The Dark Crusader (5 page)

I broke away from her desperate grip and almost literally flung myself through the small cabin door. This wasn't courage, it was the lack of it, I didn't know what the fauna of the South Pacific was but it might have ranged from nests of cobras to colonies of black widow spiders and if I'd stopped to think of all the unpleasant possibilities it might have taken me a very long time indeed to cross that threshold.

I picked the blazing torch off the floor and swung it round in a complete circle, all in one movement. Nothing. Another, a much slower and more thorough inspection. Still nothing, nothing except a pile of damp clothes and a couple of my socks on the bed. I went out, taking the socks with me, and pulled the door tight shut behind me.

Her breathing had quietened but she was still trembling badly when I got back. The change from the cool, self-sufficient and rather aloof young lady who had flown out to Fiji with me to this panic-stricken defenceless girl was just within the limits of credibility and it gave me no pleasure at all. Her fair hair was in wild disorder. She was wearing a matched jumper and cardigan and a pair of light blue slacks. On her left foot she wore two of my socks: the right foot was bare.

I turned the torch on this bare foot, leaned forward suddenly and swore. On the outside of the foot, just behind the little toe, were two narrow deep punctures from which blood was slowly welling.

"Rat!" I said. "You've been bitten by a rat."

"Yes," she said shakily. Her eyes darkened in remembered terror. "It was horrible, horrible, horrible! A black rat, huge, as big as a cat. I tried to shake it off but it hung on and on and on-"

"It's all over now," I said .sharply. The hysteria had been climbing back into her voice. "Just a moment."

"Where-where are you going?" she asked fearfully.

"First aid kit in my case." I fetched it, squeezed out the wounds and soaked up all the blood with cotton-woof, used iodine liberally, applied a plaster dressing and pulled on the socks. "You won't come to any harm from that."

I lit and gave her a cigarette, ripped a spar off one of the wooden crates, used it as a lever to rip off a larger spar from another crate and finally used that to wrench off a three-foot long three by one from the biggest crate I could see: with three three-inch nails sticking out from the far end it made quite a weapon, more than a match for the fangs of any rat.
As
big as a cat, Marie Hopeman had said, but I took that with a pinch of salt-they might be as long as a cat but never as big-but for all that black ships' rats could be vicious, especially in numbers. I went into the cabin again, peered around cautiously for the enemy, found none, picked up the two pillows and blankets from the bunk, went out again, shook the blankets ostentatiously to demonstrate that there were no rats concealed in the folds, wrapped them tightly round her, put the pillows behind her back, dug out a spare jacket from one of my cases, made her put it on and stepped back to admire my handiwork.

"Not bad at all," I admitted. "I have the touch. Mirror and comb, perhaps? They tell me it does wonders for a woman's morale."

"No." She smiled shakily at me. "As long as I can't see it, I don't worry. You know, I don't really think you're tough at all."

I smiled back at her, very enigmatic I thought, then used my tie to hang the torch from a batten, close by the deck-head. I pulled back some battens across the aisle from her and hoisted myself up on a platform of wooden boxes, the three by one ready to hand.

"You can't sleep there," she protested. "It's too hard and- and you'll fall off." This was something new, Marie Hopeman showing any concern for me.

"I've no intention of going to sleep," I said. "That's for you. Rat-catcher Bentall, that's me. Goodnight."

We must have been well clear of the land by this time, for the schooner was beginning to roll, not much, but enough to be perceptible. The timbers creaked, the torch swung to and fro throwing huge black moving shadows and, all the time, now that our movements and voices had ceased, I could hear a constant sibilant rustle, either our rodent pals on safari or a cockroach battalion on the march. The combination of the creaking, the rustling and the black ominous shifting shadows was hardly calculated to induce a mood of soporific tranquillity, and I was hardly surprised when, after ten minutes, Marie Hopeman spoke.

"Are-are you asleep? Are you all right?"

"Sure I'm all right," I said comfortably. "Goodnight."

Another five minutes then:

"John!" It was the first time she'd ever called me that except when company had made it necessary to keep up the fiction of our marriage.

"Hullo?"

"Oh, damn it!" There was vexation in her voice, a small reluctant anger at herself, but there was nervousness, too, and the nervousness had the upper hand. "Come and sit beside me."

