Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom)

by Robert W. Walker

  Ransom, having become bored, and having watched Declan write for hours in his journal, asked if he might not read more of the young man’s scribblings. “Unless you feel the entries too private.”

  Declan readily gave up the journal, saying “There’s nothing private about it. Here you are, detective. For your perusal and occupation. Glad you’ve taken an interest.” He indicated Thomas lying on his prison bunk.

  This while Thomas rolled his eyes and silently brooded, muttering and moaning, “It’s the death of our careers, Declan. And what do we have to look forward to? The street, the gutter, a pair of homeless beggars in grimy old Belfast—unable to break free, never to soar as was our previous destiny, and to think—”

  “Oh, please do shut up, Tommie. You’re sounding like a bleedin’ parrot.”

  Ransom smirked at this last remark and went instantly to reading aloud. He began at the beginning of Declan’s ink-splotched words to follow the timeline of Titanic while being built: “July 1,1911 – projected date agreed on by White Star and Harland & Wolff for Titanic's maiden voyage is March 20th 1912.” Ransom stomped the jail floor. “Harrr! Well the devil now… they’ve missed their estimated launch date by a far cry, now haven’t they?”

  “The best laid plans,” began Declan, “repairs to the Olympic—due to the Hawke affair—slowed the work on Titanic. Read on.”

  “Please do so, read on but in silence,” pleaded Thomas, holding his hands. “I’ve heard it all too often!”

  With the reading material Declan had provided him, Alastair hardly noticed the hours passing as he read the journal. He sat in the alternating zebra shadows created by his cell window, painting him in the black and white pattern of a prisoner. The light and dark cut his features in two. He’d long before grown bored with the view from the window—an interior courtyard of the enormous Belfast Jailhouse and adjacent, requisite courthouse and other places housing city officials. He thanked God for Declan’s journal to keep his mind occupied. He read on:

  September 20th 1911: Olympic with Captain Edward J. Smith—lately named captain to pilot Titanic—has badly damaged the Olympic’s hull in collision with Royal Navy cruiser Hawke. Titanic's maiden voyage delayed due to necessary diversion of workers and materials to repair Olympic’s outer hull.

  In parenthesis, Declan had later written in tighter script out in the margin: (re: Smith. Hope he doesn’t run into another ship!)

  October 11: White Star officially announces new date for Titanic's maiden voyage in the London Times—April 10, 1912. This delay primarily due to Smith’s having the accident with Hawke.

  January 1912: Sixteen wooden lifeboats installed on Titanic under Welin davits (designed to handle two or three boats). The original designer, Alexander Carlisle (no longer in the employ of Harland & Wolff) had suggested davits capable of carrying more boats, but presented it as an economic measure, and not in the interests of increased safety).

  British Board of Trade regulations say that Titanic's 16 lifeboats, including four "collapsible" canvas-sided lifeboats, exceed requirements by ten percent capacity. Still, a definite lack of seats should any incident require the use of such boats. However, the belief is that no such incident is possible with what they continue to call in their advertisements their beautiful unsinkable ships: Olympic, Titanic, Britannic (the later two as yet under construction).

  February 3: Titanic successfully dry-docked at Belfast's Thompson Graving Dock.

  March 1: Engineering crew begins to assemble in Belfast, some actually living on board the Titanic.

  March 25: Lifeboats are tested; swung out, lowered, and hoisted back into position under davits. Still think it madness to have so few for such a large number of staterooms and passengers.

  March 31: Except for a few minor details in some passenger staterooms, the outfitting of Titanic is complete. Her capacity includes a size of 46,328 gross tons, with approximately 52,250 tons of displacement, 46,000 horsepower with 29 boilers, 159 furnaces, and funnels 73 feet above boat deck. She has three propellers and is estimated to be able to make some 24 knots full speed (although not put to the test thus far).

  Although Titanic and her sister ship Olympic are identical in dimensions, more staterooms and suites have been added to Titanic (plus structural additions) making her the heavier of the two. In point of fact, Titanic is now the largest ship in the world.

