“Yes, captain’s cabin . . . Oh, it’s you, Willy . . . Yes, he’s here. Hang on a minute.” Nicolson rose easily to his feet, vacating his seat for the captain. “The second engineer, sir.”
Findhorn talked for perhaps half a minute, mostly in monosyllabic grunts. Nicolson wondered idly what Willoughby had wanted. He had sounded almost bored but then nobody had ever seen Willoughby excited about anything. Ernest Willoughby never found anything in life worth getting excited about. A crazy, dreaming old coot — he was the oldest man in the ship — with a passion for literature matched only by his utter contempt for engines and the means whereby he earned his livelihood, he was the most honest man, and the most completely unselfish, that Nicolson had ever met. Willoughby himself took no pride in this, and was probably unaware of it: he was a man who had little, but wanted nothing at all. With him Nicolson had little in common, superficially at any rate: but, almost as if by the attraction of opposites, he had formed the greatest liking and admiration for the old engineer, and Willoughby, unmarried and with only a threadbare bed-sitting-room in the company club in Singapore, had spent a good few evenings in his home. Caroline, he remembered, had thought the world of old Willy and had usually made a point of seeing that the best meals and the longest, coolest drinks were always waiting for the old engineer. Nicolson stared down at his glass, and his mouth twisted in bitter memory . , . Suddenly he became aware that Captain Findhorn was on his feet, looking down at him with a peculiar expression on his face.
“What’s the matter, Johnny? You feel all right?”
“Just wandering, sir.” Nicolson smiled and waved a hand at the whisky bottle. “A great help, this, when you’re taking a walk around in your mind,”
“Help yourself: take another walk round.” Findhorn picked up his hat and turned for the door. “Wait here for me, will you? I have to go below.”
Two minutes after the captain had gone the phone rang again. It was Findhorn speaking, asking Nicolson to come below to the dining-saloon. He gave no reason. On his way below Nicolson met the fourth officer coming out of the wireless operator’s cabin. Vannier was looking neither happy nor pleased. Nicolson looked at him, an eyebrow raised in interrogation, and Vannier glanced back at the wireless operator’s door, his expression a nice mixture of indignation and apprehension.
“That old battle axe in there is in full cry, sir.” He kept his voice low. “The what?”
“Miss Plenderleith,” Vannier explained. “She’s in Walter’s cabin. I was just dropping off to sleep when she started hammering on the bulkhead between us, and when I ignored that she went out to the passage and started calling.” Vannier paused, then went on feelingly: “She has a very loud voice, sir.”
“What did she want?”
“The captain.” Vannier shook his head incredulously. “‘Young man, I want to see the captain. At once. Tell him to come here.’ Then she pushed me out the door. What will I do, sir?”
“Exactly what she asks, of course.” Nicolson grinned. “I want to be there when you tell him. He’s below in the saloon.” They dropped down one deck and went into the dining-saloon together. It was a big room, with two fore-and-aft tables with seating for twenty. But it was almost empty now: there were only three people there and they were all standing. The captain and the second engineer stood side by side, facing aft, giving easily with the rolling of the ship. Findhorn, immaculately correct in uniform as always, was smiling. So was Willoughby, but there all resemblance between the two men ended. Tall, stooped, with a brown, wrinkled face and a thick, unkempt shock of grey hair, Willoughby was a tailor’s nightmare. He wore a white shirt — what had originally been a white shirt — unpressed, buttonless and frayed at the collar and half-sleeves, a pair of khaki duck trousers, wrinkled like an elephant’s legs and far too short for him, diamond-patterned plaid socks and unlaced canvas shoes. He hadn’t had a shave that day, he probably hadn’t had a shave that week.
Half-standing, half-leaning against the buffet table, the girl was facing them, hands gripping the edge of the table to steady herself. Nicolson and Vannier could see only her profile as they went in, but they could see that she, too, was smiling, the righthand corner of her mouth curving up and dimpling the olive-tinted peach of her cheek. She had a straight nose, very finely chiselled, a wide smooth forehead, and long, silky hair gathered in a deep roll round her neck, hair black with that intense blackness that reflects blue under the strong sun and gleams like a raven’s wing. With her hair, complexion and rather high cheekbones, she was a typical Eurasian beauty: but after a long, long look — and all men would always give Miss Drachmann a long, long look — she was neither typical nor Eurasian: the face was not broad enough, the features were too delicate and those incredible eyes spoke only of the far north of Europe. They were as Nicolson had first seen them in the harsh light of his torch aboard the Kerry Dancer — an intense, startling blue, very clear, very compelling, the most remarkable features in a remarkable face. And round and beneath these eyes, just then, were the faint, blue smudges of exhaustion.
She had got rid of her hat and belted bush-jacket, Nicolson saw. She wore only her stained khaki skirt and a clean white shirt, several sizes too large for her, with the sleeves rolled far up the slender arms. Vannier’s shirt, Nicolson felt sure. He had sat beside her all the way back in the lifeboat, talking in a low voice and most solicitous for her welfare. Nicolson smiled to himself, sought back in his memory for the days when he too had been an impressionable young Raleigh with a cloak always ready to hand, a knight-errant for any lady in distress. But he couldn’t remember the days: there probably hadn’t been any.
Nicolson ushered Vannier into the room ahead of him — Findhorn’s reactions to Miss Plenderleith’s request would be worth watching — closed the door softly behind him, turned round and checked himself just in time to stop from bumping into Vannier, who had halted suddenly and was standing motionless, rigid, not three feet from the door, his clenched fists by his side.
All three had fallen silent and turned to the door as Nicolson and Vannier had come in. Vannier had no eyes for Findhorn and Willoughby — he was staring at the nurse, his eyes widening, his lips parting in shock. Miss Drachmann had turned so that the lamplight fell full on the left hand side of her face, and that side of her face was not pretty. A great, long, jagged scar, still raw and livid and puckering up the cheek where it had been roughly, clumsily stitched, ran the whole length of her face from the hairline of the temple to the corner of the soft, round chin. Near the top, just above the cheekbone, it was half an inch wide. On anyone’s face it would have looked ghastly: on the smooth loveliness of hers it had the unreality of a caricature, the shocking impact of the most impious blasphemy.
She looked at Vannier in silence for a few seconds, then she smiled. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was enough to dimple one cheek and to whiten the scar on the other, at the corner of the mouth and behind the eye. She reached up her left hand and touched her cheek lightly.
“I’m afraid it’s really not very nice, is it?” she asked. There was neither reproach nor condemnation in her voice: it was apologetic, rather, and touched with a queer kind of pity, but the pity was not for herself.
Vannier said nothing. His face had turned a shade paler, but when she spoke the colour returned and began to flood all over his neck and face. He looked away — one could almost see the sheer physical effort it cost him to pull his eyes off that hideous scar — and opened his mouth to speak. But he said nothing; perhaps there was nothing he could say.
Nicolson walked quickly past him, nodded to Willoughby and stopped in front of the girl. Captain Findhorn was watching him closely, but Nicolson was unaware of it.
“Good evening, Miss Drachmann.” His tone was cool but friendly. “All your patients nice and comfortable?” If you want banal remarks, he thought, Nicolson’s your man.
“Yes, thank you, sir.”
“Don’t call me’ sir’,” he said irritably. “I’ve told you that once already.” He lifted his hand and gently touched the scarred cheek. She didn’t flinch, there was no movement at all but for a momentary widening of the blue eyes in the expressionless face. “Our little yellow brothers, I take it?” His voice was as gentle as his hand.