Murderers' Row (19 page)

“Oh, an uncontrolled jibe could dismast the ship, but with that woman at the wheel and Nick to handle the mainsheet and backstays—”

“What's a sheet? I forget.”

She glanced at me over her shoulder. “You don't really know very much, do you?”

I said, “I haven't been puking all over the damn boat, either, small stuff. Let's not get into a comparison of our seagoing abilities, huh? What's a sheet?”

“The mainsheet is the line—rope to you—controlling the mainsail.” Her voice was stiff. “To jibe under control, or wear ship as they used to call it, Nick's got to get the sail sheeted flat aft so it can't swing, and the starboard backstay set up taut; then Mrs. Rosten will bring the stern through the wind... There!”

There was a lurch, and I felt the schooner heel over to the left—excuse me, to port. Above us, blocks squealed and spars creaked; the whole ship seemed to sigh, taking the strain of the masts and rigging a different way.

“Now we're on the starboard track,” the kid said. “Nick's cast off the port backstay and is slacking off on the mainsheet... You didn't have to say that!”

“Say what?”

She turned to face me. I could see her vaguely in the yellow glow from the bathroom, where the light was still on. She had a pale, rumpled, wrung-out look; but she was focusing again. Her voice was shrill.

“Just because I don't have the stomach of a goat, like some people!”

“Easy, kid,” I said. “I didn't mean—”

“Don't call me kid,” she gasped. “I'm twenty-two years old and I'm not a kid and I know you think I'm an absolute fool, the way I've behaved. Theodora the Terrible, the ruthless murderess who can't bear the thought of blood, the irresistible siren who doesn't really want to be touched, the nautical expert who can't even keep her lunch down when it blows. Well, how would you like to be a cute little female Tom Thumb all your life? I'm not a toy, damn it, I'm a person; but try to make people believe it! Just try!” She drew a long, ragged breath. “Here we go again!”

There was again that odd stillness as the schooner came dead before the wind, and the lurch as the sails swung across and filled on the new tack.

“We must be maneuvering inshore,” Teddy said. Her voice was suddenly calm again. She looked out. “I can't see anything. I bet they're sweating up there, just the two of them, working a boat this size in shallow water. I hope that woman knows what she's doing. If she puts us aground in this wind, she'll break the ship in two. We'd drown in here before anybody—Matt,” she whispered, turning. “Matt, I'm sorry. Be nice to me. I'm so damn scared!”

It was the moment for me to take her into my arms and smooth the matted fair hair back from her small face and kiss her and tell her everything was going to be all right, even if I didn't mean it. It was what she wanted me to do, and I was damned if I'd do it. She at least could have stayed sick; she didn't have to get up and explain her lousy little psyche to me, as if I cared.

Abruptly, the schooner turned left for what seemed an hour, leaning over hard; then it came upright. The sound of flapping canvas reached us from above. I looked at Teddy.

“We've rounded up into the wind,” she said. Her voice was strained. “They must be—taking somebody on board.”

Something thumped against the side of the ship. We heard footsteps overhead. Suddenly Robin Rosten's voice was speaking in the passageway.

“Straight ahead. Not in there, that's the head— bathroom to you. It's the cabin to starboard. No, no, on your right, you lubber. Throw him in and let's get topside and give Nick a hand before we drift onto the shoals.”

The man who opened the door had a seamed, whiskery face and a meaty nose. Remove the whiskers, and it was a face I'd seen in the files, but I couldn't recall the name that went with it. Well, I'd figured he'd be somebody reasonably familiar. Robin had got my code name from the conversation I'd had with Jean; but the name Matthew Helm hadn't been mentioned in that hotel room. She had to have got that from somebody who knew the two names went together.

He'd seen my face somewhere, too, and he was glad to see it again. “Mister Helm,” he said. “How nice to make your acquaintance. I have been looking forward to it. You are not as pretty as the lady we were expecting, the one with such a deplorable fondness for liquor, but I'm sure my superiors will not complain...”

“Stow it, Loeffler,” Robin said, behind him. “Never mind the corny dialogue. Just shove in the doctor and secure the door.”