  April 1: Sea trials delayed due to high winds. (Ha! What? She’s unsinkable, right?)

  Ransom stopped reading, suddenly stood from his bunk, and went to the bars separating him from the two interns, and wiped his eyes of fatigue. “Declan, lads, this is good news, the sea trials being delayed. But how did you learn of it?”

  “The guard said so while you slept. They gave me the discarded newspapers to pad my bunk.” Declan lifted a copy of the Belfast Bugle he’d been using to soften his mattress. “Care to see it?”

  Ransom felt a glimmer of hope flit though him. “If these fools around us come to their senses, we can still stop Titanic from going to Southampton, spreading this plague there.”

  “That’s not going to hold her up long, sir, and I fear no one is listening to the three of us.”

  Thomas just groaned and added, “We’re doomed as far as our careers are concerned.”

  “We’ve got to convince the authorities how dangerous this thing is,” countered Ransom. “We must make them think! To take us—well, you scientific lads seriously.”

  “But how? They’re deaf to us!”

  “Good luck with that,” replied Thomas, curling into the fetal position on his bunk.

  “I’ve been in jails before, lads—and I’ve broken out of a couple in my day. There’s got to be a weakness we can exploit. Like this fellow who brought you the paper, Declan.”

  “Quinlan? No, sir. He’s strictly by the book he is.”

  The boys muttered and grumbled, disbelieving there was any chance here of escape. “It’s calm out today and look here!” Declan slapped the copy of the Belfast Times and began reading from the paper: “6AM sea trials begin anew. Titanic assisted by two tugs through Victoria Channel to Belfast Lough. All equipment to be tested, including wireless. Speed and handling trials, including various turning and stop-start maneuvers. Major stopping test to be conducted. They’re sayin’ she’ll run full ahead at 20 knots and then stop full astern like droppin’ a coin.”

  “Let me see that.” Ransom reached through the bars separating them for the paper. Declan freely gave it up.

  Ransom read aloud: “By 2PM officials expect that Titanic’s running test will have been conducted, after which she travels for about two hours—approximately 40 miles—out into the Irish Sea at an average speed of 18 knots.” Ransom paced as he held the paper open before him, reading. “Then she returns to Belfast.” He dropped his hands and the paper down, looking over the top at the medical students. “Do ya hear that, lads? She’s not gone from here yet.” Harrrrr! Listen here; paper says, expected arrival at Harland and Wolff 5PM. All tests by then expected to meet Board of Trade standards.”

  “Trials’re expected to last less than a day,” Declan dejectedly added. “Be gone in the dark, she will.”

  Thomas sat up and snickered. “How does your bloody obsession with that ship, Declan, help us now?” Thomas’ complaint hung in the air. “I for one am sick to death of hearing about that bloody, cursed ship! It’s all you talk about.” Thomas bounced off the bunk and paced the few square feet of his side of the cell.

  Declan smacked his friend on the behind for his sudden tirade. “Once finished with the tests, Detective Wyland, she’s gone from here; Thomas, you hear me?”

  “And good riddance I say!”

  “And if there is a plague aboard… well?” badgered Declan, dropping onto his bunk now, looking deflated.

  “And here we sit,” added Thomas. “It’s hopeless. The daft fools won’t listen to reason. How can Dr. Bellingham be so… so—”

  “Stupid?” asked Ransom.

  �
��Ignorant,” said Declan.

  “Is there a difference?” asked Ransom, snapping the newspaper tighter to make it stand more rigid as he wished to read on.

  “Well now ignorance is having an absence of the facts, not knowing, whereas stupid is knowing the facts, yet still acting like the ignorant fool,” Declan tried defending his professors but only managed to spin himself into a verbal quagmire.

  After a long silence, Ransom announced, “Launch time tonight is 8PM.” He checked his watch on its fob. “Six twelve now. Damn.”

  “Are they going to feed us sometime tonight?” asked Thomas, still pacing, running his fingers along the cage bars. “You suppose we only get the one meal a day, Declan? God, it’s been a long time since lunch.”

