‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he reassured her. The darkness
was impenetrable after the flash. ‘Sparks grounds his
antenna, and it acts as a lightning rod.’
‘Thank you, Dr. Faraday,’ she said. A groping hand
brushed his arm, and then she was against his chest.
‘Who the hell needs science?’
He took her in his arms; if she needed comforting,
why be a churl about it? She felt very slender and soft
inside the nylon robe, and her arms came up around his
neck. In the next jagged flash of lightning he could see
her uptilted face with the eyes closed, waiting to be
kissed. He kissed her. Her mouth opened under his,
and the arms tightened, and he noted with a detached
sort of interest that he apparently wasn’t impotent after
all. At the same moment the squall struck with a wild
shriek of wind and horizontal rain that came slashing
through the porthole. He broke free, slammed it shut
and tightened one of the dogs. Thunder crashed, and
another searing flash of lightning left him blinded as he
turned back to her.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 88
They brushed together, and she was in his arms
again, as adhesive as a Band-Aid. ‘We might be more
comfortable,’ he suggested humorously, ‘if we sat
down.’
‘I’m sure you would,’ she murmured with her lips
brushing his. ‘And I feel guilty as hell about it.’
He unbelted the robe and slipped it back over her
shoulders. It dropped, and was followed by the pajama
top. She guided his hand to the zipper at the side of the
remaining garment and helped him slide it down over
the rounded hips. He picked her up and carried her to
the bunk.
There was no holding her back or pacing her, and she
had no need for subtlety of finesse in her headlong
flight to throw herself shrieking over the precipice. She
came to climax three times, crying out and digging her
nails into his shoulders as though driven by some
kinship with the demonic force of the squall battering
at the ship. He would have timed his own release to
coincide with this final paroxysm as a matter of simple
courtesy and the obligatory gesture of appreciation
under the circumstances, but his attention had strayed
and he was thinking of the time the Shoshone had been
knocked down in a squall that had caught her lying
dead in the water, with the result that he was late and
the act ended on a note of anticlimax. He expected to
be taken to task for this wooden performance, but
apparently she hadn’t even noticed. Male flesh and
willingness were all she demanded; she’d furnish the
fire herself.
‘In these days of instant everything,’ she murmured,
‘it’s refreshing to meet a man who takes his time.’
He lit a cigarette for her. ‘I thought you were afraid
of lightning?’
‘Afraid? I expected to die every second.’ She sighed.
‘But what a way to go. Men have no monopoly on that
old barracks joke.’
The Leander was beginning to roll a little now as
wind continued to howl around her. Rain drummed on
the bulkhead beyond their heads. There was another
simultaneous white flash of lightning and explosion of
And The Deep Blue Sea — 89
thunder. She gasped and pressed against him, and at
the same time a hand slid down his body and began its
seductive manipulation. He wondered idly if Freud had
never considered the phallus as a symbolic lightning
rod.
* * *
There was no one else in the passageway except the
young Filipino carrying a plastic cup of milk and a
sandwich on a paper plate. Lind unlocked the door of
the hospital and they entered. A single light was
burning over the desk. The portholes were dogged
against the fury of the squall outside, the deadlights
closed down over them. Krasicki lay on the same lower
bunk, motionless, staring blankly up at the bottom of
the one above him. He gave no indication he was aware
of them at all.
‘He has closed the deadlights,’ Gutierrez observed as
he exchanged the sandwich for the stale one still
untouched. ‘You think he is afraid of the lightning?’
‘No,’ Lind said. ‘Probably the portholes are eyes
looking at him.’
The youth shook his head. ‘Pobrecito.’ He went out,
closing the door behind him.
Lind stepped over and bolted it, and turned. ‘Okay,’
he said softly.
Krasicki sat up and grinned with a display of yellowed
teeth. ‘How’s it going?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ Lind replied. He pulled a chair over and sat
down, leaning forward so they could converse in low
tones covered by the tumult of the squall. ‘Hugo sends
his congratulations.’
‘And what about our audience? Still no complaints
about the performance?’
‘No,’ Lind said. ‘They feel very sorry for you.’
‘And the rendezvous? You’re in contact with the
boat?’
