sketch the course it would take. Any reference books you wish I can have fetched.”

“I don’t require any.” I took his pencil. “North’s about round Ireland, so, a slightly flattened great circle route along the westbound summer lane, so, to this point well southeast of Newfoundland. The northward curve looks strange, but that’s only because of the projection of the chart: it is the shortest route.”

“I believe you. And then?”

“Shortly after that the course diverges from the main westbound New York lane, approximately here, and comes into Norfolk more or less from the east-northeast.” I twisted my head round to try to see out of the surgery door. “What’s all that racket? Where’s it coming from? Sounds like riveting guns or pneumatic chisels to me.”

“Later, later,” he said irritably. He unrolled another chart and the irritation vanished from his face. “Splendid, Carter, splendid. Your track coincides almost exactly with the information I have here.”

“Why the hell did you ask me — "

“I double-check everything, Mr. Carter. This vessel, now, is due to arrive at Norfolk at exactly ten o’clock at night, on Saturday, in two days’ time. Not earlier, not later: exactly ten o’clock. If I wish to meet that vessel at dawn that day, where would the interception point be?”

I kept my questions to myself. “Dawn, in that latitude, at this time, is five o’clock, give or take a few minutes. What speed does this vessel do?”

“Of course. Foolish of me. Ten knots.”

“Ten knots. Seventeen hours. One hundred and seventy nautical miles. The interception point would be here.”

“Exactly.” He’d consulted his own chart again. “Exactly. Most gratifying.” He looked at a slip of paper in his hand. “Our present position is 26.52 north, 76.33 west, near enough, anyway. How long would it take us to get to this interception point?”

“What is that hammering outside?” I demanded. “What devilry are you up to now, Carreras?”

“Answer my question!” he said sharply. He held all the cards.

I said: “What’s our speed just now?”

“Fourteen knots.” “Forty-three hours,” I said after a minute. “Just under.”

“Forty-three hours,” He said slowly. “It’s now ten a.m. Thursday and I have to rendezvous at five a.m. On Saturday. My god, that is only forty-three hours.” The first shadow of worry crossed his face.

“What is the maximum speed of the Campari?”

“Eighteen knots.” I caught a glimpse of Susan’s face. She was fast losing all her illusions about chief officer Carter.

“Ah! eighteen?” His face cleared. “And at eighteen knots?”

“At eighteen knots you’ll probably tear the stabilisers off and break up the Campari,” I told him.

He didn’t like that. He said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’ve got trouble coming, Carreras. Big trouble.”

I looked at the window. “I can’t see that sea, but I can feel it. An abnormally long deep swell. Ask any fisherman in the Bahamas what that means at this time of the year and he’ll tell you. It can mean only one thing, Carreras tropical storm, pretty certainly a hurricane. The swell is coming from the east, and that’s where the heart of the storm lies. Maybe a couple of hundred miles away yet, but it’s there. And the swell’s getting worse. Have you noticed? it’s getting worse because the classic path of a hurricane in these parts is west northwest, at a speed of ten to fifteen miles an hour. And we’re heading north by east. In other words, tee hurricane and the Campari are on a collision course. You started listening to some weather reports, Carreras.”

“How long will it take at eighteen knots?” He pressed.

“Thirty-three hours. About. In good weather.”

“And the course?”

I laid it off and looked at him. “The same as you have on that chart, undoubtably.”

“It is. What wavelength for weather reports?”

“No wave length,” I said drily. “If there’s a hurricane moving in westwards from the Atlantic, every commercial station on the eastern seaboard will be broadcasting practically nothing else.”

He moved across to Marston’s phone, spoke to the bridge, gave instructions for maximum speed and for listening in to weather reports.

When he’d finished, I said, “Eighteen knots? Well, I warned you.”

“I must have as much time as possible in hand.” He looked down at Bullen who was still rambling on incoherently in his sleep. “What would our captain do in those circumstances?” “Turn and run in any direction except north. We have our passengers to think of. They don’t like getting seasick.”

“They’re going to be very seasick, I’m afraid. But all in a good cause.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. I knew now the source of the hammering on deck. “A good cause. For a patriot such as yourself, Carreras, what better cause could there be? The Generalissimo’s coffers are empty. Not a soul in sight and his regime is tottering. Only one thing can save the sick man of the Caribbean — a transfusion. A transfusion of gold. This ship that we’re going to intercept, Carreras — how many millions in gold bullion is she carrying?” Marston was back in the surgery now, and he and Susan looked at me, then at each other, and you could see their mutual diagnosis: delayed shock had made me light-headed. Carreras, I could see, wasn’t thinking anything of the kind: his face, like his body, had gone very still.

“You have access to sources of information of which I am completely unaware.” his voice was hardly more than a whisper. “What sources, Carter? quickly!”

