The Dark Crusader - Страница 5

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"All my business is urgent," Fleck boomed. "Of course, of course." The clerk seemed nervous, anxious to ingratiate himself with Fleck. "It just so happens that Mr. and Mrs. Bentall here are going out there, too, and they have a taxi-"

"Delighted to meet you, Mr.-ah-Bentall," Fleck said heartily. With his right hand he crushed mine in a bluff honest sailorman's grip while with his left he brought the complete ruin of the. shapeless jacket he was wearing another long stage nearer by thrusting his concealed gun so far forward against the off-white material that I thought he was going to sunder the pocket from its moorings. "Fleck's my name. I must get out to the airport at once and if you would be so kind-share the costs of course-I'd be more than grateful…"

No doubt about it, he was the complete professional, we were wafted out of that hotel and into the waiting taxi with all the smooth and suave dexterity of a head-waiter ushering you to the worst table in an overcrowded restaurant: and had I had any doubts left about Fleck's experienced competence they would have been removed the moment I sat down in the back seat between him and Rabat and felt something like a giant and none too gentle pincers closing round my waist. To my left, Rabat's twelve-bore: to my right, Fleck's automatic, both digging in just above the hip-bones, the one position where it was impossible to knock them aside. I sat still and quiet and hoped that the combination of ancient taxi springs and bumpy road didn't jerk either of the forefingers curved round those triggers.

Marie Hopeman sat in front, beside Krishna, very erect, very still, very aloof. I wondered if there was anything left of the careless amusement, the quiet self-confidence she had shown in Colonel Raine's office two days ago. It was impossible to say. We'd flown together, side by side, for 10,000 miles, and I still didn't even begin to know her. She had seen to that.

I knew nothing at all about the town of Suva, but even if I had I doubt whether I would have known where we were being taken. With two people sitting in front of me, one on either side, and what little I could see of the side-screens blurred and obscured by heavy rain, the chances of seeing anything were remote. I caught a glimpse of a dark silent cinema, a bank, a canal with scattered faint lights reflecting from its opaque surface and, after turning down some narrow unlighted streets and bumping over railway tracks, a long row of small railway wagons with C.S.R. stamped on their sides. All of those, especially the freight train, clashed with my preconceptions of what a south Pacific island should look like, but I had no time to wonder about it. The taxi pulled up with a sudden jerk that seemed to drive the twelve-bore about halfway through me, and Captain Fleck jumped out, ordering me to follow.

I climbed down and stood there rubbing my aching sides while I looked around me. It was as dark as a tomb, the rain was still sluicing down and at first I could see nothing except the vague suggestion of one or two angular structures that looked like gantry cranes. But I didn't need my eyes to tell me where I was, my nose was all that was required. I could smell smoke and diesel and rust, the tang of tar and hempen ropes and wet cordage, and pervading everything the harsh flat smell of the sea.

What with the lack of sleep and the bewildering turn of events my mind wasn't working any too well that night, but it did seem pretty obvious that Captain Fleck hadn't brought us down to the Suva docks to set us aboard a K.L.M. plane for Australia. I made to speak, but he cut me off at once, flicked a pencil torch at two cases that Krishna had carefully placed in a deep puddle of dirty and oily water, picked up the other two cases himself and told me softly to do the same and follow him. There was nothing soft about the confirmatory jab in the ribs from Rabat's twelve-bore. I was getting tired of Rabat and his ideas as to what constituted gentle prods, Fleck probably fed him on a straight diet of American gangster magazines.

Fleck had either better night eyes than I had or he had a complete mental picture of the whereabouts of every rope, hawser, bollard and loose cobble on that dockside, but we didn't have far to go and I hadn't tripped and fallen more than four or five times when he slowed down, turned to his right and began to descend a flight of stone stairs. He took his tune about it and risked using his flash and I didn't blame him: the steps were green-scummed and greasy and there was no handrail at all on the seaward side. The temptation to drop one of my cases on top of him and then watch gravity taking charge was strong but only momentary; not only Were there still two guns at my back but my eyes were now just sufficiently accustomed to the dark to let me make out the vague shape of some vessel lying alongside the low stone jetty at the foot of the steps. If he fell now, all Fleck would suffer would be considerable bruising and even greater damage to his pride which might well make him pass up his desire for silence and secrecy in favour of immediate revenge. He didn't look like the kind of man who would miss so I tightened my grip on the cases and went down those steps with all the care and delicate precision of a Daniel picking his way through a den of sleeping lions. And there wasn't all that difference here, just that the lions were wide awake. A few seconds later Marie Hopeman and the two Indians were on the jetty behind me.

