Her voice hit me like a sonic boom. “We’ve turned back north; we’ve got the island off the starboard. We’re close-hauled, beating out of Mendenhall Bay. We’ll have to tack as soon as we’re clear of the island to make open water. I hope that woman’s got her bearings straight. We can’t have much room to play around in here, in a boat this size.”
My voice still came from far away. “Why would Mrs. Rosten come clear in here, in the first place, instead of picking them up on the seaward side of the island, where we had plenty of room and couldn’t be seen from shore?”
“Don’t be silly, she had to get in the lee to bring them aboard. They’d never have been able to get a rubber boat out to us seaward, not against this wind. There must be a mile of breakers on that side tonight.” Teddy leaned forward. “We’re still holding on; we’ve got a ways to go yet before we can come about and clear the island on the port tack…”
I looked at the man on the bunk. Stop stalling, you spineless jerk! I told myself. I leaned forward and made a show of drawing back the eyelid to look at the eye, like a TV doctor. I picked up the wrist to check the pulse. I dropped the wrist and leaned forward again to put my hand to his mouth. Teddy spoke behind me.
“What are you doing, Matt? What are you giving him?” I didn’t even jump. I guess I’d known it wouldn’t work out right. Maybe I hadn’t even wanted it to work out right. But it was all of a pattern, I thought grimly: the woman who’d died when she wasn’t supposed to and the man who was alive five minutes after he should have been dead. I should, of course, have done it the instant they threw him into my arms, as I’d planned, and to hell with who saw what. I might even have got away with it, then.
I turned my head slowly. “Benzedrine,” I said. “To bring him around.”
She was frowning at me. I don’t put much stock in feminine intuition; she’d have been a real dope if she hadn’t sensed something, after the fumble-witted stalling I’d done.
“Let me see it,” she said in an odd little voice, and I showed it to her on the palm of my hand. She asked, “How do you happen to have-”
“Hell, we always carry bennies to keep us awake on a tough job.”
“But are you sure that’s the right thing to give him?”
Her voice had an absent sound, as if she wasn’t really interested in the question she was asking. She was still frowning, not at the pill, but at me. Her blue eyes were narrow and wondering. She knew that something was wrong, terribly wrong, but the idea that had come into her mind was too far-out to put into words… She did it without a hint of warning. She just grabbed the pill out of my hand and started bringing it to her mouth; and I swung without thinking, slapping it away before it reached her lips. I guess I’d have done the same thing even if I’d had time to think.
The pill rolled away across the teak floor, and then came back towards us as the Freya heeled over. It reminded me, somehow, of one of the pearls from Jean’s broken necklace. I got up and picked it up. I went into the john, dropped it into the toilet, and pumped it out of sight. When I came back, she was still standing stiffly by the bed.
“No!” she said breathlessly. “Stay away! Don’t come near him!”
She was staring at me as if she had never seen me before. Perhaps she hadn’t. “You-were going to kill him!” she whispered.
I laughed. “You’ve got murder on the brain, small stuff. I told you, it was a benny.”
“Then why didn’t you let me swallow it?”
“You’re crazy enough without being hopped up on benzedrine. Now cut out the melodramatics, Teddy, and-”
“That’s why you wanted us to wait until he came aboard, so you could kill him. So he couldn’t tell anybody
– and I thought you were being so brave and generous!” I said, “For the love of Pete, cut it out! Don’t throw a wingding on me now.”
She said fiercely, “You’ll have to kill me, too! You know that, don’t you? If anything happens to him, anything at all, you’ll have to kill me, too!”
I looked at her grimly, wondering what I’d done to be punished by having to deal with this unpredictable little bundle of cowardice and courage, of nonsense and sense.
I said wearily, “It will be a pleasure to assassinate you, Peewee, as soon as we’re out of this. Just call on me any time. But right now, will you get to that damn window and tell me-”
“Porthole,” she said mechanically. They’ll never let you call any part of a ship by the wrong name, even if the bucket’s sinking under you.
“All right, porthole!” I said. “Now snap out of it. Nobody’s going to touch your old man. At least I’m not. So get over there-”
The Freya changed course sharply. I heard the thunder of flapping canvas overhead as she came to an even keel. Teddy glanced at me warily and darted to the porthole.
“We’re coming about!” she said. She sounded shocked. “I don’t understand! Mrs. Rosten can’t possibly hope to lay a course out past the island yet, with the wind in this quarter. She’ll put us aground on-what’s that?”
A vibration went through the schooner’s hull. For a moment, I thought we’d struck bottom; and I saw the same thought in Teddy’s eyes. We stared at each other dumbly, forgetting everything else. The vibration settled down to a strong, steady rumble that shook the lights and made the door rattle. I drew a long breath.
“She’s just started up the mill, that’s all,” I said.
“We’re still swinging!” Teddy said, bewildered. “She’s bearing off before the wind, back into Mendenhall Bay.” Her small face lighted up. She whirled to grab me by the arm. “Matt, we’re saved! There must be somebody out there, heading her off, to make her turn back like that. She’s started the auxiliary because it doesn’t matter who hears her now, don’t you see? But she’s trapped inside the island. They’re bound to catch her!”
We leaned forward together, peering out. There was nothing to be seen except darkness and water-black, foam-flecked water, hissing past. We were traveling faster than we’d gone all day.
“She’s really pouring the oil to that diesel,” I said. “Just how far can she run in this direction before piling up?” Teddy didn’t answer. I glanced at her, and saw that her elation had faded as suddenly as it had come. Her face was quite white. “What’s the matter, kid?” I asked.
Teddy licked her lips. “She’s going to try the channel. She-she’ll kill us all!”
“Channel?” I said. “What channel?” Then I remembered that Robin herself had said something about a tidal channel between the island and the mainland. She’d also mentioned a mile of shoals, I recalled.
