The Golden Rendezvous (27 page)

Shocked puzzlement, but not too much shock it wouldn't be expected of me. "Your son? dead? how can he be dead? what did he die of?"

almost of its own volition, before I suddenly checked the movement, my hand started reaching for the clasp knife under the pillow. Not that it would have made much difference even if he had seen it five minutes in the dispensary steriliser had removed the last of the traces of blood.

"I don't know." he shook his head and I felt like cheering; there were no traces of suspicion in his face. "I don't know."

"Dr. Marston," I said. "Surely you "we haven't been able to find him. He has disappeared."

"Disappeared?" it was captain bullen making his contribution, and his voice sounded a shade stronger, a little less husky, than it had the previous night. "Vanished? a man just can't vanish aboard a ship like that, mr. carreras."

"We spent over two hours searching the ship. My son is not aboard the campari. When did you last see him, mr. carter?"

I didn't indulge in guilty starts, sharp upward glances, or anything daft like that. I wondered what his reactions would have been if i'd said: "when I heaved him over the side of the campari last night." instead I pursed my lips and said, "after dinner last night when he came here. He didn't linger. Said something like: 'captain carreras making his rounds,' and left."

"That is correct. I'd sent him to make a tour of inspection. How did he look?"

"Not his usual self. Green. Seasick."

"My son was a poor sailor," carreras acknowledged. "It is possible-"

"You said he was making rounds," I interrupted. "Of the whole ship? decks and everything?"

"That is so."

"Did you have life lines rigged on the fore and after decks?"

"No. I had not thought it necessary."

"Well," I said grimly, "there's your possible answer. Your probable answer. No life lines, nothing to hang on to. Felt ill, ran for the side, a sudden lurch " I left the sentence hanging.

"It is possible, but not in character. He had an exceptional sense of balance."

"Balance doesn't help much if you slip on a wet deck."

"Quite. I also haven't ruled out the possibility of foul play."

"Foul play?" I stared at him, duly grateful that the gift of telepathy is so very limited. "With all the crew and passengers under guard, lock and key, how is foul play possible? unless," I added thoughtfully, "there's a nigger in your own woodpile."

"I have not yet completed my investigations." the voice was cold; the subject was closed, and miguel carreras was back in business again.

Bereavement wouldn't crush this man. However much he might inwardly mourn his son, it wouldn't in the slightest detract from his efficiency or his ruthless determination to carry out exactly the plans he had made. It wasn't, for instance, going to make the slightest difference to his plans to send us all into orbit the following day. Signs of humanity there might be, but the abiding fundamental in carreras'

character was an utter, an all-excluding fanaticism that was all the more dangerous in that it lay so deeply hidden beneath the smooth urbanity of the surface. "The chart, carter." he handed it across to me along with paper giving a list of fixes. "Let me know if the fort ticonderoga is on course. And if she is running on time. We can later calculate our time of interception if and when I get a fix this morning."

"You'll get a fix," bullen assured him huskily. "They say the devil is good to his own, carreras, and he's been good to you. You're running out of the hurricane and you'll have clear patches of sky by noon. Rain later in the evening, but first clearing."

"You are sure, captain bullen? you are sure we are running out of the hurricane?"

"I'm sure. Or, rather, the hurricane is running away from us."

old bullen was an authority on hurricanes and would lecture on his pet subject at the drop of a hat, even to carreras, even when a hoarse whisper was all the voice he could summon. "Neither wind nor sea have moderated very much"-and they certainly hadn't"but what matters is the direction of the wind. It's from the northwest now, which means that the hurricane lies to the northeast of us. It passed us by to the east, on our starboard hand, sometime during the night, moving northwards, then suddenly swung northeast. Quite often when a hurricane reaches the

northern limits of its latitude and then is caught up by the westerlies it can remain stationary at its point of recurvature for twelve or twenty-four hours-which would have meant that you would have had to sail

through it. But you had the luck: it recurved and moved to the east almost without a break." bullen lay back, close to exhaustion. Even so little had been too much for him.

