Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom)

by Robert W. Walker

  “Quarantine Titanic? Haw! Haw-haw.” O’Laughlin shook his head as he laughed. “Do you know what is riding on this trip? The record, man, the record! To beat Olympic’s time to New York. Lots of bets’ve been placed.”

  “Of course, we know that, sir. We are officers,” replied Murdoch, his mustache twitching at the suggestion otherwise. “We know very well, Doctor, what we’re about, and rules don’t allow us to gamble, sir.”

  “Oh, pity that. Stuff the rules, I say.”

  “By now everyone aboard understands that, sir,” Lightoller’s tone became patronizing. “Look for a taste of your stashed rum, we can all have a seat and discuss the matter in more detail… get to the bottom of Constable Ransom’s concerns, and move on.”

  “Show him the photos, Declan—the autopsy photos,” said Ransom.

  “I can assure you, gentlemen,” began O’Laughlin, “There’s no sickness aboard Titanic that I’m aware of—”

  “On a ship of this size? Four New York blocks long? How can you be sure. This is like… like a floating city, and every city has its underbelly.” While Ransom and the boys were amazed at what their eyes took in at every juncture of the Titanic, their mission allowed for little chance to wonder at the marvel they walked upon.

  “He’s correct, Dr. O’Laughlin,” said Lightoller. “Fact is there is everything from dysentery to consumption just among the Black Gang alone. I mean they fake not having their various disorders, but there’s no signing on 900 crewmen and women that I know of that is without a good share of illness. You may as well suggest there’re no rats aboard!”

  “The Black Gang?” asked Thomas. “Who would they be?”

  “Stokers—the men feeding the boilers, Tommie,” said Declan.

  Lightoller added, “The fellas who see to it the boilers are hot and turning those giant turbines and propellers below.”

  “How else do you think we churn out 22knots,” replied O’Laughlin. “Black as coal miners they are from shovelin’ the stuff… mountains of it each day. They’ll be carrying ’em up from time to time with heat stroke, I assure you, but unlikely anything else save a case of consumption now and again.”

  “I saw no one terribly disturbing come aboard.” Murdoch said of the Black Gang. “But you can bet there’re a number who’re carrying one sort of pestilence or another.”

  “And some as soon slit your throat as not?” asked Ransom.

  “Aye, that too.” Murdoch met Ransom’s glare.

  “They seem a good bunch to me,” defended Lightoller. “Certainly know how to throw a party.”

  “Are you saying they have rum, whiskey, rye?” asked Ransom.

  “That and more.” The doctor laughed but it was cut short when his eyes fell on the photos Declan held out for his perusal.

  Everyone fell silent. O’Laughlin with Murdoch and Lightoller looking over each shoulder studied each of eight photographs of three separate bodies, twenty-four in all.

  “What do you make of it, Dr. O’Laughlin?” asked Murdoch.

  “These are burn victims,” he replied and shrugged. “Hardly disease victims. What kind of hoax are you about, you men?”

  “Burn victims?” shouted Thomas. “These are not!”

  “That darkened skin is the result of complete, total dehydration, Dr. O’Laughlin,” insisted Declan. “Look, we are students at Queens University Medical.”

  “How wonderful for you,” replied O’Laughlin, unimpressed, his eyes never leaving the photos.

  “Well, I mean presently we’re doing residency at Mater Infirmorum, surely you’ve heard of it? I’ve a letter from my professor and the dean there—read them.”

  “I knew this would be a waste of time!” Ransom exploded, grabbed up the photos and was about to hand them to Declan for safekeeping when suddenly a robust-looking Captain Edward Smith stepped into the doctor’s quarters, asking, “What is going on here, William?” He instantly glared eye-to-eye with Ransom. “My officers, crewmen, and passengers have been startled by you men. Do you wish to explain yourselves?”

  “They’re not exactly stowaways, sir,” began Lightoller. “Sorry but they talked their way aboard. My doing entirely sir… .I mean my misjudgment.”

  Murdoch did his best to cover for his junior officer. “Mr. Lightoller’s brought this to my attention, sir, and I thought it best to bring it to Dr. O’Laughlin’s before we should bother you with any of it, sir, and glad we did.”

