The Golden Rendezvous (14 page)

"I could support the chief's arguments in that, sir," I put in.

There seemed no point in mentioning that I thought mcLlroy's idea as farfetched as did the captain. "Any person with a radio receiver might equally well have a transmitter and miguel carreras himself mentioned to me that he used to command his own ships. Navigation, by sun or stars, would be easy for him. He probably knows our position to within ten miles."

"And those messages that came through on the radio" mcLlroy went on. "Message or messages. A message so damned important that two men

died, and the possibility that another such message might come through caused a third man to die. What message, captain, what so tremendously important a message? warnings: from where, from whom, I don't know.

Warnings, captain bullen. Knowledge which in our hands would have destroyed some carefully laid plans, and the scope of those plans you can judge from the fact that three men died so that that message should

not come through."

old bullen was shaken. He tried not to show it, but he was shaken.

Badly. And I knew it next moment when he turned to tommy wilson.

"On the bridge, mr. wilson. Double lookouts. Stay doubled till we get to nassau." he looked at mcLlroy. "If we get to nassau. Signaller to stand by the aldis all day. 'i want assistance' flags ready for the yardarm. Radar office: if they take their eyes off the screen for a second i'll have 'em on the beach. No matter how small a blip they see, no matter what distance, report immediately to the bridge."

"We turn towards them for assistance, sir?"

"You blithering idiot," bullen snarled. "We run for our lives in the opposite direction. Do you want to steam into the waiting guns of a destroyer?" no question but that bullen was far off balance: the self-contradictory element in his instructions escaped him completely.

"You believe the chief, then, sir?" I asked. "I don't know what to believe," bullen growled. "I'm just taking no chances."

when wilson left I said, "maybe the chief is right. Maybe wilson is right too. Both could go together an armed attack on the campari with certain suborned members of the crew backing up the attackers."

"But you still don't believe it," mcLlroy said quietly. "I'm like the captain. I don't know what to believe. But one thing I do know for certain the radio receiver that intercepted the message we never got that's the key to it all."

"And that's the key we're going to find." bullen heaved himself to his feet. "Chief, i'd be glad if you came with me. We're going to search for this radio personally. First we start in my quarters, then in yours, then we go through the quarters of every member of the crew of

the campari. Then we start looking anywhere where it might be cached outside their quarters. You come with us, macdonald."

the old man was in earnest all right. If that radio was in the crew's quarters, he'd find it. The fact that he'd offered to start the search in his own suite was warranty enough for that.

he went on: "mr. carter, I believe it's your watch."

"Yes, sir. But jamieson could look out for me for an hour.

Permission to search the passengers' quarters?"

"Wilson was right about that bee in your bonnet, mister." which only went to show how upset bullen was: normally, where circumstances demanded, he was the most punctilious of men and, in the presence of the

bo'sun, he would never have spoken as he had done to wilson and myself.

He glowered at me and walked out.

he hadn't given my permission, but he hadn't refused it either. I glanced at cummings; he nodded and rose to his feet.

we had luck in the conditions for our search, the purser and i, in that we didn't have to turf anyone out of their cabins: they were completely deserted. Radio reports in the morning watch had spoken of weather conditions deteriorating sharply to the southeast and bulletins had been posted warning of approaching bad weather; the sun decks were

crowded with passengers determined to make the most of the blue skies before the weather broke. Even old cerdan was on deck, flanked by his two watchful nurses, the tall one with a big mesh-string knitting bag and clicking away busily with her needles, the other with a pile of magazines, reading. You had the impression with them, as with all good nurses, that less than half their minds were on what they were doing; without stirring from their chairs they seeded to hover over old cerdan like a couple of broody hens. I had the feeling that when cerdan paid nurses to hover he would expect his money's worth. He was in his wheel chair, with a richly embroidered rug over his bony knees. I took a good long look at that rug as I passed by, but I was only wasting my time: so 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, mr. carter?"

"Any time," I said courteously. "But not here...." my voice trailed away. I was changing my mind even as I spoke.

"You see, you're the only person I can talk to," she said. "Yes."

a beautiful girl alone in my cabin and plainly anxious to speak to me and I wasn't even listening to her. I was figuring out something; it did involve susan beresford but only incidentally.

"Oh, do pay attention," she said angrily. "All right," I said resignedly. "I'm paying."

"You're paying what?" she demanded. "Attention." I reached for my whisky glass. "Cheers!"

"I thought you were forbidden alcohol on duty?"

"I am. What do you want?"

"I want to know why no one will talk to me." she lifted a hand as I made to speak. "Please don't be facetious. I'm worried. Something's terribly wrong, isn't there? you know I always talk more to the officers than any of the other passengers"-i passed up the pleasure of loosing off a couple of telling shafts-"and now nobody will talk to me. Daddy says i'm imagining it. I'm not. I know i'm not. They won't talk. And not because of me. I know. They're all dead scared about something, going about with tight faces and not looking at anyone but looking at them all the time. Something is wrong, isn't there? terribly, terribly wrong. And fourth officer dexter he's missing, isn't he?"