Ingram gripped her arm and shook his head at her, but neither of the others had heard her anyway.
At least he knew now why Mrs. Warriner insisted on assuming all the guilt, even if she was probably still wrong. “Listen,” he said, “that doesn’t change anything. He locked you in there because he was already irrational, and he was irrational simply because his mind refused to accept the fact he’d been responsible for Mrs. Bellew’s death.” Then he wondered if he was being very smart. This would only inflame Bellew even more. No, Bellew already knew it anyway, and if he was brutal and stupid enough to want to smash up a boy who was mentally sick, this was merely superfluous and would have no effect on him one way or the other. And somehow he had to reach Mrs. Warriner.
Even while he was conscious of a faint self-disgust for beginning to sound like a cocktail-party psychiatrist, he couldn’t escape the feeling that her illogical burden of guilt was probably as dangerous here as Bellew’s vindictiveness, and just as likely to trigger an explosion. And certainly it made it a lot more dangerous, and unnecessarily dangerous, for her. Not having any interest at all in what happened to her if anything happened to Warriner, she’d attack Bellew with anything in sight, and the consequences of that wouldn’t be anything you’d ever want to remember—if you lived long enough to remember anything. Then, just for a moment, he was tempted to throw up his hands and let the three of them go ahead and kill themselves. Why did he have to defend Warriner, who’d caused the whole thing, when obviously his responsibility was to Rae? Was he going to endanger her life again for that alibi-artist, merely because he was helpless? But he knew he couldn’t turn his back on it, even aside from the fact that once it started it couldn’t be contained or avoided anyway. And, in the end, there was always Mrs. Warriner. She was worth fifty of the other two, and you couldn’t let her throw herself into the meat-grinder from some misguided feeling of guilt.
“For God’s sake,” he went on wearily, “none of it was your fault, and you’re not even doing him any good by trying to take the blame. I’m no head-shrinker, but it seems to me the chances are very good he can be brought out of it, with proper treatment. But he has to admit it. I don’t think it’s a feeling of guilt that made him crack up, but just the refusal to accept the blame. And as long as you go on grabbing all of it in sight, he never will. Jesus, there’s no crime in losing your head. Anybody can do it; it’s unpredictable. You know that yourself, Bellew—”
“No, I don’t, good-buddy. I say nobody but a limp-wristed punk like Hughie-boy could do it, but then I’d never argue with a smart bastard like you. Why don’t you write a book?”
He bit down hard on his temper. The whole attempt to appeal to the man had been futile, and any minute it was going to get out of hand. He had to move Warriner, and he’d better do it now, before he waked up. If he could get him shut up in that forward cabin, out of sight, they might make it through the night without an eruption of violence, and by morning Bellew would have had a chance to think twice about it. But getting him out from behind the wheel and down the ladder wasn’t going to be easy. He was on the point of telling Bellew to give him a hand when he remembered the old axiom: never give an order you know is going to be ignored.
He turned to Mrs. Warriner. “I think the best place for him is in the forward cabin. The rest of us can use the two bunks in the main cabin in relays, or flake out on deck, subject to the watches we work out. So if you’ll take his feet, we’ll move him down there now.”
“Yes, of course,” she said. She stood up.
“No,” Bellew said. “As you were.”
“What?” she asked.
“Goldilocks stays right where he is.” Bellew reached out a foot, put it against her midriff, and pushed. She sat down again.
There was no point in even saying anything, Ingram thought coldly. The act was deliberate and self- explanatory. He was already on his feet, and he hit Bellew as hard as he could just under the ear, as he was getting to his. The only chance he had was to hurt him, and hurt him badly, right at the start. But even as the blow landed, he knew he’d lost. Bellew rolled back with it with the ease and the beautiful reflexes of a pro and counterpunched with almost unbelievable speed for a man his size. Ingram felt the wind go out of him as a fist like a concrete block slammed into his stomach; and then another, which he only partially blocked, hit him over the heart. He started to fall but came back against the mizzen. Bellew hit him twice more in the stomach. Sickness ballooned inside him. He heard Rae shriek behind him, and Mrs. Warriner was trying to get past him to reach Bellew herself.
It was no place to fight; there was no room. He pushed off the mast, blocked Bellew’s next punch, and managed to get under his guard with a right.
Ingram felt an arm lock around his neck and the thumb of the other hand groping for his eyes. He ducked his face down in Bellew’s throat and brought his right hand up, grinding the heel of it as he pushed upward, and felt the nose flatten with the tearing of cartilage. Bellew released his neck, pushed him upward, and then kicked out with both feet against his chest. He came up and back, felt his head strike the mizzen boom, and sagged to his knees. Out of the corners of his eyes, he saw Rae emerging from the hatch with the shotgun barrels in her hand, raising them to swing.
Bellew whirled as lightly as a cat, caught her arm, and yanked. She came catapulting up on deck. Bellew plucked the gun barrels from her, threw them outward into the sea, and cuffed her backward across the deckhouse in three smooth and almost simultaneous blurs of motion. Ingram was on his feet again. Bellew turned back to him, grinning and hideous with blood running down his face and onto his chest from the pulpy ruin of his nose. Ingram tried to swing, and then something like the popping of a flash bulb went off inside his head and he was on the bottom of the cockpit.
He wasn’t completely out, but dazed and too sick and too weak to get up. He tried. He pushed upward with his arms, felt
His mind was clear now, but he still couldn’t get up. He fell back on his side and was looking up past the wheel and the binnacle. Bellew, the gory face split in its wolfish grin, was leaning over Warriner. And Warriner was sitting up, cringing backward, still screaming.
“No, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, no! No—no—!”
Ingram vomited. He could feel the warmth of it on his hands, and the deck was slick with it as he tried again to push himself up. Mrs. Warriner materialized out of somewhere, flinging herself across his line of vision onto Bellew’s shoulders. Bellew shrugged her off. Only half turning, he slapped her backward, and she fell on Ingram’s legs.
“Come on, old Hughie-boy, old shark-killer.’’ Bellew grabbed Warriner’s shoulders and lifted. He was apparently still talking, for Ingram could see his lips move, but all sound was lost then in another cry from Warriner, a mindless, unceasing, animal screaming that lifted the hair on Ingram’s scalp and ran like ice along his back. Warriner lunged upward from behind the wheel, his legs kicking free of the remaining turns of line around them. The line from his wrists to the stanchion gave way. Muscles writhed in his arms. His hands burst apart.
Bellew shifted his grip, caught him about the waist, and lifted. He stepped up on the narrow strip of deck between the cockpit and the rail.
Mrs. Warriner was off Ingram’s legs then, springing up and toward Bellew. Ingram made it to his knees. Warriner’s cry cut off as he saw the water below him, and he spun around in Bellew’s grasp, locking his arms and legs around him as if he were clinging to the bole of a tree, and nothing was visible of his eyes except the whites. Ingram got to his feet but fell backward onto the seat.