"You can tell all this just lying in your bed there?" carreras demanded.

bullen gave him the commodore's look he would have given any cadet who dared question his knowledge and ignored him.

"The weather is going to moderate?" carreras persisted.

"That's obvious, isn't it?"

carreras nodded slowly. Making his rendezvous in time and being able to transship the gold had been his two great worries, and now both of them were gone he turned abruptly, walked out of the sick bay.

bullen cleared his throat and said formally, in his strained whisper, "congratulations, mr. carter. You are the most fluent liar i've ever known."

macdonald just grinned.

the forenoon, the afternoon came and went. The sun duly appeared, as bullen had prophesied, and later disappeared, also as he had prophesied. The sea moderated, although not much, not enough, I guessed, to alleviate the sufferings of our passengers, and the wind stayed where it was, out of the northwest. Bullen, under sedation, slept nearly all day, once again relapsing into his incoherent mumblings-none of them, I was relieved to note, were about tony carreras

while macdonald and I talked or slept. But we didn't sleep before I told him what I hoped to do that night when-or if I managed to get loose on the upper deck. Susan I hardly saw that day. She made her appearance after breakfast with her arm in plaster and in a sling.

There was no danger of this arousing any suspicion, even in a mind like carreras'; the story was to be that she had gone to sleep in a chair, been flung out of it during the storm, and sprained her wrist. Such accidents were so commonplace in heavy weather that no one would think to raise an eyebrow. About ten o'clock in the morning she asked to be allowed to join her parents in the drawing room and stayed there all day.

fifteen minutes after noon carreras appeared again. If his investigations into possible foul play connected with his son's death had made any progress, he made no mention of it; he did not even refer to the disappearance again. He had the inevitable chart-two of them this time-with him and the noon position of the campari. Seemingly he'd managed to get a good fix from the sun. "Our position, our speed, their position, their speed, and our respective courses. Do we intercept at the point marked x?"

"I suppose you've already worked it out for yourself?"

"I have."

"We don't intercept," I said after a few minutes. "At our present speed we should arrive at your rendezvous in between eleven and eleven and a half hours. Say midnight. Five hours ahead of schedule."

"Thank you, mr. carter. My own conclusion exactly. The five-hour wait for the ticonderoga won't take long in passing."

I felt a queer sensation in my middle; the phrase about a person's heart sinking may not be physiologically accurate but it described the feeling accurately. This would ruin everything, completely destroy what little chance my plan ever had of succeeding. But I knew the consternation did not show in my face.

"Planning on arriving there at midnight and hanging round till the fly walks into your parlour?" I shrugged. "Well, you're the man who's making the decisions."

"What do you mean by that?" he asked sharply. "Nothing much," I said indifferently. "It's just that I would have thought that you would want your crew at the maximum stage of efficiency for transshipping the gold when we met the fort ticonderoga."

"So?"

"So there's still going to be a heavy sea running in twelve hours'

time. When we stop at the rendezvous, the campari is going to lie in the trough of the seas and, in the elegant phrase of our times, roll her guts out. I don't know how many of that crowd of landlubbers you have along with you were seasick last night, but i'll bet there will be twice as many to-night. And don't think our stabilisers are going to save you

-they depend upon the factor of the ship's speed for their effect."

"A well-taken point," he agreed calmly. "I shall reduce speed, aim at being there about four a.m." he looked at me with sudden speculation. "Remarkably co-operative, full of helpful suggestions.

Curiously out of the estimate I had formed of your character."

"Which only goes to show how wrong your estimate is, my friend.

Common sense and self-interest explain it. I want to get into a proper hospital as soon as possible-the prospect of going through life with one leg doesn't appeal. The sooner I see passengers, crew, and myself transferred aboard the ticonderoga the happier i'll be. Only a fool kicks against the pricks; I know a fait accompli when I see one. You are going to transfer us all aboard the ticonderoga, aren't you, carreras?"

