Midnight Sailing, page 6
“I doubt if Miss Bonner is a serious menace to the peace of the world,” Larkin said.
“Don’t you think she might be trying to worm herself into your confidence?”
“What for?” Larkin asked.
Willowby smiled knowingly. “Aren’t you a detective?” he asked.
“No,” Larkin laughed.
“That’s odd,” Willowby frowned. “Mr. Shima said there was a detective aboard.”
“Who’s Mr. Shima?”
“The distinguished-looking Jap gentleman from Callao.”
“He’s mistaken,” said Larkin. “But this Chilean brandy is no mistake. It’s delightfully warming. Shall we drink to Dorothy Bonner?”
Willowby gave a brief, genteel laugh. “You’re a sly fox,” he said.
“And after that, we’ll drink to the Chilean Navy, the Peruvian Navy, and the Manchurian War Ministry. Salud y pesetas, Mr. Willowby.”
“You speak Spanish?”
“That’s for Chile and Peru. Now what would one say in toasting Manchuria? Would it be Banzai?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Willowby uneasily.
“It’s high time we found out,” said Larkin, reaching behind him to push the bell.
The white-coated steward appeared almost instantly—so quickly, in fact, that Larkin stared at him suspiciously for a moment before he said:
“Steward, we’ve been having a slight linguistic argument. What’s the appropriate Japanese phrase to accompany the raising of a brimming goblet—thus? To drink a toast, in other words.”
The steward understood the gesture. He said, “Japanese say, ‘Kampai!’ Means ‘D’ry gurassu.’”
“Dry glass. Very expressive. Bottoms up, in other words. Well, kampai, Mr. Willowby.”
“Kampai,” said Willowby. The outer corners of his eyes drooped another fraction of an inch as he watched Larkin over the rim of his glass. Suddenly the color left his face. His eyes widened.
Larkin turned his head to follow Willowby’s startled gaze, saw only his own reflection in the closed porthole. “Neuralgia?” Larkin asked.
“Not precisely.” Willowby was doing his best to compose his features into a smile. It turned out to be a forced, worried smile. “Imagination,” he said. “Brandy, too, I fancy. But it gave me quite a start for a moment. I thought I saw Mrs. Greeve’s stowaway looking in at the porthole. Silly of me….”
“Did he look like Miss Bonner?” Larkin leaned forward eagerly.
“Naturally, he would, after that conversation at the dinner table. And after my just seeing Miss Bonner’s photograph. Queer, the tricks a man’s imagination can play….”
Larkin put down his glass, stood up. “I think I’ll see the skipper about this,” he announced.
“I say, hadn’t you better wait? Suppose this chap is a homicidal maniac, and is lurking outside somewhere?”
“I thought it was the brandy,” said Larkin.
“Yes, of course.” Willowby laughed sheepishly.
Larkin opened the door. “Thanks for the brandy,” he said, “and thanks for the tip on the radio.”
“Quite all right,” said Willowby. “I thought you ought to know. Good night.”
Larkin went out on deck. The night was dark and starless. A stiff wind was blowing from the southwest, piling up seas on the port bow. It was a damp wind, with just a hint of mildness from the warmer latitudes. Larkin lowered his head slightly as he walked into it, plodding forward toward the part of the deck where he had last seen the man who looked like Dorothy Bonner. When he had taken a dozen steps, he raised his head—and saw the man again.
The beam of the ship separated them, yet Larkin could see the man’s face quite plainly. He appeared to be leaning out from behind the bow of a lifeboat. He was hatless and the eerie, green glow from the starboard running light streamed down full upon his features—Dorothy Bonner’s features! The green light upon his face reminded Larkin unpleasantly of the face of a dead man he had once seen or the face of a specter.
