in the world, a crazy suicidal maniac, but even so, I couldn’t let him
be gunned down where he stood. I don’t know where my first bullet went,
but the second must have struck the machine gun. I saw it jerk
violently as if struck aside by a giant hand, and then came a continuous
cacophonous drum fire of deafening sound as a third man squeezed the
trigger of his machine gun and kept on squeezing it. Something with the
power and weight of a plunging pile driver smashed into my left thigh,
hurling me back against the bar. My head struck the heavy brass rail at
the foot of the counter and the sound of the drum fire died away.
the stink of drifting cordite and the silence of the grave. Even
before consciousness came fully back to me, even before I opened my
eyes, I was aware of those, of the cordite and the unearthly stillness.
I opened my eyes slowly, pushed myself shakily up till I was sitting
with my back more or less straight against the bar, and shook my head to
try to clear it. I had, understandably enough, forgotten about my stiff
neck; the sharp stab of pain did more to clear my head than anything
else could have done.
the first thing I was aware of was the passengers. They were all
stretched out on the carpet, lying very still. For one heart-stopping
moment I thought they were all dead or dying, mown down in swathes by
that stuttering machine gun, then I saw mr. greenstreet, miss
harrbride’s husband, move his head slightly and look round the drawing
room with a cautious and terrified eye. One eye was all I could see.
At any other time it would have been very, very funny, but I never felt
less like laughing. The passengers, perhaps through wisdom, but more
probably through the reflex reaction of instinctive self-preservation,
must have flung themselves to the deck the moment the machine gun had
opened up and were only now daring to lift their heads. I concluded
that I couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few seconds.
I moved my eyes to the right. Carreras and son were standing just
where they had been, and tony carreras had a gun in his hand now. My
gun. Beyond them a huddled group lay sprawling or sitting about the
floor. Cerdan, the “nurse” i’d shot, and three others.
tommy wilson, the laughing, lovable, happy-go-lucky tommy wilson,
was dead. He wouldn’t have to worry about his mathematics any more.
it didn’t need old doc marston and his shortsighted peering to tell
me that wilson was dead. He was lying on his back, and it looked to me
as if half his chest had been shot away; he must have taken the main
brunt of that concentrated burst of machine-gun fire. And tommy hadn’t
even lifted his gun.
archie macdonald was stretched out on his side, close to wilson.
He seemed to me to be very still, far, far too still. I couldn’t see
the front of his body for he was turned away from me; for all I knew
magnum slugs had torn the life out of him as they had out of tommy
wilson. But I could see blood all over his face and neck, slowly
soaking into the carpet.
captain bullen was the one who was sitting. He wasn’t dead anyway,
but I wouldn’t have bet a brass farthing on his chances of staying
alive. He was fully conscious, his mouth warped and dragged into an
unnatural smile, his face white and twisted with pain. From shoulder
almost to the waist his right side was soaked in blood, so soaked that I
couldn’t see where the bullets had gone home, but I could see bright red
bubbles flecking the twisted lips, which meant that he had been shot
through the lung.
I looked at the three of them again. Bullen, macdonald, wilson.
Three better men it would have been hard to find, three better shipmates
impossible to find. They had wanted none of this, none of this blood
and agony and death; all they had wanted was the chance to do their jobs
in peace and quiet and as best they could. Hard-working, companionable,
and infinitely decent men, they had sought no violence, thought no
violence, so now they lay there dead and dying, macdonald and bullen
with their wives and families, tommy wilson with his fiancee in england
and a girl in every port in america and the caribbean. I looked at them
and I felt no sadness or sorrow or anger or shock; I just felt cold and
detached and strangely uninvolved in it all. I looked from them to the
carreras family and cerdan and I made myself a promise, and it was well
for me that neither carreras heard my promise or knew of its irrevocable
finality, for they were clever, calculating men and they would have shot
me dead as I lay there.
I wasn’t feeling any pain at all, but I remembered about the pile
driver that had hurled me back against the bar. I looked down at my
left leg, and from mid-thigh to well below the knee the trousers were so
saturated with blood that there was no trace of white left. The carpet
all round my leg was soaked with it. That carpet, I remembered vaguely,
had cost over $10,000, and it was certainly taking a terrible beating
that night. Lord dexter would have been furious. I looked at my leg
again and fingered the soggy material. Three distinct tears, which
meant that I had been shot three times. I supposed the pain would come
later. A great deal of blood, far too much blood: I wondered if an
artery had been torn.
“Ladies and gentlemen.” it was carreras speaking, and although his
hand must have been giving him hell there was no sign of it in his face.
The fury, the malevolence I had so recently seen, was only a memory: he
was back on balance again, urbane, commanding, in complete control of
the situation.
“I regret all this, regret it extremely.” he waved his left hand
in the direction of bullen and wilson, macdonald and myself. “All so
unnecessary, so terribly unnecessary, brought upon captain bullen and
his men by captain bullen’s reckless folly.” most of the passengers
were on their feet now, and I could see susan beresford standing beside
her father, staring down at me as if she weren’t seeing too well, eyes
abnormally large in the pale face. “I regret, too, the distress you
have been caused, and to you, mr. and mrs. Beresford, I tend my
apologies for the ruin of your night’s entertainment. Your kindness has
been ill-rewarded.”
“For god’s sake cut out the fancy speeches,” I interrupted. My
voice didn’t sound like mine at all, a harsh, strained croak, a bullfrog
with laryngitis. “Get the doctor for captain bullen. He’s been shot
through the lung.”
he looked at me speculatively, then at bullen, then back at me. “A
certain indestructible quality about you, mr. carter,”
he said thoughtfully. He bent over and peered at my blood stained
leg. “Shot three times, your leg must be pretty badly smashed, yet you
can observe so tiny a detail as a fleck of blood on captain bullen’s
mouth. You are incapacitated, and I am glad. Had your captain,
officers, and crew been composed exclusively of men like yourself, I
would never have come within a thousand miles of the campari. As for
the doctor, he will be here soon. He is tending a man on the bridge.”
“Jamieson? our third officer?”
“Mr. jamieson is beyond all help,” he said curtly. “Like captain
bullen, he fancied himself as a man cast in a heroic mould; like captain
bullen, he has paid the price for his stupidity. The man at the wheel
was struck in the arm by a stray bullet.” he turned to face the
passengers. “You need have no further worry about your personal safety.
The campari is now completely in my hands and will remain so. However,
you form no part of my plans and will be transferred in two or three
days to another vessel. Meanwhile you will all eat, live, and sleep in
this room: I cannot spare individual guards for each stateroom.
Mattresses and blankets will be brought to you. If you co-operate, you
can exist in reasonable comforts; you certainly have no more to fear.”
“What is the meaning of this damnable outrage, carreras?” there
was a shake in beresford’s voice. “Those desperadoes, those killers,
what of them? who are they? where in the name of god did they come
from? what do you intend to do? you’re mad, man, completely mad.
Surely you know you can’t expect to get off with this?”
“You may use that thought for consolation. Ah, doctor, there you
are.” he held out his right hand, swathed in its bloodstained