J. E. MacDonnell - 021

by The Coxswain(lit)

  Pascoe was passing the bathroom when the memory came back again. He indulged it consciously, as he had done forty times since he'd found the shaft's treasure. Now his thin mouth curved in a cunning, secret smile.

  Not only had he lifted that big slob's roll, but he had it hidden in a place which was less safe than the captain's cabin, but not by much.

  It was this thought which pleased Pascoe almost as much as the actual possession of Beuring's money. He was sure in his own mind that nobody else would have thought of such an inviolate hiding place.

  Two thefts of money had been reported to the coxswain, and every man in the ship knew a thief was loose. Those who had locks had secured their kit-lockers. A man would as soon have gone uninvited to his best friend's locker as he would have poked the captain on the nose. So rottenly potent had been the effect of Pascoe's thieving throughout the ship that a man disliked even being found on the messdeck alone. He did his business, and got out quickly.

  Kit-lockers were absolutely taboo. Beuring's stolen money was now resting in Pascoe's kit-locker.

  Men filed out on to the upper-deck, leaving the ovens below empty. Pascoe wandered aft, looking for a place to squat. Between the engine-room fans and the wired cage of the potato-locker was a passage about three feet wide and six feet long. It would have held three or four men comfortably in its cool shade, but now Pascoe saw it was occupied, by a man on a stretcher.

  His mouth had opened to remonstrate. Then he saw the darkcoloured bulk of Beuring lying on the stretcher, his eyes closed. Pascoe changed his mind, and walked on. He solaced the consciousness of his cowardice with the helpful reflection that with what he had of Beuring's the big lout could have the passage.

  Unknown to Pascoe, the coxswain was a few paces behind him. And he was looking for Beuring.

  He saw the skinny figure halt, look into the passage, and then hurry on. When Rennie came up he also halted, and looked thoughtfully down at Beuring.

  The coxswain was no Sherlock Holmes in deduction, but neither was he dull. And for years his official functions had kept him acquainted with the characters and operations of men like Beuring and Pascoe. It was a different Rennie who had listened to Hooky's description of the gambler's morose attitude, and he had given considerable thought to the reason for it.

  He knew Beuring, he knew his type. Also he knew, naturally, that Beuring was in no official trouble. Therefore it required only a minor exercise in deduction to conclude that Beuring's trouble was money. The gambler must have hauled in a nice pile during his operations. The point which interested Rennie was-did he still have it? And, if not, who did?

  "You've got a good spot there, Beuring," he said casually.

  The dark eyes opened. Rennie saw the belligerence in them change to watchfulness.

  "It's not bad," Beuring grunted.

  "Then I'd like to get in on it." Rennie's hand brushed the feet aside. Beuring sat up.

  "You wouldn't like the whole bloody stretcher?"

  "No thanks, this bit will do me fine."

  Beuring waited, and Rennie recognised his wariness. He said: "Anything worrying you, Beuring?"

  "You ought to know there ain't. You're the C.I.B. all rolled into one."

  "I don't think you'd come to me with your worries," Rennie answered easily. It was not part of his plan to get nettled.

  "I tell you I ain't got none!"

  "My spies tell me different. They say you won a packet with that little canvas board, but you look like a bloke who's lost the lot."

  "Who're you kidding?" Beuring sneered, and Rennie knew he was up against experienced cunning. "You got spies? They say I run a board? Why ain't I up before the Old Man then? I hear it's worth a few days' stoppage."

  "Not a few days' stoppage of leave, Beuring-at least fourteen days' cells."

  "Well, well! Only trouble with that lash-up of fourteen days is that we don't rate cells aboard this hooker."

  "Oh, that can be easily fixed. I've no doubt the captain would settle you in the cable-locker-until we got to Moresby, then you'd be shipped south to Garden Island. They've got cells there, Beuring," Rennie ended solemnly.

  "So I hear. But there's another snag. I don't run a crown and anchor board-and you ain't caught me."

  Rennie shifted his attack.

  "No, I haven't caught you, but you do run a board. I don't suppose I'll ever catch you. Not the way you pay your cockatoos."

  For a second he thought he'd laid it on too thick. Then Beuring chuckled, an odd prideful sound, and he knew that his enemy's ego was his target.

  "You're smart, Beuring, I'll hand you that. This is strictly unofficial, of course." He stopped, and fumbled for cigarettes. Several men went past, their eyes curious at sight of the oddly-assorted pair.

  "So smart that I can't understand how you let a drongo like that beat you to it."

  His voice was casual, but he was nearly taken by surprise at the big man's reaction. Beuring's dark face tightened and his eyes glowered.

  "What the hell d'you mean by that?"

  Rennie camouflaged the exultation surging through him.

  "Come off it," he chided, "I know he lifted your roll. What makes you think he'd stop at you? The Number One target? I bet it took you hours to work out a place to stash it in." He shook his head. "Time you learned the safest place is the most obvious. Like a kit-locker, for instance."

  That was a purely lucky stab in the dark, unintentional. He didn't know it then.

