“Let him tell us, Doctor,” Miss Beresford said acidly. “He’s just dying to tell us.”
“It means that there’s something very very big behind it all,” I said slowly. “All cargoes, except those in free ports and under certain transshipment conditions, which don’t apply here, have to be inspected by Customs. Those crates passed the Carracio Customs—which means that the Customs know what’s inside. Probably explains, too, why our Carracio agent was so nervous. But the Customs let it pass. Why? Because they had orders to let those crates pass. And who gave them the orders? Their government. Who gave the government its orders? Who but the generalissimo—after all, he is the government. The generalissimo,” I went on thoughtfully, “is directly behind all this. And we all know he’s desperate for money. I wonder, I wonder?”
“You wonder what?” Marston asked.
“I don’t really know. Tell me, Doctor, have you the facilities for making tea or coffee here?”
“Never yet seen a dispensary that hadn’t my boy.”
“What an excellent idea!” Susan Beresford jumped to her feet. “I’d love a cup of tea.”
“Coffee.”
“Tea.”
“Coffee. Humour a sick man. This should be quite an experience for Miss Beresford. Making her own coffee, I mean. You fill the percolator with water——”
“Please stop there.” She crossed over to my bedside and looked down at me, her face without expression, her eyes very steady. “You have a short memory, Mr. Carter. I told you night before last that I was sorry, very sorry. Remember?”
“I remember,” I acknowledged. “Sorry, Miss Beresford.”
“Susan.” She smiled. “If you want your coffee, that is.”
“Blackmail.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake call her ‘Susan’ if she wants,” Dr. Marston interrupted irritably. “What’s the harm?”
“Doctor’s orders,” I said resignedly. “O.K., Susan, bring the patient his coffee.” The circumstances were hardly normal: I could get back to calling her Miss Beresford later on.
Five minutes passed, then she brought the coffee. I looked at the tray and said: “What? Only three cups? There should be four.”
“Four?”
“Four. Three for us and one for our friend outside.”
“Our friend—you mean the guard?”
“Who else?”
“Have you gone mad, Mr. Carter?”
“Fair’s fair,” Marston murmured. “‘John’ to you.”
She looked coldly at him, glared at me and said icily: “Have you gone mad? Why should I bring that thug coffee? I’ll do nothing——”
“Our chief officer always has a reason for his actions,” Marston said in sharp and surprising support. “Please do as he asks.”
She poured a cup of coffee, took it through the outside door and was back in a few seconds.
“He took it?” I asked.
“Didn’t he just. Seems he’s had nothing except a little water to drink in the past day or so.”
“I can believe it. I should imagine that they weren’t too well equipped in the catering line in those crates.” I took the cup of coffee she offered me, drained it and set it down. It tasted just the way coffee ought to taste.
“How was it?” Susan asked.
“Perfect. Any suggestion I made that you didn’t even know how to boil water I withdraw unreservedly.”
She and Marston looked at each other and then Marston said: “No more thinking or worrying to do tonight, John?”
“Nary a bit. All I want is a good night’s sleep.”
“And that’s why I put a pretty powerful sedative in your coffee.” He looked at me consideringly. “Coffee has a remarkable quality of disguising other flavours, hasn’t it?”
I knew what he meant and he knew I knew what he meant. I said: “Dr. Marston, I do believe I have been guilty of underestimating you very considerably.”
“I believe you have, John,” he said jovially. “I believe you have indeed.”
I became drowsily aware that my left leg was hurting, not badly but badly enough to wake me up. Someone was pulling it, giving it a strong steady tug every few seconds, letting go, then tugging it again. And he kept on talking all the time he was doing it. I wished that that someone, whoever he was, would give it up. The tugging and the talking. Didn’t he know I was a sick man?
I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was the clock on the opposite bulkhead. Ten o’clock. Ten o’clock in the morning, for broad daylight was coming in through uncurtained windows. Dr. Marston had been right about the sedative: “powerful” was hardly the word for it.