But this man was no specter. His lips were moving, as though he were talking to someone cut off from Larkin’s view by a corner of the superstructure. Or to someone listening through an open porthole. His words were inaudible to Larkin, who, listening intently, heard nothing but the rush of wind singing in his ears. Suddenly his scalp tightened. A spot of cold crawled down the back of his neck. Above the sound of wind and sea came a single, piercing note, a brief ascending cry. The high pitched resonance was that of a woman—or of a shrillvoiced man, like Jeremy Hood. The tone was hysterical, a half-mad shriek that might be either unreasoning laughter or blind fear. Larkin just had time to see the man back rapidly out of the green glow of the running light before he himself started across the deck.
Larkin had to make a wide detour. The base of a mast stood in his way; and a winch, a hatch cover, a cluster of ventilator cowls. He hurried through the darkness, tripped over a deck cleat, chafed his knees. He got up, swearing at himself, at the delay, at the noise he had made. When he reached the lifeboat, his man was gone.
For a long moment he stood under the green radiance of the starboard light, trying to plot the course of the man’s escape. He could have clambered up to the transverse promenade deck and gone down the companion stairs. He might have reached the steerage companion-way, although the door was shut. There was a porthole near by, but it wasn’t likely he had squeezed into that; the port was closed and dark. Then there was the lifeboat …
Larkin approached the lifeboat for a closer look. The canvas cover, he noticed, had been unfastened on one side. He pulled; the canvas lifted back easily. He leaned over the gunwales, poked his cigarette lighter inside, snapped a tiny flame from it, peered in. He saw only a water cask stenciled with Japanese characters, an un-stepped mast, oars, an emergency compass. The light went out. At the same instant something crashed against the base of Larkin’s skull.
The dull, heavy impact shook Larkin to his heels, surged upward again in nauseous rebound. Radiant commas flashed painfully before his eyes and spun away into sickening darkness. His knees dissolved. Instinctively he hooked his elbows over the gunwales of the lifeboat to keep from slipping to the deck. At a great, unreal distance he heard the receding tattoo of footsteps on the deck behind him. He breathed deeply, fought off a throbbing, impelling desire to drop off into a friendly void. A spatter of spray stung his face. He felt a sense of co-ordination returning to his limp muscles, found that his legs would hold him again. He took a few unsteady steps forward, then turned at right angles to cross the deck. There was a .38 caliber revolver in his suitcase—or had been until that morning—and he felt a need for the reassuring touch of steel in his pocket before exploring further. Someone was taking violent objection to his professional curiosity….
A few feet from his cabin, he stopped short. A thread of light gleamed under his stateroom door. Why? General Rodriguez was not sleeping there tonight; he would be in Dr. Bioki’s care for another day or two, the ship’s physician had said. Who was in the cabin? Nobody, probably. Larkin smiled to himself. He was jumpy. That’s what comes of being hit on the head. The steward had probably been in to turn down the bedding, and had left the light on—that was all. Just as he started walking again, the crack of light vanished from under the door.
He paused with his hand on the brass knob, waiting for his heart to stop hammering at his throat. Then he flung the door wide.
Nothing happened. He peered vainly into the darkness. He listened, heard only the pounding of his own arteries. He took a tentative step across the threshold. A subtle, half-familiar fragrance rose to his nostrils. He thrust out his hand, swept it swiftly over the wall, switched on the light.
Dorothy Bonner was sitting rigidly on the edge of the berth. One hand clutched the overlapping folds of her flame-colored negligee so tightly that her knuckles were almost transparent. She was breathing rapidly and the rhythm of her breath sent delicious little ripples shimmering over the filmy silk that molded her tense body. She was pale—but then she was always pale. And her long, gray eyes were calm—desperately calm.
“Close the door!” she said in a whisper. “And put out that light. Quick!”
Chapter Nine: A HEAVY ENVELOPE
Larkin shut the door but he did not snap the switch. He was reluctant to obliterate the impression of disturbing loveliness that had burst upon him with the dazzling suddenness of a bright light. He was a little breathless as he leaned back against the door. The provocative curve of her throat was very white where it lifted from the flaming silk of her negligee. Now he seemed to be looking at her for the first time as a woman, very much of a woman. Now the sweep of her wavy hair into long rolls behind her ears, like dark, glossy scrolls of carved mahogany, was no longer a matter of abstract grace; it was a challenge to Larkin to run his fingers through the curls in a frenzy of affectionate destruction.