  "I dunno what the hell you're gabbin' about," Beuring snarled. Rennie saw that his hands were balled fists.

  "Look." He leaned forward confidentially. "I said I'd get you, Beuring. And if you slip up I will. But the tea-leafs more important to me than a gambler. This bloke made a sucker out of you. I want him. I want him stopped, fast. You make out a complaint about him and I'll have his locker searched within ten minutes. Now-how about it?"

  The hot eyes stared into his.

  "Who's this bloke you're talkin' about?"

  Rennie's small smile was patient.

  "You know damn well who I mean. Well?"

  "So that's what you pratted yourself in on me for?" Beuring snarled. "You can get...!"

  Rennie had no difficulty at all in feigning anger. He said coldly:

  "You talk like that to me and you're up before the Bloke, smart!"

  "That'll do me! You come along here makin' charges against innocent men... Ah, leave me alone!"

  Rennie left him alone. He walked quickly forrard and be had reached the door of his mess before he allowed the jubilation he felt to show through the angered mask of his face.

  Hooky looked up as he stepped in.

  "Hullo, hullo," the big man growled, "you look like a six-weeks' leave pass. In this flamin' heat...!"

  "I think I've got him!" Rennie exulted. Hooky looked at him. "You remember you said Beuring was liverish. I reckoned someone had pinched his roll. I've just had a few choice words with him, and now I know it went off."

  Hooky lifted himself from the bench.

  "Pascoe?"

  "Who else? I needled Beuring. He's ropeable. I also mentioned a safe place these days would be a kit-locker. If he goes down there we've got him!"

  "Like hell! What if Pascoe hasn't stashed it in his locker?"

  "That won't matter a damn. There have been reports of stealing. I find Beuring at another man's locker."

  "Yeah, I see what you mean," Hooky said slowly. Then he swung his feet to the deck. "Come on-it won't take him long to go through a locker."

  "Hold your horses, chum! I might as well take the Eighth Army down there. I'll handle it."

  "He's tough."

  "This is the Navy, not Woolloomooloo. If I catch him, he comes quietly."

  Hooky nodded, and Rennie slipped from the mess.

  He had guessed, rightly, that Beuring would watch him enter his mess before, and if, he made his move. He also guessed that the gambler would waste no time if he had convinced him-there would be hardly a man b
elow decks in this heat.

  He went quickly round the foc's'le and then down the ladder and into the passage on the opposite side to his mess. He was quite aware that he was relying on Beuring's believing that his real reason for accosting him was to enlist his help in trapping Pascoe. On that, and the ugly seeds he had planned about Pascoe's superiority in cunning.

  He was dressed in shorts and sandals and his feet made no sound on the cortisone. He passed swiftly through the deserted iron-deck messes, and stepped over the coaming into the foc's'le.

  He saw at once that the bait had been swallowed. Beuring was not only at Pascoe's kit-locker-his right hand clutched a bundle of notes.

  Rennie stepped up behind him and Beuring swung.

  "Able-seaman Beuring," Rennie said, "I'm charging you with stealing money on the mess-deck. Get your cap and muster on the bridge."

  Rennie's voice was genuinely formal. He had laid the trap and he had caught his man. Now his whole interest was in the official presenting of the charge, and bringing the offender before the officer of the watch. Not till after did he appreciate the beautiful irony of the situation-he had not caught a gambler, but a thief stealing his own ill-gotten money.

  But Beuring was more perceptive. He stared into the coxswain's face and he knew he was trapped-not accidentally, but deliberately. Trapped getting back his own money, money which he could not claim as his own without revealing where he got it.

  Red rage flooded into his brain. The man standing stiffly before him was the epitome of everything he had lost-of Pascoe, of his money, of the lush racket which was now blasted. But most of all of Pascoe.

  That rotten little mongrel had pinched his dough, this man here had used him to trap him. The redness flooded, blinded.

  "You slimy bastard!" he mouthed.

  "That's enough!" Rennie ordered harshly, "you're in bad enough as it is!"

  "Then this won't hurt me!" Beuring snarled, and struck.

  Rennie had never in his time as a petty-officer or chief had a hand raised against him. Nor was he a boxer. The fist took him on the cheek and spun him round against the mess-table.

  Beuring struck again. The blow, aimed more with blind rage than science, smashed into Rennie's thin chest. He gasped with the force and hurt of it, but he forced himself up from the table and flung himself at the big man.

  A fist took him on the mouth. He felt the numbing shock of the pain and he tasted the warm blood. He tried to close with Beuring knowing he could not match him, feeling the savage blows on his chest and face and striving to get a hold on those viciously-striking arms.

  His body was thin and wiry, but it weighed almost three stone lighter than Beuring's. And he was an older man. He was almost exhausted by the killing punishment. Yet still he kept on his feet, even though all he could see of Beuring was a snarling, sweat-running face through a mist of pain and exhaustion.

  He felt a hand clutch round his throat and he saw dimly the bunched fist go back and he waited for the blow which would finish him. Then he heard the voice. He did not know who had spoken, but he recognised the words:

  "All right, you bastard!"

