10
In the pantry next door to the dining room Rafferty stirred the coffee again in the small pot to be sure the two tablets were dissolved. He glanced at his watch. It was seven twenty-five a.m.; ten minutes to go. He set the pot on a tray with the little pitcher of condensed milk and the sugar bowl, slipped on the white jacket with its exciting hard slab of weight in the right-hand pocket, and carried the tray down the passageway to Madeleine Lennox’ cabin. He knocked. ‘Coffee,’ he said.
‘Just a minute,’ she called out. There was the sound of the door’s being unlatched. He went in. She was sitting on the side of the bunk in pajamas, lighting a cigarette. She smiled. ‘You’re a little early this morning. Thank you, Dominick.’
‘Y’welcome,’ he said. He set the tray on the desk beside the bunk, and as he turned he took the usual good look down the open collar of the pajamas. She never seemed to get wise. Not a bad-looking pair of knockers, either, for an old biddy, and several times he’d been tempted to reach down and cop a handful, but you never knew. She might squawk. Not that he was afraid of Barset, but he didn’t want that big cold-eyed son of a bitch looking down his throat; he’d seen some of his work.
If he’d moved in soon enough he might have got some of it, he thought, stepping into the bathroom as though checking the towel supply and soap. Barset had beat him to it, though; he was pretty sure the scrawny bastard had been dipping his wick in it ever since they left Callao, and now it looked like Goddard-stein was having it delivered to his room. Out of sight, he whistled tunelessly, opened and closed the door of the medicine cabinet, and turned on a faucet momentarily. That Hollywood phony, who’d he think he was fooling, changing his name? The whole place was Jews and nigger-lovers, they ought to burn it down.
He came out. ‘I’ll bring you a couple of fresh towels,’ he said, looking around at her as he reached for the door.
‘Thank you.’ She tilted the pot to fill the cup again, and added some more sugar. He went out into the passageway. She hadn’t noticed a thing; that crappy condensed milk covered the taste of it all right. He stepped out on deck on the starboard side and looked forward. The bos’n and Otto and the other sailor were halfway down it now, coming this way as they washed down with the fire hose and brooms. Four minutes to go.
He stepped back into the passageway and went forward to the linen locker. He picked up two bath towels, came back, and knocked on the door of Madeleine Lennox’ cabin. Before he slipped in he shot a glance both ways along the passageway; nobody was in sight. She looked up and patted back a yawn. She smiled at him with a puzzled shake of the head, and said, ‘I feel so sleepy.’
‘It’s this heat,’ he said. ‘I better close your porthole; they’re washing down.’
He stepped past her, brushing her knees as she sat on the bunk, and leaned over the desk to dog down the porthole. The coffeepot and cup were both empty; she’d drunk it all. He turned and went into the bathroom, still carrying the towels.
Madeleine Lennox gazed dreamily after him and yawned again. Why, he didn’t look down my pajamas that time, she thought in wonder. After a beautifully planned and executed maneuver like that—God, what’s the matter with me, didn’t we sleep at all last night?—after that perfect down-range turn to come in over target at the precise angle to see clear to my navel, he didn’t even look. Could I have aged that much in five minutes?
She was conscious of a roaring sound that puzzled her for a moment; then she recognized it as the stream from the fire hose beating on the bulkhead of Harry’s cabin next door. But she still seemed to be floating off into a rosy cloud, and it was hard to focus or keep her thoughts straight. What was she thinking about? Oh, yes, the twilight of the boob. Her declining box-office. Somewhere between age thirteen, when they started trying to see up your dress, down your dress, or through your dress, and age ninety, when the show had been warehoused for years, there had to be some precise instant of time like the exact balancing point of a teeter-totter when they simply stopped peeking, once and forever. Like that. Was it possible she had pin-pointed this historic moment? Five minutes ago she could have sold advertising space on them, at least at sea—
There was a swishing sound of water along the deck outside, and then an even louder drumming as the stream from the fire hose beat on her own bulkhead and closed porthole. And coincident with this momentary din she saw Rafferty emerge from the bathroom. He had a towel in his right hand, and as he came toward her with his beefy grin he suddenly flipped the towel over into his left, and under it was a blue-black slab of metal which as the widow of a naval officer she could recognize as a sidearm even at the moment of dropping off to sleep like this. He raised it over her head, but there didn’t seem to be much she could do about it.