  The ship’s doctor piped in with, “T’would seem these fellows are here to pull off some sort of fraud, a dreadful, misguided hoax!”

  “Ahh yes, a hoax of some sort, just the thing,” replied Captain Smith, looking Ransom and his young partners in crime up and down. “It’s the only thing hasn’t happened aboard yet. We have a lady topside shouting bloody murder about some dream she’s had—demanding she be put off the ship at Queenstown. Making a terrible row among the passengers to the point we had to lock her in her berth until we reach Queenstown. Now this!”

  “Deputy Constable Ransom and his traveling companions,” began Murdock, “are claiming the ship’s being ravaged by a plague!”

  “Nonsense, of course,” put in the doctor.

  “Sounds to me more like a Typhoid Mary situation here, Captain,” countered Charles Lightoller. “A plague-carrier scattering it, so in a sense he’s a murderer if he is knowingly spreading it, sir.”

  “I can bloody well speak for myself, Officer Lightoller,” bellowed Ransom. “Captain, we’ve no time to waste haggling over matters. This is of the utmost concern, and I assure you it is no hoax! But rather a matter of life and death, sir, and you must listen to our story and look at our documented proof.”

  “Indeed…” Smith looked Ransom over once again, taking his time to size up this stranger; both men were approximately the same height, weight, and age. Both men carried themselves well. “Are you some sort of Sherlock Holmes, sir? I confess a guilty pleasure in reading accounts of the fictional Holmes but meeting a real life Holmes aboard Titanic, now that is grand indeed.”

  “The photos they claim to be of diseased men, sir,” said O’Laughlin, “appear to be men burned alive if you ask my opinion.”

  “On the contrary, sir,” said Declan, holding out the stack of photos, now smudged with fingerprints. “These men died a horrible, horrible death—one of them Thomas’ uncle.” He paused to pull Thomas into the circle as Thomas had shied off when Smith entered with his thick white beard and darting azure eyes. “These men died from the inside out… from the egg-sacs laid in them and the incredible hunger of this thing, sir, this… this alien creature… a monster and a killer we know far too little of; this enemy of mankind, sir.”

  “I see. Well now shall we have a seat everyone about the conference table and have a closer look, Dr. O’Laughlin? Perhaps you are mistaken in your diagnosis; not easy to make judgments based on out of focus, grainy photos, really.”

  “Let’s have that rum you fellows were interested in,” said Dr. O’Laughlin. “Perhaps I was hasty in my conclusions after all.” Ransom had missed the glint in each man’s eye, captain and doctor. They had been together for years and knew one another’s most subtle gesture and sarcasm, but Alastair had an ear for such nuances as well, and he began to wonder.

  “Rum sounds good indeed,” began Ransom, “but Captain, these men in the photos were not seared to death by fire but by a vile organism that feeds on the entrails of a man; a parasite that we believe originated in the mines in Belfast from where the ore for your came. Crazy as it may sound, this organism has an affinity for the iron and steel, sir.”

  “Ahhh… I see. Very odd indeed.”

  “I know it sounds mad… crazy, sir, but we only wish to save lives.”

  “Dr. O’Laughlin, are you aware of any such unseen organism that can wreak this sort of horror on a man?” Captain Smith held up the photo of Anton Fiore, his chest splayed open.

  “These are burn victims undergoing autopsy; at best old reused cadavers, sir,” the
ship’s surgeon declared in a tone that said ‘end of story’.

  Ransom wanted to leap across the table, grab the man by the throat, and strangle him for his closed-mindedness.

  Meanwhile, Smith asked O’Laughlin, “Have you seen anything in your clinic to warrant such drastic action?”

  “Nothing of the kind sir.”

  “Then you cannot recommend a quarantine?”

  “Absolutely not, sir.”

  Ransom grabbed his cane as if it might be a weapon. “Hold on, Captain, we’ve not said the word quarantine in your presence, now have we? We may be able to isolate and freeze this thing, ensuring your passengers’ safety.”

  Smith looked across the table into Ransom’s steely eyes. “It’s getting round the ship, your calling for a quarantine. Fact is, a crewman overheard something of it… I suppose from you men, and it spread rapidly from there.”

