under your hand.”
“Take your word for it any time.” I hefted the knife, saw susan
staring at it, her eyes wide.
“You you would use that thing?”
“Stay behind if you like. The torch, dr. Marston.” I pocketed
the flash, kept the knife in my hand, and passed through the surgery
door. I didn’t let it swing behind me; I knew susan would be there.
the sentry, sitting wedged into a corner of the passage, was
asleep. His automatic carbine was across his knees. It was an awful
temptation, but I let it go. A sleeping sentry would call for a few
curses and kicks, but a sleeping sentry without his gun would start an
all-out search of the ship.
it took me two minutes to climb up two companionways to the level
of “a” deck. Nice wide, flat companionways, but it took me two minutes.
My left leg was very stiff, very weak, and didn’t react at all to
autosuggestion when I kept telling myself it was getting less painful by
the minute. Besides, the campari was pitching so violently now that it
would have been a full-time job for a fit person to climb upwards
without being flung off.
pitching. The campari was pitching, but with a now even more
exaggerated corkscrew motion, great sheets of flying water breaking over
the bows and being hurled back against the superstructure. At some
hundreds of miles from the centre of a hurricane-and I didn’t need any
barometers or weather forecasts to tell me what was in the calling it is
the outspreading swell that indicates the direction of the centre of a
hurricane; but closer in, and we were getting far too close for comfort,
it is the wind direction that locates the centre. We were heading
roughly twenty degrees east of north and the wind blowing from dead
ahead. That meant the hurricane was roughly to the east of us, with a
little southing, still keeping pace with us, travelling roughly
northwest, a more northerly course than was usual, and the campari and
the hurricane were on more of a collision course than ever. The
strength of the wind I estimated at force eight or nine on the old
beaufort scale: that made the centre of the storm less than a hundred
miles away. If carreras kept on his present course at his present
speed, everybody’s troubles, his as well as ours, would soon be over.
at the top of the second companionway I stood still for a few
moments to steady myself, took susan’s arm for support, then lurched aft
in the direction of the drawing room, twenty feet away. I’d hardly
started lurching when I stopped. Something was wrong.
even in my fuzzy state it didn’t take long to find out what was
wrong. On a normal night at sea the campari was like an illuminated
christmas tree; tonight every deck light was off. Another example of
carreras taking no chances, although this was an unnecessary and
exaggerated example. Sure, he didn’t want anyone to see him, but in a
black gale like this no one could have seen him anyway, even had any
vessel been heading on the same course, which was hardly possible,
unless its master had taken leave of his senses. But it suited me well
enough. We staggered on, making no attempt to be silent. With the
shriek of the wind, the thunderous drumming of the torrential rain, and
the repeated pistol-shot explosions as the earing campari’s bows kept
smashing into the heavy rolling ombers ahead no one could have heard us
a couple of feet way.
the smashed windows of the drawing room had been roughly boarded
up. Careful not to cut a jugular or put an eye out on one of the jagged
splinters of glass, I pressed my face close to the boards and peered
through one of the cracks. The curtains were drawn inside, but with the
gale whistling through the gaps between the boards, they were blowing
and flapping wildly most of the time. One minute there and i’d seen all
I wanted to see and it didn’t help me at ail. The passengers were all
herded together at one end of the room, most of them huddled down on
close-packed mattresses, a few sitting with their backs to the bulkhead.
A more miserably seasick collection of millionaires I had never seen in
my life: their complexions ranged from a faintly greenish shade to a
dead-white pallor. They were suffering all right. In one corner I saw
some stewards, cooks, and engineer officers, including mcllroy, with
cummings beside him; seaman’s branch apart, it looked as if every
off-duty man was imprisoned there with the passengers. Carreras was
economising on his guards: I could see only two of them, hard-faced,
unshaven characters with a tommy gun apiece. For a moment I had the
crazy idea of bursting in the door and rushing them, but only for a
moment. Armed with only a clasp knife, and with a top speed of about
that of a fairly active tortoise, I wouldn’t have got a yard.
two minutes later we were outside the wireless office. No one had
challenged us; no one had seen us; the decks were entirely deserted. It
was a night for deserted decks.
the wireless office was in darkness. I pressed one ear to the
metal of the door, closed a had over the other ear to shut out the
clamour of the storm, and listened as hard as I could. Nothing. I
placed a gentle hand on the knob, turned, and pushed. The door didn’t
budge a fraction of an inch. I eased my hand off that doorknob with all
the wary caution and thistledown delicacy of a man withdrawing the
koh-inoor from a basket of sleeping cobras.
“What’s the matter?” susan asked. “Is
that was as far as she got before my hand closed over her mouth,
not gently. We were fifteen feet away from that door before I took my
hand away.
“What is it? what is it?” her low whisper had a shake in
it; she didn’t know whether to be scared or angry or both. “The
door was locked.”
“Why shouldn’t it be? why should they keep watch “the door is
locked by a padlock. From the outside. We put a new one there
yesterday morning. It’s no longer there. Somebody has shut the catch
on the inside.” I didn’t know how much of this she was getting: the
roar of the sea, the drum fire of the rain, the wind rushing in from the
darkness of the north and playing its high-pitched threnody in the
rigging seemed to drown and snatch away the words even as I spoke them.
I pulled her into what pitiful shelter was offered by a ventilator, and
her next words showed that she had indeed heard and understood most of
what I had said.
“They have left a sentry? just in case anyone tried to break in?
how could anyone break in? we’re all under guard and lock and key.”
“It’s as carreras junior says-his old man never takes a chance.” I
hesitated then, because I didn’t know what else to say. I went on:
“i’ve no right to do this. But I must. I’m desperate. I want you to
be a stalking -hors help get that character out of there.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Good girl.” I squeezed her arm. “Knock at the door. Pull that
hood off and show yourself at the window. He’ll almost certainly switch
on a light or flash a torch, and when he sees it’s a girl-well, he’ll be
astonished but not scared. He’ll want to investigate.”
“And then you-you “that’s it.”
“With only a clasp knife.” the tremor in her voice was
unmistakable. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“I’m not sure at all. But if we don’t make a move until we’re
certain of success we might as well jump over the side now. Ready?”
“What are you going to do? once you get inside?” she was scared
and stalling. Not that I was happy myself.
“Send an sos on the distress frequency. Warn every vessel within
listening range that the campari has been seized by force and is
intending to intercept a bullion-carrying vessel at such and such a
spot. Within a few hours everyone in north america will know the
situation. That’ll get action all right.”
“Yes.” a long pause. “That’ll get action. The first action it
will get is that carreras will discover that his guard is missing -and
where had you thought of hiding him?”
“In the atlantic.”
she shivered briefly, then said obliquely, “i think perhaps
carreras knows you better than I do… The guard’s missing. They’ll
know it must be one of the crew responsible. They’ll soon find out that
the only guard keeping an eye on the crew who wasn’t awake all the time
is the boy outside the sick bay.” she was silent for a moment, then