Rafferty slashed downward with the .45, catching her just above the hairline on the left side of her head, the brutal impact lost under the beating of water against the bulkhead. As she pitched forward he caught her and stretched her out on the bunk with the towel under her head. Dropping the gun back in his pocket, he began yanking at the legs of the pajamas. Damn it, there must be a zipper somewhere. He located it at her left hip, stripped off the garment, and hurriedly unbuttoned the pajama top. Being careful to keep her head on the towel, he turned her face down, and peeled this garment off to complete undressing her.
Stacked, for an old dame. He squeezed an appreciative handful of buttock, and wished he had time to tear off a quickie, but he didn’t like the way that big bastard had looked when he’d told him just what would happen if he didn’t get out of here on schedule. He was taking enough chances carrying this gun, instead of the sap he was supposed to use.
He carried her into the bathroom and stretched her out under the shower. A trickle of blood ran out of her hair onto the tile. He came out, carefully checking the deck between bathroom and bunk. The bos’n and his fire hose were drawing farther away now, and he had to hurry. There were two or three drops of blood. Grabbing the already stained towel off the bunk, he wiped them up, and rolled the towel inside another.
In the bathroom again, he turned on the shower, letting it beat down on her, and dropped a bar of soap on the streaming tile beside her body. He stepped back, surveying the scene and nagged by a feeling there was something he hadn’t done, but it looked all right. She was wet all over, and the soap was there where she’d stepped on it and fallen. He shrugged and went out.
With the rolled towels under his arm, he opened the screen door and peered out into the passageway. No one was in sight. He stepped out quickly and strolled back to the pantry. Karl was in the dining room, setting up for breakfast. He shoved the towels into the bottom of a garbage can he was supposed to have emptied last night, and carried it aft, across the well-deck. The stink was everywhere this morning, and one of the deck apes was gawking up at the ventilators where you could see the smoke coming out. He pointed.
‘It’s burnin’ worse all the time.’
‘Good man,’ Rafferty said approvingly. ‘Give me a report every hour.’ What a clown, you’d think it was his cotton. He went up onto the poop to the fantail and emptied the can. Lighting a cigarette, he stared boredly aft as the two towels and the flotsam of garbage dropped back in the white water of the wake and disappeared. It was going to be another hot day.
* * *
Goddard showered at a quarter of eight, and as he turned off the water he could hear the shower running on the other side of the bulkhead in Mrs. Lennox’s bathroom. He was putting a new blade in the razor to shave when he became aware that the smell of burning cotton had now penetrated clear in here. Clad only in slacks and slippers, he went out on deck and walked aft in the lifeless heat. A squall was making up far off on the horizon to starboard, but what little breeze there was here came from almost directly astern, so there was little movement of air along the superstructure of the ship. Smoke was curling from both ventilators of number three hold, no longer in intermittent wisps but in a steady outpouring that drifted straight up in the brassy sunlight of early morning. A sheen, or haze, seemed to hang over the well-deck itself, and the odor was strong enough to irritate the throat. The Leander was in trouble that was growing worse by the hour.
He’d come aboard the ship in a rubber raft, and he wondered now if he were going to leave it in a lifeboat. If it did come to that, he reflected, he wasn’t going to be in great demand as an occupant of either boat. ‘No, you take the hard-luck bastard in that one. We don’t want him in here.’ Maybe you couldn’t blame them, at that; a murder, a suicide, a heart attack, and a fire, all in three days, might start a witch-hunt almost anywhere.
He went back and shaved. He had finished and was drying the razor when he became aware that Mrs. Lennox’ shower was still running. He grinned. She’d be a great asset on a small boat; she would have used up the Shoshone’s six weeks’ supply of water before breakfast the first morning. Well, it was one way to keep cool.
