The Golden Rendezvous (26 page)

I hauled him to the ladder, dragged him up to a sitting position against it, hooked my hands under his shoulders and jerked up his dead weight, inch by inch, until his shoulders and hanging head were on a level with my own, stooped quickly, caught him in a fireman's lift, and started climbing.

for the first time that night the pitching, corkscrewing campari was my friend. When the ship plunged into a trough, rolling to starboard at the same time, the ladder would incline away from me as much as fifteen degrees and i'd take a couple of quick steps, hang on grimly as the campari rolled back and the ladder swung out above me, wait for the return roll, and then repeat the process. Twice carreras all but slipped from my shoulder; twice I had to take a quick step down to renew my purchase. I hardly used my left leg at all; my right leg and both arms took all the strain. Above all, my shoulders took the strain. I felt at times as if the muscles would tear, but it wasn't any worse than the pain in my leg, so I kept on going. I kept going till I reached the top. Another half-dozen rungs and I would have had to let him drop for I don't think I could ever have made it.

I heaved him over the hatch coaming, followed, sank down on deck, and waited till my pulse rate dropped down to the low hundreds. After the stench of oil and the close stufliness of that hold the driving gale-borne rain felt and tasted wonderful. I cupped the torch in my hand-not that there was more than a very remote chance of anyone being round at that hour, in that weather-and went through his pockets till I found a key tagged "sick bay." then I caught him by the collar and started for the side of the ship.

a minute later I was down in the bottom of the hold again. I found tony carreras' gun, stuck it in my pocket, and looked at susan. She was still unconscious, which was the best way to be if I had to carry her up that ladder, and I had. With a broken arm she couldn't have made it alone, and if I waited till she regained consciousness she would be in agony all the way. And she wouldn't have remained conscious long.

after coping with carreras' dead weight, the task of getting susan beresford up on deck seemed almost easy. I laid her carefully on the rain-washed deck, replaced the battens, and tied the tarpaulin back in place. I was just finishing when I sensed rather than heard her stir.

"Don't move," I said quickly. On the upper deck again I had to raise my voice almost to a shout to make myself heard against the bedlam of the storm. "Your forearm's broken."

"Yes." matter-fact, far too matter-of-fact. "Tony carreras? did you leave

"That's all over. I told you that was all. "where is he?"

"Overboard."

"Overboard?" the tremor was back in her voice and I liked it much better than the abnormal calmness. "How did he

"I stabbed him god knows how many times," I said wearily. "Do you think he got up all by himself, climbed the ladder, and jumped sorry, susan. I shouldn't well, i'm not quite my normal, I guess. Come on.

Time old doc marston saw that arm."

I made her cradle the broken forearm in her right hand, helped her to her feet, and caught her by the good arm to help steady her on that heaving deck. The blind leading the blind.

when we reached the forward break of the well deck I made her sit in the comparative shelter there while I went into the bo'sun's store.

It took me only seconds to find what I wanted: two coils of nylon rope which I stuck into a canvas bag, and a short length of thicker manilla.

I closed the door, left the bag beside susan, and staggered across the sliding, treacherous decks to the port side and tied the manilla to one of the guardrail stanchions. I considered knotting the rope, then decided against it. Macdonald, whose idea this was, had been confident that no one, in this wild weather, would notice so small a thing as a knot round the base of a stanchion, and even if it were noticed, carreras' men would not be seamen enough to investigate and pull it in; but anyone peering over the side and seeing the knots might have become very curious indeed. I made the knot round that stanchion very secure indeed, for there was going to depend on it the life of someone who mattered very much to myself. Ten minutes later we were back outside the sick bay. I need not have worried about that sentry. Head bent low over his chest, he was still far away in another world and showed no signs of leaving it. I wondered how he would feel when he came to.

Would he suspect he had been drugged would he put any unusual symptoms

down to a combination of exhaustion and seasickness? I decided I was worrying about nothing; one sure guess I could make, and that was that when the sentry awoke he would tell no one about his sleep. Miguel carreras struck me as the kind of man who might have a very short way indeed with sentries who slept on duty.