  Then what looked like a thin flash of light swept down before his eyes. The hand let go his throat.

  He fell, gasping, back against the mess-table. He did not see Hooky's steel hand jerk, and swing Beuring round by the wrist; nor the glare of astonishment on the dark man's face and the huge fist which smashed that face back clear to the ship's side.

  He felt, some seconds later, a powerful arm about his shoulders and a concerned voice saying:

  "Come on, old feller, come on... Up now. Take it easy. We'll get somethin' on that face. Easy does it."

  "Beuring..." Rennie panted.

  "Don't you worry about Beuring!" Hooky growled, and the, hate in his voice was naked. His big arm went around the coxswain's shoulder and he half-led, half-carried him to the sickbay.

  "I'll see Pascoe first," Bentley ordered curtly.

  "Aye, aye, sir," Rennie acknowledged, and turned and spoke through the sticking plaster on the side of his mouth:

  "Able-seaman Pascoe! Double to the table! Off cap!"

  Pascoe stood there, his eyes on the table, and Rennie read the charge. "Money found in his kit-locker on the foc's'le mess-deck suspected of being stolen."

  Every officer in the ship not actually on-watch was mustered round the table abaft the bridge. It was eleven o'clock of the following morning, and the sun shone down hotly on the attentive scene.

  "Able-seaman Pascoe," Bentley said in a controlled voice, "there was a little more than œ175 in the notes Beuring was found removing from your locker."

  The implication in his voice was obvious, and it was meant to be.

  "Do you admit the charge?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Pascoe's voice was low, subservient. Since he had been charged the day before he had thought a lot about his defence, such as it was. He knew that no one would believe him if he claimed the money was not in his locker with his knowledge-this was a court of summary justice, not the labyrinthine maze of legal quibbling ashore. And he couldn't say he'd saved a sum as large as that. He was in, up to his neck, and he had decided to do the only thing which might mitigate his sentence.

  "But it wasn't my money, sir."

  "You admitted the charge," Bentley said coldly.

  "Yes, sir, but the money belonged to Beuring. I took it from where he'd stashed it, sir. He won it gambling on the foc's'le mess-deck..."

  The eager betrayal ran on. Bentley did not interrupt. His secretary was getting it all down. The seaman gabbled and the captain listened, the composed sternness of his face hiding his disgust.

  Pascoe stopped and Bentley said:

  "Have you finished?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Bentley looked at the downcast eyes and worried face and he knew what Pascoe was after and he knew he had wasted his time. This fellow was unworthy of the slightest leniency. Bentley wasted no time.

  "Remanded for punishment," he rapped, and the coxswain repeated the sentence.

  Pascoe doubled away, his face strained. "Remanded" meant that lower-deck would be cleared and a warrant read out against him. And that meant fourteen days' cells.

  "Able-seaman Beuring," the coxswain said, and he succeeded in keeping his tone down to that unimpassioned correctness he would have used to caff up a man requesting to grow a beard.

  Beuring did not double up to the table as Pascoe had done. His was just about as serious a crime as he could have committed-he had struck a senior rating. Even gambling and thieving took second place to that. Now he was under escort, guarded by a leading-hand and a hefty able seaman, both with belts and bayonets slung round their waists.

  The leading-hand ordered:

  "Prisoner and escort, quick march!" And, at the table, "Off cap!"

  Beuring's cap came off and the leading-hand quickly bent and took it from his hand. A prisoner on a charge like this must be allowed no incentive to increase his culpability, and a cap flung in a captain's face would be even more unthinkable than striking the coxswain.

  In the same unemotional voice Rennie read the charge. Bentley said:

  "Have you anything to say?"

  "No."

  "Answer `sir'!" Rennie snapped, his body taut.

  "No, sir."

  Bentley looked sideways.

  "Coxswain?"

  "At about two o'clock yesterday afternoon, sir," Rennie started, "I spoke to Able-seaman Beuring on the upperdeck..."

  Bentley, who knew all the circumstances from Randall, to whom Beuring had been first taken, listened impatiently behind his facade of impartiality. He had never felt less impartial in his life. But the officers heard Rennie's story with open interest-most cases they attended were simple uncomplicated offences against regulations; but this one as Rennie's voice unfolded it possessed a novel touch of sublety. And none of them had been present at a charge so serious.

  "... then he struck me, sir. I tried to g
rapple with him and secure his arms. I..." For the first time Rennie's voice faltered. He was admitting his physical inadequacy. "I failed to do that, sir. He continued his attack and I was almost unconscious when Chief Petty-officer Walker came on the scene. The offender was subdued and taken under escort before the officer of the watch, sir."

  "And you, Cox'n?" Bentley said, very softly.

  "I was taken to the sickbay, sir."

  Silence fell on the little group. From down near the quarterdeck came the muted clang of a chipping hammer. Above their heads the search radar-aerial swung disinterestedly, its noise of operation a rhythmic electronic whirr.