Lind nodded. ‘It’s directly on our course, waiting.
Five hundred and fifty miles away at eight p.m.
Rendezvous is two a.m., two nights from now.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 90
‘We’ll make it all right?’
‘Yes, with several hours to spare. The timing will be
adjusted by another engine room breakdown if
necessary.’ Lind smiled. ‘And of course there’s the
other stoppage. For your funeral.’
Krasicki chuckled. ‘Put on a good show for the
sentimental sheep.’
‘The rope’s ready?’ Lind asked.
‘Yes.’ Krasicki stood up and pulled back the blue
bedspread of the upper bunk. Strips torn from one of
the sheets had been braided into a length of thin,
strong rope. Lind examined it. He nodded.
‘Make one end fast to an overhead pipe,’ he said.
‘Stand on a lower bunk and put the noose around your
neck. Tie it so it won’t tighten, of course. Five minutes
after one bell strikes at eight thirty you’ll hear me
unlocking the door. Goddard or the captain will be with
me, but I’ll come in first. When you see the door start to
open, step off the bunk, but support your weight with
your hands on the rope until I’m all the way in. I’ll have
you cut down in less than five seconds, so there’s no
danger.’
‘And what about the witness?’
‘He won’t have a chance to touch you. I’ll send him
for the first-aid kit. He just sees you, that’s all.’ ‘And
the materials for the artwork?’
Lind tapped his pocket. 'I have them here, and you
can use the mirror to put them on. You know how the
bruises look, and the congested face?’
Krasicki smiled coldly. ‘I have seen many men who
danced upon the air, Herr Lind.’
Lind stepped over with his back against the door and
appraised the angle of view. He came back to where
Krasicki was standing, and pointed upward to the pipe.
‘I think right there, beside the flange. The witness will
see you the second I throw the door open and jump in,
but I’ll block his view of any details in case you move.’
Krasicki looked up. Lind flipped the rope over his
head from behind, tightened it around his throat, and
twisted. Krasicki’s eyes appeared to bulge, going wide
And The Deep Blue Sea — 91
with horror, and his mouth flew open in a silent scream.
Hands clawed futilely at the rope for several seconds,
and then dropped with a grotesque flapping motion. His
body sagged and went limp. Lind eased him to the
deck, but knelt beside him, the big muscles of his
shoulders and forearms still corded with the brutal
strain on the garrote. The whole thing had been done in
total silence, like some ghastly ballet performed
without music on a soundproof stage.
After another minute the big mate relaxed the tension
on the rope, fashioned it into a slip-knot about the dead
man’s neck, and passed the other end over the pipe
above them. He hoisted Krasicki up with the ease of a
mother picking up a baby, held him clamped in his left
arm while he used the right to take up the slack in the
rope, pass it around the pipe again, and tie it off. He let
go. Krasicki’s feet dangled a few inches off the deck,
and his body began to swing slowly back and forth with
the gentle rolling of the ship. Lind went out and
relocked the door.
* * *
Madeleine Lennox made one final hoarse outcry, and a
flash of lightning revealed the mask of ecstasy now
become pain as it approached the unbearable, the face
twisted and distorted and the eyes clamped tightly shut
as her head rolled from side to side. The writhing body
strained upward against Goddard’s as though in some
dying effort to engulf and devour this instrument of her
torture, and then collapsed and went limp with the
suddenness of a snapping spring. The ragged
exhalations of her breath were hot against his naked
shoulder where a moment before the nails had gripped
and dug.
Insatiable, Goddard thought, and wondered what her
husband’s life had been like when he was at sea,
knowing, as he must, of the succession of lovers
bracketed by these silken, frenetic thighs. Maybe he
didn’t even mind, he reflected, knowing her emotional
involvement in the encounters was probably no greater
than it would have been with a procession of repairmen
trying to deal with a recalcitrant television set.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 92
There was no doubt she’d worked out a novel system
for coping with it, by staking out a male world where
there was no competition at all. Women passengers on
freighters were nearly always elderly, with exceptions
like Karen Brooke a one-chance-in-a-hundred
possibility, and the younger, swinging crowd wouldn’t
be caught dead on one. The ship’s officers, though
probably married in most cases, were still sailors, and
far from home, living a monastic life where sexy
females were a collector’s item. All steamship
companies frowned on this sort of hanky-pank on the
part of their masters and mates, of course, but in man’s
long journey toward the light, fornication had survived
harsher edicts.