I took out the key i'd found on tony carreras and unlocked the door. Marston was at his desk; the bo'sun and bullen were both sitting up in bed. This was the first time i'd seen bullen conscious since he'd been shot. He was pale and haggard and obviously in considerable pain, but he didn't look as if he were on his last legs. It took a lot to kill off a man like bullen.

he gave me a long look that was pretty close to a glare. "Well, mister, where the hell have you been?" normally, with those words, it would have come out like a rasp, but his lung wound had softened his rasp to a hoarse whisper. If i'd had the strength to grin, i'd have done just that, but I didn't have the strength; there was hope for the old man yet.

"A minute, sir. Dr. Marston, miss beresford has a "i can see, I can see. How in the world did you manage " close to us now, he broke off and peered at me with his shortsighted eyes. "I would say, john, that you're in the more immediate need of attention."

"Me? i'm all right."

"Oh, you are, are you?" he took susan by her good arm and led her into the dispensary. He said, over his shoulder, "seen yourself in a mirror recently?"

I looked in a mirror. I could see his point. Balenciagas weren't blood-proof. The whole of the left side of my head, face, and neck was covered in blood that had soaked through hood and mask, matted in thick,

dark blood that even the rain hadn't been able to remove: the rain, if anything, had made it look worse than it really was. It must all have come from tony carteras' bloodstained shirt when i'd carried him up the ladder of number four hold. "It'll wash off," I said to bullen and the bo'sun. "It's not mine. That's from tony carreras."

"Carreras?" bullen stared at me, then looked at macdonald. In spite of the evidence in front of his eyes, you could see that he thought i'd gone off my rocker. "What do you mean?"

"I mean what I say. Tony carreras." I sat heavily on a chair and gazed down vacantly at my soaking clothes. Maybe captain bullen wasn't so far wrong: I felt an insane desire to laugh. I knew it was a climbing hysteria that came from weakness, from overexhaustion, from mounting fever, from expending too much emotion in too short a time, and

I had to make a physical effort to fight it down. "I killed him tonight down in number four hold."

"You're mad," bullen said flatly. "You don't know what you're saying."

"Don't i?" I looked at him, then away again. "Ask susan beresford."

"Mr. carter's telling the truth, sir," macdonald said quietly. "My knife, sir? did you bring it back?"

I nodded, rose wearily, hobbled across to macdonald's bed, and handed him the knife. I'd had no chance to clean it. The bo'sun said nothing, just handed it to bullen, who stared down at it for long, unspeaking moments.

"I'm sorry, my boy," he said at length. His voice was husky.

"Damnably sorry. But we've been worried to death."

I grinned faintly. It was an effort even to do that. "So was i, sir, so was i."

"All in your own good time," bullen said encouragingly. "I think mr. carter should tell us later, sir," macdonald suggested. "He's got to clean himself up, get those wet clothes off and into bed. If anyone comes "right, bo'sun, right." you could see that even so little talk was exhausting him. "Better hurry, my boy."

"Yes." I looked vaguely at the bag i'd brought with me. "I've got the ropes there, archie."

"Let me have them, sir." he took the bag, pulled out the two coils of rope, pulled the pillow from his lower pillowcase, stuffed the ropes inside, and placed them under his top pillow. "Good a place as any, sir. If they really start searching, they're bound to find it anyway.

Now if you'd just be dropping this pillow and bag out the window.. I did that, stripped, washed, dried myself as best I could, and climbed into bed, just as marston came into the bay.

"She'll be all right, john. Simple fracture. All wrapped up and in her blankets and she'll be asleep in a minute. Sedatives, you know."

I nodded. "You did a good job to-night, doctor. Boy outside is still asleep and I hardly felt a thing in my leg." it was only half a lie and there was no point in hurting his feelings unnecessarily. I glanced down at my leg. "The splints

"I'll fix them right away." he fixed them, not more than half killing me in the process, and while he was doing so I told them what had happened. Or part of what had happened. I told them the encounter

with tony carreras was the result of an attempt i'd made to spike the gun on the afterdeck; with old bullen talking away non-stop in his sleep, any mention of the twister would not have been clever at all.

at the end of it all, after a heavy silence, bullen said hopelessly, "it's finished. It's all finished. All that work and suffering for nothing. All for nothing."

it wasn't finished; it wasn't going to be finished ever. Not till either miguel carreras or myself was finished. If I were a betting man i'd have staked the last cent of my fortune on carreras.

