It was odd, sitting on a thwart beside this total stranger, who smelled of whisky and pulled with short, economical strokes, giving an occasional glance over his shoulder to check their course. Ned felt a curious shyness and an equally inexplicable desire to win the man’s approval.
“Had no trouble?” Hammer grunted presently.
“No. Apart from running into a policeman on the dockside.”
“You did, did you?”
“I just said I was going for a stroll. He wasn’t in the least suspicious.”
“Did he see your face?”
“He shone a torch on me for a moment.”
“That’s not so hot.”
“Well, you never suggested my wearing a false beard,” Ned replied, rather nettled.
“And nobody knows you’re here? You’ve not been dropping sly hints to that popsy of yours?”
“Certainly not. Now look—”
“O.K., O.K. Good enough. Harder on your oar—the tide’s pulling us off course.”
Stuart Hammer was very much in command. When they reached the Avocet, he sent Ned up the side first, telling him to put on some jerseys and sea boots he’d find in the locker above the starboard bunk in the cabin. Ned jumped to it, hardly giving himself time to look round the cabin, which seemed very luxurious with its red leather, polished teak and electric light. When he emerged, he helped his companion to haul the dinghy aboard and lash it on the cabin roof. In a few minutes they had the jib broken out, the mainsail up and the anchor weighed, and Avocet was leaning over for the long beat toward the open sea.
“Your arm seems better now,” Ned remarked.
“Yes, thanks. I’ve been taking it easy. Tighten your jib sheet, old son; we might make it on this tack. She sails very close.”
“Seems a lovely boat. Bermudan sloop—is that right? I’ve never sailed in anything bigger than a dinghy.”
“Yes. Had her built for me last year on the Solent. She’s handy enough. But you can’t go too far afield in a six-ton sloop. I could do with something bigger.”
“Do you race her?”
“No. That’s a mug’s game. Can’t stick the racing types—clannish lot, you know. I prefer plowing my lonely furrow. Anyway, I’m too busy.”
“What’s your job?”
“Personnel manager in my uncle’s factory. Beverley’s. At Norringham. Godforsaken place, but it’s a living. Of sorts.”
Ned began to look around. The shore lights were receding. The lighthouse away on their port bow flung its sweeping beam, from a low headland, over the neck of water which led to open sea. The masthead of Avocet shifted gently, with the vessel’s movement, against the whey of cloud far above. The great mainsail curved up into the darkness, like a sculptured abstract. A buoy whipped past and went wallowing backward, as if they were at anchor and it was racing shoreward. Ned felt a mounting exhilaration: his troubles were falling behind him, in Avocet’s wake; he seemed to have cut himself adrift from all responsibility. He stole a glance at his companion’s face, in profile to him, lit up momentarily as the lighthouse beam scythed round on the water just ahead.
“Go below for a bit, chum,” said Stuart Hammer, jerking his head toward the invisible lighthouse. “Coastguard station there. Don’t want them to spot I’ve a crew with me.”
Ned did as he was told, moving in what felt like the compulsion of a dream. This is part of Hammer’s plan that he and I should not be seen together, he thought: cautious chap, for all his piratical appearance; wants to protect me in case there should be any trouble later, after I’ve left the ship.
He moved to turn on the electric light, which he had switched off previously before coming on deck, then desisted. If Hammer wanted to give the impression he was sailing single-handed, it’d be bad to have the cabin lit up. Ned groped his way to the portside bunk and sat down. Every ten seconds, as the lighthouse beam struck through the portholes, the cabin sprang out of invisibility, then went black again. For some reason, this alternation of pitch darkness and blinding light set up a growing uneasiness in Ned’s mind. He found himself counting the seconds of darkness till the beam should come round again, and shrinking from it as though it were a naked blade.
Presently a more strenuous movement of the boat, a harder thumping of waves on the bow and a louder rustle of water past the side told him they were out from the shelter of the headland into open sea. At Stuart’s call, he returned to the cockpit, feeling the wind’s full force now—north-northeast, he judged—and seeing a flash of spray lift itself like a phantom over the port bow to hiss against the jib and vanish.
“Want to turn in yet?”
