He stepped past her, brushing her knees as she sat on the bunk, and leaned over the desk to dog down the porthole. The coffeepot and cup were both empty; she’d drunk it all. He turned and went into the bathroom, still carrying the towels.
Madeleine Lennox gazed dreamily after him and yawned again. Why, he didn’t look down my pajamas that time, she thought in wonder. After a beautifully planned and executed maneuver like that—God, what’s the matter with me, didn’t we sleep at all last night?—after that perfect down-range turn to come in over target at the precise angle to see clear to my navel, he didn’t even look. Could I have aged that much in five minutes?
She was conscious of a roaring sound that puzzled her for a moment; then she recognized it as the stream from the fire hose beating on the bulkhead of Harry’s cabin next door. But she still seemed to be floating off into a rosy cloud, and it was hard to focus or keep her thoughts straight. What was she thinking about? Oh, yes, the twilight of the boob. Her declining box-office. Somewhere between age thirteen, when they started trying to see up your dress, down your dress, or through your dress, and age ninety, when the show had been warehoused for years, there had to be some precise instant of time like the exact balancing point of a teeter-totter when they simply stopped peeking, once and forever. Like that. Was it possible she had pin-pointed this historic moment? Five minutes ago she could have sold advertising space on them, at least at sea—
There was a swishing sound of water along the deck outside, and then an even louder drumming as the stream from the fire hose beat on her own bulkhead and closed porthole. And coincident with this momentary din she saw Rafferty emerge from the bathroom. He had a towel in his right hand, and as he came toward her with his beefy grin he suddenly flipped the towel over into his left, and under it was a blue-black slab of metal which as the widow of a naval officer she could recognize as a sidearm even at the moment of dropping off to sleep like this. He raised it over her head, but there didn’t seem to be much she could do about it.
Rafferty slashed downward with the .45, catching her just above the hairline on the left side of her head, the brutal impact lost under the beating of water against the bulkhead. As she pitched forward he caught her and stretched her out on the bunk with the towel under her head. Dropping the gun back in his pocket, he began yanking at the legs of the pajamas. Damn it, there must be a zipper somewhere. He located it at her left hip, stripped off the garment, and hurriedly unbuttoned the pajama top. Being careful to keep her head on the towel, he turned her face down, and peeled this garment off to complete undressing her.
Stacked, for an old dame. He squeezed an appreciative handful of buttock, and wished he had time to tear off a quickie, but he didn’t like the way that big bastard had looked when he’d told him just what would happen if he didn’t get out of here on schedule. He was taking enough chances carrying this gun, instead of the sap he was supposed to use.
He carried her into the bathroom and stretched her out under the shower. A trickle of blood ran out of her hair onto the tile. He came out, carefully checking the deck between bathroom and bunk. The bos’n and his fire hose were drawing farther away now, and he had to hurry. There were two or three drops of blood. Grabbing the already stained towel off the bunk, he wiped them up, and rolled the towel inside another.
In the bathroom again, he turned on the shower, letting it beat down on her, and dropped a bar of soap on the streaming tile beside her body. He stepped back, surveying the scene and nagged by a feeling there was something he hadn’t done, but it looked all right. She was wet all over, and the soap was there where she’d stepped on it and fallen. He shrugged and went out.
With the rolled towels under his arm, he opened the screen door and peered out into the passageway. No one was in sight. He stepped out quickly and strolled back to the pantry. Karl was in the dining room, setting up for breakfast. He shoved the towels into the bottom of a garbage can he was supposed to have emptied last night, and carried it aft, across the well-deck. The stink was everywhere this morning, and one of the deck apes was gawking up at the ventilators where you could see the smoke coming out. He pointed.
‘It’s burnin’ worse all the time.’
‘Good man,’ Rafferty said approvingly. ‘Give me a report every hour.’ What a clown, you’d think it was his cotton. He went up onto the poop to the fantail and emptied the can. Lighting a cigarette, he stared boredly aft as the two towels and the flotsam of garbage dropped back in the white water of the wake and disappeared. It was going to be another hot day.
* * *
Goddard showered at a quarter of eight, and as he turned off the water he could hear the shower running on the other side of the bulkhead in Mrs. Lennox’s bathroom. He was putting a new blade in the razor to shave when he became aware that the smell of burning cotton had now penetrated clear in here. Clad only in slacks and slippers, he went out on deck and walked aft in the lifeless heat. A squall was making up far off on the horizon to starboard, but what little breeze there was here came from almost directly astern, so there was little movement of air along the superstructure of the ship. Smoke was curling from both ventilators of number three hold, no longer in intermittent wisps but in a steady outpouring that drifted straight up in the brassy sunlight of early morning. A sheen, or haze, seemed to hang over the well-deck itself, and the odor was strong enough to irritate the throat. The
He’d come aboard the ship in a rubber raft, and he wondered now if he were going to leave it in a lifeboat. If it did come to that, he reflected, he wasn’t going to be in great demand as an occupant of either boat. ‘No, you take the hard-luck bastard in that one. We don’t want him in here.’ Maybe you couldn’t blame them, at that; a murder, a suicide, a heart attack, and a fire, all in three days, might start a witch-hunt almost anywhere.
He went back and shaved. He had finished and was drying the razor when he became aware that Mrs. Lennox’ shower was still running. He grinned. She’d be a great asset on a small boat; she would have used up the
Karen Brooke was alone in the dining room when he went in a few minutes past eight. She was wearing a sleeveless summer dress of almost the same shade of blue as her eyes, which in combination with the swirl of honey-colored hair seemed to intensify her tan.
‘You look very nice,’ he said.
She smiled, but her manner was cool and impersonal. ‘Thank you, Mr. Goddard. I consider that a real compliment, in view of the priority.’
‘How’s that?’ he asked.
‘Lots of men would have said the ship’s afire, and then you look nice.’
‘Oh, there are clods like that.’ He sobered. ‘How long have you known it?’
‘Since yesterday. About the same time you asked me what the cargo was.’
‘But there’s still no official recognition?’
‘No. Mr. Lind hasn’t been down yet. But I suppose they’ve known it for the past few days. It might be what brought on Captain Steen’s heart attack, don’t you think?’
He nodded. ‘Anyway, he’s better this morning, according to Barset.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Karl came in. Goddard asked for a poached egg and some coffee. Karl poured the coffee and went back to the pantry. ‘Is all of number three loaded with cotton?’ Goddard asked. ‘Tween-decks too?’
‘No-o.’ She frowned, trying to remember. ‘They were just finishing loading when I came aboard, and it seems to me the tween-decks in that one is general cargo—cases of canned goods, leather, a lot of big carboys in crates, things like that.’
‘You don’t know what’s in the carboys?’
She nodded. ‘Alcohol.’
He said nothing, but it was obvious from her expression she knew as well as he did the potentialities of that combination— alcohol-saturated cotton—if those carboys started breaking in the heat down there.
Lind came in. He greeted them abstractedly, and it struck Goddard he came as near to looking troubled as he had ever seen him. Well, it might be understandable under the circumstances. When Karen asked how Captain Steen was doing, he shook his head and frowned.
‘I don’t know. I wish now I’d transferred him to the
‘Has he had another attack?’ Goddard asked.
‘No, not that. He rested quietly all night, and his pulse was all right. But the past hour he’s had more trouble breathing. And there may be some pulmonary edema—fluid in the lungs.’
‘Pneumonia?’ Goddard asked.
