spasmodically against the back of his chair and started to slump.
Lind had Krasicki’s arm then, swinging it up and grabbing for the gun, while Captain Steen and Goddard were trying to get around the other end of the table to reach them. Krasicki was still pulling the trigger. The third shot smashed the overhead light fixture, showering glass, and the fourth, as Lind spun him around, shattered the long mirror on the bulkhead across the room.
Lind tore the gun from his grasp, bumped him under the jaw with a forearm, and shoved. Krasicki slammed backward and collapsed on deck like a bundle of rags. The screams cut off then, and there was an instant of unearthly silence, broken only by the tinkle of glass as another shard of the mirror fell to the deck and broke. The dining room steward came running in followed by Barset, who braked to a stop, and whispered, ‘Sweet, suffering mother of Christ!’
Goddard turned and looked at Egerton. A trickle of blood ran out of the corner of his mouth, and under the hand clutching at his chest the white shirt was stained with a growing circle of red. His left hand clawed at the tablecloth as he tried to hold himself erect, and when he toppled and fell over sideways he dragged it with him to the accompaniment of breaking china and a marimba tinkling of silverware.
5
Lind flipped the safety on the gun and tossed it to Captain Steen. Already lunging around the end of the table toward Egerton, he snapped at Barset and the dining room steward, ‘Tie him up and sit on him. Better get help; he’s crazy.’ ‘I’ll send for the bos’n,’ Steen said.
Goddard jumped to help Lind. They got Egerton out from behind the table and picked him up by shoulders and legs. Madeleine Lennox and Karen ran out of the door, sobbing as they averted their faces from the limp and bloodstained figure of the Englishman. Lind and Goddard hurried down the passageway with him and put him on the bunk in his cabin.
‘The first-aid kit on the settee in my cabin,’ Lind said. ‘And bring the sterilizer, the whole thing.’
‘Right.’ Goddard ran up to the next deck. Men were coming out of the officers’ messroom. ‘What is it?’ they asked. ‘What happened?’
‘Krasicki went berserk,’ Goddard said. ‘Shot Egerton.’
The sterilizer was secured to the desk with catches. He released them, unplugged it, and grabbed up the first-aid kit. When he hurried back into Edgerton’s cabin, Lind was bent over the bunk. He straightened, holding a bloodstained towel, and gestured wearily.
‘Put ‘em down anywhere,’ he said. ‘A couple of aspirin would have done just as well.’
Goddard looked past him, and nodded. Egerton was already unconscious and obviously dying of massive hemorrhage. Lind had spread the jacket open and cut the shirt away, exposing his chest. Blood was everywhere, in the thick mat of gray hair, running down his ribs, and staining the jacket and bedspread beside him. The pillow under the side of his mouth was soaked with it. The eye was closed, and his breathing ragged and labored. There was no froth in the blood on his chest Goddard noted; he would have thought there would be, since one or both the shots must have gone through the lungs. He was about to mention this to Lind when Captain Steen appeared in the doorway. Sparks, he said, was trying to locate a ship in the area with a doctor. Lind shook his head.
‘It’s no use,’ he said. He felt Egerton’s pulse, gave a despairing shrug, and gently lowered the wrist. ‘Just a matter of minutes.’
‘Seems dark for arterial blood,’ Goddard remarked, wondering at the same time what difference it made. When you lost enough of it, you died, no matter what shade it was.
‘Probably the pulmonary,’ Lind replied. ‘It carries venous blood.’
Egerton’s breathing changed to a gasping rattle that went on for over a minute and then stopped abruptly. Lind reached for the wrist again, probing for the pulse that had apparently ceased. He put it down and gently raised the eyelid with a thumb to look at the pupil. He sighed and closed the eye.
‘That’s all,’ he said.
Captain Steen lowered his head. He appeared to be praying. Then he straightened and said, ‘I’ll tell the steward to bring a sheet.’
Lind turned on the basin tap to wash the blood from his hands. Goddard turned to go out. He felt something under his shoe and looked down. It appeared to be a tiny awl. He pushed it over against the bulkhead with his foot and went out into the passageway, and as he neared the entrance to the dining room he heard the sudden, mad sound of Krasicki’s voice again. He looked in, and at the same moment Lind ran past him, still drying his hands on a towel.
Captain Steen was in the room, along with Barset and two other men, one of whom Goddard recognized as the AB who’d given him the shin. The other was a squat, ugly man in his thirties with almost grotesquely massive shoulders and arms. He had an old knife scar in the corner of his mouth and the coldest blue eyes Goddard had ever seen. Krasicki’s hands were bound in front of him and his feet were tied together, but he was sitting up and trying to slide backward away from the men in front of him, still shouting in that unknown language. The squat man and the AB reached down and caught his arms to pick him up. He shrank away from them, and screamed.
‘Easy, Boats,’ Lind said. ‘Let me try to talk to him.’ The two men let go and stepped back. Lind knelt and spoke quietly to Krasicki. ‘We’re not going to hurt you. Everything’s all right.’
This had no effect at all; the mad eyes were completely without comprehension. Lind spoke in German. Insulated within his madness, Krasicki paid no attention, merely continuing to rave in the language none of them understood.
Lind spoke to Barset. ‘Take a couple of your men and canvass the whole crew; see if anybody speaks Polish. It might help some if we knew what he’s saying.’
‘We already have,’ Barset replied. ‘No dice.’
‘Well, we’ve got to quiet him down,’ Lind said. He went out and came back with the first-aid kit. He filled a hypodermic syringe and motioned for the bos’n and AB to hold Krasicki. When the latter saw the syringe, as old and frail as he was it took three men to pin him down sufficiently for Lind to inject the sedative. Goddard felt sick.
In a few minutes Krasicki began to subside. He slumped. ‘Get a stretcher,’ Lind said to the bos’n.
Goddard went forward to the lounge. It was empty. He wondered if Karen and Mrs. Lennox had gone to their cabins. Then he saw them pass in front of one of the portholes. He went on deck and around to the forward side of the midships house. They were leaning on the rail, still looking badly shaken as they watched the reddening western sky. He told them Egerton was dead.
Madeleine Lennox said faintly, ‘I’ll have nightmares the rest of my life. That poor man.’
All three exchanged a glance then with the identical thought:
‘What will happen to Mr. Krasicki?’ Karen asked.
‘They’ll turn him over to the Philippine authorities,’ Goddard said, ‘but after that it’ll be like Kafka with LSD. An Englishman is murdered on the high seas by a Pole with Brazilian citizenship who’s obviously insane and couldn’t be legally guilty of murder in the first place, and it all happens on a Panamanian ship that’s probably never been to Panama. He’ll be committed, but at his age I doubt he’ll live till they figure out where.’
‘And what about poor Mr. Egerton?’ Madeleine Lennox asked. ‘Will he be buried at sea?’
‘I don’t know,’ Goddard replied. ‘Depends on what they hear from the next of kin.’ It was probably another twelve days to Manila, but the body could be preserved by packing it in ice if the
Karen Brooke shuddered. ‘It’s so horribly senseless. Just because Mr. Egerton reminded him of somebody.’
‘Some German, apparently,’ Goddard agreed. ‘The chances are he was in a concentration camp during the war. Incidentally, why do you say Mr. Egerton, if he was a colonel?’
‘He asked us to,’ Karen said. ‘He was retired, he said, and “colonel” sounded pompous and Blimp-ish.’ Tears came into her eyes then, and she brushed at them with her fingertips. ‘Oh, damn! He was so sweet.’
They fell silent, watching the splendor of sunset as the
