The Golden Rendezvous (28 page)

I turned slowly and stared at her. I said slowly, "was that the job he meant when he asked me if i'd like to work for him?"

"Of course. And you didn't give him a chance to tell you. Do you think he'd given up? he hadn't really started. You don't know my father. And you can't claim i'd anything to do with it either." I didn't believe her. I said, "i can't tell you how-well, how grateful I am. It's a terrific chance, I know and admit.

if you see your father again this evening thank him very much indeed from me."

her eyes were shining. I'd never seen a girl's eyes shining for me before. Not in this way.

"Then you'll-then you'll "and tell him no."

"And tell him

"It's a foolish thing to have pride, perhaps, but i've still got a little left." I hadn't meant my voice to sound so harsh; it just came out that way. "Whatever job i'll get, i'll get the one I found for myself, not one bought for me by a girl." as a thumbs-down on a genuine and generous offer, I reflected bitterly, the refusal could have been more graciously phrased.

she looked at me, her face suddenly very still, said, "oh, johnny,"

in a curiously muffled voice, turned and buried her face half on the pillow, half on the sheets, her shoulders heaving, sobbing as if her heart would break.

I didn't feel good at all. I could have walked under a five barred gate without opening it. I reached and touched her head awkwardly and said, "i'm terribly sorry, susan. But just because I turn down

"It's not that, it's not that." she shook her head in the pillow, voice more muffled than ever. "It was all make believe. No, not that, everything I said was true, but just for a few moments we-well, we weren't here. We-we were away from the campari; it was something that

had nothing to do with the campari. You-you understand." I stroked her hair. "Yes, susan, I understand." I didn't know what she was talking about.

"It was like a dream." I didn't see where she came into the dream.

"In the future. Away-away from this dreadful ship. And then you burst the dream and we're back on the campari. And no one knows what the end's to be, except us-mummy, daddy, all of them, carreras has them believing their lives will be spared." she sobbed again, then said between sobs, "oh, my dear. We're just kidding ourselves. It's all over. Everything's over. Forty armed men and they're prowling all over the ship. I saw them. Double guards everywhere-there are two outside this door. And every door locked. There's no hope, there's no hope.

Mummy, daddy, you, me, all of us-this time tomorrow it will all be over.

Miracles don't happen any more."

"It's not all over, susan." i'd never make a salesman, I thought drearily; if I met a man dying of thirst in the sahara I couldn't have convinced him that water was good for him. "It's never all over." but that didn't sound any better than my first attempt.

I heard the creak of springs and saw macdonald propped up on one elbow, thick black eyebrows raised in puzzlement and concern. The sound

of her crying must have wakened him.

"It's all right, archie," I said. "Just a bit upset, that's all."

"I'm sorry." she straightened herself and turned her tearstained face in the bo'sun's direction. Her breath was coming in the quick, short, indrawn gasps that are the aftermath of crying. "I'm terribly sorry. I woke you up. But there is no hope, is there, mr. macdonald?"

"'archie' will do for me," the bo'sun said gravely. "Well, archie." she tried to smile at him through her tears. "I'm just a terrible coward."

"And you spending all day with your parents and never once being able to tell them what you know? what kind of cowardice do you call that, miss?" macdonald said reproachfully.

"You're not answering me," she said in tearful accusation. "I am a west highlander, miss beresford," macdonald said slowly. "I have the gift of my ancestors, a black gift at times that i'd rather be without, but I have it. I can see what comes tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,

not often, but at times I can. You cannot will the second sight to come, but come it does. I have seen what is to come many times in the past few years, and mr. carter there will tell you that I have never once been wrong." this was the first I had ever heard of it; he was as fluent a liar as myself. "Everything is going to turn out well."

"Do you think so, do you really think so?" there was hope in her voice now, hope in her eyes; that slow, measured speech of macdonald's, the rocklike steadiness of the dark eyes in that sun-weathered face, bespoke a confidence, a certainty, an unshakeable belief that was most impressive. There now, I thought, was a man who would have made a great salesman.