“No, thanks. I’m enjoying this,” Ned answered. “When does the operation take place?”
“The operation?” In the dim light of the binnacle lamp, Stuart Hammer’s face had an odd expression, distrait but faintly mischievous. “Oh, yes. Tomorrow night. We’ll be lying up on the other side tomorrow. Dutch coast.”
“Diamonds?”
“Slacken your sheet.” Stuart put up the helm, and they turned a little to starboard, till the wind was full abeam. “You like to sail her for a bit now? Get the feel of it? I’ll make some coffee.” Stuart gave Ned their course, then ducked into the cabin, calling over his shoulder, “Give me a hail if we start sinking.”
Peering from time to time at the compass needle, Ned sailed Avocet on into the darkness. He was overanxious and tense at first; but the vessel looked after herself in this steady wind, needing little of the watchfulness, the constant changing of course, to which dinghy sailing had accustomed him, and he was soon able to relax.
Presently Stuart Hammer emerged, carrying two steaming mugs, with a bottle tucked under his arm.
“You like coffee with your brandy?” He poured generous measures from the bottle into a mug and handed it to Ned. “All right, I’ll take over now. We’ll be crossing the coastal shipping lane in half an hour or so.”
Ned could see already the navigation lights of ships in the distance.
“Must be a boring business tooling up and down the coast.”
“Oh, they prefer it. See more of their families. It’s like a village street—the coastal shipping lane. I sailed from Wandsworth to South Shields once, before the war, in a gas collier: flatirons, they called them. The skipper knew every vessel we passed, like a neighbor—knew her captain was suffering from a duodenal, and her first mate kept pigeons at home, and her chief engineer was having trouble with his wife, and the steward’s first cousin was a supporter of Newcastle United. Regular hive of gossip—the east-coast route.”
Stuart Hammer, grown suddenly expansive, talked on. Ned found him a fascinating companion now; the brandy, warming his blood, gave Ned a feeling of security and irresponsibility, so that he did not notice at first, when Stuart fell silent, the measuring looks which he kept casting over his left shoulder or the unusual tension in his attitude at the helm. Finally, however, Ned screwed his head round. The lights of what seemed to be a large vessel were visible ahead, on the weather beam, not more than half a mile away, on a converging course. Ned regarded them with interest, hardly aware that Stuart was slackening the main sheet and turning a little more to starboard.
“Big chap,” he said.
“Cargo liner. Scandinavian probably. Hope he’s keeping a lookout.”
A few minutes later it was borne in on Ned that Avocet’s change of course would bring them pretty close to the ship out there, whose bulk was now becoming visible against the darkness. He felt exhilaration and an absolute confidence in his companion’s seamanship.
“Going to ram her?” he said with a grin.
“Steam gives way to sail. Rule of the road.”
“If she can see our sail.”
A roar from the ship’s steam whistle, sounding to Ned more like a threat than a warning, announced that Avocet had at any rate been spotted. Stuart Hammer answered it with a loud raspberry and continued on his course. He was eyeing Ned very attentively, but the latter, concen
trated upon the rapidly narrowing space of water between the two vessels, did not notice this. Unless one of them gave way, Avocet was going to sail right across the stranger’s bows. He could not make out whether the steamer was turning away: a succession of hysterical bellows—the sound of a giant howling in a nightmare—came from her steam whistle. Ned could see the snarl of foam at her forefoot, barely two hundred yards away now; she would slice Avocet in half if they met. How quickly could a steamer that size change course? A garbled memory came to him of some naval court-martial, at which it was stated that two battleships on converging courses had been bound to collide, whatever action the coxswains took, once they were within half a mile of each other. And that Hardy poem—“The Convergence of the Twain.”
Ned glanced at Stuart Hammer. The man was staring at him; his teeth gleamed through the rakish beard. Ned suddenly knew that he was sailing with a madman who was determined to kill them both. The whole plan of this voyage from the start had been paranoiac—the secrecy, the queer rendezvous, the inevitable smuggling fantasy. A wave of panic broke over him, followed at once by an amazing backwash. All right, he’s going to drown us, and I don’t care; nobody will care—not Helena, not Laura—so why should I? This will solve all the problems.
