Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

“Something’s happened to him all right,” I said. My voice was steady, unnaturally so. “He’s dead. Or I think he’s dead. Rusty, get Dr. Marston right away, he’s usually in the telegraph lounge this time of night. Tell the captain, if he’s there. Not a word to anyone else about this.”

Rusty disappeared, and another figure appeared to take his place beside Susan Beresford in the doorway. Carreras. He stopped, one foot over the storm-sill, and said: “My God! Benson.”

“No, Brownell. Wireless officer. I think he’s dead.” On the off-chance that Bullen hadn’t yet gone down to the lounge I reached for the bulkhead phone labelled “Captain’s Cabin” and waited for an answer, staring down at the dead man sprawled across the table. Middle-aged, cheerful, his only harmless idiosyncrasy being an unusual vanity about his personal appearance that had once even driven him to the length of buying a toupee for his bald spot – public shipboard opinion had forced him to discard it – Brownell was one of the most popular and genuinely liked officers on the ship. Was? Had been. I heard the click of a lifted receiver.

“Captain? Carter here. Could you come down to the wireless office? At once, please.”

“Benson?”

“Brownell. Dead, sir, I think.”

There was a pause, a click. I hung up, reached for another phone that connected directly to the radio officers’ cabins. We had three radio officers and the one with the middle watch, from midnight to 4 a.m., usually skipped dinner in the dining-room and made for his bunk instead. A voice answered: “Peters here.”

“First mate. Sorry to disturb you, but come up to the radio room right away.”

“What’s up?”

“You’ll find out when you get here.”

The overhead light seemed far too bright for a room with a dead man in it. I turned down the rheostat and the white glare was replaced by a deep yellow glow. Rusty’s face appeared in the doorway. He didn’t seem so pale any more but maybe the subdued light was just being kind to him.

“Surgeon’s coming, sir.” His breathing was quicker than ever. “Just picking up his bag in the dispensary.”

“Thanks. Go and fetch the bo’sun, will you. And no need to kill yourself running, Rusty. There’s no great hurry now.”

He left, and Susan Beresford said in a low voice: “What’s wrong? What – what happened to him?”

“You shouldn’t be here, Miss Beresford.”

“What happened to him?” she repeated.

“That’s for the ship’s surgeon to say. Looks to me as if he just died where he sat. Heart attack, coronary thrombosis, something like that.”

She shivered, made no reply. Dead men were no new thing to me but the faint icy prickling on the back of my neck and spine made me feel like shivering myself. The warm trade wind seemed cooler, much cooler, than it had a few minutes ago.

Doctor Marston appeared. No running, no haste even, with Dr. Marston: a slow measured man with a slow measured stride. A magnificent mane of white hair, clipped white moustache, a singularly smooth and unlined complexion for a man getting so far on in years, steady clear keen blue eyes with a peculiarly penetrating property, here, you knew instinctively, was a doctor who you could trust implicitly, which only went to show that your instinct should be taken away from you and locked up in some safe place where it couldn’t do you any harm. Admittedly, even to look at him made you feel better, and that was all right as far as it went: but to go further, to put your life into his hands, say, was a very different and dicey proposition altogether for there was an even chance that you wouldn’t get it back again. Those piercing eyes had not lighted on the Lancet or made any attempt to follow the latest medical developments since quite a few years prior to the Second World War. But they didn’t have to: he and Lord Dexter had gone through prep school, public school and university together and his job was secure as long as he could lift a stethoscope. And, to be fair to him, when it came to treating wealthy and hypochondriacal old ladies he had no equal on the seven seas.

“Well, John,” he boomed. With the exception of Captain Bullen, he addressed every officer on the ship by his first name exactly as a public school headmaster would have addressed one of his more promising pupils, but a pupil that needed watching all the same. “What’s the trouble? Beau Brownell taken a turn?”

“Worse than that, I’m afraid, Doctor. Dead.”

“Good lord! Brownell? Dead? Let me see, let me see. A little more light if you please, John.” He dumped his bag on the table, fished out his stethoscope, sounded Brownell here and there, took his pulse and then straightened with a sigh. “In the midst of life, John … and not recently, either. Temperature’s high in here but I should say he’s been gone well over an hour.”

I could see the dark bulk of Captain Bullen in the doorway now, waiting, listening, saying nothing.

“Heart attack, Doctor?” I ventured. After all he wasn’t all that incompetent, just a quarter century out of date.

“Let me see, let me see,” he repeated. He turned Brownell’s head and looked closely at it. He had to look closely. He was unaware that everyone in the ship knew that, piercing blue eyes or not, he was as short-sighted as a dodo, and refused to wear glasses. “Ah, look at this. The tongue, the lips, the eyes, above all the complexion. No doubt about it, no doubt about it at all. Cerebral hæmorrhage. Massive. And at his age. How old, John?”

“Forty-seven, eight. Thereabouts.”

“Forty-seven. Just forty-seven.” He shook his head. “Gets them younger every day. The stress of modern living.”

“And that outstretched hand, Doctor?” I asked. “Reaching for the phone. You think–”

“Just confirms my diagnosis, alas. Felt it coming on, tried to call for help, but it was too sudden, too massive. Poor old Beau Brownell.” He turned, caught sight of Bullen looming in the doorway. “Ah, there you are, Captain. A bad business, a bad business.”

“A bad business,” Bullen agreed heavily. “Miss Beresford, you have no right to be here. You’re cold and shivering. Go to your cabin at once.” When Captain Bullen spoke in that tone, the Beresford millions didn’t seem to matter any more. “Doctor Marston will bring you a sedative later.”

“And perhaps Mr. Carreras will be so kind!–” I began.

“Certainly,” Carreras agreed at once. “I will be honoured to see the young lady to her cabin.” He bowed slightly, offered her his arm. She seemed more than glad to take it and they disappeared.

Five minutes later all was back to normal in the radio cabin. Peters had taken the dead man’s place, Dr. Marston had returned to his favourite occupation of mingling socially and drinking steadily with our millionaires, the captain had given me his instructions, I’d passed them on to the bo’sun and Brownell, canvas-wrapped, had been taken for’ard to the carpenter’s store.

I stayed in the wireless office for a few minutes, talking to a very shaken Peters, and looked casually at the latest radio message that had come through. All radio messages were written down in duplicate as received, the original for the bridge and the carbon for the daily spiked file.

I lifted the topmost message from the file, but it was nothing very important, just a warning of deteriorating weather far to the south-east of Cuba which might or might not build up into a hurricane. Routine and too far away to bother us. I lifted the blank message pad that lay by Peters’s elbow.

“May I have this?”

“Help yourself.” He was still too upset even to be curious as to why I wanted it. “Plenty more where that came from.”