He sat up and lit a cigarette. In a moment she stirred
drowsily, and murmured, ‘I thank you.’
‘For what?’ he asked.
‘For the obvious. You’re very good, Mr. Goddard, at a
social activity that bores you to death.’
‘Bored? Of course I wasn’t.’
‘Oh, I’m not complaining, dear man. I feel wonderful,
and believe me, getting there is more than half the fun.
I just wondered why. You could have burned your draft
card; you obviously don’t have to prove anything.’
‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ he said.
‘Good manners,’ she decided. ‘I think that’s the clue.
You see, you’re not even angry now, at this classic
example of the perversity of females.’ She laughed
softly. ‘I like you; you’re nice. Uninvolved and totally
aloof, but nice. Could I have a cigarette?’
He lit one and passed it to her, and set the ashtray on
his stomach. Thunder continued to rumble, but it was
farther away now and the fury of the squall was
diminishing.
She was silent for several minutes, and then she said
musingly, ‘There’s still something about it that bothers
me.’
‘About what?’ he asked.
‘Krasicki. Going berserk that way,’ she said. ‘If he
did.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 93
Alarms tripped and began to ring their warning. 'I
don’t think I’m following you.’
‘Don’t let it bother you. I’m not sure I know myself
what I’m talking about. But there was something you
said afterward that I’ve never been able to get out of
my mind.’
So that stupid remark may get both of us killed, he
thought. Unless he was being sounded, which was just
as dangerous.
‘You remember,’ she went on, ‘you said it would be a
very good director who could have staged that scene
any better. I know you didn’t mean it that way, but
afterward I got to thinking about it, and began to have
the craziest feeling that what I’d seen hadn’t even
happened. Am I making any sense to you at all?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Unless you’re taking off into
philosophical concepts of reality that’re too deep for
me.’
‘I’m not talking about philosophical concepts,’ she
replied. ‘I’m talking about deliberate, planned illusion.’
‘Wait a minute!’ He tried for the right tone of
amazement and incredulity. ‘You mean you think that
could have been faked?’
‘I don’t know. But it was too perfect. Too many
separate elements came together at exactly the right
point in space and time for random chance, and there
are two or three things about it that bother me. One is
the way Krasicki tricked Egerton—I mean Mayr—into
speaking German. That was clever, but could a man
with a deranged mind have done it?’
‘A disturbed mind doesn’t mean a moronic mind,’
Goddard protested. ‘And he had been a university
professor.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘But there’s another thing. In the
theater, I think you call it blocking.’
Sharp, Goddard thought, unless she’s been coached.
‘That’s right. The movement of actors in a scene.’
‘Umh-umh. So with three men at the table, Lind is the
only one in a position to grab Krasicki and try to stop
And The Deep Blue Sea — 94
him. The captain is clear at the other end, and you’re
behind it.’
‘The skipper always sits at the head of the table,’
Goddard said. ‘And in my case it was pure chance.’
‘I’m not so sure,’ she replied. ‘Where you were sitting
had been Krasicki’s place. He’d never come to the
dining room since we left Callao, but the place was
always laid for him in case he did show up.’
Goddard was thinking swiftly and uneasily. Barset
could be involved in it, or the dining room steward, or
both. Or they could have been merely following
instructions from Captain Steen. But it was Madeleine
Lennox who was the dangerous problem at the
moment. It would seem absurd, of course, that she
could have any part in the plot itself, but there was a
very real possibility she could be involved with Lind.
Suppose the mate was using her to find out just how
much he suspected?
As a trap it was deceptively simple, and beautiful in
its deadliness. He was supposed to warn her, tell her
there was a good chance she could be right but to keep
her mouth shut if she hoped to get to Manila alive. If
she were innocently playing with dynamite, that would
stop her. But if she weren’t, if she reported it to Lind,
he’d very neatly positioned his own neck on the block.
But there was another way.
‘You’d better cut down on spy movies,’ he said.
