was at least a couple of miles away too. I only hoped we were a couple
of miles away in the same direction. “Is that you, archie?” god knows
I didn’t doubt it. I just wanted the reassurance of hearing him say so.
“It’s myself, sir. Just you leave everything to me.” it was the
bo’sun all right; he couldn’t have used that sentence more than five
thousand times in the years i’d known him. “Just you lie still.”
i’d no intention of doing anything else. I’d be far gone in years
before i’d ever forget the last time I moved, if I lived that long,
which didn’t seem likely at the moment.
“My neck, archie.” my voice sounded a few hundred yards closer.
“I think it’s broken.”
“Aye, i’m sure it feels that way, sir, but i’m thinking myself
maybe it’s not as bad as all that. We’ll see.”
I don’t know how long I lay there, maybe two or three minutes,
while the bo’sun swabbed the blood away until eventually the stars began
to swim into some sort of focus again. Then he slid one arm under my
shoulders and under my head and began to lift me, inch by patient inch,
into a sitting position.
I waited for the guillotine to fall again, but it didn’t. This
time it was more like a butcher’s meat chopper, but a pretty blunt
chopper: several times in a few seconds the campari spun round 360
degrees on its keel, then settled down on course again. 047, I seemed
to recall. And this time I didn’t lose consciousness.
“What time is it, archie?” a stupid question to ask, but I wasn’t
at my very best. And my voice, I was glad to hear, was at last
practically next door to me.
he turned my left wrist.
“Twelve forty-five, your watch says, sir. I think you must have
been lying here a good hour. You were in the shadow of the boat and no
one would have seen you even if they had passed by this way.”
I moved my head an experimental inch and winced at the pain of it.
Two inches and it would fall off.
“What the hell happened to me, archie? some kind of turn or other?
I don’t remember
“Some kind of turn!” his voice was soft and cold. I felt his
fingers touch the back of my neck. “Our friend with the sandbag has
been taking a walk again, sir. One of these days,” he added
thoughtfully, “i’m going to catch him at it.”
“Sandbag!” I struggled to my feet, but i’d never have made it
without the bo’sun. “The wireless office! peters!”
“It’s young mr. jenkins that’s on now, sir. He’s all right.
you said you’d relieve me for the middle watch, and when twenty
past twelve came I knew something was wrong. So I just went straight
into the wireless office and phoned captain bullen.”
“The captain?”
“Who else could I phone, sir?” who else, indeed? apart from
myself the captain was the only deck officer who really knew what had
happened, who knew where the bo’sun was concealed and why. Macdonald
had his arm round me now, still half supporting me, leading me forward
to the cross passage that led to the wireless office. “He came at once.
He’s there now, talking to mr. jenkins. Worried stiff thinks the same
thing might have happened to you as happened to benson. He gave me a
present before I came looking for you.” he made a movement and I could
see the barrel of a pistol that was all but engulfed in his huge hand.
“I am hoping that I get a chance to use this, mr. carter, and not the
butt end, either. I suppose you realise that if you had toppled forward
instead of sideways, you’d most likely have fallen over the rail into
the sea.”
I wondered grimly why they hadn’t, in fact, shoved me over the side
but said nothing, just concentrated on reaching the wireless office.
Captain bullen was waiting there, just outside the door, and the bulge
in the pocket of his uniform jacket wasn’t caused only by his hand. He
came quickly to meet us, probably to get out of earshot of the wireless
officer, and his reaction to my condition and story of what had happened
was all that anyone could reasonably have wished for. He was just mad
clear through. I’d never seen him in such a mood of tightly controlled
anger since i’d first met him three years ago. When he’d calmed down a
bit, he said, “but why the devil didn’t they go the whole hog and throw
you overboard while they were at it?”
“They didn’t have to, sir,” I said wearily. “They didn’t want to
kill me. Just to get me out of the road.”
he peered at me, the cold eyes speculative. “You talk as if you
knew why they coshed you.”
“I do. Or I think I do.” I rubbed the back of my neck with a
gentle hand. I was pretty sure now there weren’t any vertebrae broken;
it just felt that way. “My own fault. I overlooked the obvious. Come
to that, we all overlooked the obvious. Once they’d killed brownell and
we’d deduced, by association, that they’d also killed benson, I lost all
interest in benson. I just assumed that they’d got rid of him. All I
was concerned with, all any of us was concerned with, was to see that
there was no further attack made on the wireless office, to try to find
out where the receiver was, and to figure what lay behind it all.
Benson, we were sure, was dead, and a dead benson could no longer be of
any use to us. So we forgot benson. Benson belonged to the past.”
“Are you trying to tell me that benson was is-still alive?”
“He was dead all right.” I felt about ninety, a badly crippled
ninety, and the vice round my head wasn’t easing off any I could notice.
“He was dead, but they hadn’t got rid of him. Maybe they hadn’t a
chance to get rid of him. Maybe they had to wait till it was real good
and dark to get rid of him. But they had to get rid of himself we’d
found him, we’d have known there was a murderer aboard. They probably
had him stashed away in some place where we wouldn’t have thought of
looking for him anyway, lying on top of one of the offices, stuck in a
ventilator, behind one of the sundeck benches it could have been
anywhere. And I was either too near where they’d stashed him, so that
they couldn’t get at him, or they couldn’t chuck him overboard as long
as I was standing by the rail there. Barring myself, they knew they
were safe enough. Going at maximum speed, with a bow wave like we’re
throwing up right now, no one would have heard anything if they had
dropped him into the sea, and on a dark and moonless night like this no
one would have seen anything either. So they’d only me to deal with and
they didn’t find that any trouble at all,” I finished bitterly.
bullen shook his head. “You never heard a thing? not the faintest
fall of a footstep, not even the swish of a cosh coming through the
air?”
“Old flannel-feet must be a pretty dangerous character, sir,” I
said reflectively. “He didn’t make the slightest whisper of sound. I
wouldn’t have thought it possible. For all I know, I might have taken a
fainting turn and struck my head on the davit as I fell. That’s what I
thought myself even suggested it to the bo’sun here. And that’s what
i’m going to tell anyone who wants to know tomorrow.” I grinned and
winked at macdonald, and even the wink hurt. “I’ll tell them you’ve
been overworking me, sir, and I collapsed from exhaustion.”
“Why tell anyone?” bullen wasn’t amused. “It doesn’t show where
you have been coshed; that wound is just above the temple and inside the
hairline and could be pretty well camouflaged. Agreed?”
“No, sir. Someone knows I had an accident the character
responsible for it-and he’s going to regard it as damned queer if I make
no reference to it at all. But if I do mention it and pass it off as a
ladylike swoon, there’s an even chance he may accept it, and if he does
we’re still going to have the advantage of being in the position of
knowing there’s mayhem and murder aboard, while they will have no
suspicion we know anything of the kind.”
“Your mind,” said captain bullen unsympathetically, “is beginning
to clear at last.”
when I awoke in the morning the already hot sun was streaming in
through my uncurtained window. My cabin, immediately abaft the
captain’s, was on the starboard side, and the sun was coming from