Someone was talking, sure enough, old Bullen babbling away incoherently in a drugged and troubled sleep, but there was no one tugging at my leg. It was the traction weight suspended from the ceiling that was doing the tugging. The Campari, in spite of her stabilisers, was rolling through a ten-to-fifteen degree arc, which meant that there must be a pretty heavy and steep beam sea or swell running. Whenever the ship came to the end of a roll, the suspended pulley, reaching the limit of its pendulum swing, would give a pronounced jerk: a few seconds later another jerk. Now that I was fully awake, it was more painful than I had at first thought. Even if I had had a genuinely fractured femur that sort of thing wouldn’t be doing me any good at all. I looked around to see Dr. Marston and to ask him to remove it.
But the first person who caught my eye was not Dr. Marston but Miguel Carreras. He was standing near the top of my bed, maybe he had been shaking me awake. He was newly shaven, looked fresh and rested, had his neatly bandaged right hand in a sling and carried some charts under his arm. He gave me a slight smile.
“Good morning, Mr. Carter. How do you feel now?”
I ignored him. Susan Beresford was sitting at the doctor’s desk. She looked pretty tired to me and there were dark smudges under her green eyes. I said: “Susan, where’s doctor Marston?”
“Susan?” Carreras murmured. “How swiftly contiguity breeds familiarity.”
I ignored him again. Susan said: “In the dispensary, asleep. He’s been up most of the night.”
“Wake him, will you? Tell him I want this damned weight off. It’s tearing my leg in two.”
She went into the dispensary and Carreras said: “Your attention, Mr. Carter, if you please.”
“When I get that weight off,” I said surlily. “Not before.”
Dr. Marston appeared, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and started to remove the weight without a word.
“Captain Bullen and the bo’sun?” I asked. “How are they?”
“The captain’s holding his own—just.” The old boy looked tired and sounded tired. “The bo’sun’s recovering fast. Both of them came too early this morning: I gave them sedatives. The longer they sleep, the better.”
I nodded, waited till he had lifted me to a sitting position and adjusted my leg, then said curtly: “What do you want, Carreras?”
He unrolled a chart and spread it over my knees. “A little navigational assistance—cross-checking, shall we call it? You will co-operate?”
“I’ll co-operate.”
“What?” Susan Beresford crossed from the desk and stared down at me. “You—you’re going to help this man?”
“You heard me, didn’t you? What do you want me to be—a hero?” I nodded at my leg. “Look where being heroic’s got me.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it!” Patches of colour flared in the pale cheeks. “You. Going to help this—this monster, this murderer.”
“If I don’t,” I said wearily, “he’ll like as not start on you. Maybe break a finger at a time or yank out a tooth at a time with Dr. Marston’s forceps —and without anæsthetic. I’m not saying he’d like doing it: but he’d do it.”
“I’m not afraid of Mr. Carreras,” she said defiantly. But she was paler than ever.
“Then it’s time you were,” I said curtly. “Well, Carreras?”
“You have sailed the North Atl
antic, Mr. Carter? Between Europe and America, I mean?”
“Many times.”
“Good.” He jabbed the chart. “A vessel leaving the Clyde and sailing for Norfolk, Virginia. I wish you to sketch the course it would take. Any reference books you wish I can have fetched.”
“I don’t require any.” I took his pencil. “North about round Ireland, so, a slightly flattened great circle route along the west-bound summer lane, so, to this point well southeast of Newfoundland. The northward curve looks strange, but that’s only because of the projection of the chart: it is the shortest route.”
“I believe you. And then?”
“Shortly after that the course diverges from the main west-bound New York lane, approximately here, and comes into Norfolk more or less from the east-north-east.” I twisted my head around to try to see out the surgery door “What’s all that racket? Where’s it coming from? Sounds like riveting guns or pneumatic chisels to me.”
