Fatal Venture (9 page)

He unpacked at once. Placing his clothes in the wardrobe and his books on the shelves gave him a feeling of proprietary satisfaction. It had been decided that he was to wear uniform, and he now put this on. It was the first time he had worn uniform, and he was young enough to find a real excitement in his unwonted appearance, as revealed in consecutive areas by an adroit use of his tiny mirror. He practised carrying his cap under his left arm, lest such a feat should later become necessary.

Someone had told him that it was etiquette to report his arrival to the Captain, and he presently left his cabin and adventured himself into the maze of alleyways and companions which filled the interior of this amazing vessel. He had no idea of his whereabouts, but he felt that his general direction should be upwards. When therefore he came to an ascending flight of steps, he took it. This plan succeeded so well that eventually he found himself in a lounge from which there was actually a view of the sea. A moment later, with a feeling of triumph, he stepped on deck.

Registering his position carefully for the return journey, he pursued his explorations. The stretch of deck was wide and long and from it he could see the waterfront of Havre laid out like a painted back curtain. Men were giving the railings a finishing coat of white, and he asked one to direct him to the Captain’s cabin. Just as he reached it, Hardwick stepped out. He was a fine figure of a man at all times, but in his spotless, well-pressed uniform Morrison thought him really imposing.

“Morning, Morrison,” Hardwick said curtly and yet genially, with a quick glance at the new clothes. “Got on board?”

“I was just coming to report to you, sir,” Morrison answered, trying not to look self-conscious. “I’m afraid I’m ignorant of sea procedure, but I was told I should do so.” Captain Hardwick in uniform on the deck of his ship somehow seemed less approachable than had the tweed-clad man with whom he had discussed transport.

The captain gave a short-lived smile as if to indicate that there was goodwill behind his attention to business. “That’s all right,” he answered, “but if you keep Mr Grant informed of your whereabouts it will be enough. And a word in your ear, Morrison. Make friends with Grant. You’ll find him a good fellow, and if you two pull together things will run more smoothly. Above all, things on the ship must run smoothly.”

Morrison wondered if this was helpful advice or a threat. He decided to assume the former.

“Thank you for the hint, sir,” he answered. “I’ll see to it.”

Grant, he knew, was the purser, and later he made his acquaintance. Having spent some hours in learning his way about the ship and arranging his office, he dropped into the lounge for tea. Grant was there and Morrison took the next chair.

“Luxury for me, tea like this in the afternoon,” he remarked when he had introduced himself. “I didn’t see it when I was working for the Boscombe people.”

“Yes, we’re going to be well done,” returned the purser, a big Yorkshireman with a pleasant manner. “I didn’t know you were with Boscombe’s. How did you come to join this show?”

Morrison told him.

“Then you’re in it from the start? I hope it’s given you a pull?”

Morrison smiled. “It’s got me my job and I think that’s good enough. Of course, also, I’ve got into a certain extent with Bristow and Stott, which” – he thought it better to avoid any appearance of bragging – “I’m hoping may be more helpful in the future than it has been up till now.”

“You’re lucky,” Grant assured him. “I got wind of it through one of the engineers.”

Morrison smiled. “You were on an Orient liner, weren’t you? Perhaps it’s impertinent, but I should have thought your old job was better than this? It was certain to go on, while this may crash any time.”

Grant seemed pleased at his interest. “I thought of that,” he replied, “but I was fed up with the Australian service. Not that it isn’t good and all that. But I wanted a change and I thought this might be an interesting ship to serve in.”

“It’ll be all of that,” Morrison agreed, “when the gambling gets going.”

“I expect you’re right. Seen the rooms?”

“No, but I’d like to.”

“Come on, then.”

The gaming rooms were at the bottom of the ship, immediately forward of the boilers. They occupied the former Nos. 3 and 4 holds, a huge space. Three large lifts had been installed which descended into a central hall, from which opened the eight rooms. Four of these were large and four smaller. In the centres of the larger were roulette tables, while the smaller accommodated other games. Round all of them were easy chairs and sofas, each room having its separate bar. The decoration was modern and effective, the atmosphere fresh, and the arrangement of the hidden lighting was so admirable that the place was as brilliant as day, yet with neither glare nor shadow.

