“I should think so,” I said. In view of the fact that be bad aboard some ill-disposed person who was clearly a dab hand with some of the more esoteric poisons this was as unwarrantedly optimistic a statement as I could remember making, but I had to say something. “Any other victims would have shown the symptoms before now: and I’ve checked everyone.”
“Have you now?” Captain Imrie asked. “How about my crew? They eat the same food as you do.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” And I hadn’t. Because of some mental block or simply because of lack of thought, I’d assumed, wholly without reason, that the effects would be confined to the film unit people: Captain Imrie was probably thinking that I regarded his men as second-rate citizens who, when measured against Otto’s valuable and expensive cast and crew, hardly merited serious consideration. I went on: “What I mean is, I didn’t know that. That they ate the same food. Should have been obvious. If you’ll just show me-”
With Mr. Stokes in lugubrious attendance, Captain Imrie led me round the crew quarters. Those consisted of five separate cabins-two for the deck staff, one for the engine-room staff. one for the two cooks and the last for the two stewards. It was the last one that we visited first.
We opened the door and just stood there for what then seemed like an unconscionably long time but was probably only a few seconds, mindless creatures bereft of will and speech and power of motion. I was the first to recover and stepped inside.
The stench was so nauseating that I came close to being sick for the first time that night and the cabin itself was in a state of indescribable confusion, chairs knocked over, clothes strewn everywhere and both bunks completely denuded of sheets and blankets which were scattered in a tom and tangled mess over the deck. The first and overwhelming impression was that there had been a fight to the death, but both Moxen and Scott, the latter almost covered in a shredded sheet, looked curiously peaceful as they lay there, and neither bore any marks of violence.
#
I say we go back. I say we return now.” Captain Imrie wedged himself more deeply into his chair as if establishing both a physical and argumentatively commanding position. “You gentlemen will bear in mind that I am the master of this vessel, that I have responsibilities towards both passengers and crew.” He lifted his bottle from the wrought-iron stand and helped himself lavishly and I observed, automatically and with little surprise, that his hand was not quite steady. If I’d typhoid or cholera aboard I’d sail at once for quarantine in the nearest port where medical assistance is available. Three dead and four seriously ill, I don’t see that cholera or typhoid could be any worse than we have here on the Morning Pose. Who’s going to be the next to die?” He looked at me almost accusingly, Imrie seemed to be adopting the understandable attitude that, as a doctor, it was my duty to preserve life and that as I wasn’t making a very good job of it what was happening was largely my fault. “Dr. Marlowe here admits that he is at a loss to understand the reasons for this-this lethal outbreak. Surely to God that itself is reason enough to call this off?”
“It’s a long long way back to Wick,” Smithy said. Like Goin, seated beside him, Smithy was swathed in a couple of blankets and, like Otto, he still looked very much under the weather. “A lot can happen in that time.”
“Wick, Mr. Smith? I wasn’t thinking of Wick. I can be in Hammerfest in twenty-four hours.”
“Less,” said Mr. Stokes. He sipped his rum, deliberated and made his pronouncement. “With the wind and the sea on the port quarter and a little assistance from me in the engine room. Twenty hours.” He went over his homework and found it faultless. “Yes, twenty hours.”
“You see?” Imrie transferred his piercing blue gaze from myself to Otto. “Twenty hours.”
When we’d established that there had been no more casualties among the crew Captain Imrie, in what was for him a very peremptory fashion, had summoned Otto to the saloon and Otto in turn had sent for his three fellow directors, Goin, Heissman, and Stryker. The other director, Miss Haynes, was, Stryker had reported, very deeply asleep which was less than surprising in view of the sedatives I’d prescribed for her. The Count had joined the meeting without invitation but everyone appeared to accept his presence there as natural.
To say that there was an air of panic in the saloon would have been exaggeration, albeit a forgivable one, but to say that there was a marked degree of apprehension, concern, and uncertainty would have erred on the side of understatement. Otto Gerran, perhaps, was more upset than any other person present, and understandably so, for Otto had a great deal more to lose than any other person present.