Karen Brooke was alone in the dining room when he went in a few minutes past eight. She was wearing a sleeveless summer dress of almost the same shade of blue as her eyes, which in combination with the swirl of honey-colored hair seemed to intensify her tan.
‘You look very nice,’ he said.
She smiled, but her manner was cool and impersonal. ‘Thank you, Mr. Goddard. I consider that a real compliment, in view of the priority.’
‘How’s that?’ he asked.
‘Lots of men would have said the ship’s afire, and then you look nice.’
‘Oh, there are clods like that.’ He sobered. ‘How long have you known it?’
‘Since yesterday. About the same time you asked me what the cargo was.’
‘But there’s still no official recognition?’
‘No. Mr. Lind hasn’t been down yet. But I suppose they’ve known it for the past few days. It might be what brought on Captain Steen’s heart attack, don’t you think?’
He nodded. ‘Anyway, he’s better this morning, according to Barset.’
‘Yes, I know.’
Karl came in. Goddard asked for a poached egg and some coffee. Karl poured the coffee and went back to the pantry. ‘Is all of number three loaded with cotton?’ Goddard asked. ‘Tween-decks too?’
‘No-o.’ She frowned, trying to remember. ‘They were just finishing loading when I came aboard, and it seems to me the tween-decks in that one is general cargo—cases of canned goods, leather, a lot of big carboys in crates, things like that.’
‘You don’t know what’s in the carboys?’
She nodded. ‘Alcohol.’
He said nothing, but it was obvious from her expression she knew as well as he did the potentialities of that combination— alcohol-saturated cotton—if those carboys started breaking in the heat down there.
Lind came in. He greeted them abstractedly, and it struck Goddard he came as near to looking troubled as he had ever seen him. Well, it might be understandable under the circumstances. When Karen asked how Captain Steen was doing, he shook his head and frowned.
‘I don’t know. I wish now I’d transferred him to the Kungsholm.’
‘Has he had another attack?’ Goddard asked.
‘No, not that. He rested quietly all night, and his pulse was all right. But the past hour he’s had more trouble breathing. And there may be some pulmonary edema—fluid in the lungs.’
‘Pneumonia?’ Goddard asked.
‘No. But it could be a symptom of congestive heart failure. Sparks is still in touch with the Public Health Service doctors, and we’ve got everything they recommend—but, I don’t know.’
‘Well,’ Karen said, ‘they wouldn’t have any more on the Kungsholm.’
‘Just one thing,’ Lind said bleakly. ‘A licensed doctor, instead of a ham-handed sailor.’ He shrugged then, and managed a wry grin, with a return of some of the old exuberance and self-confidence. ‘Oh, before I forget. We’re afire in number three hold. Not supposed to reveal things like that to you fluttery and hysterical passengers, but it’s getting a little like trying to hide an eight-month pregnancy.’
‘Is there anything you can do?’ Goddard asked.
‘We’re going to start throwing water in it as soon as we can get hoses down through the stuff in the tween-decks.’
‘Is there any chance of telling where the burning bales are?’
‘Not much. And if they’re very far down, it’ll be hard to get any water to them. But if we can wet enough of them on top maybe we can keep it under control.’ Lind drained his cup of coffee and got up without ordering breakfast. ‘You don’t know anybody who’s got a chicken farm for sale?’
He went out. Here we go again, Goddard thought. Will the real Eric Lind stand up? Wasn’t there any way you could arrive at some answer, some definite and final conclusion that would remain valid for at least an hour? Steen was better, so it was all a pipe dream, but now we’re prepared for the next bulletin that he’s dead. Or are we? He thought uneasily of Madeleine Lennox. No, she was all right. She was up; he’d heard her taking a shower.
Karen excused herself and left. He finished his poached egg and lit a cigarette while he drank another cup of coffee. When he went outside and walked aft, the bos’n and two sailors were knocking out the wedges that secured the tarpaulins on number three’s hatch cover. Smoke was filtering up here and there around the edges of it. Another man was unrolling a fire hose. He wondered if they had gas masks aboard; the smoke was going to be pretty bad down there.