"I don't think, miss beresford." again the grave smile. "I know.

Our troubles are almost at their end. Do what I do put your last cent on mr. carter here."

he even had me convinced. I, too, knew that everything was going to turn out just fine, until I remembered who he was depending on. Me.

I gave susan a handkerchief and said, "go and tell archie about that job."

"You're not going to trust your life to that thing?" there was horror in susan's face, panic in her voice as she watched me tie a bowline round my waist. "Why, it's no thicker than my little finger."

I could hardly blame her: that thin three stranded rope, no bigger than an ordinary clothesline, was hardly calculated to inspire confidence in anyone. It didn't inspire much in me, even although I did know its properties.

"It's nylon, miss," macdonald explained soothingly. "The very rope mountaineers use in the himalayas-and you don't think they'd trust their lives to anything they weren't dead sure of? you could hang a big motorcar on the end of this and it still wouldn't break." susan gave him her it's -all-right for you to talk when it'snot your life that's depending on-it look, bit her lip, and said nothing. The time was exactly midnight. If i'd read the clock dial settings on the twister properly, six hours was the maximum delayed action that could be obtained. Assuming carreras rendezvoused exactly on time at 5 a.m., it would be at least another hour before he could get clear; so the twister wouldn't be armed until after midnight. Everything was ready. The sick-bay door had been cautiously locked on the inside with the key i'd taken from tony carreras so that neither of the two guards could burst in unexpectedly in the middle of things. And even if they did get suspicious and force an entrance, macdonald had a gun.

macdonald himself was now sitting at the top of my bed, beside the window. Marston and I had half carried him there from his own bed. His left leg was quite useless like myself, he'd been given an injection by doc marston to deaden the pain, mine being twice as powerful as the previous night's dose but then macdonald was not going to be called upon to use his leg that night, only his arms and shoulders, and there was nothing wrong with macdonald's arms and shoulders. They were the strongest on the campari. I had the feeling I was going to need all their strength. Only macdonald knew the purpose I had in mind. Only macdonald knew that I intended returning the way I went. The others believed in my suicidal plan for an attack on the bridge, believed if I were successful I would be returning via the sick-bay door. But they didn't believe I would return at all. The atmosphere was less than festive.

bullen was awake now, lying flat on his back, his face silent and grim.

I was dressed in the same dinner suit as i'd worn the previous night. It was still damp, still crusted with blood. I'd no shoes on.

The clasp knife was in one pocket, oil skin wrapped torch in the other, the mask round my face, hood over my head. My leg ached, I felt as a man feels after a long bout of flu, and the fever still burned in my blood, but I was as ready as I was ever going to be. "Lights," I said to marston.

a switch clicked and the sick bay was as dark as the tomb. I drew back the curtains, pulled open the window, and secured it on the latch.

I stuck my head outside.

it was raining steadily, heavily, a cold driving rain out of the northwest, slanting straight in through the window on to the bed. The sky was black with no star above. The campari still pitched a little, rolled a little, but it was nothing compared to the previous night. She was doing about twelve knots. I twisted my neck and peered upwards.

No

one there. I leaned out as far as possible and looked fore and aft. If there was a light showing on the campari that night, I couldn't see it.

I came inside, stooped, picked up a coil of nylon rope, checked that it was the one secured to the iron bedstead, and flung it out into the rain and the darkness. I made a last check of the rope knotted round my waist-this was the one the bo'sun held in his hands-and said,

"i'm off." as a farewell speech it could perhaps have been improved upon, but it was all I could think of at the time. Captain bullen said,

"good luck, my boy." he'd have said an awful lot more if he knew what I really had in mind. Marston said something I couldn't catch. Susan said nothing at all. I wriggled my way through the window, favouring my wounded leg, and then was fully outside, suspended from the sill by my elbows. I could sense rather than see the bo'sun by the window, ready to pay out the rope round my waist.

"Archie," I said softly, "give me that spiel again. The one about how everything is going to turn out all right."