“Secure? Ah, you mean fasten—”

The man called Loeffler—which wasn't the name we had him filed under—got a grip on the sagging figure supported between him and Robin, and propelled him forward for me to catch. The door closed, and I was standing there with Dr. Norman Michaelis in my arms, the man I'd come to silence. I remembered Mac's words clearly:
How to achieve this result is left entirely to the discretion of the agent on the spot. Do you understand?

I'd understood perfectly then, and I understood just as well now. It was a moment of triumph, in a way. I'd broken discipline and disobeyed orders to get here. I'd played gangster and let myself be drugged and imprisoned. I might never get out alive, but at least my job was finished. Jean's job was finished. I was here, and so was the subject I'd come to find. The rest, for a man of my training, was just a technical detail.

“Is he—going to be all right?”

That was Teddy, behind me, trying to get a look at her parent as I put him into the bunk beside Louis. It was a damn fool question. Probably none of us were going to be all right. Certainly Dr. Norman Michaelis wasn't, not if I could help it.

He looked about as you'd expect a man to look after being imprisoned for a lengthy interval in a ruined cellar. He seemed to be wearing slacks, a sport shirt, and rubber-soled shoes. I remembered that he'd vanished while out sailing. The mechanics of it had never been explained to me, and didn't really matter. I wasn't about to wake him up to ask him.

The clothes were filthy, his hair was long and tangled, and he had a beard like a hermit. He looked half-starved to boot. He was out cold.

“What's the matter with him?” Teddy wailed. “Why doesn't he wake up?”

I said, “They've got him under drugs. It's the lazy man's way of keeping a prisoner quiet. Besides, the right drugs used long enough affect the will to resist. I guess they were softening him up for the interrogation experts.”

My voice sounded dry and pedantic and far away. It would have been such an easy job if I'd been alone with him; it would have been over already. He was drugged, weakened by exposure and hunger; it would have been no more trouble than blowing out a candle.

His lips moved. “AUDAP? I don't know anything about—no, no, I won't tell—you can't make me tell!”

He was wrong. They could make him tell. They could make almost any man tell almost anything—unless the man were dead. I thought of the odd-looking nuclear submarines with their incredible loads of destruction upon which, Mac had been told by the Navy, depended the safety of the nation and the peace of the world. Even if the picture was a little exaggerated—I'd never yet met a military man who was entirely objective about the importance of his own service—the decision wasn't mine to make. I had my orders.

I stuck my elbow into the kid crowding against me. “Get over by the porthole, Teddy. Tell me if you can see anything. Brief me.”

“But—”

“Snap into it. I'll look after him.” I'd look after him, all right.

She moved away reluctantly. I was aware of her leaning forward to wipe at the glass—and there was my chance. The little death pill was in my hand. I hated to part with it, I might need it myself pretty soon, but it was the best way. All I had to do was slip it into his mouth and make him swallow. She'd never know. He'd simply have died in his drugged sleep, as far as she was concerned.

Her voice hit me like a sonic boom. “We've turned back north; we've got the island off the starboard. We're close-hauled, beating out of Mendenhall Bay. We'll have to tack as soon as we're clear of the island to make open water. I hope that woman's got her bearings straight. We can't have much room to play around in here, in a boat this size.”

My voice still came from far away. “Why would Mrs. Rosten come clear in here, in the first place, instead of picking them up on the seaward side of the island, where we had plenty of room and couldn't be seen from shore?”

“Don't be silly, she had to get in the lee to bring them aboard. They'd never have been able to get a rubber boat out to us seaward, not against this wind. There must be a mile of breakers on that side tonight.” Teddy leaned forward. “We're still holding on; we've got a ways to go yet before we can come about and clear the island on the port tack...”

I looked at the man on the bunk.
Stop stalling, you spineless jerk!
I told myself. I leaned forward and made a show of drawing back the eyelid to look at the eye, like a TV doctor. I picked up the wrist to check the pulse. I dropped the wrist and leaned forward again to put my hand to his mouth. Teddy spoke behind me.

