Стюарт Стерлинг - Down Among the Dead Men

“Why are you being nasty?” She was plaintive.

“Because you put me in a bad light with the police. That Lieutenant ran roughshod over me last night, as it was. I told him I spent the week-end on board because you were giving me the proxy. Now if I don’t vote it, he’ll want to know what happens. It’ll look queer. I tell you straight, Barbara, — if they try to pin anything on me, I’m not going to be the goat for you. Not in a homicide case.”

She laughed deep in her throat. “You know I didn’t murder Ansel.”

“Cardiff thinks you did. Your Filipino thought so, or he wouldn’t have quit you. Or maybe he beat it because he helped you dispose of the body.”

“Cle-e-e-em!!”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if you’d been fooling around with Ansel, — and that squarehead would have been a bad person to two-time. Not like some of the others...”

“It hurts me to have you feel that way, darling. But I can’t blame you too much...” she pulled open a dressing-table drawer, drew out a sheet of note paper with a scorpion embossed in gilt in one corner. It was covered with lavender scrawls. “It’s so easy to draw the wrong conclusion when you only have part of the facts. I made the same mistake when I only took Merrill’s particular planet into account—”

“Don’t start on that...”

“...when I should have considered the influence of all the planets, the sun, moon, — horizon and meridian—”

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake.”

The motors rumbled suddenly; the hull began to pulsate. “Cardiff’s getting ready to pull out, Barbara. I’m ducking—”

“Wait, Clem. I can show you. I know who committed the murder—”

Knuckles rapped at the door. Hurlihan. opened it.

Fross stood there, scowling. “Hurry up on deck. Rolf Berger just came aboard. With blood in his eye.”

Ting-tang! Ting-tang! Ting-tang! The ship’s clock chimed hurriedly as if it feared being late for an appointment.

On deck, Cardiff gave orders:

“Northeast by north. Nothing to port. That’ll be the bell off Execution Rock.”

“Tide’s sweeping us right along even at quarter-speed, Cap’n.”

“Ought to make the shoal about eleven-thirty, if we don’t pile up somewhere.”

“What they really mean by dead reckoning, yes, sir.”

Off Sands Point, off Rye Beach, off Great Captains Island, ships blew worried blasts on steam whistles; off Scotland Lightship at the mouth of the harbor, they whispered — held their breath...

In the Seavett’s saloon, the Executive Director stood straddle-legged in front of the fireplace. The cannel coal glowed cherry-red at his back but its cheerfulness was not reflected on the faces of Barbara or Clem Hurlihan or Henry Sutlee Fross.

“Lawford’s not going to die tonight.” Berger clasped his hands behind his back, thrust his chin forward truculently, “or I wouldn’t be here. But worry about Merrill has nearly done for him, this time. He collapsed; after I found him, and rushed him to the hospital, the doctors said it was a paralytic stroke, — and you know what that means. He won’t be able to take any active part in the business from now on. He knows it. He dictated a memorandum giving me power of attorney and managed to sign it with the last of his strength. I didn’t want it. I don’t want it now. Merrill ought to take charge, now. But the boy isn’t here. And so Lawford asked me to do one tiling for him.” He glanced at his brief case, lying against the bulkhead.

“We’re well aware,” Fross crossed one leg over the other, inspected the snugness of his sock, “of your influence over Mister Ovett in matters of business.”

“You are.” Berger let his voice drop on the verb. “Well, what he asked me to do isn’t a matter of business.” He glared icily at the three of them in turn. “Lawford asks me to act in loco parentis. To look after Merrill. I gave him my word and by the Lord I mean to do it. I’ll take his father’s place in shielding him from the consequences of his own hotheadedness... or the cold-bloodedness of others.”

Hurlihan wriggled his shoulders in discomfort. “I never believed he killed Gjersten. Maybe he knows who did and had his own reason for shielding that person. But I’m for Merrill. Always have been.”

“Pah!” Berger hawked, turned and spat into the coals. “You’re for yourself. And always have been. You and Fross saw that Merrill’d absorbed a lot of half-baked idealism about the obligations of inheritance, — a man should never spend any money he hasn’t earned himself, — that sort of slush. You knew he was friendly with this professional radical. So you made a deal with Joslin. Got him to use his influence with Merrill, induced him to assign his stock to this so-called Foundation. So you, in turn, could control the company through Joslin. Then all you’d have to do was find a way to bring pressure on Merrill.”

Barbara pouted, prettily. “You’re not being quite fair, Mister Berger.”

The Executive Director gestured brusquely. “I don’t intend to be fair. None of you would win any prizes for square dealing; the only way I know how to light fire is with fire. Merrill’s in trouble. I may not be able to save him from that. But I’m not going to stand around and watch you deceive him and trick him and hoodwink him when he can’t protect himself. When he gets back or when he can defend himself, I’ll step out. Until then, you’re out.”

“What the hell!” Hurlihan jumped up.

Fross took off his pince-nez quickly. “I don’t quite understand.”

“You understand, all right. Until Merrill can get his hand on the helm, I’m running the Line. You are no longer our legal counsel, Mister Fross. You are no longer our superintendent, Gem Hurlihan. And you,” he bowed stiffly to Barbara, “remain aboard this yacht only as long as you remain a decent wife.”

“Mister Berger!”

“Merrill may not approve of my actions,” Berger added. “For that reason alone, you two,” he scowled fiercely at Fross and Hurlihan, “will continue to draw your salaries until he decides what to do about you. In the meantime,” he punctuated his statement with bobbing head, “I’m going to have a superintendent who won’t connive behind Merrill’s back. And a lawyer who’ll spend less time trying to put something over on the Line, its president or his son, — and more time to defending Merrill against this charge of murder, — or to finding out who did commit the crime.” He clutched the lapels of this coat, shook them once to indicate he had said his say. “If that’s going to mean trouble for any of you , you’ve had fair warning!”

The mist had shut down again, a thick gauze that screened everything more than fifty feet from the pilot-house windows.

“The line the yacht’s patrolling runs from Stratford Light over to the reef, Sarge. We ought to be able to hit her.”

“We’ll be lucky if we hit nothing else in this murk. Why they call it pea-soup fog I do not know. Pea soup is at least warm!” Mulcahey stuck his head out of the port window to peer anxiously in search of the buoy off Execution Rock. “Are you positive we’re after the genuine culprit, now? I would hate to be looking for the wrong needle in a haystack as big as Long Island Sound.”

“Yair.” Koski glanced back at Ellen and Joslin, leaning against the cockpit gunwale. “I feel bad about smashing Gjersten’s skull, though.”

“For why, the scut?”

“He’d have pointed the finger at his partner, before the FBI boys got through with him. But maybe, — ” he felt gingerly of his neck, “maybe he could do that just as well, the way he is...”