Findhorn smiled faintly. “And you still think he’s not a phoney?”
“No, sir — neither do you. Colonel Blimp, Grade A — then he does or says something off-beat, completely out of character. He just doesn’t classify easily. Inconsiderate of him, very.”
“Very,” Findhorn murmured dryly. “Then there’s his other pal, Van Effen. Why the devil should Siran show such tender concern for his health?”
“It’s difficult,” Nicolson admitted. “Especially when Van Effen didn’t show much concern for his, what with threatening to blow holes in his spine and trying to throttle him. But I’m inclined to believe Van Effen. I like him.”
“I believe him, too. But Farnholme just doesn’t believe him — he knows Van Effen is telling the truth — and when I ask him why he backwaters at high speed and advances piffling reasons that wouldn’t convince a five year old.” Findhorn sighed wearily. “Just about as puerile and unconvincing as the reasons Miss Plenderleith gave me for wanting to see me when I went to her cabin just after you and Siran had finished your — ah — discussion.”
“So you went after all?” Nicolson smiled. “I’m sorry I missed that.”
“You knew?”
“Vannier told me. I practically had to drag him to the saloon to get him to give you her message. What did she say?”
“First of all she denied having sent for me at all, then gave me some nonsense about when would we arrive in port and could she send a cable to her sister in England, just something fabricated on the spur of the moment, obviously. She’s worried about something and I think she was going to tell me what it was, then changed her mind.” Captain Findhorn shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the problem. “Did you know that Miss Plenderleith came from Borneo too? She’s been headmistress in a girls’ school there and hung on to the last minute.”
“I know. We had a long conversation on the catwalk this morning. Called me ‘young man’ all the time and made me wonder whether I had washed behind the ears.” Nicolson looked speculatively at the captain. “Just to add to your worries, I’ll tell you something else you don’t know. Miss Plenderleith had a visitor, a gentleman friend, in her cabin last night.”
“What! Did she tell you this?”
“Good lord, no. Walters told me. He was just stretching out on his settee after coming off watch last night when he heard a knock on Miss Plenderleith’s door — pretty soft, but he heard it: his settee in the wireless office is right up against the bulkhead of his cabin. Walters says he was curious enough to listen at, the communicating door, but it was shut tight and he couldn’t hear much, it was all very whispery and conspiratorial. But one of the voices was very deep, a man’s murmur for certain. He was there almost ten minutes, then he left.”
“Midnight assignations in Miss Plenderleith’s cabin!” Findhorn still hadn’t recovered from his astonishment. “I would have thought she would have screamed her head off.”
“Not her!” Nicolson grinned and shook his head positively. “She’s a pillar of respectability, all right, but any midnight visitor would have been hauled in, lectured over the old girl’s wagging forefinger and sent on his way a chastened man, bent on leading a better life. But this was no lecture, I gather, but a very hush-hush discussion.”
“Walters any idea who it was?”
“None at all — just that it was a man’s voice and that he himself was too damn’ tired and sleepy to, worry about it anyway.”
“Yes. Maybe he has the right idea at that.” Findhorn took off his cap and mopped his dark head with a handkerchief: only eight o’clock, but already the sun was beginning to burn. “We’ve more to do than worry about them anyway. I just can’t figure them out. They’re a strange bunch — each one I talk to seems queerer than the last.”
“Including Miss Drachmann?” Nicolson suggested.
“Good heavens, no! I’d trade the bunch of them for that girl.” Findhorn replaced his cap and shook his head slowly, his eyes distant. “A shocking case, Johnny — what a ghastly mess those diabolical little butchers made of her face.” His eyes came into focus again, and he looked sharply at Nicolson. “How much of what you told her last night was true?”
“About what the surgeons could do for her, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Not much. I don’t know a great deal, but that scar will have stretched and set long before anyone can do anything about it. They can still do something, of course — but they’re not miracle workers: none of them claims to be.”
“Then damn it all, mister, you’d no right to give her the impression they are.” Findhorn was as near anger as his phlegmatic nature would allow. “My God, think of the disillusionment !”
