Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

Dr. Marston sighed.

“He’ll be all right. That is, he’s in no danger. Abnormally thick skull, I should say: that saved him. Concussion, yes but not fractured. I think. Hard to say without an X-ray. Respiration, pulse, temperature, blood pressure – none of them shows any signs pointing to extensive brain injury. It’s his leg I’m worried about.”

“His leg?”

“Patella. Knee-cap to you. Completely shattered, beyond repair. Tendons sliced, tibia fractured. Leg sawn in half. Must have been hit several times. The damned murderers!”

“Amputation? You don’t think–”

“No amputation.” He shook his head irritably. “I’ve removed all the broken pieces I can find. Bones will either have to be fused, so shortening the leg, or a metal plate. Too soon to say. But this I can say: he’ll never bend that knee again.”

“You’re telling me he’s crippled? For life?”

“I’m sorry. I know you’re very friendly.”

“So he’s finished with the sea?”

“I’m sorry,” Marston repeated. Medical incompetence apart, he was really a pretty decent old duffer. “Your turn now, John.”

“Yes,” I wasn’t looking forward to my turn. I looked at the guard. “Hey, you! Yes, you. Where’s Carreras?”

“Señor Carreras.” The young man dropped his cigarette on the Persian carpet and ground it out with his heel. Lord Dexter would have gone off his rocker. “It is not my business to know where Señor Carreras is.”

That settled that. He spoke English. I couldn’t have cared less at that moment where Carreras was. Marston had his big scissors out, and was preparing to slit up my trouser leg.

“Captain Bullen?” I asked. “What chance?”

“I don’t know. He’s unconscious now.” He hesitated. “He was wounded twice. One bullet passed clean through below the shoulder, tearing the pectoral muscle. The other entered the right chest a little lower, breaking a rib, then must have gone through the lung near the apex. The bullet is still lodged inside the body, almost certainly in the vicinity of the shoulder-blade. I may decide to operate later to remove it.”

“Operate.” The thought of old Marston hacking around inside an unconscious Bullen made me feel even paler than I looked. I choked down the next few words I thought of and said: “Operate? You would take the grave chance, you would be willing to risk your lifetime’s professional reputation–”

“A man’s life is at stake, John,” he said solemnly.

“But you might have to penetrate the chest wall. A major operation, Dr. Marston. Without assistant surgeons, without skilled nurses, without a competent anæsthetist, no X-rays, and you might be removing a bullet that’s plugging a vital gap in the lung or pleura or whatever you call it. Besides, the bullet might have been deflected anywhere.” I took a deep breath. “Dr. Marston, I cannot say how much I respect and admire you for even thinking of operating in such impossible conditions. But you will not run the risk. Doctor, as long as the captain is incapacitated I am in command of the Campari – in nominal command, anyway,” I added bitterly. “I absolutely forbid you to incur the very heavy responsibility of operating in such adverse conditions. Miss Beresford, you are a witness to that.”

“Well, John, you may be right,” old Marston said weightily. He was suddenly looking five years younger. “You may indeed be right. But my sense of duty–”

“It does you great credit, Doctor. But think of all those people who have been carrying a bullet about inside their chests since the First World War and still going strong.”

“There’s that, of course, there’s that.” I had rarely seen a man looking so relieved. “We’ll give nature a chance, hey?”

“Captain Bullen’s as strong as a horse.” The old man had at least a fighting chance now. I felt as if I’d just saved a life. I said weakly: “You were right, Doctor. I’m afraid I have been talking too much. Could I have some water, please?”

“Of course, my boy, of course.” He brought some, watched me drink it and said: “That feel better?”

“Thank you.” My voice was very faint. I moved my lips several times, as if speaking, but no words came. Marston, alarmed, put his ear close to my mouth to make out what I was trying to say, and I murmured, slowly and distinctly: “My thighbone is not broken: but pretend it is.”

He stared, eyes reflecting astonishment, opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He wasn’t all that slow, the old boy. He nodded slightly and said: “Ready for me to begin?”

He began. Susan Beresford helped him. My leg was a gory sight but looked worse than it was. One bullet had passed directly through the leg, but the other two had just torn ragged superficial gashes on the inside, and it was from those that most of the blood had come. All the while he was working, Dr. Marston kept up, for the sake of the guard, a running commentary on the extent and severity of my wounds, and if I hadn’t known he was lying fluently he would have made me feel very ill indeed. He certainly must have convinced the guard. When he’d cleaned and bound the wounds, a process I bore with stoic fortitude only because I didn’t want to start yelling in front of Susan Beresford, he fixed some splints to my leg and bound those on also. This done, he propped up my leg on a pile of pillows, went into the dispensary and reappeared with a couple of screwed pulleys, a length of wire with a heavy weight attached to the end and a leather strap. The strap he fitted to my left ankle.

“What’s this in aid of?” I demanded.

“I’m the medical officer, please remember,” he said curtly. His left eyelid dropped in a slow wink. “Traction, Mr. Carter. You don’t want your leg to be permanently shortened for life?”

“Sorry,” I muttered. Maybe I had been misjudging old Marston just a little. Nothing would ever make me reconsider my opinion of him as a doctor, but he was shrewd enough in other things: the first thing a man like Carreras would have asked was why a man with a broken bone in his leg was not in traction. Marston screwed the two hooks into holes in the deckhead, passed the wire through, attached the weight to one end and the strap to the other. It didn’t feel too uncomfortable. He then picked up the length of trouser leg that had been cut off, checked quickly to see if the guard was watching, splashed some water on it and then wrung it out on top of my bandages. Even to myself I had to admit that I’d seldom seen a more convincing sight, a patient more completely and thoroughly immobilised.

He finished just in time. He and Susan Beresford were just clearing away when the door opened and Tony Carreras came in. He looked at Bullen, MacDonald and myself, slowly, consideringly – he wasn’t a man who would miss very much – then came to my bedside.

“Good evening, Carter,” he said pleasantly. “How are you feeling?”

“Where’s that murderous parent of yours?” I asked.

“Murderous parent? You do my father an injustice. Asleep, at the moment, as it happens: his hand was giving him great pain after Marston had finished with it” – I wasn’t surprised at that – “so he was given a sleeping draught. The good ship Campari is all buttoned up for the night and Captain Tony Carreras in charge. You may all sleep easy. You’ll be interested to hear that we’ve just picked up Nassau on the radar-scope – port 40, or some such nautical term – so you weren’t playing any funny tricks with that course after all.”

I grunted and turned my head away. Carreras walked across to Marston. “How are they, Doctor?”

“How do you expect them to be after your thugs have riddled them with bullets?” Marston demanded bitterly. “Captain Bullen may live or die, I don’t know. MacDonald, the bo’sun, will live, but he’ll be a stiff-legged cripple for life. The chief officer has a compound fracture of the femur – the thigh-bone. Completely shattered. If we don’t get him to hospital in a couple of days, he also will be crippled for life: as it is, he’ll never be able to walk properly again.”