  “The Ship’ll be well on her way before we see daylight,” Declan remarked on Thomas’s concern over food. “I can’t believe that Dr. Bellingham—of all people—is simply going to ignore our findings, Thomas! And he calls himself a scientist. You know how he keeps harping about how a scientist must keep his mind open to chance, to happenstance, to-to failure as well as opportunity? Was he just being a blowhard?”

  “He’s always saying how a good doctor has to be a good scientist a hundred times if he said it once,” piped in Thomas. “Guess he’s full-a-horse manure after all.”

  “Don’t be so quick to judge me with your slinging of manure, Mr. Coogan!” It was Dr. Bellingham on the other side of the bars standing before them as if he’d simply materialized. He’d come in so quietly, they hadn’t noticed until now. “I’ve come to have you out of here, gentlemen. No point in your remaining here all night with a common criminal.” He eyeballed Ransom, frowned, and turned to Quinlan as the hefty Sergeant stood holding a huge ring with a large skeleton key.

  Sergeant Quinlan opened the cell holding the two young men, Declan and Thomas knocking into one another in their rush to be free, hardly giving Ransom a look.

  “Lads,” Ransom shouted at the younger prisoners when they’d almost gone out the heavy oak door. “You’ve got to convince them of the importance of stopping that ship—now, tonight before she sets sail for Southampton.”

  “We’ll do what we can, sir,” Declan assured him, “but we’re not magicians.” Declan gave Ransom a slight wave of his hand, holding up the sabre-tooth they’d found in the lab that’d fallen from the clothing of one of the dead miners.

  Hidden in part by Dr. Bellingham’s girth, Thomas slowed only long enough to ask Bellingham, “Do you think the food vendors on Newcastle are there at this hour?”

  Ignoring Thomas’ question, Dr. Enoch Bellingham suddenly stopped and turned to Ransom, eyeing him warily once more. “Detective,” Bellingham said, giving Ransom a moment’s hope that was instantly lost when he added, “I hope everything ahhh… works out for you, sir.”

  “It’s not me I am worried about, Professor; it’s the victims of this damnable plague, and everyone who boards Titanic in Southampton, and from what I understand, Cherbourg—France.”

  “We can do nothing without tests, detective. Hell, any tests that might result in an actual antidote, we’re talking about years to develop.”

  “Then you know how dangerous this is? You’ve read Declan’s notes, haven’t you?”

  “It changes nothing; the situation is hopeless. No one’s going to stop that monster ship because a handful of Irishmen have died here in Belfast, man. They’d laugh in your face.”

  Deflated, Ransom dropped his gaze. “Meanwhile first, second, third class passengers, crew, staff, officers, the captain, the builder, and I understand envoys, mayors, the famous, the infamous barons of wealth, along with many giants of commerce and industry—all aboard will die if not stopped from boarding, and if not quarantined. Call it an anarchist threat if necessary but—”

  “I pray whatever scurrilous thing this is… this disease that sucks men of every ounce of life’s blood and fluids has run its course, but rest assured that I and Dean Goodfriar have sent word to the ship via the Marconi.”

  “What do you mean? You sent word over the wireless?” Ransom was incredulous. “You need to go down to the shipyards! Speak to the captain and crew face-to-face, make them understand! A Marconi message is not going to convince anyone!”

  “They’ve set sail. It was the only way to get word to them,” countered the professor of surgery.

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’ve set sail!” he repeated.

  “But the newspaper said they wouldn’t be shipping out till eight!”

  “Do you believe everything you read in the Bugle?” Bellingham stared at him and added, “Apparently yes.”

  “All right… very little news trickles in here. Look here, then… did you receive a response from Titanic?”

  “I did on first sending.”

  “Which was?”

  “Some rude chap shouted for the operator at the Belfast station to—and I quote—“Stuff it and get off the line.”

  “You must try again!”

  “We did, the operator and I—several times. A warning.”

  “And what then?”

  “No reply. I can’t say for certain if word ever got through to the captain.”

  “Send another and another until they understand,” insisted Ransom. “Until they do reply, sir—immediately.”