He reached for a cigarette, but discovered the pack was empty. He tossed it over the side and went back to his cabin for another. As he was tearing the cellophane from it he was arrested by the faint sound issuing from the open door of his bathroom. He frowned, and stepped inside to be sure. The shower was still running in the one next door. After nearly forty-five minutes? He hurried out into the passageway.
Only the screen door was closed, and through it he could just hear the slight hissing of the water. He knocked. There was no answer, no sound of movement. Could she have gone off and forgotten it? He checked the dining room and the lounge and then the deck outside. She was nowhere around. Uneasy now, he came back and knocked again, and when there was still no response he stepped next door to Karen’s cabin and rapped. She looked out.
He explained quickly, and added, ‘I wonder if you’d look in and see if something’s happened to her.’
‘Yes, of course.’ She knocked on the door herself, and called out, ‘Madeleine.’ She went in. Almost immediately, Goddard heard her startled exclamation. ‘She’s lying under the shower! Wait’ll I get a sheet.’
He heard the shower stop, and then quick footsteps, Karen opened the screen door, her eyes frightened. He hurried into the bathroom. Madeleine Lennox lay almost face down on the tile in the open shower stall, a little stain of pink still spreading from the hair plastered wetly to her skull, and the sheet Karen had spread across her nude body was already soaked. Goddard rolled her over and raised her to a sitting position, wrapping the sheet about her as he gathered her up. Karen threw a towel across the pillow, and he laid her on the bunk.
He grabbed her wrist while Karen watched anxiously. ‘She’s alive,’ he said. The pulse was slow, but steady, and now they could see the rise and fall of her chest. ‘I’ll tell Barset to get Mr. Lind,’ Karen said. She hurried out.
Goddard stepped to the door of the bathroom and looked in. He saw the bar of soap lying on the tile, but it was two other things that caught and held his attention. One was the shower head itself; it was the same as the one in his bathroom, fixed, directly overhead, like those in any men’s locker room. The other item was the dry, unused shower cap hanging from a hook on the bulkhead. And the shower had come on during, or immediately after, all that din the bos’n was making with his fire hose at seven thirty. Well, he thought, you wanted to know. Now you do.
She’d been unconscious for nearly an hour, which meant that unless she’d been slugged hard enough for a genuine concussion she’d been given something to keep her under. He whirled and went back to the bunk. Sliding her arms from under the sheet, he examined both of them. There was no indication of puncture. He looked around then, and saw the tray with its coffeepot and cup on the desk. So it was given orally, beforehand. And the blow on the head was merely to provide a visible wound and some blood, another touch of artistry by the great master of illusion.
She would die without ever regaining consciousness, just as would Captain Steen—unless he was already dead. Lind would simply continue giving her enough morphine to keep her out for several days to simulate the coma from a severe concussion, and then inject the massive overdose that would kill her.
Well, he asked himself bleakly, was it abstract knowledge he’d been after, or did he intend to do something about it? Do what? Challenge Lind openly, tell him he knew the whole thing? What would that accomplish except to get him put on the list himself? Lind was the leader of the conspiracy, the ship’s doctor, and its acting master. Mount his soapbox and incite the rest of the crew to mutiny, not even knowing which ones he was talking to? That would be good for a laugh. Get a load of that goofy bastard; he’s not only a Jonah, but he hears voices.
Karen returned, but remained outside the door. There was the sound of hurrying footsteps along the passageway, and Lind came in. Barset appeared and passed in the first-aid kit. Goddard moved back. Lind checked her pulse, apparently with satisfaction, and raised one eyelid to look at the pupil. He had to wash his hands before he examined the wound, and as he scrubbed, Goddard told him how they’d come to find her.
Lind’s face was serious. ‘Hmmm. Unconscious for nearly an hour. She must have given herself a pretty good rap.’