I didn't say that to them. I told them instead of the simple plan I had in mind, an unlikely plan concerned with taking over the bridge at gun point. But it wasn't half as hopeless and desperate as the plan I really had in mind. The one i'd tell archie macdonald about later.

Again I couldn't tell the old man, for again the chances were heavy that he would have betrayed it in his half-delirious muttering under sedation. I hadn't even liked to mention tony carreras, but the blood had to be explained away.

when I finished, bullen said in his hoarse whisper, "i'm still the captain of the ship. I will not permit it. Good god, mister, look at the weather, look at your condition. I will not allow you to throw your life away. I cannot permit it."

"Thank you, sir. I know what you mean. But you have to permit it. You must. Because if you don't "what if someone comes into the sick bay when you're not here?" he asked helplessly.

He'd accepted the inevitable.

"This." I produced a gun and tossed it to the bo'sun. "This was tony carreras'. There are still seven shots in the magazine."

"Thank you, sir," macdonald said quietly. "I'll be very careful with those shots."

"But yourself, man?" bullen demanded huskily. "How about yourself?"

"Give me back that knife, archie," I said.

chapter 10

[friday 9 a. m. saturday 1 a.m.]

I slept that night and slept deeply, as deeply, almost, as tony carreras. I had neither sedatives nor sleeping pills; exhaustion was the only drug I needed.

coming awake next morning was a long, slow climb from the depths of a bottomless pit. I was climbing in the dark, but in the strange way of dreams I wasn't climbing and it wasn't dark; some great beast had me in his jaws and was trying to shake the life out of me. A tiger, but no ordinary tiger. A sabre-toothed tiger, the kind that had passed from the surface of the earth a million years ago. So I kept on climbing in the dark and the sabre-toothed tiger kept on shaking me like a terrier shaking a rat and I knew that my only hope was to reach the light above, but I couldn't see any light. Then, all of a sudden, the light was there, my eyes were open, and miguel carreras was bending over me and shaking my shoulder with no gentle hand. I would have preferred the sabre-toothed tiger any day.

marston stood at the other side of the bed and when he saw I was awake he caught me under the arms and lifted me gently to a sitting position. I did my best to help him but I wasn't concentrating on it; I was concentrating on the lip-biting and eye-closing so that carreras couldn't miss how far through I was. Marston was protesting.

"He shouldn't be moved, mr. carreras. He really shouldn't be moved. He's in constant pain and I repeat that major surgery is essential at the earliest possible moment." it was about forty years too late now, I supposed, for anyone to point out to marston that he was a born actor. No question in my mind now but that that was what he should have been: the gain to both the thespian and medical worlds would have been incalculable.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and smiled wanly. "Why don't you say it outright, doctor? amputation is what you mean.

he looked at me gravely, then went away without saying anything. I looked across at bullen and macdonald. Both of them were awake, both of

them carefully not looking in my direction. And then I looked at carreras.

at first glance he looked exactly the same as he had a couple of days ago. At first glance, that was. A second and closer inspection showed the difference: a slight pallor under the tan, a reddening of the eyes, a tightening of the face that had not been there before. He had a chart under his left arm, a slip of paper in his left hand. "Well," I sneered, "how's the big bold pirate captain this morning?"

"My son is dead," he said dully.

I hadn't expected it to come like this, or so soon, but the very unexpectedness of it helped me to the right reaction, the reaction he would probably expect from me anyway. I stared at him through slightly narrowed eyes and said, "he's what?"

"Dead." miguel carreras, whatever else he lacked, unquestionably had all the normal instincts of a parent, a father. The very intensity of his restraint showed how badly he had been hit. For a moment I felt genuinely sorry for him. For a very short moment. Then I saw the faces of wilson and jamieson and benson and brownell and dexter, the faces of all those dead men, and I wasn't sorry any more. "Dead?" I repeated.