  Just then Constable Ian Reahall stepped in and said, “Dr. Bellingham–take your charges and be gone—the lot of ya.”

  “I thank you for your help, constable.” Bellingham ushered Declan and Thomas out, and everyone left save Reahall who began to pace up and down before Ransom. “What to do with you, Ransom… what to do… .”

  “I thought you had your mind set on collecting some fictitious reward, Constable; how much is on the head of this man Ransom?”

  “Not exactly a king’s ransom,” Reahall said with a smirk. “Hardly enough to cover my expenses to get you back to the states.”

  Ransom imagined the amount on his head fairly slight, typical of Chicago authorities. They might want him dead or alive, but they didn’t want to pay too terribly much for it. “Is this how you barter for my release?”

  “I am told Titanic has left Belfast under Captain Bartlett for Southampton where a Captain Edward Smith will take the helm.”

  “Left already, says Bellingham. Is it true?”

  “Yes, off to her port of embarkation.”

  “Southampton, England, where those holding tickets will board—placing them all in jeopardy if that contagious plague is aboard working on Agent Tuttle—killing him from the inside out.”

  “Southampton’s some five-hundred seventy miles from here.”

  Ransom dropped his head, muttering, “Five-hundred seventy bloody miles…”

  “She’ll be on display there for Easter Sunday, dressed for it. That’s tomorrow, the 10th. So there’s little hope of stopping her from here. Those fool egg-heads at the university hospital can send all the messages they like. There’s no stopping the White Star Line from set schedules. She’d been slated to leave on the 10th but circumstances being as they are, it appears the ship sets off on the 11th.”

  “You could send someone. They could be there before she makes her stops, before she goes for the open seas.”

  “It’s a lost cause, I tell you!” Ransom heard the anger rise in the man’s voice, “Now I’m here to ask you, man, have you not any friends here in Belfast who will put up bail for you?”

  “Ahhh, now I see your game, Constable… bail. It’s your primary source of income, eh? How much then did you squeeze out of Bellingham?”

  “You do know how things work, don’t you? By God if you aren’t Ransom of Chicago, you have indeed been a policeman; that much is true.” Reahall smiled wide, a thing Ransom was fast tiring of. “And so, you know bail is but a small portion of our operation here. I could use a man of your talents working the streets for me.”

  Graft and corruption, Ransom thought, the world over. Chicago had no monopoly there. “Me? A snitch? No,
sorry but no… not in my make up.”

  Reahall shrugged this off. “And bail?”

  “Again sorry. No true friends here. Certainly no one capable of pulling together enough for the likes of you.”

  “You’ve got two young friends on the outside to raise your bail.”

  “Students, poor as church mice, Constable.”

  “Well now, can’t blame a man for trying; a man has a right to make a decent wage… a living, Ransom; you wouldn’t begrudge an aging lawman his share, would you? How’re such things done in Chicago, Inspector?”

  “The Irish in Chicago didn’t invent corruption.”

  “But they have perfected it.” Reahall laughed, the sound bouncing off the cell walls.

  The two men stared through the bars at one another as a bear might lock eyes with a panther, and Ransom—whose street name in Chicago was Bear—began to laugh good-naturedly. Finally, he said over the laughter, “A man has to feed his family… put bread on the table by any means, true?”

  Denying nothing, Reahall joined him in his laughter, and leaving, he called back over his shoulder, “Enjoy your evening, Inspector Ransom.” He laughed as the oaken outer door slammed. He laughed down the corridor, his footsteps clicking along the tiles. Ransom sat alone in his cell, head in hand. His thoughts were no longer for his own safety or whether Reahall would do his duty and extradite him to America, but rather, on the innocent lives that would be lost on board Titanic if no one put a quarantine on the ship before boarding in Southampton… five-hundred, seventy miles distant.

  “It may’s well be the moon,” he moaned.

  Hopelessness washed over him.

  Not two hours later, well after Ransom finished his jailhouse meal, amounting to bread and water, Reahall returned, and through Ransom’s bars the two detectives played a staring game of wills.