He grinned back at Stuart Hammer. “Hope you can swim. I’m good for about thirty strokes.”
“He’s not changing course,” said Hammer, in a curiously urgent voice, as if he was trying to elicit some response from Ned.
“So it appears.”
“Nor am I. It’s going to be a near thing.”
“Obstinate chap, aren’t you?” said Ned, amazed by the fatalistic calm of his own mind.
Avocet, which had seemed big as a house when they were alone with her in the night, was dwindling now to a toy boat as the cargo liner loomed closer, blocking out the sky. Fifty yards, forty, thirty—panic returned, coming up in Ned’s throat like bile, but he fought it down. The two vessels were drawing together almost at right angles: it felt as though the sloop was being dragged, like a pin to a magnet, on to the steamer’s great cutting stem.
At the last possible instant, Stuart put his helm down hard and Avocet swerved round to port. But the steamer was so close now that she blanketed the sloop from the wind. Rapidly losing steerage way, Avocet wallowed ever closer to the steamer’s clifflike sides: instead of running right across the steamer’s bows, she was in danger of colliding broadside-on. There were shouts, the ringing of a telegraph bell, the pounding of engines, a white face looking down from the rail. The steamer drove past like an express, ten yards away—hawsehole, lighted portholes, thrashing screws—and left Avocet tossing in the wake so violently that it seemed her mast must topple. Waves pounced onto the deck from queer angles.
Suddenly a searchlight beam reached out from the steamer’s afterbridge and felt for them; and in the same instant Stuart Hammer seized Ned by the back of the neck and flung him down sprawling into the well of the cockpit.
“Lie still,” he shouted. “They mustn’t see you.”
Avocet lay bathed in the searchlight’s beam; then, her sails filling, she paid off onto her course. Ned was past amazement. This was the climax of the dream which had begun hours ago. He lay still, thinking nothing except that he was still alive.
“O.K., you can get up now,” said Stuart when the steamer’s searchlight had been switched off. “Sorry about that, but it was necessary. Didn’t hurt you, I hope.”
“No. Just surprised me.”
“Good man. I see you’ve got your nerve with you all right.”
For the second time since they had met, a word of praise from Hammer gave Ned quite inordinate pleasure. “Nerve? You scared the pants off me,” he said. His mind felt light and clairvoyant. An extraordinary notion came to him. “I say, the object of the recent exercise wasn’t by any chance to test my alleged nerve?”
Stuart Hammer smiled in his beard. “If I answer that, will you answer me one? Would I be right in saying that you weren’t frightened just now because you didn’t care a damn one way or the other?”
“I see you’d be a success as a personnel manager,” replied Ned after a brief pause.
“Give me some more brandy. And help yourself.” Stuart Hammer’s voice deepened, becoming almost hypnotic for Ned. “What’s the trouble? Domestic?”
The resonant voice; the strange personality—enigmatic, yet giving an impression of being absolutely dependable; the light-headedness of relief which Ned felt after their narrow escape; the unreality of his present situation, sailing into the blue with a total stranger on an illegal venture: all this prompted him to tell Stuart Hammer his story. Ned, in any case, was the type who finds himself imparting confidences to strangers much more easily than to friends. But this particular story he had never told fully to anyone. The need for absolute secrecy had meant that he could never talk about Laura, while some inhibition of taste or conscience had always prevented him from exposing even to Laura the whole truth about his married life—to reveal what a destructive influence Helena had been.
Avocet sailed on, riding the waves like a seabird, and Ned talked on through the small hours. What did it matter? He would never meet Stuart Hammer again: they lived in different worlds. To pour out the accumulated misery and rancor of years gave him intense relief, as though a tumor on the brain had been removed. It was surprising to find his companion, whom he had judged to be a tough if eccentric extrovert, so interested and sympathetic.
“So there it is,” Ned concluded: “a nice tangle of neuroticism, self-pity and futility. Afraid I must have bored you to tears.” His voice shook uncontrollably. “And I don’t know how I can stand it any longer.”