"You'll be here again before we know you're gone," he said cheerfully. "See and bring my knife back."

I felt for the rope attached to the bed, got it in both hands, eased my elbows off the sill, and dropped quickly, hand over hand, as macdonald played out my life line. Five seconds later I was in the water.

the water was dark and cold and it took my breath away. After the warmth of the sick bay the shock of the almost immediate transition, the abrupt drop in temperature, was literally paralysing. Momentarily, involuntarily, I lost my grip on the rope, panicked when I realised what had happened, floundered about desperately, and caught it again. The bo'sun was doing a good job above: the sudden increase in weight as i'd lost my life line must have had him halfway out of the window.

but the cold wasn't the worst. If you can survive the initial shock you can tolerate the cold to a limited degree, accustomed but not reconciled; what you can't tolerate, what you can't become accustomed to

is the involuntary swallowing of large mouthfuls of salt water every few seconds. And that was what was happening to me.

I had known that being towed alongside a ship doing twelve knots wasn't going to be any too pleasant, but I had never thought it was going to be as bad as this. The factor I hadn't taken into the reckoning was the waves. One moment I was being towed, face down and planing, up the side of a wave; the next, as the wave swept by under me, I was almost completely out of the water, then falling forwards and down wards to smash into the rising shoulder of the next wave with a jarring violence that knocked all the breath from my body. And when all the breath has been driven from you the body's demands that you immediately

gulp in air are insistent, imperative, and not to be denied. But with my face buried in the sea I wasn't gulping in air, I was gulping down large quantities of salt water. It was like having water under high pressure forced down my throat by a hose. I was floundering, porpoising, twisting and spinning exactly like a hooked fish being pulled in on the surface through the wake of a fast-trolling motorboat.

Slowly, but very surely, I was drowning.

I was beaten before I started. I knew I had to get back, and at once. I was gasping and choking on sea water; my nostrils were on fire with it; my stomach was full of it; my throat burned with it, and I knew that at least some of it had already reached my lungs.

a system of signals had been arranged, and now I began to tug frantically on the rope round my waist, hanging on to the other rope with my left hand. I tugged half a dozen times, slowly, in some sort of order at first, then, as no response came, frantically, despairingly. I was porpoising up and down so violently that all macdonald could be feeling anyway was a constant and irregular series of alternate tightenings and slackenings of the line; he had no means of distinguishing between one type of tug and another.

I tried to pull myself back on my own line, but against the onrushing pressure of the water as the campari ploughed through that stormy sea it was quite impossible. When the tension came off the line round my waist, it needed all the strength of both my hands just to hang on to the life line without being swept away. With all the strength and desperation that was in me I tried to edge forward an inch. But I couldn't even make that inch. And I knew I couldn't hang on much longer. Salvation came by sheer chance, no credit to me. One particularly heavy wave had twisted me round till I was on my back, and in this position I fell into the next trough and hit the following wave with back and shoulders. Followed the inevitable explosive release of air from my lungs, the just as inevitable sucking in of fresh air-and this time I found I could breathe! air rushed into my lungs, not water: I could breathe! lying on my back like this, half lifted out of the water by my grip on the life line, and with my head bent forward almost to my chest between my overhead arms, my face remained clear of the water and I could breathe.

I wasted no time but went hand over hand down the life line as fast as macdonald paid out the rope about my waist. I was still swallowing some water but not enough to matter. After about fifteen seconds I took

my left hand off the life line and started scraping it along the side of the ship, feeling for the rope i'd left dangling over the side of the afterdeck last night. The life line was now sliding through my right hand and, wet though it was, it was burning the skin of my palm. But I hardly noticed it. I had to find that manilla i'd left tied to the guardrail stanchion; if I didn't, then it was curtains. Not only would the hopes of my carrying out my plan be at an end; it would be the end for me also. Macdonald and I had had to act on the assumption that the rope would be there and no attempt would be made to pull me back until he got the clear prearranged signal that it was time to begin just that.