Next morning Morrison’s work began again, a huge mail coming aboard shortly after breakfast. A plane had been engaged to carry the ship’s letters to and from the London office, and Morrison’s contribution was no small part of the whole. However, he worked quickly, and with the help of Anderson and Miss Pym he had reasonable time for games and to make the acquaintance of his shipmates.

Then another major event took place in his life. In the small hours of May 24th a soft murmuring began in the lower parts of the ship. It was a pleasant companionable sound and it told Morrison that the engines were moving. When he came up early in the morning they were out of sight of land.

Every minute that he could spare from his work that day Morrison spent on deck. Presently the English coast came in sight and grew gradually clearer. That highish ground to port was the Isle of Wight, the lower line to starboard being the mainland near Hayling Island. Soon he could recognise landmarks: the Foreland, Brading Harbour and Ryde on the island and Southsea and Portsmouth opposite. Breakfast was served as they passed the mouth of Portsmouth Harbour, and when he regained the deck they had just left Calshot. He watched entranced as they moved up Southampton Water, past Lee-on-the-Solent and the Hamble, Netley and Hythe. By ten o’clock they had berthed in the New Dock at Southampton.

Stott and Bristow were waiting for them and came aboard when the gangway was lowered. Stott had very nearly swallowed Morrison’s bait. He had not reserved a whole deck to himself, but he had done the next best thing. His large and elaborate suite opened on to a quite considerable area of deck, screened off, not with rails, but with solid partitions, so that he could enjoy the sea and air in privacy. Bristow’s accommodation did not run to anything so sumptuous, but he didn’t do so badly with a bedroom, private sitting room, office and bathroom.

Stott seemed rather worried as he came on board. He nodded absently to Morrison and went off at once to see the Captain. But Bristow was in an expansive mood.

“Hullo, old man!” he greeted Morrison. “How goes it? What do you think of the ship?”

He seemed to have lost his aloof air and was as friendly as at that first interview in the Calais express. He was jubilant about the success of the scheme. The ship carried 1,800 passengers and nearly 3,000 had applied for accommodation. Most of the latter were coming later – in fact, the ship was booked to capacity for the first three months.

“Infinitely better than we could have hoped,” he declared enthusiastically. “Why, we’re already fingering the gold, and if this goes on we’ll have our hands right into it. But I have a message for Grant. See you later.” He hurried off importantly.

Presently the first train arrived. Morrison examined curiously the people whom he was to serve as they began streaming across the wharf and up the gangways. They were too far away to exhibit great detail, but even at that distance he was struck by their commonplace air. They looked exactly like all the first-class passengers he had ever seen. When they began actually to enter the ship he went below to his office. Should any of them want his help, he must be available.

Several did. People who had lost rugs and handbags on the journey, or who wanted to return earlier or stay later than they had said. He did what he could to satisfy them, while gradually the ship began to hum uneasily and take on an air of unrest contrasting disagreeably with its peaceful atmosphere during the previous fortnight. He was kept busy all the afternoon, and when during a lull he slipped on deck it was to find that they were already halfway down Southampton Water.

At nine o’clock on that first night when they were well out in the channel, the gaming rooms were thrown open and at once were filled. They remained full till, by what was stated to be the rules of the ship, they closed down at 1.00 a.m. Play was cautious: no big sums changed hands and the gains to the bank, so Bristow told Morrison later, were not large. But they were an earnest of what was to follow. Next day the shore service began, the first flying boat leaving the ship after breakfast when they were passing Plymouth and returning in the evening when they were off Penzance. The boats operated to and from the Southampton base, which had proved the most convenient. No one used the service on that second day nor for some days to come, but it ran regularly as advertised. Then gradually passengers began to leave, their places usually being filled on the same day.