‘You’re beginning to believe them.’
‘Then you think I’m imagining things?’
‘Look, the man was shot twice through the chest in
full view of five people. You saw the blood—’
She interrupted. ‘I know. It must have been real, so
that ought to clinch it, but something about it still
bothers me. I keep trying to remember what it was.’
He sighed. ‘You’d be a defense attorney’s dream as a
witness in a murder trial. Yes, I saw this man’s head
blown off with a .45, but I don’t believe for a minute he
was hurt.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ she said.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 95
Maybe he’d convinced her. But when she went back
to her own cabin he still wasn’t sure.
* * *
It was a hot, bright morning with a gentle breeze out of
the southeast, almost directly astern. The Leander rose
lazily and almost imperceptibly to the quartering swell
as she plowed ahead. Eight bells struck as Goddard
emerged from the passageway and began his morning
walk around the promenade deck. The squall had
sluiced all the salt from her decks and bulkheads, and
there was a freshly scrubbed look to her paint that
matched the clean and untroubled beauty of the day.
Gone, too, were his suspicions of last night; the whole
idea was ridiculous, he decided now, and thought with
amusement that Mrs. Lennox wasn’t the only one who’d
seen too many spy movies.
He had completed four laps around the deckhouse
when he noted the ship was passing through a vast
colony of tiny Portuguese men-of-war, apparently newly
hatched, their sails no larger than a fingernail. He
stopped at the after end of the deck and lit a cigarette
as he leaned on the rail to watch them drift past in
numbers that must run into millions. It was a
phenomenon he had encountered two or three times at
sea and which always puzzled him. How could they
hatch in such numbers in one place? He was wondering
about it now when he became conscious of an odor like
that of burning cloth. He looked down, thinking he
must have set his shirt afire with the cigarette, but
there was no sign of it. Then the odor was gone, as
strangely as it had appeared. He must have imagined it.
Only Captain Steen and Madeleine Lennox were in
the dining room when he entered. They were just
finishing their breakfast, and he was struck by the odd
preoccupation of their manner as they greeted him.
Steen looked troubled. Mrs. Lennox turned as he sat
down, and asked archly, ‘Did that awful thunderstorm
scare you last night, Mr. Goddard?’ Lind came in at the
same moment, and Goddard was conscious of a vague
impression that wasn’t what she’d started to say at all.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 96
Lind laughed as he sat down. ‘Don’t be insulting, Mrs.
Lennox. A line squall scare a man who’d go around the
Horn in a Dixie cup?’
The others laughed, a trifle self-consciously, and after
they had gone out, Lind said to Goddard, ‘I’ve been
reading up on catatonic states, and there are a couple
of things I’d like to try on Krasicki. You want to come
along?’
Goddard was startled for an instant, thinking of his
fears of the night before; then he shrugged. ‘Sure,’ he
said. They finished breakfast and went down to the
deck below. Lind called out to the Filipino youth to
bring Krasicki’s breakfast, and Goddard stood in back
of him as he unlocked the door. Lind pushed it open, let
out a curse, and leaped inside. Beyond him, Goddard
saw Krasicki’s body dangling from the overhead pipe.
‘Get the first-aid kit!’ Lind shouted, drawing a knife
and slashing at the braided rope.
Goddard wheeled and ran down the passageway, his
mind racing even ahead of his feet. He’d been right.
And now his performance had to be as convincing as
Lind’s. There was another shout behind him as he sped
out on deck and up the ladder, but he kept going. He
was panting as he hurried back down the passageway
with the kit two minutes later. Several crew members
were now jammed around the open door, peering in. He
started to push through them, and Lind’s voice barked,
‘Clear the door! Let him through!’
Krasicki’s body lay on the deck, the rope now gone
from his throat, exposing the brutal mark it had left.
Very realistic, Goddard thought; just don’t get too
close. Lind straightened, and said wearily, ‘I tried to
stop you. He’s been dead for hours.’
Goddard shook his head. ‘It’s a rotten shame.’ We’re
a real team, he thought; with a good director, we could
do anything.