Teddy said dully, “It’s very simple. She’s just going to take ten feet of draft through an eight-foot channel at fourteen knots, that’s all. Listen! They’re running up the foresail again. They had it down for a while.”
“Translate,” I said. “Never mind the damn sail. What’s this about eight feet and ten feet?”
“Well, the channel’s supposed to be eight feet at mean low water. If the tide is high, she may have ten or even twelve, but even so-”
“So she could make it?”
“No, you don’t understand!” she protested. “It’s a narrow channel; it isn’t dredged; it isn’t buoyed; it just goes where the tide goes. It changes with every storm. It says eight feet on the chart, but that doesn’t mean anything. There could be a sandbar clear across it tomorrow- or tonight!”
“Skip the could-be’s,” I said. “Obviously she thinks she’s got a chance or she wouldn’t try it. But suppose she does, what does it get her? I mean, this is just a glorified sailboat, after all. You said fourteen knots just now, and she’s giving it everything she’s got-sail, power, everything. Right?”
“Yes, but-”
“But, hell!” I said. “I don’t know much about boats, but I do know that fourteen knots is nothing, even on the water. A knot is only a fraction over a mile per hour, isn’t it? A fast twin-screw cruiser can do forty and better, can’t it? We’ve been spotted and somebody’s chasing us, obviously. If it’s the Marines or the Coast Guard, they’re going to have something reasonably speedy, aren’t they? They aren’t apt to be patrolling the area in a rowboat. Even if Mrs. Rosten makes it out through the channel at a lousy fourteen knots, she’ll be run down in a couple of miles, won’t she?” -
“You don’t understand!” Teddy said plaintively. There seemed to be a lot I didn’t understand. “There’s a gale blowing out there already; it will be worse before morning. You heard Louis. On a reasonably calm day, any little outboard motorboat could catch us, but the Freya is a seagoing schooner, Matt! She’s built to stay out and take it. Very few powerboats are, certainly not here on the Bay. Nobody’s going to chase us at forty knots in this weather, or fourteen knots, either. Not out past the shelter of Mendenhall Island, they aren’t. In a wind like this, no small craft is going to catch an eighty-foot -schooner on a reach, as long as the masts stay in her.”
“I see,” I said. “So once the lady gets clear of the land, she’s home free.”
Teddy nodded. “Unless the Navy gets a destroyer out of Norfolk to look for her; and with the tail end of a hurricane to hide in, she has a very good chance of slipping out to sea, anyway, radar or no radar. Getting back home again after the weather has cleared will be another matter, but that won’t help us a bit.” She glanced at the porthole and gulped. “That is, assuming she can get us through that silly little channel. If she can’t she’ll drown us all!”
“I knew I should have learned to swim better,” I said.
She looked at me for a moment, and remembered she didn’t trust me, and drew away a little. “It doesn’t matter much does it? We aren’t any of us going to swim very far, in here with the door locked.”
The schooner gave a sudden lurch, throwing us against the bunk. It wasn’t anything, just a gust of wind; she rose again, shuddering and vibrating, driving hard towards the unseen channel ahead, fleeing the unknown threat astern. I had a mental picture of my cruel pirate queen at the wheel. Big Nick would be forward as lookout, maybe out on the bowsprit, scanning the water ahead. Loeffler and his unidentified associate would be huddled in whatever shelter they could find against the spray, commending their souls to some Marxist god, unless they were better sailors than I thought…
The kid did something that caught my attention, I didn’t quite know why. She’d been bending over the bunk to help her father, who’d slid down on top of Louis, to leeward; and suddenly she’d done something quick and sneaky. Now she was turning away guiltily, hiding something. I grabbed her and swung her around. Her hand came up, striking at me with something, in a panicky way. I parried the blow and got the thing away from her. It was a rusty wrench.
TWENTY TWO
I STARED AT the wrench for a moment. Then I looked at Teddy, who was rubbing her bruised wrist.
“It was-in Louis’ sock,” she said, glaring at me. “You didn’t have to break my arm!”
I didn’t bother to ask why she’d tried to hide it. The answer was in her face. She’d been going to wait until my back was turned and slug me with it, after which, presumably, she’d have rescued Papa somehow, from me as well as from the people on deck.
I looked at Louis. The rolling around had worked his pants leg up towards the knee, but of course I should have looked there when I first searched him. I’d had hours to go over him thoroughly, but I’d taken for granted there wasn’t anything to find. I’d assumed that he’d never really meant to get us anything useful, that he hadn’t had time, or even if he’d got it, that he’d told all about it and had it taken away from him.
I’d made the mistake that’s so easy to make in this business: I’d sold a guy short because I didn’t trust him or like him. Louis had given me what I’d asked for. He’d even kept quiet about it through a brutal third degree. I’d passed it up because I’d been too smart to really look for it.
Well, it was no time to start counting my shortcomings; that would have to wait until I had a week or two to spare. The funny thing was that I felt pretty good, suddenly. I looked at the kid, standing there defiantly, and at Dr. Michaelis, lying in the bunk behind her; and I knew that I’d had it, I was through, and it felt fine. I knew I wouldn’t have killed him if he’d had the secret of the universe locked inside his unkempt head.
I was remembering what Mac had said happened to men whose business allowed them to kill and get away with it. I was remembering Jean dying in my arms, and the hasty knife going into Alan, and the careless way I’d almost put a bullet through young Orcutt’s head. Mac had been right, and Klein, the psychiatrist. It was time I got the hell out of the lousy racket.
First, of course, I had to get the hell out of here. I looked at the wrench. It was no beauty, but it was in working order. I pulled off my belt. The rectangular buckle wasn’t as big as I’d have liked-