  “Are you trying to panic everyone aboard our ship?” asked Murdoch. “To what end?”

  “You and the lads here’ll have to do better than this,” conclude Smith. “You’re surely working for our competitors, I’d say. What do you think, Murdoch? Dr. Laughlin?”

  “The Cunard people?” shouted Declan. “No, Captain Smith! We are exactly who we say we are—interns from Belfast, and this man is a former Chicago Inspector now a Belfast police officer.”

  Ransom added, “I assure, you, Captain, we are not frauds, sir, and neither is the disease!”

  Lightoller had made himself useful, having spread out shot glasses, Waterford crystal at that, and poured like a veteran bartender, his nostrils twitching in anticipation, eyebrows bobbing.

  Ransom had two shots before he finally said to the doctor and the captain, “We have it on good authority, sir, that a malignant organism has infiltrated the ship as long ago as the day you left Belfast, if not before.”

  “I’ve seen no evidence of a plague, or a militant disease of any sort,” repeated O’Laughlin.

  “It may well start deep below, sir, probably with the crew… maybe the Black Gang,” said Declan, his voice filled with certainty.

  “Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Lightoller,” began the captain, “tell me, have you had any crewmen or others aboard going ill?”

  “Or missing?” asked Declan.

  “Gone missing? Why… well, yes. You recall the lad, Burne? Burnsey the other stokers call him; rather fond of the young man, they are.”

  “And before that?” asked Ransom.

  “One… one of the Pinkerton agents who’d booked passage from Belfast to Southampton in fact,” replied Murdoch.

  “And he failed to disembark in Southampton,” added Lightoller, stroking his chin. “Chap was called on in his quarters but not there. We spent untold hours searching for him.”

  “And he never surfaced?” asked Ransom.

  “When I was told of it,” Captain Smith said now, “I decided we could wait no longer and waste no more time on the man.”

  “And was it from Southampton to here that—”

  “Is when this fellow Burne disappeared, yes?”

  “Yes,” replied Lightoller as well, “so we decided he’d somehow got by us—without his trappings and his bags.”

  “What of his and the agent’s bags?” pressed Ransom,

  Lightoller frowned. “Abandoned… still in their respective rooms—quite odd, really. Left me with an eerie feeling, it did, Captain.”

  “Yes, well… odd behavior, but we see odd behavior a great deal in this line of work,” added Smith.

  “We’re Seeing it now,” said O’Laughlin with a slight snicker.

  “Not so odd behavior if you are dead and thrown overboard or hidden in some storage bin or locker aboard,” replied Ransom, holding his glass out for a third shot of rum. “Do you have anything sharper?”

  “It’s rum for pirates and stowaways,” Smith said with a grin that raised his white beard. He laughed and his men, along with his surgeon joined him in laughter.

  “I’d prefer my rum to any drink, but we’re hardly stowaways,” Ransom replied, lying about his favorite drink.

  As Lightoller located more of the doctor’s liquor, Ransom said, “Look here, Captain Smith, sir, we must convince you to stop this ship, to go passenger by passenger to determine who needs be kept in quarantine.”

  “And I tell you there is far too much riding on this voyage to allow the disappearance of one or two men to interfere with it,” replied Smith. “Every great endeavor, every great feat of mankind has required sacrifices. We are engaged in breaking all maritime speed records for a ship of this tonnage, man. To beat Olympic. Don’t you want to be a part of that?”

  “A record?”

  “Yes, to outperform the record holder—our own sister ship and the only ship of equal or near-equal tonnage—the Olympic.”

  “Then it’s not even bout your former, chief rival? The Cunard line?” asked Declan.

  “I know what Titanic’s owner and her architect—both aboard—will say,” said Lightoller, downing his second rum.

  “What’s that?”

  “That you men are all imposters and belong in our brig.”

  “Oo-hell-no!” moaned Thomas. “Not more jail time.”

  Ransom put his head in his hands at Thomas’ blurting this out. “No, no, the lad means something entirely else—that we have spent hours talking to the authorities in Belfast about a number of murders there—deaths brought about by this plague.”

