cells so quickly destroy a tissue, the organs, and then the whole body.”
“Alastair, imagine the table cloth folded to the moon and the stars,” said Declan, while one lady at the table gaped, obviously curious. A second seated lady erupted with, “My god, I see what you mean.”
“I see it too,” added one of the men at the table who had turned pale at the thought. “My mother died of a cancerous condition. It’s why I became a doctor.” He then introduced himself as Dr. Washington Dodge and wife. He pointed toward three children at play with spinning toys on deck that he proudly announced as his own. “The reason we must travel second class,” he finished with a joke.
“Now if your demonstration is through, Declan,” said Thomas in his ear, “where do we start to search for Davenport’s ahhh… remains?”
Just then the sound of children at play with a yelping dog seeped into Alastair’s consciousness. He looked down the length of the deck to see a golden Retriever bounding about and barking, the sound grasped by the wind and hurled out to sea. The children were attempting a game of ball and jacks, while the dog kept stealing the ball.
“The dog,” said Ransom.
“What of him?” asked Thomas.
“He’s a bloody Retriever.”
“You don’t expect him to retrieve a body, do you?”
“I have seen dogs of his breed sniff out decay in Chicago. There was a doctor there, a friend of mine, Christian Fenger, a pathologist and surgeon at Cook County Hospital. The man is genius personified, and he’d begun experiments with this and other breeds to locate missing persons—often cadavers by the time they were found—in a confined area.”
“We certainly have that below!” said Declan. “Confined spaces, that is.”
“I’ve seen dogs sniff out bodies in Lake Michigan from a boat. Their sense of smell is altogether preternatural, defies even watery depths.”
Thomas, who’d bummed a cigarette from a passerby was puffing when he shrugged and conceded, “Perhaps the dog may then be of service.”
“I suspect it depends on his nose,” suggested Ransom.
“We will have to engage the dog’s owner then,” said Declan. “Do you have any coins on you to use in order to ahh… borrow the animal?”
“I’m surprised they managed to get a dog on board,” remarked Thomas between puffs.
“We certainly heard enough barking when we were in that damned cell,” replied Declan.
“Yeah, but they were caged below like us. Seeing one running free like this… well it’s like that dog is… well, like us—breaking with ship’s law.”
“You know people, especially hard-bitten folks; they find a way. If the owner wants his dog to have some air… then the dog gets air,” replied Alastair. “So best let me commandeer the dog in the name of the Chica—I mean the Royal Irish Constabulary.”
“The Royal Irish Constabulary, truly?” came a lady’s voice, someone who’d overheard as voices carried much farther, it seemed on a sea breeze.
Ransom turned to see that it was Mrs. Dodge, the lady entranced by Declan’s demonstration of exponential growth. He hooked his cane over his left wrist and took her hand in his right, kissing it. “Belfast Constabulary, madam, at your service,” he replied.
She made a slight gasp. “Whatever ghastly thing might it be, Constable, to bring you aboard
“My associates and I are… well we are in pursuit of a felonious ahhh… felon er-ah fellow,” Ransom told her, “but please, Mrs. Dodge, we are incognito. Tell no one you encountered us.”
The lady nodded vigorously, obviously excited and intrigued at this turn of events. “I so love Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tales. They are so very intriguing.”
“You must promise now to tell no one, my dear.”
She nodded vigorously and indicated her lips were sealed before she rejoined her party. Ransom told the boys, “I’d hoped to do this quietly, but now it’ll be all over the ship; who we are that is. We must work fast, boys. As for the dog, shouldn’t cost us a dime—besides, Captain McEachern got all our cash.”
Ransom then flashed his badge at the mob about the dog. One man with a horrid wooden leg that looked gray from age with its unvarnished surface immediately looked for an escape route. This gray-bearded fellow’s expression was the embodiment of fear at the sight of Ransom’s badge. His wooden leg looked unfinished as if stolen from a woodshop and in need of a good finishing and sanding, and as Ransom decided these things, the man grabbed the dog, and in an instant got a leash on the animal, and they were about to make a run for it when Alastair’s cane hooked the wooden ankle to drop the man unceremoniously onto the deck. The errant leg rattled toward the children who’d been at play with the dog, and Dr. and Mrs. Dodge raced for their boys, scooping them up and into their protective arms. All the while the dog barked and brayed in agitation.
The dog stood over his fallen master now, snarling at Alastair. At the same time, a pair of ship’s officers in white were rushing toward the melee, either after the dog to put him safely away, or after the doctors and Ransom to put them safely away.
Either way, Ransom turned and ran, the young interns racing after him, seeking the safety of the interior, going for the stairwell and the deck below, madly in search of a place to hide. “My God,” bellowed Thomas as they went, “we’re like roaches seeking the darkest corner.”
“Which way?” asked Ransom. “Where do we go, lads?”
“This ship’s filled with places to hide; it’s why that damnable creature is so elusive!” shouted Declan over their clatter.
“Yes, we go to the bottom again,” shouted Ransom. “Find a stokehold or a cargo hold.”
“Trading one cell for another?” complained Thomas.
“It’s only temporary until we can get hold of that Retriever.”
“And how do you propose that?” asked Thomas.
“That old man and his dog’re going to be escorted back down to the dog kennel, and his dog locked away. We’ll get the dog then.”
“But Alastair, that dog’s liable to bite your hand off if it sees you again,” warned Declan as they continued down one stairwell and then the next.
Near out of breath, Alastair said, “Either of you boys good with dogs?”
Above decks, everyone had gasped at the policeman’s sudden, vicious ‘attack’ against a helpless old man, but no one had stepped in or had dared say anything against the man waving the badge. The big man calling himself a constable had been too intimidating for that, but one porter at a distance saw the commotion and had rushed off for help. At the same time, Dr. Dodge had set his son with his wife to retrieve the injured man’s leg and to hand it to him, thankful it had not been splintered. Others stood about with a mix of emotions filling them.
“We are in need of your dog, sir—temporarily,” they’d recounted what Ransom had said to the crippled fellow. “As an officer of the law, I am commandeering the animal,” one man repeated word for word.
The gray-beared old man tried to calm his dog now, hushing it and calling its name. “Varmint! Varmint, stop that now! Get over here.”
The dog, well trained, did as his master said.
The white-coated officers who’d raced to the scene now had a fix on the three escaped prisoners. They were soon joined by Murdoch and four other crewmen. Murdoch vowed, “We’ll find these rascals again for sure, and if need be it’s over the side with them in one of the collapsible! Set them adrift.”
An hour later Ransom, Declan, and Thomas sat, stomachs growling for want of food, in a dark back section of a closet-sized hole that had been locked, but Ransom had been able to pick the door lock using a stickpin he’d secretly removed from a lady’s hat above decks. The dubious name on the door had been Specie Room, specie meaning coins. Here lay
