The Golden Rendezvous

“Why did you do it, Johnny?” McIlroy again, very quietly.

“Because we’ll never see Benson again. Not alive, that is, Benson’s dead. Benson’s been killed.”

No one said anything, not for all of ten seconds. The sound of the cool air rushing through the louvres in the overhead trunking seemed abnormally loud. The captain said harshly: “Killed? Benson killed? Are you all right, Mister? What do you mean, killed?”

“Murdered is what I mean.”

“Murdered? Murdered?” McIlroy shifted uneasily in his chair. “Have you seen him? Have you any proof? How can you say he was murdered?”

“I haven’t seen him. And I haven’t any proof. Not a scrap of evidence.” I caught a glimpse of the purser sitting there, his hands twisting together and his eyes staring at me, and I remembered that Benson had been his best friend for close on twenty years. “But I have proof that Brownell was murdered tonight. And I can tie the two together.”

There was an even longer silence.

“You’re mad,” Bullen said at length with harsh conviction. “So now Brownell’s been murdered too. You’re mad, Mister, off your bloody trolley. You heard what Dr. Marston said? Massive cerebral hæmorrhage. But of course he’s only a doctor of forty years’ standing. He wouldn’t know——”

“How about giving me a chance, sir,” I interrupted. My voice sounded as harsh as his own. “I know he’s a doctor. I also know he hasn’t very good eyes. But I have. I saw what he missed. I saw a dark smudge on the back of Brownell’s uniform collar—and when has anybody on this ship ever seen a mark on any shirt that Brownell ever wore? They didn’t call him Beau Brownell for nothing. Somebody had hit him, with something heavy and with tremendous force, on the back of the neck. There was also a faint discoloration under the left ear—I could see it as he lay there. When the bo’sun and I got him down to the carpenter’s store we examined him together. There was a corresponding slight bruise under his right ear—and traces of sand under his collar. Someone sandbagged him and then, when he was unconscious, compressed the carotid arteries until he died. Go and see for yourselves.”

“Not me,” McIlroy murmured. You could see that even his normally monolithic composure had been shaken. “Not me. I believe it—absolutely. It would be too easy to disprove it. I believe it all right—but I still can’t accept it.”

“But damn it all, Chief!” Bullen’s fists were clenched.

“The doctor said that——”

“I’m no medical man,” McIlroy interrupted. “But I should imagine the symptoms are pretty much the same in both cases. Can hardly blame old Marston.”

Bullen ignored him, gave me the full benefit of his commodore’s stare.

“Look, Mister,” he said slowly. “You’ve changed your tune, haven’t you? When I was there, you agreed with Dr. Marston. You even put forward the heart failure idea. You showed no signs——”

“Miss Beresford and Mr. Carreras were there,” I interrupted. “I didn’t want them to start getting wrong ideas. If word got around the ship—and it would have been bound to—that we suspected murder, then whoever was responsible might have felt themselves forced to act again, and act quickly, to forestall any action we might take. I don’t know what they might do, but on the form to date it would have been something damned unpleasant.”

“Miss Beresford? Mr. Carreras?” Bullen had stopped clenching his hands but you could see that it wouldn’t take much to make him start up again. “Miss Beresford is above suspicion. But Carreras? And his son? Just aboard today—and in most unusual circumstances. It just might tie up.”

“It doesn’t. I checked. Carreras Senior and Junior had both been in either the telegraph lounge or the dining-room for almost two hours before we found Brownell. They’re completely in the clear.”

“Besides being too obvious,” McIlroy agreed. “I think, Captain, it’s time we took our hats off to Mr. Carter here: he’s been getting around and using his head while all we have been doing is twiddling our thumbs.”

“Benson,” Captain Bullen said. He didn’t show any signs of taking off his hat. “How about Benson? How does he tie up?”

“This way.” I slid the empty telegraph book across the table. “I checked the last message that was received and went to the bridge. Routine weather report. Time, 2007. But later there was another message written on this pad: original, carbon, duplicate. The message is indecipherable—but to people with modern police equipment it would be child’s play to find out what was written there. What is decipherable is the impression of the last two time figures. Look for yourself. It’s quite clear. 33. That means 2033. A message came through at that moment, a message so urgent in nature that, instead of waiting for the routine bridge messenger collection, Brownell made to phone it through at once. That was why his hand was reaching for the phone when we found him, not because he was feeling ill all of a sudden. And then he was killed. Whoever killed him had to kill. Knocking Brownell out and stealing the message would have accomplished nothing for as soon as he would have come to he would have remembered the contents of the message and immediately sent it to the bridge. It must,” I added thoughtfully, “have been a damned important message.”

“Benson,” Bullen repeated impatiently. “How about Benson?”

“Benson was the victim of a lifetime of habit. Howie here tells us how Benson invariably went out on deck between half past eight and twenty-five to nine for a smoke, while the passengers were at dinner. The radio room is immediately above where he would have been taking his promenade—and the message came through, and Brownell was killed, inside those five minutes. Benson must have seen or heard something unusual and gone to investigate. He might even have caught the murderer in the act. And so Benson had to die too.”

“But why?” Captain Bullen demanded. He still couldn’t believe it all. “Why, why, why? Why was he killed? Why was that message so desperately important? The whole damned thing’s crazy. And what in God’s name was in that message anyway?”

“That’s why we’ve got to go to Nassau to find out, sir.”

