Алистер Маклин - The Golden Rendezvous

“Doctor’s orders,” I said resignedly. “O.K., Susan, bring the patient his coffee.” The circumstances were hardly normal: I could get back to calling her Miss Beresford later on.

Five minutes passed, then she brought the coffee. I looked at the tray and said: “What? Only three cups? There should be four.”

“Four?”

“Four. Three for us and one for our friend outside.”

“Our friend – you mean the guard?”

“Who else?”

“Have you gone mad, Mr. Carter?”

“Fair’s fair,” Marston murmured. “ ‘John’ to you.”

She looked coldly at him, glared at me and said icily: “Have you gone mad? Why should I bring that thug coffee? I’ll do nothing–”

“Our chief officer always has a reason for his actions,” Marston said in sharp and surprising support. “Please do as he asks.”

She poured a cup of coffee, took it through the outside door and was back in a few seconds.

“He took it?” I asked.

“Didn’t he just. Seems he’s had nothing except a little water to drink in the past day or so.”

“I can believe it. I should imagine that they weren’t too well equipped in the catering line in those crates.” I took the cup of coffee she offered me, drained it and set it down. It tasted just the way coffee ought to taste.

“How was it?” Susan asked.

“Perfect. Any suggestion I made that you didn’t even know how to boil water I withdraw unreservedly.”

She and Marston looked at each other and then Marston said: “No more thinking or worrying to do tonight, John?”

“Nary a bit. All I want is a good night’s sleep.”

“And that’s why I put a pretty powerful sedative in your coffee.” He looked at me consideringly. “Coffee has a remarkable quality of disguising other flavours, hasn’t it?”

I knew what he meant and he knew I knew what he meant. I said: “Dr. Marston, I do believe I have been guilty of underestimating you very considerably.”

“I believe you have, John,” he said jovially. “I believe you have indeed.”

I became drowsily aware that my left leg was hurting, not badly but badly enough to wake me up. Someone was pulling it, giving it a strong steady tug every few seconds, letting go, then tugging it again. And he kept on talking all the time he was doing it. I wished that that someone, whoever he was, would give it up. The tugging and the talking. Didn’t he know I was a sick man?

I opened my eyes. The first thing I saw was the clock on the opposite bulkhead. Ten o’clock. Ten o’clock in the morning, for broad daylight was coming in through uncurtained windows. Dr. Marston had been right about the sedative: “powerful” was hardly the word for it.

Someone was talking, sure enough, old Bullen babbling away incoherently in a drugged and troubled sleep, but there was no one tugging at my leg. It was the traction weight suspended from the ceiling that was doing the tugging. The Campari , in spite of her stabilisers, was rolling through a ten-to-fifteen degree arc, which meant that there must be a pretty heavy and steep beam sea or swell running. Whenever the ship came to the end of a roll, the suspended pulley, reaching the limit of its pendulum swing, would give a pronounced jerk: a few seconds later another jerk. Now that I was fully awake, it was more painful than I had at first thought. Even if I had had a genuinely fractured femur that sort of thing wouldn’t be doing me any good at all. I looked around to see Dr. Marston and to ask him to remove it.

But the first person who caught my eye was not Dr. Marston but Miguel Carreras. He was standing near the top of my bed, maybe he had been shaking me awake. He was newly shaven, looked fresh and rested, had his neatly bandaged right hand in a sling and carried some charts under his arm. He gave me a slight smile.

“Good morning, Mr. Carter. How do you feel now?”

I ignored him. Susan Beresford was sitting at the doctor’s desk. She looked pretty tired to me and there were dark smudges under her green eyes. I said: “Susan, where’s doctor Marston?”

“Susan?” Carreras murmured. “How swiftly contiguity breeds familiarity.”

I ignored him again. Susan said: “In the dispensary, asleep. He’s been up most of the night.”

“Wake him, will you? Tell him I want this damned weight off. It’s tearing my leg in two.”

She went into the dispensary and Carreras said: “Your attention, Mr. Carter, if you please.”

“When I get that weight off,” I said surlily. “Not before.”

Dr. Marston appeared, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and started to remove the weight without a word.

“Captain Bullen and the bo’sun?” I asked. “How are they?”

“The captain’s holding his own – just.” The old boy looked tired and sounded tired. “The bo’sun’s recovering fast. Both of them came too early this morning: I gave them sedatives. The longer they sleep, the better.”

I nodded, waited till he had lifted me to a sitting position and adjusted my leg, then said curtly: “What do you want, Carreras?”

He unrolled a chart and spread it over my knees. “A little navigational assistance – cross-checking, shall we call it? You will co-operate?”

“I’ll co-operate.”

“What?” Susan Beresford crossed from the desk and stared down at me. “You – you’re going to help this man?”

“You heard me, didn’t you? What do you want me to be – a hero?” I nodded at my leg. “Look where being heroic’s got me.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it!” Patches of colour flared in the pale cheeks. “You. Going to help this – this monster, this murderer.”

“If I don’t,” I said wearily, “he’ll like as not start on you. Maybe break a finger at a time or yank out a tooth at a time with Dr. Marston’s forceps – and without anæsthetic. I’m not saying he’d like doing it: but he’d do it.”

“I’m not afraid of Mr. Carreras,” she said defiantly. But she was paler than ever.

“Then it’s time you were,” I said curtly. “Well, Carreras?”

“You have sailed the North Atlantic, Mr. Carter? Between Europe and America, I mean?”

“Many times.”

“Good.” He jabbed the chart. “A vessel leaving the Clyde and sailing for Norfolk, Virginia. I wish you to sketch the course it would take. Any reference books you wish I can have fetched.”

“I don’t require any.” I took his pencil. “North about round Ireland, so, a slightly flattened great circle route along the west-bound summer lane, so, to this point well southeast of Newfoundland. The northward curve looks strange, but that’s only because of the projection of the chart: it is the shortest route.”

“I believe you. And then?”

“Shortly after that the course diverges from the main west-bound New York lane, approximately here, and comes into Norfolk more or less from the east-north-east.” I twisted my head around to try to see out the surgery door “What’s all that racket? Where’s it coming from? Sounds like riveting guns or pneumatic chisels to me.”

“Later, later,” he said irritably. He unrolled another chart and the irritation vanished from his face. “Splendid, Carter, splendid. Your track coincides almost exactly with the information I have here.”

“Why the hell did you ask me–”

“I double-check everything, Mr. Carter. This vessel, now, is due to arrive at Norfolk at exactly ten o’clock at night, on Saturday, in two days’ time. Not earlier, not later: exactly ten o’clock. If I wish to meet that vessel at dawn that day, where would the interception point be?”

I kept my questions to myself. “Dawn, in that latitude, at this time, is five o’clock. Give or take a few minutes. What speed does this vessel do?”