tightly was that rug wrapped round his skinny shanks that he couldn’t
have concealed a match box under it, far less a radio.
with a couple of stewards keeping watch we went through the suites
on “a” and “b” decks with meticulous care. I had a bridge megger with
me, which was to lend cover to our cover story, if we had to use one,
that we were trying to trace an insulation break in a power cable; but
no passenger with a guilty mind was going to fall for that one for a
moment when he found us in his cabin, so we thought the stewards a good
idea.
there should have been no need for any passenger aboard the campari
to have a radio. Every passenger’s cabin on the ship, with the
campari’s usual extravagance, was fitted out with not one but two
bulkhead relay receivers, fed from a battery of radios in the telegraph
lounge; eight different stations could be brought into circuit simply by
pressing the eight pre-selector buttons. This was all explained in the
brochure, so normally nobody thought of bringing radios along.
cummings and I missed nothing. We examined every cupboard,
wardrobe, bed, drawer, even my ladies’ jewel boxes. Nothing. Nothing
anywhere, except in one place: miss harcourt’s cabin. There was a
portable there, but then I had known that there had been one: every
night when the weather was fine, miss harcourt would wander out on deck,
clad in one of her many evening gowns, find a chair, and twiddle around
the tuning knob till she found some suitable soft music. Maybe she
thought it lent something to the air of enchantment and mystery that
should surround a movie queen; maybe she thought it romantic; it could
have been, of course, that she just liked soft music. However it was,
one thing was certain-miss harcourt was hot our suspect: not to put too
fine a point on it, she just didn’t have the intelligence. And, in
fairness, despite her pretensions, she was too nice.
I retired, defeated, to the bridge and took over from jamieson.
Almost an hour elapsed before another defeated man came to the bridge:
captain bullen. He didn’t have to tell me he was defeated: it was
written on him, in the still, troubled face, the slight sag of the broad
shoulders. And a mute head shake from me told him all he needed to
know. I made a mental note, in the not unlikely event of lord dexter
turfing us both out of the blue mail, to turn down any suggestions by
captain bullen that we should go into a detective agency together; there
might be faster ways of starving, perhaps, but none more completely
certain.
we were on the second leg of our course now, 10 degrees west of
north, heading straight for nassau. Twelve hours and we would be there.
My eyes ached from scanning the horizons and skies; even although I knew
that there were at least ten others doing the same thing, still my eyes
ached. Whether I believed mcLlroy’s suggestion or not, I certainly
behaved as if I did. But the horizon remained clear, completely,
miraculously clear, for this was normally a fairly heavily travelled
steamer lane. And the loud-speaker from the radar room remained
obstinately silent. We had a radar screen on the bridge but rarely
troubled to consult it: walters, the operator on watch, could isolate
and identify a blip on the screen long before most of us could even see
it.
after maybe half an hour’s restless pacing about the bridge, bullen
turned to go. Just at the head of the companionway he hesitated,
turned, beckoned me, and walked out to the end of the starboard wing. I
followed.
“I’ve been thinking about dexter,” he said quietly. “What would be
the effect i’m past caring about the passengers now; i’m only worried
about the lives of every man and woman aboard-if I announced that dexter
had been murdered?”
“Nothing,” I said. “If you can call mass hysteria nothing.”
“You don’t think the fiends responsible for all this might call it
off? whatever ‘it’ is?”
“I’m dead certain they wouldn’t. As no mention has been made of
dexter yet, no attempt to explain away his absence, they must know we
know he’s dead. They’ll know damned well that the officer of the watch
can’t disappear from the bridge without a hue and cry going up. We’d
just be telling them out loud what they already know without being told.
You won’t scare this bunch off. People don’t play as rough as they do
unless there’s something tremendous at stake.”
“That’s what I thought myself, johnny,” he said heavily. “That’s
just what I thought myself.” he turned and went below, and I had a
sudden foreknowledge of how bullen would look when he was an old man.
I stayed on the bridge until two o’clock, long past my usual time
for relief, but then i’d deprived jamieson, who had the afternoon watch,
of much free time that morning. A tray came up to me from the galley,
and for the first time ever I sent an offering by henriques back
untouched. When jamieson took over the bridge he didn’t exchange a word
with me except routine remarks about course and speed. From the
strained, set expression on his face you would have thought he was
carrying the mainmast of the campari over his shoulder. Bullen had been
talking to him; he’d probably been talking to all the officers. That
would get them all as worried as hell and jittery as a couple of old
spinsters lost in the casbah; I didn’t see that it would achieve
anything else.
I went to my cabin, closed the door, pulled off shoes and shirt,
and lay down on my bunk-no four-posters for the crew of the
campari-after adjusting the louvre in the overhead cold-air trunking
until the draught was directed on my chest and face. The back of my
head ached and ached badly. I adjusted a pillow under it and tried to
ease the pain. It still ached, so I let it go and tried to think.
Somebody had to think and I didn’t see that old bullen was in any state
for it. Neither was i, but I thought all the same. I would have bet my
last cent that the enemy-i couldn’t think of them as anything else by
this time-knew our course, destination, and time of arrival almost as
well as we did ourselves. And I knew that they couldn’t afford to let
us arrive in nassau that night, not, at least, until they had
accomplished what they had set out to accomplish, whatever that might
be. Somebody had to think. Time was terribly short.
by three o’clock i’d got nowhere. I’d worried all round the
problem as a terrier worries an old slipper; i’d examined it from every
angle; i’d put forward a dozen different solutions, all equally
improbable, and turned up around dozen suspects, all equally impossible.
My thinking was getting me nowhere. I sat up, careful of my stiff neck,
fished a bottle of whisky from a cupboard, poured a drink, watered it,
knocked it back, and then, because it was illegal, helped myself to
another. I placed this second on the table by my bunk and lay down
again.
the whisky did it. I’ll always swear the whisky did it; as a
mental lubricant for rusted-up brains it has no parallel. After five
more minutes of lying on my back, staring sightlessly up at the cold-air
trunking above my head, I suddenly had it. I had it suddenly,
completely and all in a moment, and I knew beyond doubt that I had it
right. The radio! the receiver on which the message to the wireless
office had been intercepted! there had been no radio. God, only a
blind man like myself could have missed it; of course there had been no
radio. But there had been something else again. I sat bolt upright
with a jerk, archimedes coming out of his bath, and yelped as a hot
blade skewered through the back of my neck. “Are you subject to these
attacks often or do you always carry on like this when you are alone?”
a solicitous voice enquired from the doorway. Susan beresford, dressed
in a square-necked white silk dress, was standing in the entrance, her
expression half amused, half apprehensive. So complete had been my
concentration that i’d never even heard the door open.
“Miss beresford.” I rubbed my aching neck with my right hand.
“What are you doing here? you know passengers are not allowed in the
officers’ quarters?”
“No? I understood my father had been up several times in the past
few trips talking to you.”
“Your father is not young, female, and unmarried.”
“Pfui!” she stepped into the cabin and closed the door behind her.
All at once the smile was no longer on her face. “Will you talk to me,