“Later, later,” he said irritably. He unrolled another chart and the irritation vanished from his face. “Splendid, Carter, splendid. Your track coincides almost exactly with the information I have here.”
“Why the hell did you ask me——”
“I double-check everything, Mr. Carter. This vessel, now, is due to arrive at Norfolk at exactly ten o’clock at night, on Saturday, in two days’ time. Not earlier, not later: exactly ten o’clock. If I wish to meet that vessel at dawn that day, where would the interception point be?”
I kept my questions to myself. “Dawn, in that latitude, at this time, is five o’clock. Give or take a few minutes. What speed does this vessel do?”
“Of course. Foolish of me. Ten knots.”
“Ten knots. Seventeen hours. One hundred and seventy nautical miles. The interception point would be here.”
“Exactly.” He’d consulted his own chart again. “Exactly. Most gratifying.” He looked at a slip of paper in his hand. “Our present position is 26.52 north, 76.33 west, near enough, anyway. How long would it take us to get to this interception spot?”
“What is that hammering outside?” I demanded. “What devilry are you up to now, Carreras?”
“Answer my question!” he said sharply.
He held all the cards. I said: “What’s our speed just now?”
“Fourteen knots.”
“Forty three hours,” I said after a minute. “Just under.”
“Forty-three hours,” he said slowly. “It’s now 10 a.m. Thursday and I have to rendezvous at 5 a.m. on Saturday. My God, that is only forty-three hours.” The first shadow of worry crossed his face. “What is the maximum speed of the Campari?”
“Eighteen knots.” I caught a glimpse of Susan’s face. She was fast losing all her illusions about Chief Officer Carter.
“Ah! Eighteen?” His face cleared. “And at eighteen knots?”
“At eighteen knots you’ll probably tear the stabilisers off and break up the Campari,” I told him.
He didn’t like that. He said: “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’ve got trouble coming. Carreras. Big trouble.” I looked at the window. “I can’t see that sea, but I can feel it. An abnormally long deep swell. Ask any fisherman in the Bahamas what that means at this time of the year and he’ll tell you. It can mean only one thing, Carreras—tropical storm, pretty certainly a hurricane. The swell is coming from the east and that’s where the heart of the storm lies. Maybe a couple of hundred miles away yet, but it’s there. And the swell’s getting worse. Have you noticed? It’s getting worse because the classic path of a hurricane in those parts is west-north-west, at a speed of ten to fifteen miles an hour. And we’re heading north by east. In other words the hurricane and the Campari are on a collision course. Time you started listening to some weather reports, Carreras.”
“How long would it take at eighteen knots?”
“Thirty-three hours. About. In good weather.”
“And the course?”
I laid it off and looked at him. “The same as you have on that chart, undoubtedly.”
“It is. What wave-length for weather reports?”
“No wave-length,” I said dryly. “If there’s a hurricane moving in westwards from the Atlantic every commercial station on the eastern seaboard will be broadcasting practically nothing else.”
He moved across to Marston’s phone, spoke to the bridge, gave instructions for maximum speed and for listening-in to weather reports. When he’d finished, I said: “Eighteen knots? Well, I warned you.”
“I must have as much time as possible in hand.” He looked down at Bullen, who was still rambling on incoherently in his sleep. “What would your captain do in those circumstances?”
“Turn and run in any direction except north. We have our passengers to think of. They don’t like getting sea-sick.”
“They’re going to be very very sea-sick, I’m afraid. But all in a good cause.”
“Yes,” I said slowly. I knew now the source of the hammering on the deck. “A good cause. For a patriot such as yourself, Carreras, what better cause could there be? The generalissimo’s coffers are empty. Not a sou in sight—and his régime is tottering. Only one thing can save the sick man of the caribbean—a transfusion. A transfusion of gold. This ship that we’re going to intercept, Carreras—how many millions in gold bullion is she carrying?”
Marston was back in the surgery now and he and Susan looked at me, then at each other, and you could see their mutual diagnosis: delayed shock had made me light-headed. Carreras, I could see, wasn’t thinking anything of the kind: his face, like his body, had gone very still.
