through at that moment, a message so urgent in nature that, instead of
waiting for the routine bridge messenger collection, brownell made to
phone it through at once. That was why his hand was reaching for the
phone when we found him, not because he was feeling ill all of a sudden.
And then he was killed. Whoever killed him had to kill. Knocking
brownell out and stealing the message would have accomplished nothing,
for as soon as he would have come to he would have remembered the
contents of the message and immediately sent it to the bridge. It
must,” I added thoughtfully, “have been a damned important message.”
“Benson,” bullen repeated impatiently. “How about benson?”
“Benson was the victim of a lifetime of habit. Howie here tells us
how benson invariably went out on deck between half-past eight and
twenty-five to nine for a smoke while the passengers were at dinner.
The radio room is immediately above where he would have been taking his
promenade-and the message came through, and brownell was killed, inside
those five minutes. Benson must have seen or heard something unusual
and gone to investigate. He might even have caught the murderer in the
act. And so benson had to die too.”
“But why?” captain bullen demanded. He still couldn’t believe it
all. “Why, why, why? why was he killed? why was that message so
desperately important? the whole damned thing’s crazy. And what in
god’s name was in that message, anyway?”
“That’s why we have to go to nassau to find out, sir.” bullen
looked at me without expression, looked at his drink, evidently decided
that he preferred his drink to me or the ill news I brought with me-and
knocked back the contents in a couple of gulps.
mcllroy didn’t touch his. He sat there for a whole minute looking
at it consideringly, then said, “you haven’t missed much, johnny. But
you’ve missed one thing. The wireless officer on watch peters, isn’t
it? how do you know the same message won’t come through again? maybe
it was a message requiring acknowledgement? if it was, and it’s not
acknowledged, it’s pretty certain to come through again. Then what’s
the guarantee that peters won’t get the same treatment?”
“The bo’sun’s the guarantee, chief. He’s sitting in black shadow
not ten yards from the wireless office with a marlinespike in his hand
and highland murder in his heart. You know macdonald. Heaven help
anyone who goes within a sunday walk of the wireless office.”
bullen poured himself another small whisky, smiled tiredly, and
glanced at his single broad commodore’s stripe.
“Mr. carter, I think you and I should change jackets.” it was as
far in apology as he could ever go and about twelve hours ahead of par.
“Think you’d like this side of my desk?”
“Suit me fine, sir,” I agreed. “Especially if you took over
entertaining the passengers.”
“In that case we’ll stay as we are.” another brief smile, no
sooner there than vanished. “Who’s on the bridge? jamieson, isn’t it?
better take over, first.”
“Later, sir, with your permission. There’s still the most
important thing of all to investigate. But I don’t even know how to
start.”
“Don’t tell me there’s something else,” bullen said heavily. “I’ve
had some time to think about this, that’s all,” I said. “A message came
through to our wireless office, a message so important that it had to be
intercepted at all costs. But how could anyone possibly know that
message was coming through? the only way that message could have come
into the campari was through a pair of earphones clamped to brownell’s
head, yet someone else was taking down that message at the same instant
as brownell was. Must have been. Brownell had no sooner finished
transcribing that message onto his pad than he reached for the phone to
get the bridge and he no sooner reached for the phone than he died.
There’s some other radio receiver aboard the campari tuned into the same
wave length, and wherever it is, it’s not a hop, skip, and jump from the
wireless office, for wherever the eavesdropper was, he got from there to
the wireless office in seconds. Problem, find the receiver.”
bullen looked at me. Mcllroy looked at me. They both looked at
each other. Then mcllroy objected: “but the wireless officer keeps
shifting wave lengths. How could anybody know what particular wave
length he was on at any one moment?”
“How can anyone know anything?” I asked. I nodded at the message
pad on the table. “Until we get that deciphered?”
“The message.” bullen gazed at the pad, abruptly made up his mind.
“Nassau it is. Maximum speed, chief, but slowly, over half an hour, so
that no one will notice the step-up in revs. First, the bridge. Get
our position.” he fetched chart, rules, dividers while I was getting
the figures, nodded at me as I hung up. “Lay off the shortest possible
course.”
it didn’t take long. “047 from here to here, sir, approximately
220 miles, then 30.”
“Arrival?”
“Maximum speed?”
“Of course.”
“Just before midnight to-morrow night.”
he reached for a pad, scribbled for a minute, then read out: “‘port
authorities, nassau. S.s. campari, position such and-such, arriving
23.30 tomorrow wednesday. Request police alongside immediate
investigation one murdered man, one missing man. Urgent. Bullen,
master.’ that should do.” he reached for the phone. I touched his arm.
“Whoever has this receiver can monitor outgoing calls just as
easily as incoming ones. Then they’ll know we’re on to them. God only
knows what might happen then.”
bullen looked slowly first at me, then at mcLlroy, then at the
purser, who hadn’t spoken a word since i’d arrived in the cabin, then
back at me again. Then he tore the message into tiny shreds and dropped
it into the wastepaper basket.
chapter 4
[tuesday 10:15 p.m.-wednesday 8.45 a.m.]
I didn’t get a great deal of investigating done that night. I’d
figured out how to start, all right, but the devil of it was I couldn’t
start till the passengers were up and about in the morning. Nobody
likes being turted out of his bed in the middle of the night, a
millionaire least of all.
after having cautiously identified myself to the bo’sun to ensure
that I didn’t get the back of my head stove in with a marlinespike, I
spent a good fifteen minutes in the vicinity of the wireless office,
relating its position to other offices and nearby accommodation. The
wireless office was on the starboard side, left immediately above the
forward “a” deck accommodation and cerdan’s suite was directly below-and
on the basis of my assumption that the murderer, even if he didn’t wait
for the last few words of the message to come through, could have had no
more than ten seconds to get from wherever the hidden receiver was to
the wireless office, then any place within ten seconds’ reach of the
wireless office automatically came under suspicion. There were quite a
few places within the suspected limits. There was the bridge, flag
office, radar office, chart room, and all the deck officers’ and cadets’
accommodation. Those could be ruled out at once. There was the dining
room, galleys, pantries, officers’ lounge, telegraph lounge and,
immediately adjacent to the telegraph lounge, another lounge which
rejoiced in the name of the drawing room-it having been found necessary
to provide an alternative lounge for our millionaires’ wives and
daughters who weren’t all so keen on the alcoholic and ticker-tape
attractions of the telegraph lounge as their husbands and fathers were.
I spent forty minutes going through those-they were all deserted at that
time of night-and if anyone had yet invented a transistor receiver
smaller than a match box, then I might have missed it; but anything
larger, i’d have found it for sure. That left only the passengers’
accommodation, with the cabins on “a” deck, immediately below the
wireless office, as the prime suspects. The “b” deck suites, on the
next deck below, were not out with the bounds of possibility; but when I
ran a mental eye over the stiff-legged bunch of elderly crocks on “b”
deck, I couldn’t think of a man among them who could have made it to the
wireless office in under ten seconds. And it certainly hadn’t been a
woman: because whoever had killed brownell had not only also laid out
benson, but removed him from sight, and benson weighed a hundred and
eighty pounds if he weighed an ounce.
so, “a” or “b” decks. Both of them would have to go through the
sieve tomorrow. I prayed for good weather to tempt our passengers out
onto the sun decks to give the stewards, in the course of making up beds
and cleaning out the cabins, the chance to carry out a thorough search.
The customs in jamaica, of course, had already done this; but they had
been looking for a mechanism over six feet in length, not a radio which,