"I shall have no further use for any member of the campari's crew, far less for the passengers." he smiled thinly. "Captain teach and blackbeard are not my ideals, mr. carter. I should like to be remembered as a humane pirate. You have my word that all of you will be transferred in safety and unharmed." the last sentence had the ring of truth and sincerity, because it was true and sincere. It was the truth, but it wasn't, of course, the whole truth: he'd left out the bit about our being blown out of existence half an hour later.

about seven o'clock in the evening susan beresford returned and marston left, under guard, to dispense pills and soothing words to the passengers in the drawing room, many of whom were, after twenty-four hours of continuously heavy weather, understandably not feeling at their best.

susan looked tired and pale-no doubt the emotional and physical suffering of the previous night together with the pain from her broken arm accounted for that-but I had to admit for the first time, in an unbiassed fashion, that she also looked very lovely. I'd never before realised that auburn hair and green eyes were a combination that couldn't be matched, but possibly this was because i'd never before seen an auburn haired girl with green eyes.

she was also tense, nervous, and jumpy as a cat. Unlike old doc marston and myself, she'd never have made it in the method school.

she came softly to my bedside-bullen was still under sedation and macdonald either asleep or dozing-and sat down on a chair. After i'd asked her how she was and how the passengers were, and she'd asked me how I was and i'd told her and she hadn't believed me, she said suddenly, "johnny, if everything goes all right will you get another ship?"

"I don't follow."

"Well," she said impatiently, "if the campari's blown up and we get away or if we're saved some other way, will you

"I see. I suppose I would.

"You'll like that? getting back to sea again?" this was a crazy conversation, but she was only whistling

in the dark. I said, "i don't think i'll be back to sea again somehow."

"Giving in?"

"Giving up. A different thing altogether. I don't want to spend the rest of my life catering to the whims of wealthy passengers. I don't include the beresford family, father, mother and daughter."

she smiled at this, going into the weird routine of melting the green in her eyes, the kind of smile that could have a very serious effect on the constitution of a sick man like myself, so I looked away and went on: "i'm a pretty fair mechanic and i've a bit of cash put away. There's a very nice flourishing little garage down in kent that I can take over any time I want. And archie macdonald there is an outstanding mechanic. We'd make a pretty fair team, I think."

"Have you asked him yet?"

"What chance have I had?" I said irritably. "I've only just thought about it."

"You're pretty good friends, aren't you?"

"Good enough. What's that got to do with anything?"

"Nothing, just nothing. Funny, that's all. There's the bo'sun

-he'll never walk properly again; nobody will want him at sea any more; he's probably got no qualifications for any decent job on land-especially with that leg-and all of a sudden chief officer carter gets tired of the sea and decides

"It's not that way at all," I interrupted. "You've got it all wrong."

"Probably, probably," she agreed. "I'm not very clever. But you don't have to worry about him, anyway. Daddy told me this afternoon that he's got a job for him."

"Oh?" I took a chance and looked at her eyes again. "What kind of job?"

"A storeman."

"A storeman." I know I sounded disappointed, but i'd have sounded ten times as disappointed if I had been able to take all this seriously, if i'd been able to share her belief that there was a future. "Well, it's kind of him. Nothing wrong with a storeman, but I just don't see archie macdonald as one, that's all. Especially not in america."

"Will you listen?" she asked sweetly. A touch of the miss beresford that was.

"I'm listening."

"You've heard that daddy's building a big refinery in the west of scotland? storage tanks, own port to take goodness knows how many tankers?"

"I've heard."

"Well, that's the place. Stores for the oil port and the refinery millions and millions of dollars of stores, daddy says, with goodness knows how many men to look after them. And your friend in charge with a

dream house attached."

"That is a very different proposition altogether. I think it sounds wonderful, susan, just wonderful. It's terribly kind of you."

"Not me!" she protested. "Daddy."

"Look at me. Say that without blushing."

she looked at me. She blushed. With those green eyes the effect was devastating. I thought about my constitution again and looked away, and then I heard her saying: "daddy wants you to be the manager of the new oil port. So then you and the bo'sun would be in business together after all. Wouldn't you?"