“There are no sources, Carreras.” I grinned at him. “Should there be?”

“No one plays cat-and-mouse with me.” He was still very quiet.

“The sources, Carter?”

“Here.” I tapped my head. “Only here. This source.” he regarded me for some seconds in cold silence, then nodded fractionally. “I knew it the first time I saw you. There is a — a quality about you. A champion boxer looks a champion boxer even in repose. A dangerous man cannot look anything else but dangerous, even in the most domestic situations, the most harmless surroundings. You have that quality. I have trained myself to recognise such things.”

“Hear that?” I said to Susan. “You never even suspected it, hey? Thought I was just like everybody else, didn’t you?”

“You are even more astute than I thought, Mr. Carter,” Carreras murmured.

“If adding two and two to make an obvious four is what you call being astute, then, sure, I’m astute. My god, if I were astute, I wouldn’t be lying here now with a shattered leg.” An occasional reminder of my helplessness would do no harm. “The Generalissimo needing cash — I should have worked it out long ago.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Shall I tell you why Brownell, our radio officer, was killed?”

“I should be interested.”

“Because you had intercepted a message from the Harrisons and Curtises, the two families recalled by cable from Kingston. This message said that the cables had been a hoax, and if we knew it had been a hoax we would have started looking very closely at Messrs. Carreras and Cerdan, the people who had taken their places. The point is that the cables they had received came through your capital city, Carreras, which argues post office connivance and, by inference, government knowledge. The government owns the post office.”

“Secondly, there is a long waiting list in your country for berths on the Campari; you were near the bottom but were mysteriously jumped to the top. You said you were the only people who could take immediate advantage of the two suddenly vacant suites. Poppycock. Somebody in authority — in great authority — said, ‘Carreras and Cerdan go to the top.’ and no one squawked. I wonder why?”

“Thirdly, although there is a waiting list, none of the people on it are your nationals, Carreras. They are not permitted to travel on foreign-owned vessels — and, in addition, find themselves immediately in prison if caught in possession of foreign currency. But you were permitted to travel — and you paid in U.S. Dollars. You’re still with me?”

He nodded. “We had to take the chance of paying in dollars.”

“Further, the customs closed their eyes to those crates with your men aboard — and those crates with the cannons. That shown”

“Cannons?” Marston interrupted. He was looking almost completely dazed. “Cannons?”

“The noise you can hear outside,” Carreras said equably. “Mr. Carter will explain by and by. I wish,” He went on, almost with regret, “That we were on the same side of the fence. You would have made an incomparable lieutenant, Mr. Carter. You could have named your own price.”

“That’s just about what Mr. Beresford said to me yesterday,” I agreed. “Everybody’s offering me jobs these days. The timing of the offers could have been improved.”

“Do you mean to tell me,” Susan said, “that daddy offered…”

“Don’t panic,” I said. “He changed his mind. So, Carreras, there we have it. Government connivance on all sides. And what does the government want? Money. Completely desperate. Paid three hundred and fifty million dollars to iron curtain countries in the past year or two for arms. Trouble was, the Generalissimo never had three hundred and fifty million dollars in the first place. Now nobody will buy his sugar, trade’s practically nonexistent, so how does an honest man raise money? Easy. He steals it.”

“Insulting personal remarks we can dispense with.”

“Suit yourself. Maybe armed robbery and piracy on the high seas sounds more moral than stealing. I wouldn’t know. Anyway, what does he steal? Bonds, stocks, shares, convertible drafts, currency? Not on your life. He only wants something that can never be traced back to him — and the only stuff he can get in sufficient quantity is gold. Your leader, Mr. Carreras,” I finished thoughtfully, “must have a very extensive spy network both in Britain and America.” “If one is prepared to lay out sufficient capital on an affair such as this,” he said indifferently, “a large spy system is unnecessary. I even have the complete loading plans of the bullion vessel in my cabin. Most men have their price, Mr. Carter.”

“I wish someone would try me someday,” I said. “Well, there you are. The American government has made no secret recently of its great success in recovering a large proportion of its gold reserves which went to Europe in the past few years. That bullion has to be transported — and part of it, I’ll bet my boots, is in this ship we’re intercepting. The fact that it is not due to arrive in Norfolk until after dark is interesting enough in itself; what is even more interesting is that Norfolk, in this case, almost certainly means the Hampton roads naval operating base where the ship can be unloaded with maximum security. And Norfolk, I would say, is the point that offers the shortest overland route to Fort Knox, where the gold will eventually be stored. How much gold, Carreras?”

“One hundred and fifty million dollars,” he said calmly. “You have missed very little. And nothing of importance.”

One hundred and fifty million dollars. I mentally examined this sum from several different angles, but there didn’t seem to be any comment to meet the case, so I asked, “Why did you pick on the Campari?”