“I see. Let me recap the situation.” Stuart Hammer was brisk, purposeful. “You cannot live without this Laura of yours. She threatens to leave you unless you break with your wife. Your wife would never consent to a divorce, and you cannot afford to live apart from her since she has the spondulicks.” He glanced keenly at Ned. “Moreover, you’re frightened of her. She’s vindictive—capable of anything. Ye-es, you’re certainly up the pole, old son.” Stuart paused again. “In war, it’s destroy or be destroyed. And it can be the same in love. Not that I’d know about that personally—I’m not one of the Grand-Passion brigade.”
“I’m being destroyed all right,” said Ned bitterly.
“Well, somebody’s got to go, and I hope it isn’t you. From what you’ve told me, your wife would be no loss to the world—or to herself. Pity that sort of person can’t be put out of their misery.”
The words sounded to Ned like an echo. “I agree,” he said, “but—”
“Well, you’d better turn in now, Ned. Have a good sleep. You need it.”
“But what about—? I mean, don’t we have to make plans for this smuggling affair tomorrow? I’m completely in the dark.”
“Oh, that lark. Yes, well, time enough. I’ve been thinking, though, we might go into business together.”
“Business? What business? I don’t—”
“For instance—” Stuart Hammer’s voice came out of the gloom like a spell—“for instance, we might make a contract for disposing of each other’s rubbish.”
3 The Unholy Pact
At 11:30 the next morning, Stuart Hammer, passing through the cabin to the galley, observed that Ned Stowe was still asleep. He stopped for a while and eyed him speculatively, as if trying to gauge the man behind the pale, lined, exhausted mask, which heavy sleep had not smoothed out or tranquilized. Stuart did not know so much about the highbrow type; but in his rolling-stone life he had come across all sorts, and he didn’t doubt that he could manage this one, given time. But time was the one article in short supply for Stuart. Little more than a month remained before his uncle, Herbert Beverley, would come into possession of certain facts—facts which would be the ruin of Stuart Hammer’s prospects: at the age of thirty-eight Stuart viewed with no favor at all the idea of having to start again from scratch. As he thought of his uncle�
��the one man he had never been able to swamp with his powerful personality—Stuart’s face hardened and an inhuman look came into his blue eyes: Time. The seed he had so deftly planted in this fellow Stowe’s mind last night might take time to germinate—more time than he could afford. Somehow, it must be forced. Well, Stowe had slept on it; now he had better be compelled to do a bit of ruminating. Stuart placed his strong, hairy hand on Ned’s shoulder and unceremoniously shook him awake.
“Rise and shine, old man! You’ve been sleeping like a log.”
“I’m sorry. I was dreaming that—What’s the time?”
“Nearly midday. Lav and wash basin through there, as you know. I’ll run you up some coffee and biscuits.”
Ned yawned. The haunted look was returning to his face. “Are we there?”
“We’re there.” Stuart Hammer forbore to tell him that, after sending him to his bunk last night and making sure he was asleep, he had turned Avocet round. She was lying at anchor now in an Essex creek.
“I’ve got to row ashore,” he said. “Be away for an hour or so. Make yourself at home. I’ll be back to cook us a meal.”
“Can’t I do anything?”
“No, thanks. Just sit tight. Oh, one thing, old son—” Stuart gestured toward the portholes, across which the white linen curtains were drawn—“don’t look out. There are some inquisitive folk hereabouts. Might be rowing over to take a dekko, y’know. We don’t want them to see a face at the window.”
“‘The white face of damnation.’”
Stuart brushed it aside, like a bull a cobweb. “I’m supposed to be sailing this boat single-handed. You and I have never met. Top secret.” He grinned, making it all appear a jolly, boyish escapade. “I shall lock the cabin door when I go: just in case any kids get the notion of clambering aboard. You don’t suffer from claustrophobia, I hope.”
“Only at cocktail parties.”
“Which reminds me. Plenty of booze in that cupboard. Help yourself if you feel like it.”
When Stuart returned with the coffee he noticed Ned eyeing him in a furtive, incredulous way. The seed was starting to germinate. Now let him stew for a bit. …
A Penknife in My Heart Page 3