“The light—please!” The girl’s murmur was not a plea; it was a command; so Larkin ignored it. He ignored it because his brief expansive mood died quickly at the chill, throaty undertones in the girl’s voice, undertones warning him that her whole manner of tranquil self-assurance was only a brave pretense. Her calm was unreal.
And out of the tense unreality of the girl’s pose, there came to Larkin a contradictory sense of reality. This girl was not merely a glamorous female who happened to be the object of a news story; she was the daughter of Pongee Bonner who had shot himself after a Senate inquiry, and she was running away, crossing the ocean to a continent aflame with war, toward Chinese cities being blasted to death by Jap bombs. And the carnival of killing seemed suddenly very near because Larkin was on a Jap ship loaded with nitrates that would make gunpowder for more killing, and Dorothy Bonner must be somehow involved in the Jap war machine, because Federal agents were looking for her. They would take her at Honolulu, probably, but until then Larkin would be involved with her. The aching welt on the back of his head was a throbbing symbol that he was involved personally as well as professionally. He had an uncomfortable feeling about the whole business, yet it wouldn’t do to show his distrust at this moment. So he took refuge in flippancy.
“You don’t really want the light out,” he said. “Either you underrate your own charms or you overrate my self-control. Probably the latter.”
“Can’t you be serious?” Still that undertone of warning.
“I am. Deadly serious.” Larkin strove hard for the proper note of facetiousness. “I’m not to be trusted in the dark. Besides, I enjoy looking at you.”
Without a word Dorothy got up and turned the switch. She was standing very close to Larkin, so close he could breathe the fragrance of her hair in the darkness. He took her arm. He could feel her muscles tighten beneath her firm, smooth skin. He knew her whole body was taut, rigid.
“All right,” he said. “What’s it all about?”
“You want to make five thousand dollars, don’t you?”
“What makes you think I do?”
“You’re not rolling in wealth. If you were a gilded tourist or a prosperous businessman you wouldn’t be traveling on a cut-rate scow like the Kumo-maru. Unless—”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you’re going to try to bring me back from Honolulu. Are you going to serve me with a Senate subpoena if I step on American territory again?”
“Of course not.” Larkin laughed. “Why should I?”
“Are you from Naval Intelligence?”
“Another wrong guess.”
“But you do know who I am.”
“Of course. The minute I laid eyes on you I made it a point to find out.”
“And follow me aboard?”
“I wish I could flatter you by saying ‘yes’ to that,” Larkin said. “But the truth is, up to the night of sailing I’d never even heard your name before. I swear it.”
“That’s incredible,” the girl scoffed, “with all the fuss the newspapers have been making. Please don’t tell me you can’t read.”
“Oh, I can spell out the easy words,” said Larkin. “And I can count to five thousand. Tell me, how many people do I have to strangle to make that much money?”
Dorothy drew away from him. “Sorry,” she said coldly. “I thought I could depend on your serious co-operation. I don’t know why, except that you seemed—Well, it serves me right for relying on my instincts. Good night.”
“Hey, wait a minute.” Larkin heard her hand brush against the doorknob. He made a grab in the dark. “I’m co-operating. I only wanted to know what your proposition was.”
“All right. Don’t maul me. Sit down.”
“I’m sitting down.”
There was a pause. Then: “There’s a faster ship of this same line due in Honolulu the day after we get there. It’s the Toyo-maru. It reaches Yokohama a week before we do. You’re to lay over twenty-four hours in Honolulu and take the Toyo-maru.”
“What am I supposed to do aboard the Toyo-maru— aside from playing shuffleboard?”
“Are you taking the job?”
“I’m still a little hazy on what kind of a job it is. Do I have to make my decision on the basis of what you’ve already told me?”
“Yes.”