"Right," I said agreeably. I jumped down to the deck, swung myself up on the other side and seated myself as comfortably as I could with my feet propped against the outboard battens. She made no move or stir to acknowledge my arrival, she didn't even look at me. But I looked at her, I looked and I thought of the change a couple of short hours could make. On the four-stage hop from London airport to Suva she'd hardly acknowledged my existence as a human being, except in airport terminals and conspicuous seats in a plane, where she'd smiled at me, taken my arm and sweet-talked me as any bride of ten weeks ought to have done. But the moment we had been alone or secure from observation her normal cool aloof remote personality had dropped between us like a portcullis with a broken hoist-rope. The previous afternoon, waking out of a short sleep on the Hawaii-Suva hop and drowsily forgetting that we weren't being watched, I'd incautiously taken her hand: she'd taken my right wrist in her right hand, slowly-far too slowly- withdrawn her left hand, at the same time giving me the kind of look that stays with you for a long time to come: if I could have hidden under the seat I'd have done just that and with the size I'd felt it would have been no trick at all. I didn't make the same mistake again, I'd sworn to myself that I wouldn't make the same mistake again, so now, sitting beside her in the dank and chilly hold of that gently rolling schooner, I reached down and took her hand in mine.

Her hand was ice-cold and stiffened immediately at my touch: next second it was clamped round mine and doing its best to give an imitation of a small but powerful vise. I hadn't taken all that of a chance, she wasn't scared, she was terrified, and that was all out of character with Marie Hope-man: I could feel her shiver from time to time and it wasn't all that cold down in the hold.

"Why did you bawl me out back in the hotel room?" she said reproachfully. "It wasn't nice."

"I seldom am," I agreed. "But that was different. You were about to start apologising to me for falling asleep."

"It was the least I could do. I-I'm sorry."

"Didn't it strike you that our friend Fleck might have found it rather curious?" I asked. "Innocent people with nothing to hide don't strive to keep awake all night along. My one thought at the moment was that the less reason Fleck had to suspect us of being anything other than we claimed the greater would be our later freedom of movement.

"I'm sorry," she repeated.

"It doesn't matter. No harm done." A pause. "Did you ever read George Orwell's '1984'?"

" '1984'?" Her voice was surprised and wary at the same time. "Yes, I have?"

"Remember how the authorities finally broke the resistance of the central character?"

"Don't!" She jerked her hand from mine and covered her face with her hands. "It's-it's too horrible."

"All sorts of different people have all sorts of different phobias," I said gently. I took one of her hands away from her face. "Yours just happens to be rats."

"It-it's not a phobia," she said defensively. "Not liking things is not a phobia. All sorts of people, especially women, hate rats."

"And mice," I agreed. "They yell and they scream and they dance about and they make for the highest piece of furniture they can reach. But they don't have the pink fits, not even if bitten. They're not still shaking like a broken bed-spring half an hour after it happens. What started all this off?"

She was silent for half a minute, then abruptly pushed up the tousled blonde hair at the side of her neck. Even in the dim half-light I had no difficulty in seeing the scar behind the right ear.

"It must have been a mess at the time," I nodded. "Rat, I take it. How?"

"After my parents were drowned on the way to England I was brought up by my uncle and aunt. On a farm." Her voice was not that of a person discussing the faraway green fields of treasured memories. "There was a daughter three or four years older than I was. She was nice. So was her mother, my aunt."

"And he was the wicked uncle?"

"Don't laugh. It's not funny. He was all right at first, until my aunt died about eight years after I came to them. Then he started drinking, lost the farm and had to move to a smaller place where the only room for me was an attic above the barn." ,

"Okay, that's enough," I interrupted. "I can guess the rest."

"I used to lie awake at night with a torch in my hand," she whispered. "A ring of eyes round the room, red and pink and white. Watching me, just watching me. Then I'd light a candle before going to sleep. One night the candle went out and when I woke up this-this-it was caught in my hah" and biting and it was dark and I screamed and screamed-"

"I told you, that's enough," I said harshly. "Do you like hurting yourself?" Not nice, but necessary.