“What are you doing, Matt? What are you giving him?”

I didn't even jump. I guess I'd known it wouldn't work out right. Maybe I hadn't even wanted it to work out right. But it was all of a pattern, I thought grimly: the woman who'd died when she wasn't supposed to and the man who was alive five minutes after he should have been dead. I should, of course, have done it the instant they threw him into my arms, as I'd planned, and to hell with who saw what. I might even have got away with it, then.

I turned my head slowly. “Benzedrine,” I said. “To bring him around.”

She was frowning at me. I don't put much stock in feminine intuition; she'd have been a real dope if she hadn't sensed something, after the fumble-witted stalling I'd done.

“Let me see it,” she said in an odd little voice, and I showed it to her on the palm of my hand. She asked, “How do you happen to have—”

“Hell, we always carry bennies to keep us awake on a tough job.”

“But are you sure that's the right thing to give him?”

Her voice had an absent sound, as if she wasn't really interested in the question she was asking. She was still frowning, not at the pill, but at me. Her blue eyes were narrow and wondering. She knew that something was wrong, terribly wrong, but the idea that had come into her mind was too far-out to put into words... She did it without a hint of warning. She just grabbed the pill out of my hand and started bringing it to her mouth; and I swung without thinking, slapping it away before it reached her lips. I guess I'd have done the same thing even if I'd had time to think.

The pill rolled away across the teak floor, and then came back towards us as the
Freya
heeled over. It reminded me, somehow, of one of the pearls from Jean's broken necklace. I got up and picked it up. I went into the john, dropped it into the toilet, and pumped it out of sight. When I came back, she was still standing stiffly by the bed.

“No!” she said breathlessly. “Stay away! Don't come near him!”

She was staring at me as if she had never seen me before. Perhaps she hadn't. “You—were going to
kill
him!” she whispered.

I laughed. “You've got murder on the brain, small stuff. I told you, it was a benny.”

“Then why didn't you let me swallow it?”

“You're crazy enough without being hopped up on benzedrine. Now cut out the melodramatics, Teddy, and—”

“That's why you wanted us to wait until he came aboard, so you could kill him. So he couldn't tell anybody—and I thought you were being so brave and generous!”

I said, “For the love of Pete, cut it out! Don't throw a wingding on me now.”

She said fiercely, “You'll have to kill me, too! You know that, don't you? If anything happens to him, anything at all, you'll have to kill me, too!”

I looked at her grimly, wondering what I'd done to be punished by having to deal with this unpredictable little bundle of cowardice and courage, of nonsense and sense.

I said wearily, “It will be a pleasure to assassinate you, Peewee, as soon as we're out of this. Just call on me any time. But right now, will you get to that damn window and tell me—”

“Porthole,” she said mechanically. They'll never let you call any part of a ship by the wrong name, even if the bucket's sinking under you.

“All right, porthole!” I said. “Now snap out of it. Nobody's going to touch your old man. At least I'm not. So get over there—”

The
Freya
changed course sharply. I heard the thunder of flapping canvas overhead as she came to an even keel. Teddy glanced at me warily and darted to the porthole.

“We're coming about!” she said. She sounded shocked. “I don't understand! Mrs. Rosten can't possibly hope to lay a course out past the island yet, with the wind in this quarter. She'll put us aground on—what's that?”

A vibration went through the schooner's hull. For a moment, I thought we'd struck bottom; and I saw the same thought in Teddy's eyes. We stared at each other dumbly, forgetting everything else. The vibration settled down to a strong, steady rumble that shook the lights and made the door rattle. I drew a long breath.

“She's just started up the mill, that's all,” I said.

“We're still swinging!” Teddy said, bewildered. “She's bearing off before the wind, back into Mendenhall Bay.” Her small face lighted up. She whirled to grab me by the arm. “Matt, we're saved! There must be somebody out there, heading her off, to make her turn back like that. She's started the auxiliary because it doesn't matter who hears her now, don't you see? But she's trapped inside the island. They're bound to catch her!”