Роберт Фиш - The Wager

“You ain’t going to take it?”

“No, no!” Jamison said, once more the master of the situation and now expounding basic theory to a neophyte. “You see, if we were to remove it, even with you here as a witness, what could we really prove? Only that we found a package in an air-conditioning duct. We couldn’t prove that Huuygens put it there. He’d simply deny it; after all, other people have access to his stateroom, he’d say, as witness our having found it. And what could we do? He’d walk off the ship scot-free.”

“Yeah,” Rafferty agreed, and fell back on principles of logic he’d been taught at his mother’s knee. “But you’d have the thing, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ll have it just as much in New York when we dock,” Jamison gloated, and smiled wolfishly. “And I’ll have Mr. Huuygens with it. Like that!” He clenched a fist dramatically, and then realized there was little time in the schedule for fist-clenching. He put the chair back where he had found it and studied the room. All was as it had been on their entrance. He looked up at the air-conditioning duct proudly, Rafferty’s part in the discovery already downgraded in the mental report he was still composing. He glanced at his watch; twelve noon on the button. Even his time calculations had proven perfect.

“Let’s go,” he said to Rafferty, and without thinking rubbed his nose. The instant shock of pain reminded him that all things have their price, even victory. “Let’s go,” he repeated, although less exuberantly this time, and led the way to the door.

André, having returned from a five-minute absence and reseated himself, was surprised to find Kek looking at him reprovingly. André reached for his drink, frowning.

“What’s the look for?”

“You shouldn’t have done it,” Kek said, and glanced across the room. A stranger to André, accompanied by a large ship’s officer, was passing through the bar, and the stranger looked as if he had put his face into one of the ship’s ventilation fans nose first and held it there too long.

André studied the battered features in puzzlement; then intelligence finally struck. He downed his drink first, as being of proper priority, and then said. “That’s Jamison?”

“That’s right,” Anita said glumly, “and he looks like the cat who found the combination to the cream cellar.”

“I didn’t touch him,” André said, insulted. “I was in the men’s room. I never even knew what he looked like, before.” He found the clinching argument. “It couldn’t have been me. He’s walking, isn’t he?”

“In that case I owe you an apology.” Kek looked after the disappearing back sadly. “One thing is certain, our friend Jamison is accident-prone. I’d hate to be his insurance agent.”

“He winked at me!” Anita said, amazed at Huuygens’ attitude. “I tell you he found whatever he was looking for!”

“I doubt it,” Kek said calmly. “Well, one for the road — or I suppose roadstead would be more correct aboard ship — or lunch?”

“For the road,” André said, and wondered if his old friend Huuygens was losing his grip; if the redoubtable Kek was actually as unconcerned as he appeared to be.

Anita sighed. “Well, at least Jamison gave us an excuse to be together for the rest of the cruise.”

Kek looked at her gently. “I’m afraid not. As a matter of fact, your stint with us is done, and you managed it very well. I suggest you now go out to the deck buffet with that red-haired boy who has been glaring in this direction for the past half-hour. And then, when you have time, report to Mr. Jamison. And no, it is not necessary to report back to me what the two of you discuss.”

Anita frowned. “But I thought—”

“There will be other times and other cruises,” Kek told her gently. “And this time let’s not part with a slap. André is here to protect me this time.”

“Oh!” Anita came to her feet, whirled, and stalked from the bar. Billy Standish was after her in one bound.

“A little rough, weren’t you?” André asked.

Kek paused in calling a waiter. He faced André squarely, his gray eyes serious.

“You, my friend, are going to find out what being identified with me, even in someone’s mind as a ‘confederate,’ will mean when we go through Customs,” he said quietly. “I don’t like the thought of Anita being put through that routine...”

The MV Andropolis , her flags flying bravely and her white paint gleaming brightly, plowed steadily through the Narrows, its polished railing crowded with passengers wondering where the two weeks had flown, drinking in the breathless wonders of the Brooklyn waterfront on one side and Staten Island on the other, pointing out, one to the other, things the other had just finished pointing out to them. The Verrazano bridge had been passed and commented on with awe, quite as if they had not seen it two weeks before on their departure. To their left, the Statue of Liberty stood, looking a bit tired after the years and many disappointments; to the right the twin towers of the World Trade Center loomed larger and larger in the morning sun, dwarfing the older, more dignified skyline of downtown New York. In the broad harbor ships drifted at anchor, ferries plied; garbage floated gently on the tide. The day was hot and humid, promising passengers a muggy welcome at the ancient gloomy Customs shed that should have been used for firewood when everything above Thirty-fourth Street was farmland.

In the interior of the luxury liner the companionways were jammed with stewards staggering Quasimodolike under mounds of luggage, transferring it from corridors to the promenade deck, where members of the deck crew piled it in mountainous heaps with the most crushable objects, if possible, beneath. Stewardesses frantically dragged linens from beds and pushed them into the corridor, or tried to drag vacuum cleaners into staterooms through the mob that was hastily preparing for the next cruise — for the ship sailed for Philadelphia as soon as the passengers were disembarked, there to allow others to rumple beds and fill ashtrays. In the bars, barmen counted bottles behind closed grillworks; in the huge kitchen storeroom chefs checked stocks while hand trucks propelled by caterer-employees feverishly tried to overcome the shortages before the ship sailed. In the saloons, passengers ladened with island purchases considered too precious for the handling by shipboard personnel busily scribbled each other’s addresses on bits of paper, to be examined curiously the next time a wallet or purse was cleaned out, and then thrown away. Whistles blew for unexplained reasons, horns honked at irregular intervals, while an insistent voice on the loudspeakers advised everybody not to dawdle once their luggage was on the dock, as the ship was sailing at once.

Jamison, having seen Kek Huuygens on deck patiently waiting for the tugs to edge the Andropolis into her berth, nodded in satisfaction and went below. He found Rafferty where he had left him, standing stolidly in the purser’s square, tapped the large security officer on the arm, and motioned him to follow as he walked down the aft companionway, stepping on linens and squeezing past laden stewards. At Huuygens’ cabin he was pleased to note through the open door that the place was stewardess-free. He entered, pulling Rafferty behind him, and closed the door, twisting the latch. He dragged a chair to the wall and climbed up, tugged the grillwork free, and peered within. A smile crossed his horseface. As he had figured, the brightly colored package was gone.

“Bingo!” he said softly to himself, and got down again.

“Not there anymore?” Rafferty asked.

“Of course not. Take a look,” Jamison offered generously.