Larkin hesitated. There was obviously something completely cockeyed about all this. But there was plenty that was cockeyed about the girl’s whole story, and it was the girl’s story he was after—before the Department of Justice agents got it. There didn’t seem to be any better way to get it than to take active part in whatever was going on. For the present, anyhow. He could always back out later.
“I’d do anything for five thousand bucks,” he said. “Let’s have the details.”
This time the girl hesitated. After a moment, she said, “I told you I’d come to you because I was following my instincts, It suddenly occurs to me that perhaps I ought to have a little concrete evidence to back up my well-known feminine intuition. You said this morning that you knew Grover Pendenning.”
“Did I?”
“You gave that impression. Is he a friend of yours?”
“Yes,” said Larkin. That was a lie. Grover Pendenning hated his guts. They had known each other for years, however, and Larkin had a sudden inspiration. He said, “Moreover, I can prove it. I have a letter from him in my brief case.”
“May I see it?”
“Certainly.” Larkin fumbled in the dark for his brief case. The letter was a sarcastic rejoinder to a cable Larkin had sent Pendenning from Paris, but the sarcasm was not apparent to anyone who did not know what had gone before it. And Dorothy could not know that Pendenning had asked Larkin to suppress the news of a client’s divorce, nor that Larkin, having received no co-operation from his colleagues, had been forced to refuse. Pendenning had written him: “Thanks no end for your gracious favor. I knew I could count on you. I only hope I’ll be able to do the same for you some day.”
“Here it is. You want some light, of course.”
“Strike a match.”
Larkin snapped a flame from his cigarette lighter. He watched the girl’s face as she read the note. She blew out the light.
“My instincts were right,” she said. “Here.” There was a rustle of paper. Larkin felt an envelope thrust into his hands. “Take this and hang on to it. Don’t let it getaway from you. Not until you get to Japan.”
Larkin pinched the envelope with curious fingers. “What’s in it?” he asked. “Or am I unduly inquisitive?”
“It’s a written agreement,” the girl said, “between General Juan Rodriguez and the Pan-American Vanadium Corporation.”
“I see.” Larkin pursed his lips in the darkness. He wished he could see the girl’s face. “Why didn’t you tell me this morning,” he pursued, “that you knew who tried to slit the general’s throat?”
“I didn’t know this morning.”
“But you know now?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Skip it, then,” said Larkin. “Would it be presuming too much to ask what I’m to do with Vanadium Corporation’s agreement after I change ships?”
“First of all,” Dorothy replied, “you’d better take all precautions against—against losing it.”
“Is there someone who might help me lose it?”
“There might be.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know who.”
“All right, go on. Then what?”
“When, you get through the customs at Yokohama, go right to the Sakuragicho station and take the electric interurban for Tokyo. Get off at Shimbashi station, jump into a taxi, and have him take you to the Kaigunshō. You’ll be expected.”
“You’d better write those names down for me,” said Larkin. “What’s the Kaigunshō? A hotel?”
“No. The Naval Ministry.”
Naval Ministry! Larkin’s mouth opened, but he said nothing. For once he was at a loss for a wisecrack. He had certainly stepped in something this time. He could practically feel the ooze about his neck. And the envelope in his hands was heavy with consequence.
“I know what you’re thinking,” said Dorothy after a moment of silence. “But you’re wrong. This has nothing to do with the American Navy.”
“Or your father?”
There was a pause. Then: “It concerns father indirectly, yes. But not Senator Chauvin, if that’s what you mean.”
“There’s nothing in this envelope but the Vanadium agreement?”
“That’s all.”
“There aren’t any invisible drawings on the back—bathing girls, or Peter Arno cartoons, for instance—in sympathetic ink that will turn purple when exposed to the temperature of a trousers pocket?”
“There aren’t,” the girl said. “But if you’re afraid there are, the deal’s not yet closed.”
“Nonsense. Who wants to back out? I was just looking at it from your angle. How did you happen to pick on me? You still don’t know whether or not I’m a sinister and disreputable person.”
“I’ll know before we get to Honolulu.”