"I'm sorry," she said in a low voice. "That's all. I was three weeks in hospital, not with my neck but because I was a bit out of my mind and then they let me out again." All this in a very matter-of-fact voice. I wondered what it cost her to say it. I tried not to feel sorry for her, not to feel pity: involvement with any person was the one thing I couldn't afford. But I couldn't help myself from saying: "Your unpleasant experiences weren't just confined to the rats, were they?"

She twisted to look at me, then said slowly: "You are more shrewd than I had thought."

"Not really. When you find women behaving in the hands-off down the nose snooty superciliousness affected by some, it's because they think it's an interesting attitude or a mark of superiority, or provocative, or simply because it's a cover-up for the fact that they haven't sufficient intelligence or common sense to behave and converse like a human being. We include you out. How about the wicked uncle?"

"He was wicked all right," she said, unsmiling. "By and by my cousin ran away because she couldn't stand him any longer. A week later I did the same, but for different reasons, some neighbours found me crying in the woods in the dark. I was taken to some institution, then put in care of a guardian." She didn't like any of this and neither did I. "He had a sick wife and a full-grown son and-and they fought over me. Then another institution and another and another. I had no family, I was young, a foreigner and had no money: some people think the combination entitles them to-"

"All right," I said. "You don't like rats. And you don't like men."

"I've never had any reason to change my mind about either."

It was hardly the time to point out that with her face and her figure she had as much chance of escaping attention as a magnet would have of moving untouched through a heap of iron filings. Instead, I cleared my throat and said: "I'm a man, too."

"So you are. I'd quite forgotten." The words meant nothing but the little smile that went with them made me feel ten feet tall. "I'll bet you're just as bad as the rest."

"Worse," I assured her. " 'Ravening' would be a weak word to describe me."

"That's nice," she murmured. "Put your arm around me."

I stared at her. "Come the dawn," I said, "you'll regret this weakness."

"Let the dawn look after itself," she said comfortably. "You'll stay here all night?"

"What's left of it."

"You won't leave me?" This with a child-like persistence. "Not even for a moment?"

"Nary a minute." I rattled my club against the battens. "I'll sit here and I'll keep awake and I'll fight off every rat in the South Pacific. Every man in the South Pacific, too, if it conies to that."

"I'm quite sure you would," she said peacefully. She was asleep inside a minute.

CHAPTER TWO

Tuesday 8:30 A.M.-7 P.M.

She slept serenely, like one dead, for over three hours, her breathing so quiet that I could hardly hear it. As the time slipped by, the rolling of the schooner became increasingly more pronounced until after one particularly violent lurch she woke up with a start and stared at me, her eyes reflecting confusion and perhaps a touch of fear. Then understanding came back and she sat up, taking the weight off my arm for the first time in hours.

"Hullo, knight-errant," she said.

"Morning. Feel better?"

"Mmm." She grabbed a batten as another violent lurch sent some loose boxes banging about the hold. "But I won't be for long, not if this sort of thing keeps up. Nuisance, I know, but I can't help it. What's the time?"

I made to look at the watch on my left wrist, but the arm was quite dead. I reached it across with my right hand, trying not to wince as the pins and needles of returning circulation shot through it. She frowned and said: "What's wrong?"

"You told me not to stir all night," I pointed out patiently. "So I didn't. You are no light weight, young lady."

"I'm sorry," she said quickly. She looked at me quizzically, colour in her cheeks, but smiled without embarrassment. "It's come the dawn and I still don't regret my weakness.... Half-past eight, your watch says. Must be broad daylight. I wonder where we're heading?"

"North or south. We're neither quartering nor corkscrewing, which means that we have this swell right on the beam. I don't remember much of my geography but enough to be pretty sure that at this time of the year the steady easterly trades push up an east-west swell. So, north or south," I lowered myself stiffly to my feet, walked for'ard along the central aisle to where the two narrow spaces, one on each side, had been left clear of cargo to give access to the ventilator intakes. I moved into those in turn and touched both the port and starboard sides of the schooner, high up. The port side was definitely warmer than the starboard. That meant we were moving more or less due south. The nearest land in that direction was New Zealand, about a thousand miles away. I filed away this helpful information and was about to move when I heard voices from above, faint but unmistakable. I pulled a box down from behind its retaining batten and stood on it, the side of my face against the foot of the ventilator.