“You have access to sources of information of which I am completely unaware.” His voice was hardly more than a whisper. “What sources, Carter? Quickly?”
“There are no sources, Carreras.” I grinned at him. “Should there be?”
“No one plays cat and mouse with me.” He was still very quiet. “The sources, Carter?”
“Here.” I tapped my head. “Only here. This source.”
He regarded me for some seconds in cold silence, then nodded fractionally. “I knew it the first time I saw you. There is a—a quality about you. A champion boxer looks a champion boxer even in repose. A dangerous man cannot look anything else but dangerous, even in the most domestic situations, the most harmless surroundings. You have that quality. I have trained myself to recognise such things.”
“Hear that?” I said to Susan. “You never even suspected it, hey? Thought I was just like everybody else, didn’t you?”
“You are even more astute than I thought, Mr. Carter,” Carreras murmured.
“If adding two and two to make an obvious four is what you call being astute, then, sure, I’m astute. My God, if I were astute, I wouldn’t be lying here now with a shattered leg.” An occasional reminder of my helplessness would do no harm. “The generalissimo needing cash—I should have worked it out long ago.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. Shall I tell you why Brownell, our radio officer, was killed?”
“I should be interested.”
“Because you had intercepted a message from the Harrisons and Curtises, the two families recalled by cable from Kingston: this message said that the cables had been a hoax, and if we knew it had been a hoax we would have started looking very closely at Messrs. Carreras and Cerdan, the people who had taken their places. The point is that the cables they had received came through your capital city, Carreras, which argues Post Office connivance and, by inference, government knowledge. The government owns the Post Office.
“Secondly, there is a long waiting list in your country for berths on the Campari: you were near the bottom but were mysteriously jumped to the top. You said you were the only people who could take immediate advantage of the availability of the two suddenly vacant suites. Poppycock. Somebody in authority—in great authority—said ‘Carreras and Cerdan go to the top.’ And no one squawked. I wonder why?
“Thirdly, although there is a wa
iting list, none of the people on it are your nationals, Carreras. They are not permitted to travel on foreign-going vessels—and, in addition, find themselves immediately in prison if caught in possession of foreign currency. But you were permitted to travel—and you paid in U.S. dollars. You’re still with me?”
He nodded. “We had to take the chance of paying in dollars.”
“Fourthly, the Customs closed their eyes to those crates with your men aboard—and those crates with the cannons. That shows——”
“Cannons?” Marston interrupted. He was looking almost completely dazed. “Cannons?”
“The noise you can hear outside,” Carreras said equably. “Mr Carter will explain by and by. I wish,” he went on almost with regret, “that we were on the same side of the fence. You would have made an incomparable lieutenant, Mr. Carter. You could have named your own price.”
“That’s just about what Mr. Beresford said to me yesterday,” I agreed. “Everybody’s offering me jobs these days. The timing of the offers could have been improved.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Susan said, “that Daddy offered——”
“Don’t panic,” I said. “He changed his mind. So, Carreras, there we have it. Government connivance on all sides. And what do the government want? Money. Completely desperate. Paid 350 million dollars to Iron Curtain countries in the past year or two, for arms. Trouble was, the generalissimo never had 350 million dollars in the first place. Now nobody will buy his sugar, trade’s practically non-existent, so how does an honest man raise money? Easy. He steals it.”
“Insulting personal remarks we can dispense with.”
“Suit yourself. Maybe armed robbery and piracy on the high seas sounds more moral than stealing. I wouldn’t know. Anyway, what does he steal? Bonds, stocks, shares, convertible drafts, currency? Not on your life. He only wants something that can never be traced back to him—and the only stuff he can get in sufficient quantity is gold. Your leader, Mr. Carreras,” I finished thoughtfully, “must have a very extensive spy network both in Britain and America.”
The Golden Rendezvous Page 15
