Charles Williams - Aground

“Maybe I was younger then. When you’re nineteen, it’s always somebody else that’s going to get it.”

What is it? Ingram thought. “You worried about the booze?”

“Sure. Aren’t you?”

So that wasn’t it.

“How about a deal?” Ingram asked.

“No deal.” The voice was quiet, but there was finality in it.

“Stealing a boat’s not such a terrible charge. Especially if the owner doesn’t want to press it.”

“No,” Ruiz said. “I told you we’d been friends a long time.”

“But you’re looking for a way out.”

“That’s different. If you don’t like the action, you can always walk out. You don’t have to sell out.”

“Okay, have it your way,” Ingram said. He leaned back against the boxes. “This Ives—what kind of guy was he?”

“He wasn’t a bad sort of Joe if you didn’t believe too much of what he said. He talked a good game.”

“So I gather,” Ingram said.

There was a moment’s silence, and then he asked, “By the way, where’s the deviation card for the compass? Do you know?”

“The what?” Ruiz asked.

“It’s a correction card you make out for compass error. You did make a new one, didn’t you, when you swung ship?”

“Swung ship? What for? I think you’ve lost me, friend.”

“To adjust compass,” Ingram explained. “Look—you did swing it, didn’t you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You mean you loaded three or four tons of steel down in that cabin and it didn’t occur to you it might have some effect on the compass?”

“Oh, that. Sure, we knew about it. You wouldn’t have to be a sailor. Any Boy Scout would know it. Anyway, Ives took care of it.”

“How?” Ingram asked.

“He took a bearing on something ashore before we loaded the guns, and then another one afterward. Whatever the difference was, he wrote it down somewhere. Al probably knows where it is.”

“I see,” Ingram said quietly. “Well, I’ll ask him about it.”

Ruiz slid the glowing end of his cigarette into the sand and stood up. “Guess I’ll go back and see if I can get some sleep. I hope.”

“Hasta manaña,” Ingram said. He started to get up.

“No,” Ruiz said in his cool, ironic voice. “Don’t bother following me to the door.”

“Okay. About Ives—did he ever actually tell you that was his name?”

“No. I figured Hollister was phony, of course, but that’s the only way I knew him. That and Fred.”

“What did Morrison call him?”

“Herman. What else?”

“Excuse a stupid question,” Ingram said. “Thanks for the bedding.”

“De nada,” Ruiz said. He melted into the darkness.

Ingram leaned back against the boxes and relighted his cigar. Somebody was lying, that was for certain. But who? The thing was so mixed up and the possibilities so endless you couldn’t put your finger on where it had to be. Why did Ruiz want out? That stuff about being afraid of the trip was almost certainly a smoke screen. That is, unless he knew of some other danger Ingram himself hadn’t learned of yet—something that made death or capture an absolute certainty instead of merely another chance you took. He was a professional soldier of fortune who’d lived along the edge of violence since his teens; he didn’t scare that easily, at nineteen or thirty-nine.

But there was another possibility. Could there be something unnatural in the Morrison-Ruiz relationship, in which case it was Rae Osborne who’d thrown the dungarees in the chowder? No, he decided; that was ridiculous. Deviation wasn’t necessarily accompanied by the limp wrist and effeminate mannerisms, but you nearly always sensed it, and there was none of it here. He was glad somehow; in spite of the circumstances, Ruiz was a man you could like. He’d been opposed to this thing from the beginning, and if he hadn’t been overruled by Morrison—Ingram sat up abruptly. There it was.

Would you like to go back?

That was the thing he’d almost remembered a while ago. It was what Morrison had said in Spanish before they realized he understood the language, the thing that had stopped Ruiz’ protests.

So they couldn’t go back.

But why? Because of the charge of theft? It had to be more than that. Were they afraid of the men from whom they’d stolen the guns? That might be it, of course, but he had a feeling it was still something more. Then it occurred to him that this didn’t really answer the question, anyway. Ruiz’ problem wasn’t simply that he couldn’t go back; for some reason he couldn’t go back, or ahead. You’ll go crazy, he thought; there couldn’t be any one answer to that.

He smoked the cigar down to the end and tossed it away. It described a fiery parabola and fell hissing into the water at the edge of the sand. Cuban music and the sound of off-key singing came from the Dragoon, and he saw now that they’d turned on the spreader lights. With that radio and the lights and refrigerator they would run the batteries down. Then he was conscious of annoyance with himself. You’ve lived alone too long, he thought; you’re beginning to sound like Granny Grunt. You form a mule-headed prejudice against a woman merely because nobody’s ever told her you don’t set highball glasses on charts, and now while you’re living one hour at a time on the wrong end of a burning fuse you’re stewing about the drain on a set of batteries. You ought to be playing checkers in the park.

The pillow and the folded blanket were beside him. He picked up the blanket and gave it a flipping motion to spread it, and heard something drop lightly on the sand. Apparently whatever it was had been rolled up inside; he leaned forward and felt around with his hands, wondering idly what it could be. He failed to find it, however, and after another futile sweep of his arms he flicked on the cigar lighter and saw it, just beyond the end of the blanket. It was a black plastic container of some kind, apparently a soap dish from a toilet kit or travel case. Well, at least he’d be able to wash up in the morning. He retrieved it, and was about to set it on the crates behind him when he heard a faint metallic click inside. He pulled the lid off, and flicked on the fighter again. There were several things in it—none of them soap.

The first item was a money clip shaped like a dollar sign and containing several folded bills, the outer one of which appeared to be a twenty. The next was a small hypodermic syringe, its needle wrapped in cotton, and finally there was a tablespoon with its handle bent downward at right angles near the end, apparently so it would fit into the box. The rest of the space was taken up with eight or ten tightly folded pieces of paper. The lighter went out then. He spun the wheel again and set it upright on the sand beside him while he unfolded one of the papers. It contained just what he’d expected to find, a small amount of white powder, like confectioner’s sugar. The lighter went out, and he sat frowning thoughtfully at the darkness.

He’d never seen any of the paraphernalia before, but had read enough about it to know what it was. There was a drug addict aboard. But which one? Didn’t the police always examine the arms of suspected junkies, looking for punctures? He’d seen both of them with their shirts off, and would have noticed if they’d had any; they didn’t. But wait. . . . Obviously, the blanket must have come from one of the unused bunks. So it must belong either to Ives or to old Tango. And the odds were against its being Tango’s. He probably couldn’t afford a vice as expensive as heroin; all he had was a small disability pension from the First World War and whatever Mrs. Osborne paid him for living aboard the Dragoon . So it must be Ives’. She’d never said he was an addict, but then she’d never said much of anything about him. Well, it was a relief to know it wasn’t either of the two still aboard; that’s all they needed now, a wild-eyed and unpredictable hop-head to contend with.