knowing, as he must, of the succession of lovers bracketed by these silken, frenetic thighs. Maybe he didn’t even mind, he reflected, knowing her emotional involvement in the encounters was probably no greater than it would have been with a procession of repairmen trying to deal with a recalcitrant television set.
There was no doubt she’d worked out a novel system for coping with it, by staking out a male world where there was no competition at all. Women passengers on freighters were nearly always elderly, with exceptions like Karen Brooke a one-chance-in-a-hundred possibility, and the younger, swinging crowd wouldn’t be caught dead on one. The ship’s officers, though probably married in most cases, were still sailors, and far from home, living a monastic life where sexy females were a collector’s item. All steamship companies frowned on this sort of hanky- pank on the part of their masters and mates, of course, but in man’s long journey toward the light, fornication had survived harsher edicts.
He sat up and lit a cigarette. In a moment she stirred drowsily, and murmured, ‘I thank you.’
‘For what?’ he asked.
‘For the obvious. You’re very good, Mr. Goddard, at a social activity that bores you to death.’
‘Bored? Of course I wasn’t.’
‘Oh, I’m not complaining, dear man. I feel wonderful, and believe me, getting there is more than half the fun. I just wondered why. You could have burned your draft card; you obviously don’t have to prove anything.’
‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ he said.
‘Good manners,’ she decided. ‘I think that’s the clue. You see, you’re not even angry now, at this classic example of the perversity of females.’ She laughed softly. ‘I like you; you’re nice. Uninvolved and totally aloof, but nice. Could I have a cigarette?’
He lit one and passed it to her, and set the ashtray on his stomach. Thunder continued to rumble, but it was farther away now and the fury of the squall was diminishing.
She was silent for several minutes, and then she said musingly, ‘There’s still something about it that bothers me.’
‘About what?’ he asked.
‘Krasicki. Going berserk that way,’ she said. ‘If he did.’
Alarms tripped and began to ring their warning. 'I don’t think I’m following you.’
‘Don’t let it bother you. I’m not sure I know myself what I’m talking about. But there was something you said afterward that I’ve never been able to get out of my mind.’
So that stupid remark may get both of us killed, he thought. Unless he was being sounded, which was just as dangerous.
‘You remember,’ she went on, ‘you said it would be a very good director who could have staged that scene any better. I know you didn’t mean it that way, but afterward I got to thinking about it, and began to have the craziest feeling that what I’d seen hadn’t even happened. Am I making any sense to you at all?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re taking off into philosophical concepts of reality that’re too deep for me.’
‘I’m not talking about philosophical concepts,’ she replied. ‘I’m talking about deliberate, planned illusion.’
‘Wait a minute!’ He tried for the right tone of amazement and incredulity. ‘You mean you think that could have been faked?’
‘I don’t know. But it was too perfect. Too many separate elements came together at exactly the right point in space and time for random chance, and there are two or three things about it that bother me. One is the way Krasicki tricked Egerton—I mean Mayr—into speaking German. That was clever, but could a man with a deranged mind have done it?’
‘A disturbed mind doesn’t mean a moronic mind,’ Goddard protested. ‘And he had been a university professor.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But there’s another thing. In the theater, I think you call it blocking.’
Sharp, Goddard thought, unless she’s been coached. ‘That’s right. The movement of actors in a scene.’
‘Umh-umh. So with three men at the table, Lind is the only one in a position to grab Krasicki and try to stop him. The captain is clear at the other end, and you’re behind it.’
‘The skipper always sits at the head of the table,’ Goddard said. ‘And in my case it was pure chance.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ she replied. ‘Where you were sitting had been Krasicki’s place. He’d never come to the dining room since we left Callao, but the place was always laid for him in case he did show up.’
Goddard was thinking swiftly and uneasily. Barset could be involved in it, or the dining room steward, or both. Or they could have been merely following instructions from Captain Steen. But it was Madeleine Lennox who was the dangerous problem at the moment. It would seem absurd, of course, that she could have any part in the plot itself, but there was a very real possibility she could be involved with Lind. Suppose the mate was using her to find out just how much he suspected?
As a trap it was deceptively simple, and beautiful in its deadliness. He was supposed to warn her, tell her there was a good chance she could be right but to keep her mouth shut if she hoped to get to Manila alive. If she were innocently playing with dynamite, that would stop her. But if she weren’t, if she reported it to Lind, he’d very neatly positioned his own neck on the block. But there was another way.
‘You’d better cut down on spy movies,’ he said. ‘You’re beginning to believe them.’
‘Then you think I’m imagining things?’
‘Look, the man was shot twice through the chest in full view of five people. You saw the blood—’
She interrupted. ‘I know. It must have been real, so that ought to clinch it, but something about it still bothers me. I keep trying to remember what it was.’
He sighed. ‘You’d be a defense attorney’s dream as a witness in a murder trial.
‘I guess you’re right,’ she said.
Maybe he’d convinced her. But when she went back to her own cabin he still wasn’t sure.
* * *
It was a hot, bright morning with a gentle breeze out of the southeast, almost directly astern. The
He had completed four laps around the deckhouse when he noted the ship was passing through a vast colony of tiny Portuguese men-of-war, apparently newly hatched, their sails no larger than a fingernail. He stopped at the after end of the deck and lit a cigarette as he leaned on the rail to watch them drift past in numbers that must run into millions. It was a phenomenon he had encountered two or three times at sea and which always puzzled him. How could they hatch in such numbers in one place? He was wondering about it now when he became conscious of an odor like that of burning cloth. He looked down, thinking he must have set his shirt afire with the cigarette, but there was no sign of it. Then the odor was gone, as strangely as it had appeared. He must have imagined it.
Only Captain Steen and Madeleine Lennox were in the dining room when he entered. They were just finishing their breakfast, and he was struck by the odd preoccupation of their manner as they greeted him. Steen looked troubled. Mrs. Lennox turned as he sat down, and asked archly, ‘Did that awful thunderstorm scare you last night, Mr. Goddard?’ Lind came in at the same moment, and Goddard was conscious of a vague impression that wasn’t what she’d started to say at all.
Lind laughed as he sat down. ‘Don’t be insulting, Mrs. Lennox. A line squall scare a man who’d go around the Horn in a Dixie cup?’
The others laughed, a trifle self-consciously, and after they had gone out, Lind said to Goddard, ‘I’ve been reading up on catatonic states, and there are a couple of things I’d like to try on Krasicki. You want to come along?’
Goddard was startled for an instant, thinking of his fears of the night before; then he shrugged. ‘Sure,’ he said. They finished breakfast and went down to the deck below. Lind called out to the Filipino youth to bring Krasicki’s breakfast, and Goddard stood in back of him as he unlocked the door. Lind pushed it open, let out a curse, and leaped inside. Beyond him, Goddard saw Krasicki’s body dangling from the overhead pipe.