You couldn’t fault the performance anywhere, Goddard thought as he watched. Lind shaved a small area around the scalp wound, sponged away the blood, and examined it. It wasn’t a bad cut, he announced; two stitches would close it. He probed with fingertips; the skull felt intact and certainly wasn’t depressed. Only an X-ray could tell whether or not there was a fracture, but he didn’t think there was. He cleaned the wound expertly with antiseptic, and put in the two stitches and added a small dressing. He checked her pulse again with a profound air, gently lowered the wrist, and radiated optimism. The great healer, Goddard thought.
So? So I open my stupid mouth, and I get killed too. And what good would it do her, except she’d have company on the bottom of the ocean? They might even sew us both in the same sack, if they’re running short of canvas.
And what was Madeleine Lennox to him anyway? He’d known her for three days, they’d had a couple of casual and utterly impersonal rolls in the hay, and once they’d reached Manila he’d never have seen her again anyway. He wasn’t involved any more; all he asked of the human race was to be left alone. That wasn’t an exorbitant demand, was it? All he had to do was mind his own business. And let her die.
He sighed then. It was a nice try, but, maybe he’d known it wouldn’t work. However he’d have to wait till he got Lind alone to heave it into the fan; he didn’t want to involve Karen in it.
‘Nothing more we can do at the moment,’ Lind said. 'I don’t know how bad the concussion is, but all we can do is wait till she comes around. I’ll look in on her every hour or so.’
‘Fine,’ Goddard said. ‘We’ll keep checking her too.’
Lind went out, carrying the first-aid kit. Barset sighed, shook his head in silent comment on this endless chain of disasters, and left. Karen watched them go down the passageway; then she stepped inside and closed the door. She took a cigarette from a pack on the desk, and leaned close as Goddard struck the lighter.
‘Well,’ she asked quietly, ‘how do we stop him?’
Goddard marveled at his own stupidity. If a man could figure out that she wouldn’t have been under the shower without her cap, washing her hair with a bar of soap instead of shampoo, twenty minutes before breakfast when it would take four hours to dry in this humidity, how had he expected another woman to fail to grasp it?
Before he could reply, the screen door swung open and Rafferty appeared, carrying a mop and a can of scouring powder. The beefy face was set in an expression of bland innocence and concern, which Goddard expected and dismissed, but there were two items he did find of more interest. One was the slight sag to the right-hand pocket of the jacket, and the other was a faint but undeniable thump of something inside the pocket as it brushed against the door facing.
‘Geez, I guess she really took a header, huh?’ Rafferty asked with a glance toward the unconscious figure on the bunk.
‘Yes, I guess she did, Rafferty,’ Goddard said pleasantly. We’re not in your way here?’
‘Naw, I’ll just crumb up the bathroom a little.’ He disappeared inside it.
Karen was watching Goddard in wonder. He had taken a handkerchief from his pocket and was winding it tightly about his right hand like a cestus, and the expression in his eyes was one she’d never seen before in those of a civilized man. There was something feral and wicked and almost hungry about them as he shook his head for silence and stepped casually over toward the doorway. He unhooked and closed the heavy wooden door and silently slid the bolt. The slapping sound of Rafferty’s mop continued inside the bathroom. Goddard stepped back and stationed himself beside its open doorway.
‘Look!’ he exclaimed. ‘She’s coming around. Her eyes are open.’
For a moment it fooled even Karen. She jerked her head around to look at Madeleine Lennox, and by the time she’d turned back Rafferty was emerging from the bathroom door, his eyes turned in the same direction. Goddard stepped out in front of him and swung, from far down and way back, with no necessity for subtlety or feinting, feet planted and all his weight moving forward. The fist clenched into a bound and rock-hard projectile at the instant of impact and buried itself to the wrist in Rafferty’s unsuspecting belly.