“Eat, drink and be merry,” Nicolson quoted softly. “Do you think you’ll ever see England again, sir?”
Findhorn looked at him for a long moment, craggy brows drawn deep over his eyes, then nodded in slow understanding and turned away. “Funny how we keep thinking in terms of peace and normality,” he murmured. “Sorry, boy, sorry. Yet I’ve been thinking about nothing else since the sun came up. Young Peter, the nurses, everyone — mostly the child and that girl, I don’t know why.” He was silent for a few moments, eyes quartering the cloudless horizon, then added with only apparent inconsequence: “It’s a lovely day, Johnny.”
“It’s a lovely day to die,” Nicolson said sombrely. Then he caught the captain’s eye and smiled, briefly. “It’s a long time waiting, but the Japanese are polite little gentlemen — ask Miss Drachmann: they always have been polite little gentlemen: I don’t think they’ll keep us waiting much longer.”
But the .Japanese did keep” tltec? Waiting. They kept them waiting a long, long time. Not long, perhaps, as the world reckons seconds and minutes and hours, but when men, despairing men too long on the rack of suspense, momentarily await and expect the inevitable, then the seconds and the minutes and the hours lose any significance as absolute units of time and, instead, become relative only to the razor-edged expectancy of the passing moment, to the ever-present anticipation of what must inexorably come. And so the seconds crawled by and became minutes, and the minutes stretched themselves out interminably and lengthened into an hour, and then another hour, and still the skies were empty and the line of the shimmering horizon remained smooth and still and unbroken. Why the enemy — and Findhorn knew hundreds of ships and planes must be scouring the seas for them — held off so long was quite beyond his understanding: he could only hazard the guess that they must have swept that area the previous afternoon after they had turned back to the aid of the Kerry Dancer and were now searching the seas farther to the south. Or perhaps they thought the Viroma had been lost in the typhoon — and even as that explanation crossed his mind Findhorn dismissed it as wishful thinking and knew that the Japanese would think nothing of the kind. . . . Whatever the reason, the Viroma was still alone, still rolling south-eastwards in a vast expanse of empty sea and sky. Another hour passed, and then another and it was high noon, a blazing, burning sun riding almost vertically overhead in the oven of the sky and for the first time Captain Findhorn was allowing himself the luxury of the first tentative stirrings of hope: the Cari-mata Straits and darkness and the Java Sea and they might dare begin to think of home again. The sun rolled over its zenith, noon passed, and the minutes crept on again, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, each minute dragging longer and longer as hope began to rise once more. And then, at twenty-four minutes past noon, hope had turned to dust and the long wait was over.
A gunner on the fo’c’sle saw it first — a tiny black speck far to the south-west, materialising out of the heat haze, high above the horizon. For a few seconds it seemed to remain there, stationary in the sky, a black, meaningless dot suspended in the air, and then, almost all at once, it was no longer tiny but visibly swelling in size with every breath the watchers took, and no longer meaningless, but taking shape, hardening in definition through the shimmering haze until the outline of fuselage and wings could be clearly seen, so clearly as to be unmistakable. A Japanese Zero fighter, probably fitted with long-range tanks, and even as the watchers on the Viroma recognised it the muted thunder of the aero engine came at them across the stillness of the sea.
The Zero droned in steadily, losing height by the second and heading straight for them. It seemed at first as if the pilot intended flying straight across the Viroma, but, less than a mile away, he banked sharply to starboard and started to circle the ship at a height of about five hundred feet. He made no move to attack, and not a gun fired aboard the Viroma. Captain Findhorn’s orders to his gunners had been explicit — • no firing except in self-defence: their ammunition was limited and they had to conserve it for the inevitable bombers. Besides, there was always the chance that the pilot might be deceived by the newly-painted name of Siyushu Mam and the large flag of the Rising Sun which had taken the place of Resistencia and the flag of the Argentine Republic a couple of days previously — about one chance in ten thousand, Findhorn thought grimly. The brazen effrontery and the sheer unexpectedness that had carried the Viroma thus far had outlived their usefulness.