I appreciate the reasons for your anxiety,” Otto said, “and your concern for us all does you the greatest credit. But I think this concern is making you overcautious. Dr. Marlowe says that this-ah-epidemic is definitely over. We are going to look very foolish indeed if we turn and run now and then nothing more happens.”
Captain Imrie said: “I’m too old, Mr. Gerran, to care what I look like. If it’s a choice between looking a fool and having another dead man on my hands, then Fd rather look a fool any time.”
“I agree with Mr. Gerran,” Heissman said. He still looked sick and he sounded sick. “To throw it all away when we’re so near-just over a day to Bear Island. Drop us off there and then go to Hammerfest-just as in the original plan. That means-well, you’d be in Hammerfest in say sixty hours instead of twenty-four. What’s going to happen in that extra thirty-six hours that’s not going to happen in the next twenty-four? Lose everything for thirty-six hours just because you’re running scared?”
“I am not running scared, as you say.” There was something impressive about Imrie’s quiet dignity. “My first-”
“I wasn’t referring to you personally,” Heissman said.
“My first concern is for the people under my charge. And they are under my charge. I am the person responsible. I must make the decision.”
“Granted, Captain, granted.” Goin was his usual imperturbable self, a calm and reasonable man. “But one has to strike a balance in those matters, don’t you think? Against what Dr. Marlowe now regards as being a very remote possibility of another outbreak of food poisoning occurring, there’s the near certainty-no, I would go further and say that there’s the inevitability-that if we go directly to Hammerfest we’ll be put in quarantine for God knows how long. A week, maybe two weeks, before the port medical authorities give us clearance. And then it’ll be too late, we’d just have to abandon all ideas about making the film at all and go home.” Less than a couple of hours previously, I recalled, Heissman had been making most disparaging remarks about Otto’s mental capacities, but he’d backed him up against Captain Imrie and now here was Goin doing the same thing: both men knew which side of their bread required butter. “The losses to Olympus Productions will be enormous.”
“Don’t be telling me that, Mr. Goin,” Imrie said. `Mat you mean is that the losses to the insurance company-or companies-will be enormous.”
“Wrong,” Stryker said and from his tone and attitude it was clear that directorial solidarity on the board of Olympus Productions was complete. “Severally and personally, all members of the cast and crew are insured. The film project-a guarantee as to its successful conclusion-was uninsurable, at least in terms of the premiums demanded. We, and we alone, bear the loss-and I would add that for Mr. Gerran, who is by far and away the biggest shareholder, the effects would be ruinous.”
“I am very sorry about that.” Captain Imrie seemed genuinely sympathetic but he didn’t for a moment sound like a man who was preparing to abandon his position. “But that’s your concern, I’m afraid. And I would remind you, Mr. Gerran, of what you yourself said earlier on this evening. “Health,” you said, “is a damned sight more important than any profit we might make from this film. Wouldn’t you say this is a case in point?”
“That’s nonsense to say that,” Goin said equably. He had the rare gift of being able to make potentially offensive statements in a quietly rational voice that somehow robbed them of all offence. ‘’Profit,’ you say, was the word Mr. Gerran used. Certainly, Mr. Gerran would willingly pass up any potential profit if the need arose, and that need wouldn’t have to be very pressing or demanding. He’s done it before.” This was at variance with the impression I’d formed of Otto, but then Goin had known him many more years than I had days. “Even without profit we could still make our way by breaking even, which is as much as most film companies can hope for these days. But you’re not talking-we’re not talking-about lack of profit, we’re talking about a total and nonrecoverable loss, a loss that would run into six figures and break us entirely. We’ve put our collective shirt on this one, Captain Imrie, yet you’re talking airily of liquidating our company, putting dozens of technicians-and their families-on the breadline and damaging, very likely beyond repair, the careers of some very promising actors and actresses. And all of this for what? The remote chance-according to Dr. Marlowe, the very remote chance-that someone may fall ill again. Haven’t you got things just a little bit out of proportion, Captain Imrie?”