icy wind and freezing rain blew in like a hurricane.
Luther was scrambling to his feet, terrified. Eddie jumped back onto the floor and stopped him getting away. Catching the man off balance, he pushed him up against the wall. Rage gave him the strength to overpower Luther, although they were much the same weight. He took Luther by the lapels and shoved the man’s head out the window.
Luther screamed.
The noise of the wind was so loud that the scream was almost inaudible.
Eddie pulled him back in and shouted in his ear: “I’ll throw you out, I swear to God!” He pushed Luther’s head out again and lifted him off the floor.
If Luther had not panicked, he might have broken free, but he had lost control and was helpless. He screamed again, and Eddie could just make out the words: “I’ll do it, I’ll do it, let me go, let me go!”
Eddie felt a powerful urge to push him all the way out; then he realized he was in danger of losing control too. He did not want to kill Luther, he reminded himself, just scare him half to death. He had achieved that already. It was enough.
He lowered Luther to the floor and relaxed his grip.
Luther ran for the door.
Eddie let him go.
I do a pretty good crazy act, Eddie thought; but he knew he had not really been acting.
He leaned against the washstand, catching his breath. The mad rage left him as quickly as it had come. He felt calm, but shocked by his own violence, almost as if someone else had done it.
A moment later a passenger came in.
It was the man who had joined the flight at Foynes, Mervyn Lovesey, a tall guy in a striped nightshirt that looked pretty funny. He was a down-to-earth Englishman of about forty. He looked at the damage and said: “By heck, what happened here?”
Eddie swallowed. “A broken window,” he said.
Lovesey gave him a satiric look. “That much I worked out for myself.”
“It sometimes happens in a storm,” Eddie said. “These violent winds carry lumps of ice or even stones.”
Lovesey was skeptical. “Well! I’ve been flying my own plane for ten years and I never heard that.”
Eddie was right, of course. Windows did sometimes break on trips, but it usually happened when the plane was in harbor, not in mid-Atlantic. For such eventualities they carried aluminum window covers called deadlights, which happened to be stowed right here in the men’s room. Eddie opened the locker and pulled one out. “That’s why we carry these,” he said.
Lovesey was convinced at last. “Fancy that,” he said. He went into the cubicle.
Stowed with the deadlights was the screwdriver that was the only tool required to install them. Eddie decided that it would minimize the fuss if he did the job himself. In a few seconds he took off the windowframe, unscrewed the remainder of the broken pane, screwed the deadlight in its place, and replaced the frame.
“Very impressive,” said Mervyn Lovesey, coming out of the toilet. Eddie had a feeling he was not completely reassured, all the same. However, he was not likely to do anything about it.
Eddie went out and found Davy making a milk drink in the galley. “The window’s broken in the john,” he told him.
“I’ll fix it as soon as I’ve given the princess her cocoa.”
“I’ve installed the deadlight.”
“Gee, thanks, Eddie.”
“But you need to sweep up the glass as soon as you can.”
“Okay.”
Eddie would have liked to offer to sweep up himself, because he had made the mess. That was how his mother had trained him. However, he was in danger of appearing suspiciously overhelpful, and betraying his guilty conscience. So, feeling bad, he left Davy to it.
He had achieved something, anyway. He had scared Luther badly. He now thought Luther would go along with the new plan and have Carol-Ann brought to the rendezvous in the launch. At least he had reason to hope.
His mind returned to his other worry: the plane’s fuel reserve. Although it was not yet time for him to go back on duty, he went up to the flight deck to speak to Mickey Finn.
“The curve is all over the place!” Mickey said excitably as soon as Eddie arrived.
But have we got enough fuel? Eddie thought. However, he maintained a superficial calm. “Show me.”
“Look—fuel consumption is incredibly high for the first hour of my shift. Then it comes back to normal for the second hour.”
“It was all over the place during my shift, too,” Eddie said, trying to show mild concern where he felt terrible fear. “I guess the storm makes everything unpredictable.” Then he asked the question that was tormenting him. “But do we have enough fuel to get home?” He held his breath.
“Yeah, we have enough,” Mickey said.
Eddie’s shoulders slumped with relief. Thank God. At least that worry was over.
“But we’ve got nothing in reserve,” Mickey added. “I hope to hell we don’t lose an engine.”
Eddie could not worry about such a remote possibility: he had too much else on his mind. “What’s the weather forecast? Maybe we’re almost through the storm.”
Mickey shook his head. “Nope,” he said grimly. “It’s about to get an awful lot worse.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Nancy Lenehan found it unsettling to be in bed in a room with a total stranger.
As Mervyn Lovesey had assured her, the “honeymoon suite” had bunk beds despite its name. However, he had not been able to wedge the door open permanently, because of the storm: whatever he tried, it kept banging shut, until they both felt it was less embarrassing to leave it closed than to continue fussing about keeping it open.
She had stayed up as long as possible. She was tempted to sit in the main lounge all night, but it had become an unpleasantly masculine place, full of cigarette smoke and whiskey fumes and the murmured laughter and cursing of gamblers, and she felt conspicuous there. In the end there was nothing for it but to go to bed.
They put out the light and climbed into their bunks, and Nancy lay down with her eyes closed, but she did not feel in the least sleepy. The glass of brandy that young Harry Marks got for her had not helped at all: she was as wide awake as if it had been nine o’clock in the morning.
She could tell that Mervyn was awake, too. She heard every move he made in the bunk above her. Unlike the other bunks, those in the honeymoon suite were not curtained, so her only privacy was the darkness.
She lay awake and thought about Margaret Oxenford, so young and naive, so full of uncertainty and idealism. She sensed great passion beneath Margaret’s hesitant surface, and identified with her on that account. Nancy, too, had had battles with her parents, or, at least, with her mother. Ma had wanted her to marry a boy from an old Boston family, but at the age of sixteen Nancy fell in love with Sean Lenehan, a medical student whose father was actually a foreman in Pa’s own factory, horrors! Ma campaigned against Sean for months, bringing wicked gossip about him and other girls, snubbing his parents viciously, falling ill and retiring to bed only to get up again and harangue her daughter for selfishness and ingratitude. Nancy had suffered under the onslaught but stood firm, and in the end she had married Sean and loved him with all her heart until the day he died.
Margaret might not have Nancy’s strength. Perhaps I was a little harsh with her, she thought, saying that if she didn’t like her father she should get up and leave home. But she seemed to need someone to tell her to stop whining and grow up. At her age I had two babies!
She had offered practical help as well as tough-minded advice. She hoped she would be able to fulfill her promise and give Margaret a job.
That all depended on Danny Riley, the old reprobate who held the balance of power in her battle with her
