Стюарт Стерлинг - Down Among the Dead Men

Mulcahey maneuvered as close as he dared. The patrol-boat lifted high on the crest of the ground-swell, its deck level with the bottom of the ladder. Koski sprang. The wave surged inshore. The Vigilant dropped away beneath him, down into the trough, left him dangling six feet out from the hull as the freighter rolled.

She came back. The Lieutenant thudded against the wet iron of the plate, wondered how much of a shock it took to set off a cargo of T.N.T. He began to climb. His side was an agony of torture before hands reached over the rail, hauled him up. Two men with gold braid on their caps steadied Koski at the ladder head.

“Piper, first officer,” one of them put out his hand.

“Koski, Lieutenant.” The man from the Harbor Precinct wiped his palms.

“Coast Guard says you have additional information about the man they searched for, this afternoon.”

“Just learned he signed on under the name of Stanley. M. Stanley. Let’s see your roster.”

Piper led him to the bridge; unlocked a drawer; produced a board with a typewritten sheet clipped to it. His finger ran down the list of names. “Here you are. Black gang. M. Stanley, oiler, second class.”

“On watch now?”

“All hands are on duty until we take departure from the lightship. Want to see him?”

“Yair.”

“Hope it doesn’t take long. Convoy escort can’t wait for laggards. Bad business to be left behind, where we’re going.”

“Might be worse to keep on. With this bird aboard.”

They want aft to the poop deck where the four-inch gun pointed threateningly from behind its concrete emplacement; down steep companionways, through a narrow hatch. Piper climbed down the iron ladder to the engine-room grating, waited while Koski descended.

An elderly man with grizzled hair was making some adjustment on the valves of the big reciprocating engine; he glanced up from the rhythmic slide of the crank arm, nodded.

“Stanley around?”

The man jerked his head over toward one shoulder. Koski turned. Bent over a circulating pump were muscular shoulders in a sleeveless undershirt. The man’s face was hidden, but on the left arm Koski saw a white patch of adhesive. He started for the oiler, was still ten feet away when the man pivoted around. Black eyes, set in a white face like raisins in a blob of dough, darted suspiciously from Piper to the Lieutenant; the oiler backed against an asbestos-covered pipe, picked up a wrench.

“Steady as she goes, Gjersten.” Koski halted.

The man looked quickly over his shoulder, as if he expected someone else to be there. “Who you talking to?”

“Drop the wrench!” Koski took out his gun.

“My name’s Stanley!”

“Save your breath! You’re Ansel Gjersten! Show’s over! Trip’s off! Didn’t end the way you expected, did it?”

Gjersten laughed, uncertainly. The wrench swung up at his side in what might have been a casual movement...

“Don’t start anything!” Koski warned. “You’ll go ashore feet first!”

The wrench came down swiftly, smashed against a valve fixture. Steam jetted out fiercely into the engine-room, hissing like a locomotive.

“Why don’t you shoot!” Gjersten flung himself to one side. “Shoot! Blow the damn ship out of the water, why don’t you!” The oiler fumbled at his belt. “I’ll do it for you—”

Koski gasped in air too hot to breathe, dropped to his knees, shielded his face with his arm. The engine-room clouded with vapor. Piper cried a warning, sprinted for a control valve.

Gjersten lay on one elbow, dragged an automatic from the waist-band of his pants. He took time to aim...

Koski dived, clubbing his service special. Flame spat in his face. A hot wire streaked across the side of his neck. He smashed at the black eyes with every ounce of strength he could put behind it, felt the bone of the man’s skull crack...

The roaring of the steam deafened him. For an instant he wasn’t sure whether the cargo had let go. Then the roaring blast from the steam pipe stopped hissing, became merely a hoarse, hot breath.

He rolled off Gjersten. The man was dead.

Piper came running back. Men poured down the iron ladder. There was a quarter hour of confusion, in the engine-room, on deck, in the executive cabin, — before Koski convinced the Pobrico’s command that he had a right to take the body ashore. It was another fifteen minutes until the Vigilant got underneath the swaying ladder again and let Koski step off to the foredeck.

“Hold her, Irish. Another one coming.”

“Holy Mother.” Mulcahey craned his neck up at the body being lowered in a sling. “You had to knock him out?”

“Permanently.” Koski slashed the hoist-rope.

A canvas sea-bag came down like a descending pendulum over the pilot-house; Mulcahey leaned out, grabbed it, hauled it in, line and all. “If anyone was to scoot up and ask me,” the Sergeant swung off toward the Narrows, “I would say a dead wolf is the best kind there is.”

“He won’t be biting, any more.” Koski dragged his burden aft. The police-boat lurched away from the freighter.

Joslin called: “Need any help?”

“Yair. Drag it down to the cockpit.”

“It was Gjersten,” Ellen cried. “That other... in the morgue... that’s Merrill.”

“Yair. Must be.”

“Means this skunk,” Joslin piled the tarpaulin over on top of the body, “murdered Merrill”

“To get his papers,” Mulcahey agreed.

“He got the papers, all right.” Koski wet his handkerchief in sea-water, laid it across his neck where the bullet had raised a welt. “But he didn’t kill Ovett. This,” he touched the corpse with his toe, “isn’t Bandage Face.”

Aboard the Seavett , in Barbara’s cabin, Hurlihan made the sheet of paper rattle in his fingers. “Certainly I came all the way out here so you’d sign another proxy. That fat-headed cop took the other one; wouldn’t give it back.”

She leaned forward on the vanity bench, puckering up her lips, wiping a tiny smudge of carmine from one corner of her mouth with the tip of her little finger. She could see his reflection in the dressing-table mirror, but her eyes were attentive to her own features. “I’m frightfully sorry, Clem. But I’ve changed my mind about the proxy.”

He caught her shoulder roughly, pulled her around, half facing him. “It’s a little late in the day, for that.”

“Circumstances do alter cases, darling.”

“Only one kind that would change your point of view,” he said coarsely. “Who is it this time? Fross? I thought it was queer he was so insistent about coming to the yacht with me, tonight.”

“Don’t be absurd. You know Henry couldn’t have any appeal for me...” She exchanged lipstick for eyebrow pencil. “It’s just that with the police searching for Merrill, it might be better to see what turns up.”

The superintendent refolded the paper angrily, jammed it back in his pocket. “I don’t have to consult the oracles to guess your proxy’ll turn up at the special stockholders’ meeting, — in Hank’s name. But it’s my own damn fault. I knew better than to trust you.”

“Don’t be ugly, darling.” She let her hand rest lightly on his arm. “I’m not siding with anyone else. It’s just that Henry advised me sometime ago to be cautious until we know what’s going to happen to Merrill. Now, if the police should catch him, it might make all the difference in the world.”

He shook her hand off. “There’s always been the chance his ship would be torpedoed and he’d be drowned or burned to death. That never stopped you from going behind his back. If he were dead you wouldn’t be worried about a divorce and you could always hold up the Foundation by court action long enough to get some sort of settlement for yourself. That isn’t what bothers you now. You’re afraid to do anything Merrill might not like because then he might show up and let you take the blame he’s been shouldering on your account .”