through the flight cabin. Harry had to get out of the way for a few moments. He went out through the rear door, leaving it open a crack so he could hear what went on.
Soon someone came up the stairs from the passenger deck and went through to the bow compartment. A few minutes later a number of people, two or three, came back. Harry listened to their footsteps going down the stairs, then came out.
Had they brought help, or reinforcements for the gangsters? Harry was in the dark again.
He went to the top of the stairs. There he hesitated. He decided to risk going partway down to listen.
He went to the bend in the staircase and peeked around the corner. He could see the little kitchen: it was empty. What would he do now if the seaman from the launch decided to come aboard the Clipper? I’ll hear him coming, Harry thought, and slip into the men’s room. He went on down, one slow step at a time, pausing and listening on each step. When he reached the bottom he heard a voice. He recognized Tom Luther’s voice, a cultured American accent with a trace of something European underneath. “The gods are on my side, Lovesey,” he was saying. “You have arrived in a seaplane just when we need one. You can fly me and Mr. Vincini and our associates over the navy cutter that the treacherous Eddie Deakin has summoned to trap us.”
That answered the question. The seaplane was going to enable Luther and Hartmann to get away.
Harry crept back up the stairs. The thought of poor Hartmann being taken back to the Nazis was heartbreaking; but Harry might have let it happen—he was no hero. However, young Percy Oxenford would do something stupid any moment now, and Harry could not stand aside and let Margaret’s brother get himself killed. He had to get in first, create a diversion, somehow put a spoke in the gang’s wheel, for her sake.
Looking into the bow compartment, he saw a rope tied to a strut, and he was inspired.
Suddenly he saw a way he could create a diversion and maybe get rid of one of the gangsters as well.
First he had to untie the ropes and set the launch adrift.
He went through the hatch and down the ladder.
His heart beat faster. He was scared.
He did not think about what he would say if someone caught him now. He would just make something up, as he always did.
He crossed the compartment. As he had thought, the rope came from the launch.
He reached up to the strut, undid the knot and dropped the rope on the floor.
Looking out, he saw that there was a second rope running from the bow of the launch to the nose of the Clipper. Damn. He would have to get out onto the platform to reach it, and that meant he might be seen.
But he could not give up now. And he had to hurry. Percy was back there like Daniel in the lions’ den.
He stepped up onto the platform. The rope was tied to a capstan sticking up from the nose of the aircraft. He untied it rapidly.
He heard a shout from the launch. “Hey, you, what are you doing?”
He did not look up. He hoped the guy did not have a gun.
He detached the rope from the capstan and threw it in the sea.
“Hey, you!”
He turned around. The skipper of the launch was standing on deck shouting. He was not armed, thank God. The man picked up his end of the other rope and pulled. The rope snaked out of the bow compartment and fell in the water.
The skipper ducked into the wheelhouse and started his engine.
The next part was more dangerous.
It would take only a few seconds for the gangsters to notice that their launch had come adrift. They would be puzzled and alarmed. One of them would come to investigate and tie the launch up again. And then—
Harry was too scared to think about what he was going to do then.
He dashed up the ladder and across the flight deck and concealed himself in the cargo area once again.
He knew it was deadly dangerous to fool around like this with gangsters, and he felt cold at the thought of what they would do to him if they caught him.
For a long minute nothing happened. Come on, he thought; hurry up and look out of the window! Your launch is adrift—you have to notice it before I lose my nerve.
At last he heard footsteps again, heavy ones, hurrying, coming up the stairs and through the flight cabin. To his dismay it sounded like two men. He had not anticipated having to deal with two.
When he judged that they must have descended into the bow compartment, he looked out. It was all clear. He crossed the cabin and looked through the hatch. Two men with guns in their hands were staring out of the bow door. Even without the guns Harry would have guessed they were crooks by their flashy clothes. One was an ugly little guy with a mean look; the other was very young, about eighteen.
Maybe I should go back and hide, Harry thought.
The skipper was maneuvering the launch, still with the seaplane tied to its side. The two gangsters would have to tie the launch up to the Clipper again, and they could not do that with guns in their hands. Harry waited for them to put their firearms away.
The skipper shouted something Harry could not make out, and a few moments later the two hoods stuffed the guns into their pockets and stepped out onto the platform.
With his heart in his mouth, Harry went down the ladder into the bow compartment.
The men were trying to catch a rope that the skipper was throwing to them, and all their attention was directed outward, so they did not see him at first.
He sidled across the compartment.
When he was halfway across, the young one caught the rope. The other man, the little one, half turned—and saw Harry. He put his hand in his pocket and got his gun out just as Harry reached him.
Harry felt sure he was about to die.
Desperately, without thinking, he stooped, grabbed the little man’s ankle and heaved.
A shot rang out, but Harry felt nothing.
The man staggered, almost fell, dropped his gun and seized hold of his buddy for support.
The younger man lost his balance and let go of the rope. For an instant they swayed, clutching at one another. Harry still had hold of the little man’s ankle, and he jerked it again.
Both men fell off the platform and plunged into the heaving sea.
Harry let out a whoop of triumph.
They sank below the waves, came up again and began to struggle. Harry could tell that neither of them could swim.
“That’s for Clive Membury, you bastards!” Harry shouted.
He did not wait to see what became of them. He had to know what had happened on the passenger deck. He dashed back across the bow compartment, scrambled up the ladder, emerged into the flight cabin, then tiptoed down the staircase.
On the bottom step he stopped and listened.
Margaret could hear her own heartbeat.
It sounded in her ears like a kettledrum, rhythmic and insistent, and so loud that she fancied other people must be able to hear it too.
She was more frightened than she had ever been in her life. And she was ashamed of her fear.
She had been frightened by the emergency splashdown, the sudden appearance of guns, the bewildering way people such as Frankie Gordino, Mr. Luther and the engineer kept changing their roles, and the casual brutality of these stupid thugs in their awful suits; and most of all she was frightened because quiet Mr. Membury was lying on the floor dead.
She was too frightened to move, and that made her ashamed.
For years she had been talking about how she wanted to fight Fascism, and now the opportunity had arrived. Right here in front of her, a Fascist was kidnapping Carl Hartmann to take him back to Germany. But she could do nothing about it because she was paralyzed by fear.
Perhaps there was nothing she