Rafferty grunted and doubled over. Goddard caught a jacket lapel with his left hand, clawed him out of the doorway toward him, and shot the right again. It smashed into the side of Rafferty’s jaw just below and in front of the ear. The head weather-cocked with the force of it and he started to spin, went off balance, and crashed back against the heavy wooden door with his head and shoulders as he fell to the deck. Goddard leaped on him, landing with one knee in the belly and slashing the wrapped hand across his throat. Rafferty was a bull and not much more than twenty, and the inexorable law in this kind of thing was that if you were going to win it at forty-six you had to win it fast. The second round was doubtful, and there was never any third.
Rafferty gagged, but heaved upward under him, sheer strength pushing him off the deck. Goddard opened a cut above one eye, smashed him across the mouth, and pushed back, as though trying to hold him down. Rafferty was still scrambling up. Goddard suddenly removed his weight, came up with him, reached backward, got an arm around his neck, heaved forward, and threw him. Rafferty’s body cartwheeled and slammed into the bulkhead. He fell down it on his head and one shoulder, and sprawled, reaching for the gun in the pocket of his jacket. It came clear. Goddard stamped down on the wrist and ground his heel. The gun slipped from Rafferty’s fingers. Goddard grabbed it and slashed the barrel down across the side of his head hard enough to open the scalp. Rafferty pushed back against the bulkhead, dazed now, and tried to sit up. Blood ran down across his face.
Karen watched in horror. A face appeared momentarily at the closed porthole, and there were running footsteps on deck. Goddard jerked back the slide of the .45 to arm it. A cartridge jumped out, glinting as it spun across the deck. There was already one in the chamber. He shoved the slide back, slid off the safety, and pushed the muzzle against Rafferty’s teeth.
‘All right, you son of a bitch! What’d you give her, and how much?’
‘Up yours,’ Rafferty said, and then wished he hadn’t. Goddard grinned, and he’d never seen a face like that before. Goddard flicked on the safety, caught him by the shirt collar, leaned in on him, hard, and slashed his head again with the gun barrel.
‘You want to wear your scalp around your neck like a lei, go ahead,’ he said, fighting for breath. Somebody was hammering on the door. He raised the gun again.
‘Two tablets,’ Rafferty said.
‘Of what?’
‘I don’t know. He just give ‘em to me. He didn’t say what they was.’
Probably codeine, Goddard thought. But whatever it was, two couldn’t be any more than double a prescription dose and unlikely to be fatal.
‘Where’s Mayr?’ he asked.
‘Mayr? He’s dead and buried, you jerk.’ He looked at Goddard’s face, and at the gun, rising again. ‘All right, he’s down below somewhere. I don’t know where.’
‘How’s he supposed to get off the ship? And where?’
‘A boat, somewhere ahead of us.’
‘How far?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘How many are there besides Lind?’ ‘Otto, Sparks, Karl, Mueller—’ ‘Who’s Mueller?’
‘The bos’n.’
There were more people in the passageway now. Somebody was battering on the door with what sounded like a sledge. ‘And who else?’ Goddard asked.
‘One of the black gang, but I don’t know which one.’
‘Any more?’
'I don’t know. You think he tells me anything?’
‘You’re in it for the money, is that it?’
‘Partly.’
The bolt was beginning to tear out of the door. Rafferty looked at it. Help was coming. ‘What else?’ Goddard asked.
Rafferty spat in his face. ‘What do you think, Jew boy?’
'I see,’ Goddard said. ‘You’re dedicated.’ He wiped the spittle from his face. Without looking around, he spoke to Karen Brooke between crashes on the door. ‘Karen, see if you can find that cartridge; we’ve only got one clip. Stay close to me, and don’t let anybody get behind you.’
He stood up and gestured to Rafferty with the gun. ‘All right, save the hammering out there,’ he called through the door. ‘We’re coming out.’ He worked the bolt back and pulled the door open. The screen door had been torn from its hinges and was lying on deck. Otto was standing in front of it with the nozzle of a fire hose, Lind was beside him, and Karl was coming up the passageway behind them with a fire ax. Otto started to raise the nozzle until he saw the 0.45 dangling in Goddard’s hand.
Goddard shoved Rafferty out. ‘Here’s your boy,’ he said to Lind.
