The room had bunk beds, tucked behind the door, as well as a standard bed. There was a washbasin, with hot and cold running water, but no en suite bathroom. That was down the hall and shared by five other cabins. The walls were paneled in wood veneer, and the carpet was surprisingly plush.
“We left you the big bed, Marion,” Jenny Sanders said. “At the hospital, we had old cots we joked were left behind by De Lesseps, so the bunk beds are going to feel downright extravagant to us.”
“We should draw straws for the bed,” Marion protested. “It’s only fair.”
“Don’t worry yourself,” Ruth said. “After a year in Panama, this is the pinnacle of luxury. Right, Jen?”
“Right.”
“Well, thank you both,” Marion said and set her hatbox on the bed. Her other cases were stacked in one corner. “Tell you what, I didn’t bring a whole lot of clothes with me, but let’s all three of us get dolled up tonight. Borrow anything you’d like.”
The two nurses exchanged a look. “Deal.”
At dinner, they talked about how Illinois had recently passed women’s suffrage, making it the first state east of the Mississippi to grant the vote, and how that boded well for national passage. Marion told them she’d had friends who’d been at the disastrous rally in Washington, D.C., ahead of President Wilson’s inauguration, and how the police did nothing to protect the women marchers, two hundred of whom were injured.
“I’m afraid it will be a few more years yet before we all have the vote,” she concluded.
“Maddening,” Ruth said. “I’m going to medical school in a couple months. I’m going to be a doctor and yet I can’t vote for the people passing laws that affect how I do my job.”
“Makes no sense,” Jenny agreed.
“Oh, it makes perfect sense,” Marion said with a devilish look in her eye, “from the perspective of inferior men who can’t grasp that women can be smarter and more capable in everything we do.”
That got a knowing laugh.
After dinner, they stayed in the parlor, listening to a pair of passengers take turns at an upright piano. People sang along with the songs they knew, and a few of the other ladies aboard accepted invitations to dance from gentlemen passengers and crew alike. Marion declined at least a dozen offers.
It was almost ten when they returned to their cabin. The Spatminster had left a storm far to the south. The moon was a bright half circle, and the seas had flattened. The ship’s forward movement meant there was a nice breeze running the length of her wooden deck, and now that she was many miles from land, the humidity was tolerable.
After readying themselves for bed, they wished one another good night, and Marion switched off the electric light. She drifted off worrying about Isaac and his memory issues.
She awoke in the middle of the night, unsure what had roused her from slumber. The cabin was noisy, in the sense she could hear the wind blowing past and also whistling through the ventilation louvers, and then there was the deep rumble of steam engines grinding away deep in the ship’s guts.
But then came a tiny rasp, barely perceptible. It was as soft as a mouse’s paw on a metal floor, but it had been enough to wake her. Though not quickly enough.
The intruder had finished manipulating the pins inside the cabin door’s lock and snicked it open just as Marion was coming to realize what was happening. Uniformed men burst into the cabin in a wave, each holding an electric flashlight and a Luger pistol with a silencer attached to the barrel. They had to have known in advance the number of passengers in the cabin because there were three men, plus one more who appeared to be in charge.
Two of the men went for the bunk beds while the third lunged across the room at Marion. When he tried to get his hands around her throat, Marion managed to pull her right hand free of the covers and connect with a solid blow to his jaw before he could grasp her.
She wanted to kick free of the bedding, but her attacker’s weight had pinned her legs. Her punch had done little more than stun him, and he was soon on the attack. Because he was still above her, he had enough leverage to elbow the side of her neck. It was an expert strike. The muscles around her carotid artery contracted at the blow, cutting off the flow of blood to her brain, and Marion Bell fell unconscious.
While the two men had no trouble subduing the two terrified nurses, Marion came back around just as a hood was about to be pulled over her head by the third man. She roused in time to bite her attacker’s hand hard enough to draw blood.
“Scheisse,” he said.
Filled with determination and rage, Marion kicked free from her blankets and stood up on the bed in a fighting stance. She struck her attacker, slamming the heel of her right foot just below his sternum. Air blew from his mouth in an explosive whoosh that left him doubled over and gasping as his diaphragm spasmed and refused to refill his lungs.
She jumped off the bed in a swirl of nightclothes and went after the men tying gags around her new friends’ mouths. She swept up her purse, hoping to retrieve the .22 caliber pepperbox derringer she carried when she traveled. She didn’t get more than a step when the boarding party’s leader leveled his pistol at her and pulled the trigger. Even with a silencer, the 9 millimeter was as loud as a sharp handclap. Expecting crushing pain, Marion cringed, but the shot had been an intentional miss, though it had whizzed by so close to Marion’s head she smelled