We were now only about eight feet above water level and I peered at the vessel to try to get a better idea of her shape and size, but the backdrop of that rain-filled sky was scarcely less dark than that of the land and sea. Broad-beamed, maybe seventy feet long-although I could have been twenty feet out either way-a fairly bulky midships superstructure and masts, whether two or three I couldn't be sure. That was all I had time to see when a door in the superstructure opened and a sudden flood of white light completely destroyed what little night sight I'd been able to acquire. Someone, tall and lean, I thought, passed quickly through the bright rectangle of light and closed the door quickly behind him.

"Everything O.K., boss?" I'd never been to Australia but I'd met plenty of Australians: this one's accent was unmistakable.

"O.K. Got 'em. And watch that damned light. We're coming aboard."

Boarding the ship was no trick at all. The top of the gunwale, amidships where we were, was riding just level with the jetty and all we had to do was jump down the thirty inches to the deck below. A wooden deck, I noticed, not steel. When we were all safely down Captain Fleck said: "We are ready to receive guests, Henry?" He sounded relaxed now, relieved to be back where he was.

"Stateroom's all ready, boss," Henry announced. His voice was a hoarse and lugubrious drawl. "Shall I show them to their quarters?"

"Do that. I'll be in my cabin. All right, Bentall, leave your grips here. I'll see you later."

Henry led the way aft along the deck, with the two Indians close behind. Once clear of the superstructure, he turned right, flicked on a torch and stopped before a small square raised hatch. He bent down, slipped a bolt, heaved the hatch-cover up and back and pointed down with his torch.

"Get down there, the two of you."

I went first, ten rungs on a wet, clammy and vertical steel ladder, Marie Hopeman close behind. Her head had hardly cleared the level of the hatch when the cover slammed down and we heard the scraping thud of a bolt sliding home. She climbed down the last two or three steps and we stood and looked round our stateroom.

It was a dark and noisome dungeon. Well, not quite dark, there was a dim yellow glowworm of a lamp behind a steel-meshed glass on the deckhead, enough so that you didn't have to paw your way around, but it was certainly noisome enough. It smelled like the aftermath of the bubonic plague, stinking to high heaven of some disgusting odour that I couldn't identify. And it was all that could have been asked for in the way of a dungeon. The only way out was the way we had come in. Aft, there was a wooden bulkhead clear across the width of the vessel. I located a crack between two planks and though I couldn't see anything I could sniff diesel oil: the engine-room, without a doubt. In the for'ard bulkhead were two doors, both unlocked: one led to a primitive toilet and a rust-stained wash-basin supplied by a tap that gave a good flow of brown and brackish water, not sea-water: the other opened on to a tiny six by four cabin where nearly all the floor space was occupied by a low made-up bunk without sheets but with what seemed, in the sputtering light of a match, to be fairly clean blankets. Near the two for'ard corners of the hold were six-inch diameter holes in the deckhead: I peered up those, but could see nothing. Ventilators, probably, and they could hardly have been called a superfluous installation: but on that windless night and with the ship not under way they were quite useless.

Heavy spaced wooden battens, held in place by wooden slots in deck and deckhead, ran the whole fore-and-aft length of the hold. There were four rows of those battens, and behind the two rows nearest the port and starboard sides wooden boxes and open-sided crates were piled to the very top, except where a space had been left free for the air from the ventilators to find its way in. Between the outer and inner rows of battens other boxes and sacks were piled half the height of the hold: between the two inner rows, extending from the engine-room bulkhead to the two small doors in the for'ard bulkhead, was a passage perhaps four feet wide. The wooden floor of this alleyway looked as if it had been scrubbed about the time of the Coronation.