Lind nodded, but said nothing.
Goddard jerked his head at Otto. ‘Throw that thing forward, and go aft. You too, Karl.’
The nozzle and fire ax clanged on the deck. Goddard looked out and checked to his right. There was nobody in the passageway forward. He gestured for Lind and the other three to go on aft and out on deck, and followed close behind them with Karen on his heels. Barset was in the thwartships passageway near the entrance to the dining room, looking frightened.
‘Don’t get behind me,’ Goddard said. Barset turned and went the other way.
The four men went out on deck. Goddard checked to be sure they were all in view before he stepped out himself, followed by Karen. He moved to the right to get out from in front of the passageway. There was no breeze at all now and the sea was like polished metal. Just ahead and to starboard the sky was a poisonous mass of cloud veined with the nervous play of lightning. Thunder growled on the horizon, and the acrid odor of burning cotton stung his throat. Mueller, the bos’n, was running up the ladder from the deck below. Goddard gestured for him to stand clear, near the others, and spoke to Lind.
‘Where Mayr is, or what you’re going to do with him, I couldn’t care less. But I’m going to move Mrs. Lennox into my cabin, and Karen and I are going to be there with her from now on. I don’t know how many of your crew are in this, but I’ve got a blanket policy that covers it; anybody who tries to get in will be shot. We may not make it to Manila, but some of you won’t either.’
There were no threats, no bluster. Lind merely listened, and waited for him to finish. He turned to Rafferty then, and said quietly, 'I thought I told you not to carry that gun.’
Rafferty’s eyes were crawling with fear, but he tried to bluff it out. ‘Well, Chrissakes, we got plenty more—’
It was swift, deadly, and sickening. Lind made a quick movement of his hand. Rafferty threw up an arm. Lind caught it, twisted it behind his back, and ran him headfirst into the bulkhead. There was a meaty thud, and a grunt like that of a pole-axed steer. Lind picked him up by coat collar and crotch, stepped to the rail, and threw him overboard.
The whimpering little yunh-yunh-yunh-yunh he mouthed as he fell was cut off by the sound of the splash below them. Goddard winced. In spite of himself he turned and looked aft as Rafferty surfaced in the white water beyond the line of the poop and began to drop astern, his mouth open in a soundless scream and his arms flailing as he tried to swim after the ship like a dog chasing a car.
‘Oh, God!’ Karen cried out in a strangled voice beside him. She ran to the rail and gagged. Goddard raised the gun, but it was too late; Lind had already leaped and caught her. With his left arm about her waist, he swung her up over the rail as if to throw her into the sea. He caught a handful of her skirt and slip with his right hand and let her dangle over the rushing water below as the garments slid up under her arms. The slender body writhed as she struggled, face outward, trying to turn inward and grab the stanchion. Braced against the rail and holding her out behind him, Lind turned and looked at Goddard. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘toss Otto the gun.’
Goddard heard a brief, blood-freezing sound of seams beginning to tear. He tossed the gun to Otto. At the same time a voice in the after well-deck shouted, ‘Mayr!’ Lind turned and looked.
There was another ripping sound. ‘Get her up!’ Goddard shouted. He lunged for the rail. There was no way to tell whether Lind tried to lift her back or not. The dress tore away, she slid out of the half slip, and Goddard saw her body drop feet-first into the sea.
In the madness then, he didn’t know who hit him first. A fist crashed against his jaw. He reeled backward, swung at one of the faces boring in, and then he was down as they swarmed him under. He got a knee into somebody’s groin, smashed another in the face and managed to fight his way momentarily to his feet, trying to get to Lind. As he went down the second time, he saw Mayr running up the ladder just beyond him, carrying a machine pistol.
Somebody got a clear swing at his face, knocking his head back against the deck. The barrel of the .45 chopped downward. He could see it, but there was no way to avoid it. They heaved him up, dazed but still conscious, and threw him over the rail. He was turning as he fell, and he saw the sky wheel above him, and the far line of the horizon, and then the water rushing up.