  “The same plague we have chased from Belfast, the same as we are convinced is here, on board, now,” said Thomas, trying to gather back his words.

  Dr. O’Laughlin poured Ransom a rum, and Ransom greedily drank it down, and Dr. O’Laughlin asked, “Feel better, do we?”

  “Much better, yes. You have a good bedside manner, Doctor.”

  “Mr. Lightoller is correct in what he says,” began Dr. O’Laughlin who now offered Ransom and the interns a cigar from a gold-plated tin. “The powers that be on board Titanic will not let what you propose happen; not under any circumstances. Don’t you agree, Captain Smith?”

  “I more than agree, Doctor. Even if we were convinced of this uncanny and unlikely story, gentlemen—” He paused to light his cigar. “—it remains to convince Ismay, Andrews, and others with a vested interest. Slowing down much less stopping all engines? Sorry but the owners would have my head—white beard and all.”

  “But this could mean the lives of all aboard—every man, woman, and child!” said Declan, punctuating with his unlit cigar while Thomas was coughing on his.

  Dr. O’Laughlin had gone about the room to light each cigar in turn from a silver lighter and merely smiled at them. “The death of a few passengers? Not even slightly a deterrent for the likes of these men. Trust me, they will see you as clever saboteurs, anarchists, or worse, sent from Cunard’s Board of Directors to intentionally slow Titanic’s progress enough that it will be disgraced, so the headlines might read: Boondoggle Titanic Limps into New York Off Schedule.”

  Captain Smith, also puffing on a cigar now, backed the doctor, spreading out a hand to indicate another headline he spoke: “Titanic Drags Tail Between Legs! Mr Ransom, gentlemen, being late to New York… now that would be the sin. Short of a bomb going off aboard, you see, or one of the boilers exploding, it’s simply not going to happen.”

  Alastair took a deep breath of the aromatic cigar smoke. “Excellent leaf, Dr. O’Laughlin. A Cuban, I see.”

  “You have taste, Constable.”

  “Regardless of what your officers and doctor advise, Captain Smith,” said Ransom, “we lay our case before you, sir, a man who is wise enough to see our point, and brave enough to fight for caution and safety above greed. I have it on good authority that you, Captain, are such a man.”

  “This ship is controlled by powerful men,” interrupted O’Laughlin. “Men with vested interest you can’t imagine.”

  “Staggering amounts of capital,” choked out Lightoller while Smith remained stoic and silent, listening to every word
around him.

  Ransom leaned in across the table toward Smith, “Captain, your surgeon and your officers have done all in their power to dissuade you from listening to reason. However, if you continue to stand in our way, many deaths will be on your hands—possibly every person aboard Titanic. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Black Plague.”

  “Of course we have,” replied Dr. O’Lauglin, but I saw no such thing in those photos! Wait a moment. Let me have another look at them.” O’Lauglin’s remarks and his going again to the photos belied his uncertainty at this point.

  “Well, William Francis?” asked Smith. “Is it or isn’t it Bubonic Plague?”

  “I stand by my original assessment—either these corpses are right out of the university freezer used in six months of dissection and study—which is not uncommon in a poor place like Belfast—else they are fire victims. Either way, I see no evidence of Bubonic plague! No sir! You’d cause panic and become a laughing stock should you take action based on this! It’s ridiculous. Plague ship indeed!”

  “Constable Ransom has lied to you, Captain,” Declan said, “with the best of intentions—to get you to take us seriously. Dr. O’Lauglin… no one person, medical man or not, has ever seen this disease before, and so far we’ve no cure but to run from it.”

  “This is something worse than Bubonic—far worse,” added Thomas. “You’ve got to listen to us, Captain, sir. It’s all true.”

  “The hell,” muttered O’Laughlin, choking on his drink as he again stared at the autopsy photos. “These look to be mannequins—bloody burned up dummies, if you ask me.” Shaking his head, he added, “A sure fraud of some sort first perpetrated on 2nd Officer Lightoller. You know how impressionable Charles can be, Captain.”

  “No, Dr. O’Laughlin, Captain Smith, sirs–the disease leaves a man completely dehydrated—” countered Declan. “Not a drop of spinal fluid or marrow in the bones!”