Dennis Wheatley - Sixty Days to Live

During the next three days they worked out the story. Hemmingway thoroughly enjoyed the business but Derek did not. He thought it a silly game and would have thrown in his hand luite early on had it not been that he was not prepared to allow Hemmingway the satisfaction of remaining Lavina's sole collaborator. As it was, he used the gramophone as his ally to distract her with dance records as often as he could and, when she was tired of dancing, sat with them at their story-confer-® nces, making occasional facetious comments which were "Signed to irritate Hemmingway but which Lavina found

amusing.

They had passed out of the area covered with floating ash ^ithin eight hours of entering it, since when the weather had remained fairly calm but almost consistently rainy. It was on the tenth day that they woke to find the grey clouds had changed to an angry black. Soon after breakfast a strange rain began which was more like black snow; ash-laden clouds from another volcanic area were releasing their burden and, within an hour, the sea was a blackish-grey from the rain of ash and small pieces of pumice-stone which came down with it. The same day, after lunch, Gervaise looked round the table and said:

'Listen, my friends. As long as the present weather conditions last it is impossible for Oliver to discover our position on the earth's surface. That in itself is not so vitally important; but the fact that we have not sighted land since the coming of the deluge is beginning to worry me. For all we know we may have been swept right out into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and may drift there for weeks without coming anywhere near one of the mountain ranges which must still be left standing above the water. We started out with food enough to keep us alive for two months but it certainly will not last that length of time if one of you continues to steal it.'

Varying expressions of amazement greeted his remark, and Sam said at once: 'Are you suggesting that somebody has been raiding the stores the whole time?'

'I wouldn't go as far as that,' Gervaise replied quietly, 'as it was only three days ago that I first noticed a shortage; but I've kept a careful check on things since and there is no question about it, one of you is going below at night and helping yourselves to additional rations.'

They all shook their heads and there was a chorus of denials but Gervaise went on insistently:

'It wouldn't matter so much if any of you felt you werent getting enough to eat and asked for a little extra. Or, if th® guilty party feels that would be an exhibition of greed, 1wouldn't affect us very seriously if they confined themselves to taking an additional handful of biscuits or a tin of salmo"or something of that kind. The trouble is that whoever is ma King these raids upon our stores cannot possibly eat all th they are taking. In the last three days enough food has dlappeared to have fed the lot of us during that time. Goodne knows what the person who takes it does with the b?-Ia° after he's had his midnight meal. But there it is.'

'How very extraordinary,' murmured Lavina. 'It's mighty serious,' Hemmingway said quickly. 'If the same amount of food that we use for our rations each day is disappearing every night, the stores will only last one month instead of two; and, including the two days before the flood that we spent in the Ark, we've been here getting on for a fortnight already.'

In vain they argued and speculated. While several of them had secretly believed that Lavina had been responsible for the shortage of Turkish cigarettes they nearly all suspected now that it was Derek who had been at the food. He was far the heartiest eater among them and had complained on several occasions of what he called the 'messy trifles' that Margery served up at some of their meals. Yet there was not the least evidence against him any more than against any of the others.

On the following day Gervaise found that another half-dozen tins of food had disappeared and, when he opened a fresh case of cigarettes, he discovered that somebody had been there before him and removed a good half of its contents.

That afternoon Sam got Hemmingway on his own for the moment and said: 'I've been thinking a lot about these raids on the stores and I'm sure I know who it is.' 'Who?' asked Hemmingway.

'Derek,' whispered Sam. 'It's certainly not Gervaise or he would never have raised the matter at all; it can't be Oliver because he couldn't open cases with one of his arms still in a sling. You can count the two girls out; I haven't done it; and I know you much too well to imagine that you'd ever do a rotten thing like that—so it must be Derek.'

'Perhaps,' Hemmingway agreed. 'He's always talking about 8ood, square meals and what he'd give to see an underdone steak again. But what I can't understand is, why he should take so much more than he requires each time?'

'Can't you?' Sam smiled a little grimly. 'I've got a theory about that. You know how badly he was beaten up before he Scaped from London; then he had concussion just before we 8°t him into the sphere. I believe that's affected his brain, not adly, but enough to make him irresponsible. He may even aveblank periods when he doesn't know what he's doing.

I'll tell you another thing that makes me think he's got a screw loose—the way he's always staring at Lavina.'

Hemmingway suppressed a smile. One did not have to be mad in order to derive a pleasure from looking at Sam's young wife. But although he had had ample opportunity to observe for himself the way in which Derek was always following Lavina with his eyes he did not think that any useful purpose could be served by admitting it and possibly aggravating the jealousy which the easy-going Sam was now showing for the first time.

'I can't say I've noticed it,' he shrugged. 'Derek and Lavina are pretty thick, of course, but that's quite natural because they've been friends for so long. You may be right about the food, though. Anyhow, we might keep watch tonight and see if he sneaks out of the cabin when he thinks we're all asleep.'

The alternate watches that they agreed upon proved, after all, to be quite unnecessary for the simple reason that when Derek failed to appear at dinner that evening Gervaise went below to look for him and found him lying face downwards, unconscious, on the engine-room floor, and by the time they had got him up through the trap-door and tucked up in his bunk it was quite clear that, even if he wished to, he would not be in a condition to do any raiding that night.

He had a nasty cut on the back of his head. When they had bathed it, bandaged it, and brought him round, Gervaise sent everybody else out of the cabin and began questioning him.

Derek's story was that he had gone down to clean the heating apparatus at about six o'clock and had nearly finished working on it when he had heard the sound of footfalls behind him. He had been just about to turn when somebody had rushed at him and struck him on the back of the head, knocking him out. As he had not even glimpsed his attacker he could not possibly give any account of him and, as Sam, Hemmingway and Gervaise himself had all been below decks on various errands between seven and seven-thirty, it might have been any one of them.

Although he would not say so, Gervaise thought that Sam must be the culprit. No one knew better than her father the extraordinary fascination which Lavina exercised over men. Hemmingway, as far as he could see, appeared to be immune from it as, although he was friendly, it was with a detached friendliness and he never went out of his way to amuse or intrigue her. But Derek had been in love with her and she with him three years ago. That Derek was still in love with her Gervaise was quite certain, and his shrewd old eyes had not missed the fact that Sam was perfectly well aware of Derek's passion.