“I thought you would have guessed that one too. In point of fact we had three other ships under active consideration as well, all ships on the New York-Caribbean run. We have been studying the movements of all four ships for some time. Yours suited best.”

“You cut things pretty fine, didn’t you? If we had been a couple of days late in arriving in Carracio — "

“There has been a naval vessel, a frigate, standing by and ready to intercept you on a peaceful pretext ever since you left Savannah. I was aboard. But it wasn’t necessary.” So that explained the vessel we had seen on our radar screens at night after leaving Savannah: not an American warship, as we had thought, but the Generalissimo’s. “This way was much easier, much more satisfactory.”

“And, of course,” I said, “You couldn’t have used the frigate for this job. Hasn’t the cruising range. Hopeless in bad weather. No derricks for heavy trans-shipment lifts. And conspicuous, far too conspicuous. But the Campari — who’s going to miss the Campari if she’s only a few days late in arriving at a destination. Only the head office and…”

“The head office is being taken care of,” Carreras said. “You don’t think we overlooked the obvious, do you? Our own transmitter was brought aboard and is already in circnit. A stream of perfectly satisfactory messages are going out, I assure you.”

“So you fixed that. And the Campari has the speed to overtake most cargo ships; it’s a good large sea boat for practically any weather, has first-class radar for picking up other vessels and jumbo derricks for heavy lifts.” I paused and looked at him. “We even have reinforced decks for gun platforms both forward and on the poop. Most British vessels have had those installed as a matter of course when building. But I warn you that they have to be strengthened from below with angle irons, a couple of days’ job in itself. Without them, anything more than a three-inch will buckle and twist the plates beyond repair after even only a couple of shots.”

“A couple of shots will be all that we require.” I thought about that last remark. A couple of shots. It didn’t make any kind of sense at all. What was Carreras up to?

“What on earth are you both talking about?” Susan asked wearily.

“Reinforced steel decks, angle irons — what is it all about?”

“Come with me, Miss Beresford, and I shall take pleasure in showing you personally what I mean.” Carreras smiled.

“Besides, I’m sure your good parents are becoming very anxious about you. I shall see you later, Mr. Carter. Come, Miss Beresford.”

She looked at him in doubtful hesitation. I said, “You might as well go, Susan. You never know what luck you’ll have. One good shove when he’s near the rail and off-balance. Just pick your time.”

“Your Anglo-Saxon humour becomes rather wearisome,” Carreras said thinly. “One hopes that you will be able to preserve it intact in the days to come.”

He left on this snitably sinister note, and Marston looked at me, speculation taking the place of puzzlement in his eyes. “Did Carreras mean what I thought he meant?”

“He did. That’s the hammering you’ve been hearing, the pneumatic drills. There are prepared bolt holes in the reinforced sections on the poop and foredeck to accept the base plates of several different sizes of British guns. Carreras’ guns probably come from the other side of the iron curtain and he has to drill new holes.”

“He he’s actually going to fit naval guns.”

“He had them in a couple of those crates. Almost certainly stripped down into sections, ready for quick assembly. Don’t have to be anything very big an’t be; it’s a dockyard job to fit anything of any size. But it will be big enough to stop this ship.”

“I don’t believe it!” Marston protested. “Holdup on the high seas? Piracy in this day and age? It’s ridiculous! It’s impossible!”

“You tell that to Carreras. He hasn’t a moment’s doubt but that it’s very, very possible. Neither have I. Can you tell me what’s going to stop him?”

“But we’ve got to stop him, John. We must stop him!”

“Why?” “Good God! Why? Let a man like that get away with heaven only knows how many million pounds…”

“Is that what you’re worried about?”

“Of course,” Marston snapped. “So would anyone be.”

“You’re right, of course, doctor,” I agreed. “I’m not at my best to-day.” What I could have said was that if he thought about it a bit more, he would become ten times as worried as he was, and not about the money. About half as worried as I was. And I was worried to death and frightened, badly frightened. Carreras was clever, all right, but perhaps a shade less so than he imagined. He made the mistake of letting himself get too involved in conversation, and when a man gets too involved and has anything to hide, he makes the further mistake of either talking too much of not talking enough. Carreras had made the mistake on both counts. But why should he worry about whether he talked too much or not? He couldn’t lose. Not now.

Breakfast came. I didn’t feel much like eating, but I ate all the same. I had lost far too much blood, and whatever little strength I could recover I was going to need that night. I felt even less like sleep, but for all that I asked Marston for a sedative and he gave it to me. I was going to need all the sleep I could get, too; I wouldn’t get much that coming night.

The last sensation I recalled as I dozed off was in my mouth, a queer unnatural dryness that usually comes with overmastering fear. But it wasn’t fear, I told myself. It wasn’t really fear. Just the effect of the sleeping draught. That’s what I told myself.