Alistair MacLean - The Golden Rendezvous

“In the passage. Sitting on the floor, jammed in a corner, gun across his knees.”

“How long before that stuff acts, doctor?”

“If he drinks it all straight away, maybe twenty minutes. And don’t ask me how long the effects will last. People vary so much that I’ve no idea. Maybe half an hour, maybe three hours. You can never be certain with those things.”

“You’ve done all you can. Except the last thing. Take off those outside bandages and those damned splints, will you?”

He looked nervously at the door. “If someone comes…”

“We’ve been through all that,” I said impatiently. “Even by taking a chance and losing, we’ll be no worse off than we were before. Take them off.”

Marston fetched a chair to give himself steadier support, sat down, eased the point of his scissors under the bandages holding the splints in place and sliced through them with half a dozen swift, clean cuts. The bandages fell away; the splints came loose, and then the door opened. Half a dozen long strides and Tony Carreras was by my bedside, staring down thoughtfully. He looked even paler than the last time I’d seen him.

“The good healer on the night shift, eh? Having a little patient trouble, doctor?”

“Trouble?” I said hoarsely. I’d my eyes screwed half shut, lips compressed, fists lying on the coverlet tightly clenched. Carter in agony. I hoped I wasn’t overdoing it. “Is your father mad, Carreras?” I closed my eyes completely and stifled — nearly — a moan as the Campari lurched forward and down into an abnormally deep trough with a shuddering, jarring impact that all but threw Carreras off his feet. Even through closed doors, even above the Eldritch Howl of the wind and the lash of the gale-driven rain, the sound of the impact was like gunfire and not distant gunfire at that. “Does he want to kill us all? Why in god’s name can’t he slow down?”

“Mr. Carter is in very great pain,” doc Marston said quietly.

Whatever his faults as a doctor, he was fast at catching on, and when you looked into those steady, wise blue eyes beneath the magnificent mane of white hair, it was impossible not to believe him. “Agony would be a better word. He has, as you know, a compound fracture of the femur.” With delicate fingers he touched the bloodstained bandages that had been concealed by the splints so that Carreras could see just how compound it was. “Every time the ship moves violently the broken ends of the bone grind together. You can imagine what it’s like no, I doubt if you can. I am trying to rearrange and tighten the splints so as to immobilise the leg completely. Difficult job for one man in those conditions. Care to give me a hand?”

In one second flat I revised my estimate of Marston’s shrewdness. No doubt he’s just been trying to allay any suspicions that Carreras might have had, but he couldn’t have thought up a worse way. Not, that is, if Carreras offered his help, for the chances were that if he did delay to help he’d find the sentry snoring in the passageway outside when be left.

“Sorry.” Beethoven himself never sounded half as sweet as the music of that single word from Carreras. “Can’t wait. Captain Carreras making his rounds and all that. That’s what Miss Beresford is here for anyway. Failing all else, just shoot him full of morphia.” Five seconds later he was gone.

Marston raised an eyebrow.

“Less affable than of yore, John, you would say. A shade lacking in the sympathy he so often professes?”

“He’s worried,” I said. “He’s also a little frightened and perhaps, heaven be praised, even more than a little seasick. But still very tough for all that. Susan, go and collect the sentry’s cup and see if friend Carreras has really gone.”

She was back in fifteen seconds. “He’s gone. The coast is clear.”

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

A moment later I had fallen heavily to the floor, my head just missing the iron foot of Macdonald’s bed. Four things were responsible for this: the sudden lurch of the deck as the Campari had fallen into a trough, the stiffness of both legs, the seeming paralysis of my left leg, and the pain that had gone through my thigh like a flame as soon as my foot had touched the deck. Hands gripping the bo’sun’s bed, I dragged myself to my feet and tried again. Marston had me by the right arm and I needed all the support I could get. I made it to my own bed and sat down heavily.

Macdonald’s face was expressionless. Susan looked as if she were about to cry. For some obscure reason that made me feel better. I lurched to my feet like an opening jack-knife, caught hold of the foot of my own bed, and had another go.

It was no good. I wasn’t made of iron. The lurching of the Campari I could cope with and the first stiffness was slowly beginning to disappear. Even that frightening weakness in my left leg I could in some measure ignore; I could always hop along. But that pain I couldn’t ignore. I wasn’t made of iron. I have a nervous system for transmitting pain, just like anyone else’s, and mine was operating in top gear at the moment. Even the pain I believe I could have coped with; but every time I set my left foot on the deck, the shooting agony in my left thigh left me dizzy and lightheaded, barely conscious. A few steps on that leg and I just wouldn’t be conscious at all. I supposed vaguely it must have had something to do with all the blood I had lost.

I sat down again. “Get back into bed,” Marston ordered. “This is madness. You’re going to have to lie on your back for at least the next week.”

“Good old Tony Carreras,” I said. I was feeling a bit light-headed, and that’s a fact. “Clever lad, Tony. He’d the right idea. Your hypodermic, doctor. Painkiller for the thigh. Shoot me full of it. You know, the way a football player with a gammy leg gets an injection before the game.”

“No football player ever went out on a field with three bullet holes through his leg,” Marston said grimly.

“Don’t do it, Dr. Marston,” Susan said urgently. “Please don’t do it. He’ll surely kill himself.”

“Bo’sun?” Marston queried.

“Give it to him, sir,” the bo’sun said quietly. “Mr. Carter knows best.”

“Mr. Carter knows best,” Susan mimicked furiously. She crossed to the bo’sun and stared down at him. “It’s easy for you to lie there and say he knows best. You don’t have to go out there and get killed, to be shot down or die from the loss of blood.”

“Not me, Miss.” The bo’sun smiled up at her. “You won’t catch me taking risks like that.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Macdonald.” She sat down wearily on his bedside. “I’m so ashamed. I know that if your leg wasn’t smashed up but look at him! He can’t even stand, far less walk. He’ll kill himself, I tell you, kill himself!”

“Perhaps he will. But then he will only be anticipating by about two days, Miss Beresford,” Macdonald said quietly. “I know, Mr. Carter knows. We both know that no one on the Campari has very long to live not unless someone can do something. You don’t think, Miss Beresford,” he went on heavily, “that Mr. Carter is doing this just for the exercise?” Marston looked at me, face slowly tightening. “You and the bo’sun have been talking? Talking about something I know nothing about?”

“I’ll tell you when I come back.”

“If you come back.” He went to his dispensary, came back with a hypodermic, and injected some pale fluid. “Against all my instincts, this. It’ll ease the pain, no doubt about that, but it will also permit you to overstrain your leg and cause permanent damage.”

“Not half as permanent as being dead.” I hopped across into the dispensary, pulled old man Beresford’s suit out from the pile of folded blankets Susan had fetched, and dressed as quickly as my bad leg and the pitching of the Campari would allow. I was just turning up the collar and tying the lapels together with a safety pin when Susan came in. She said, abnormally calm, “it suits you very well. Jacket’s a bit tight, though.”