Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

“And those messages that came through on the radio,” McIlroy went on. “Message or messages. A message so damned important that two men died: and the possibility that another such message might come through caused a third man to die. What message, Captain, what so tremendously important message? Warnings: from where, from whom, I don’t know. Warnings, Captain Bullen. Knowledge which in our hands would have destroyed some carefully laid plans: and the scope of those plans you can judge from the fact that three men died so that that message should not come through.”

Old Bullen was shaken. He tried not to show it but, he was shaken. Badly. And I knew it next moment when he turned to Tommy Wilson.

“On the bridge, Mr. Wilson. Double lookouts: stay doubled till we get to Nassau.” He looked at McIlroy. “If we get to Nassau. Signaller to stand by the Aldis all day. ‘I want assistance’ flags ready for the yardarm. Radar office: if they take their eyes off the screen for a second I’ll have ’em on the beach. No matter how small a blip they see, no matter what distance, report immediately to the bridge.”

“We turn towards them for assistance, sir?”

“You blithering idiot,” Bullen snarled. “We run for our lives in the opposite direction. Do you want to steam into the waiting guns of a destroyer?” No question but that Bullen was far off balance: the self-contradictory element in his instructions escaped him completely.

“You believe the chief, then, sir?” I asked.

“I don’t know what to believe,” Bullen growled. “I’m just taking no chances.”

When Wilson left I said: “Maybe the chief is right. Maybe Wilson is right, too. Both could go together – an armed attack on the Campari with certain suborned members of the crew backing up the attackers.”

“But you still don’t believe it,” McIlroy said, quietly.

“I’m like the captain. I don’t know what to believe. But one thing I do know for certain. The radio receiver that intercepted the message we never got – that’s the key to it all.”

“And that’s the key we’re going to find.” Bullen heaved himself to his feet. “Chief, I’d be glad if you came with me. We’re going to search for this radio, personally. First we start in my quarters, then in yours, then we go through the quarters of every member of the crew of the Campari . Then we start looking anywhere where it might be cached outside their quarters. You come with us, MacDonald.”

The old man was in earnest all right. If that radio was in the crew’s quarters, he’d find it. The fact that he’d offered to start the search in his own suite was warranty enough for that.

He went on: “Mr. Carter, I believe it’s your watch.”

“Yes, sir. But Jamieson could look out for me for an hour. Permission to search the passengers’ quarters?”

“Wilson was right about that bee in the bonnet, Mister.” Which only went to show how upset Bullen was: normally, where circumstances demanded, he was the most punctilious of men and, in the presence of the bo’sun, would never have spoken as he had done to Wilson and myself. He glowered at me and walked out.

He hadn’t given me permission, but he hadn’t refused it either. I glanced at Cummings: he nodded, and rose to his feet.

We had luck in the conditions of our search, the purser and I, in that we didn’t have to turf anyone out of their cabins: they were completely deserted. Radio reports in the morning watch had spoken of weather conditions deteriorating sharply to the south-east and bulletins had been posted warning of approaching bad weather: the sun-decks were crowded with passengers determined to make the most of the blue skies before the weather broke. Even old Cerdan was on deck, flanked by his two watchful nurses, the tall one with a big mesh-string knitting bag and clicking away busily with her needles, the other with a pile of magazines, reading. You had the impression with them, as with all good nurses, that less than half their minds were on what they were doing: without stirring from their chairs they seemed to hover over old Cerdan like a couple of broody hens. I had the feeling that when Cerdan paid nurses to hover, he would expect his money’s worth. He was in his bath-chair, with a richly-embroidered rug over his bony knees. I took a good long look at that rug as I passed by, but I was only wasting my time: so tightly was that rug wrapped round his skinny shanks that he couldn’t have concealed a matchbox under it, far less a radio.

With a couple of stewards keeping watch we went through the suites on “A” and “B” decks with meticulous care. I had a bridge megger with me, which was to lend cover to our cover story, if we had to use one, that we were trying to trace an insulation break in a power cable: but no passenger with a guilty mind was going to fall for that for a moment if he found us in his cabin, so we thought the stewards a good idea.

There should have been no need for any passenger aboard the Campari to have a radio. Every passenger’s cabin on the ship, with the Campari ’s usual extravagance, was fitted out with not one but two bulkhead relay receivers, fed from a battery of radios in the telegraph lounge: eight different stations could be brought into circuit simply by pressing the eight pre-selector buttons. This was all explained in the brochure so nobody thought of bringing radios along.

Cummings and I missed nothing. We examined every cupboard, wardrobe, bed, drawer, even my ladies’ jewel-boxes. Nothing. Nothing anywhere, except in one place: Miss Harcourt’s cabin. There was a portable there, but, then, I had known that there had been one: every night when the weather was fine Miss Harcourt would wander out on deck clad in one of her many evening gowns, find a chair and twiddle around the tuning knob till she found some suitable soft music. Maybe she thought it lent something to the air of enchantment and mystery that should surround a movie queen: maybe she thought it romantic: it could have been, of course, that she just liked soft music. However it was, one thing was certain, Miss Harcourt was not our suspect: not to put too fine a point on it, she just didn’t have the intelligence. And, in fairness, despite her pretensions, she was too nice.

I retired defeated to the bridge and took over from Jamieson. Almost an hour elapsed before another defeated man came to the bridge: Captain Bullen. He didn’t have to tell me he was defeated: it was written on him, in the still, troubled face, the slight sag of the broad shoulders. And a mute headshake from me told him all he needed to know. I made a mental note, in the not unlikely event of Lord Dexter turfing us both out of the Blue Mail, to turn down any suggestions by Captain Bullen that we should go into a detective agency together: there might be faster ways of starving, perhaps, but none more completely certain.

We were on the second leg of our course now, 10 degrees west of north, heading straight for Nassau. Twelve hours and we would be there. My eyes ached from scanning the horizons and skies, even although I knew there were at least ten others doing the same thing, still my eyes ached. Whether I believed McIlroy’s suggestion or not, I certainly behaved as if I did. But the horizon remained clear, completely, miraculously clear, for this was normally a fairly heavily travelled steamer lane. And the loudspeaker from the radar room remained obstinately silent. We had a radar screen on the bridge, but rarely troubled to consult it: Walters, the operator on watch, could isolate and identify a blip on the screen before most of us could even see it.

After maybe half an hour’s restless pacing about the bridge, Bullen turned to go. Just at the head of the companionway he hesitated, turned, beckoned me and walked out to the end of the starboard wing. I followed.