Bullen looked at me without expression, looked at his drink, evidently decided that he preferred his drink to me—or the ill news I brought with me—and knocked back the contents in a couple of gulps.

McIlroy didn’t touch his. He sat there for a whole minute looking at it consideringly, then he said: “You haven’t missed much, Johnny. But you’ve missed one thing. The wireless officer on watch—Peters, isn’t it? How do you know the same message won’t come through again? Maybe it was a message requiring acknowledgment? If it was, and it’s not acknowledged, it’s pretty certain to come through again. Then what’s the guarantee that Peters won’t get the same treatment?”

“The bo’sun’s the guarantee, Chief. He’s sitting in black shadow not ten yards from the wireless office with a marlin-spike in his hand and Highland murder in his heart. You know MacDonald. Heaven help anyone who goes within a Sunday walk of the wireless office.”

Bullen poured himself another small whisky, smiled tiredly and glanced at his single broad commodore’s stripe.

“Mr. Carter, I think you and I should change jackets.” It was as far in apology as he could ever go and about twelve hours ahead of par. “Think you’d like this side of my desk?”

“Suit me fine, sir,” I agreed. “Especially if you took over entertaining the passengers.”

“In that case we’ll stay as we are.” Another brief smile, no sooner there than vanished. “Who’s on the bridge? Jamieson, isn’t it? Better take over, First.”

“Later, sir, with your permission. There’s still the most important thing of all to investigate. But I don’t even know how to start.”

“Don’t tell me there’s something else,” Bullen said heavily.

“I’ve had some time to think about this, that’s all,” I said. “A message came through to our wireless office, a message so important that it had to be intercepted at all costs. But how could anybody possibly know that message was coming through? The only way that message could have come into the Campari was through a pair of earphones clamped to Brownell’s head, yet someone else was taking down that message at the same instant as Brownell was. Must have been. Brownell had no sooner finished transcribing that message on to his pad than he reached for the phone to get the bridge, and he no sooner reached for the phone than he died. There’s some other radio receiver aboard the Campari tuned into the same wave-length and wherever it is it’s not a hop, skip and jump from the wireless office, for wherever the eavesdropper was he got from there to the wireless office in seconds. Problem, find the receiver.”

Bullen looked at me. McIlroy looked at me. They both looked at each other. Then McIlroy objected: “But the wireless officer keeps shifting wave-lengths. How could anybody know what particular wave-length he was on at any one moment?”

“How can anyone know anything?” I asked. I nodded at the message pad on the table. “Until we get that deciphered.”

“The message.” Bullen gazed at the pad, abruptly made up his mind. “Nassau it is. Maximum speed, Chief, but slowly, over half an hour, so that no one will notice the step up in revs. First, the bridge. Get our position.” He fetched chart, rules, dividers while I was getting the figures, nodded at me as I hung up. “Lay off the shortest possible course.”

It didn’t take long. “047 from here to here, sir, approximately 220 miles, then 350.”

“Arrival?”

“Maximum speed?”

“Of course.”

“Just before midnight tomorrow night.”

He reached for a pad, scribbled for a minute, then read out: “‘Port authorities, Nassau, s.s. Campari, position such-and-such, arriving 2330 tomorrow Wednesday. Request police alongside immediate investigation one murdered man, one missing man. Urgent. Bullen, Master.’ That should do.” He reached for the phone. I touched his arm.

“Whoever has this receiver can monitor outgoing calls just as easily as incoming ones. Then they’ll know we’re on to them. God only knows what might happen then.”

Bullen looked slowly first at me, then at McIlroy, then at the purser, who hadn’t spoken a word since I’d arrived in the cabin, then back at me again. Then he tore the message into tiny shreds and dropped it into his waste-paper basket.

IV. Tuesday 10.15 p.m.–Wednesday 8.45 a.m. (#ulink_c089efac-1737-52a6-b4be-8d89a34bdbf0)

I didn’t get a great deal of investigating done that night. I’d figured out how to start, all right, but the devil of it was I couldn’t start till the passengers were up and about in the morning. Nobody likes being turfed out of his bed in the middle of the night, a millionaire least of all.

After having cautiously identified myself to the bo’sun to ensure that I didn’t get the back of my head stove in with a marline-spike, I spent a good fifteen minutes in the vicinity of the wireless office relating its position to other offices and nearby accommodation. The wireless office was on the starboard side, for’ard, immediately above the passengers’ “A” deck accommodation—old man Cerdan’s suite was directly below—and on the basis of my assumption that the murderer, even if he didn’t wait for the last few words of the message to come through, could have had no more time than ten seconds to get from wherever the hidden receiver was to the wireless office, then any place within ten seconds’ reach of the wireless office automatically came under suspicion.

There were quite a few places within the suspected limits. There was the bridge, flag office, radar office, chart-room and all the deck officers’ and cadets’ accommodation. Those could be ruled out at once. There was the dining-room, galleys, pantries, officers’ lounge, telegraph lounge, and, immediately adjacent to the telegraph lounge, another lounge which rejoiced in the name of the drawing-room—it having been found necessary to provide an alternative lounge for our millionaire’s wives and daughters who weren’t all so keen on the alcoholic and ticker-tape attractions of the telegraph lounge as their husbands and fathers were. I spent forty minutes going through those—they were all deserted at that time of night—and if anyone had yet invented a transistor receiver smaller than a matchbox, then I might have missed it: but anything larger, I’d have found it for sure.