Morrison soon settled down in his job, with which he was entirely satisfied. The work was congenial, his quarters comfortable, his fellow officers friendly, his leisure filled with pleasant amusements and, above all, his income greater than a few months earlier he could have imagined, in his wildest dreams. His salary was paid on the nail, and his expenses were so trifling that he was able to save almost the whole of it.

People ashore, however, did not seem so pleased. On the sailing of the ship a new and much more intense newspaper warfare arose. All sorts of people wrote condemning the venture as immoral, and calling on the authorities to find some way of stopping it. It was, they said, a disgrace to Britain to have such a vessel about her coast, and they urged that if, as was said, the authorities had no power to take action, the law should immediately be amended.

All this was magnificent grist to Gillow’s mill. He and his myrmidons joined battle with a flood of letters taking the opposite view. More members of the public then aired their opinions, increasing the advertising value of the campaign by several percent. In the end the correspondence died down inconclusively. The Government made no sign and took no action: at least, so thought Stott and his friends.

Contrary to Stott’s previously expressed opinion, it was found that a good many people came on board for the cruising alone, never entering the gaming rooms. The ship’s itinerary and the shore excursions therefore assumed greater importance and everything was done to make these items as interesting as possible. The first excursion took place on the third day out – to Glengariff and Killarney, and nearly every day after that some trip ashore was provided. The gaming rooms were not opened in the morning till ten o’clock, which allowed the boats to put excursionists ashore, and the ship to get out to sea with the rooms closed, and they were shut again from five till nine at night, enabling her to go inshore again to pick up.

The detailed arrangements for these shore excursions involved a lot of work. Previous to the sailing of the ship, Morrison had done this, having fixed up some dozen of which the date of running alone had to be given to an agent ashore. But now a difficulty arose. It was found that Morrison could not be spared from his duties on board to visit the locales of the necessary new trips.

Under these circumstances, it was arranged that Bristow should do the work. Morrison was annoyed for two reasons. First, he thought he was the man to go, and that his assistant Anderson should carry on in his place. Secondly, if someone else were to do it, he did not think Bristow was the right person. It was not a lawyer’s job.

However, Bristow went, and as it turned out, he did the work well. Even Morrison had to admit that his arrangements were good, and no unpleasant hitches followed.

Time passed and slowly the weeks grew into months. The venture was proving more and more successful, and already Morrison was beginning to wonder when the first instalment of his 10 percent, on the net profits would materialise. So far no untoward incident had taken place. No one, so far as was known, had lost his all in the gaming rooms, and there had been no suicides aboard, a possibility which had given Stott some anxiety.

When considerably over a year had passed, an event took place which vitally affected the fortunes, not only of Morrison, but of many others on board. The affair began with the application of three separate parties for accommodation. They were all small, and Morrison heard of them in the usual way, through a notification from the purser’s department that they had booked for certain dates.

The first party consisted of a Major Wyndham Stott, Mrs Stott, Miss Margot Stott and a Mr Percy Luff. Major and Miss Stott were coming aboard in ten days’ time, the other two following some days later. They lived near Basingstoke and wished for transport arrangements to and from their house.

There was nothing unusual in this except that the names were underlined in red. The Purser’s people had a system of underlining in various colours, indicating confidentially the status of their clients. Red meant important people, to be given special attention.

Morrison dealt with the case in his routine way. The ship’s itinerary showed that about midday on the date in question they would be off Kirkwall in the Orkneys, which was perhaps the prelude to the most interesting part of their cruise. He arranged for a Daimler service car to be at the house near Basingstoke to run the pair to Southampton, and for the best seats on that morning’s flying boat to be reserved for them.

The second and third parties contained only two members each. One consisted of a Mr and Mrs Forrester from London. They were coming aboard on the same day as Stott and his daughter, and Morrison automatically allotted to them adjoining seats in the plane.

The names of the third party, which was due about a week after the others, caused Morrison to sit up and take notice. They were Mr Alex N Malthus and Mr Clarence Mason. Apart from the initials, Morrison saw at once that this was
the
Malthus, because Mason, he had afterwards learnt, had been one of the directors of the abortive company.