‘Goddamn it!’ Lind exploded. He gestured toward the
braided rope. ‘The one thing we didn’t think of.’ He
whirled toward the door. ‘Break it up, you guys! What
are you gawking at?’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 97
Nice touch, Goddard thought; male frustration, anger
directed at self, relieved by shouts. And at the same
time distracts attention from the exhibit in case its nose
twitches or respiration is too evident for close scrutiny.
He looked around the room, and noted the deadlights
were closed over the portholes.
‘He closed ‘em last night,’ Lind said. 'I noticed it
when I was in here around eleven. And like a stupid
bastard, I didn’t even wonder why. Here, give me a
hand to put him in the bunk.’
Goddard looked around for Otto or the bos’n, but
neither was present. Then, in an instant of utter
confusion, he realized Lind was speaking to him. The
big mate was looking at him with a faintly sardonic
smile. ‘You’re not afraid of a dead man, are you?’
‘Oh. No,’ Goddard said, fighting for recovery. Lind
caught Krasicki’s legs. Goddard stooped and grasped
the bare arms near the shoulders, feeling the cold flesh
and the rigidity of death, and they lifted him onto the
bunk.
Lind pulled a sheet from one of the other bunks and
covered the body. He turned then, and his eyes met
Goddard’s as he made a helpless gesture with his
hands. ‘For the rigor to be that far advanced,’ he said,
‘he must have done it right after I was here. I’m a hell
of a doctor.’
Goddard was still trying to control his expression and
sort out the chaos of his thoughts, but he managed an
automatic reply of some kind. ‘There was no way you
could tell,’ he said.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 98
8
Goddard went out. The crew members in the doorway
stepped back to let him pass, but they did it silently,
and there was no longer any friendliness or recognition
in their eyes. As he went down the passageway, he
heard the muttering behind him.
‘This bucket’s beginning to give me the creeps.’
‘—ever since we picked that guy up—’
He was being cast as a Jonah; he’d lost his own ship,
and now he’d brought his contamination of doom
aboard this one. No seaman would admit to being that
superstitious, but there was always some dark residue
of it, even in the twentieth century. He paid no
attention as he went outside and up the ladder; his
mind was still trying to come to grips with questions
attacking him from all sides at once.
Karen Brooke was walking the port side of the
promenade deck. She always managed to look lovely
and cool and completely self-possessed, he thought.
She smiled. ‘Is there any change in Mr. Krasicki’s
condition?’ At the same moment Captain Steen came
hurrying down the ladder from the boat deck. He went
on without speaking. She looked after him, puzzled.
‘Yes,’ Goddard answered. ‘He’s dead. He hanged
himself.’ Or maybe I killed him, he added silently.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 99
‘Oh, how awful!’ She shook her head, winking back
the tears. ‘It’s not fair! His whole life was just one long
tragedy.’
‘I know,’ Goddard said. Apparently she was prey to no
doubts or suspicions, and he had no intention of raising
any. He’d found himself beginning to like her, sensing
in her some of the same loneliness that had marked his
own life for the past five months, and he felt an urge to
protect her if he could.
But from what, he asked himself after he had walked
forward. Didn’t Krasicki’s death prove he’d been
wrong? Didn’t it demonstrate once and for all that the
whole affair had been just what it seemed to be? Of
course it did—unless it had been designed to do just
that.
The trouble was, he reflected, that his thought
processes and Lind’s were too much alike, and they’d
been on a collision course from the beginning. If Mayr’s
death had been a hoax, for it to work at all there could
be no doubt, now or ever. That, of course, was the
reason for the elaborately staged shooting in front of
five witnesses instead of something simple like a heart
attack. So now, if Lind had sensed his suspicions of it,
the mate was backed into a corner; Krasicki still had to
disappear, but there was no longer any possibility of
getting away with a second fake sea burial. If Goddard
had suspected the first, he would already have forecast
the second. So Krasicki had been expendable, and Lind
had killed him to plug this hole in the dike.
But that wasn’t all, Goddard thought; the diabolical
bastard ran a test on me at the same time, and I may
have flunked it. If I had forecast the second fake and
guessed how he’d carry it out, he knew exactly how I
would react. I would realize I was there as a witness,
but I would be very careful not to witness any more
than I was supposed to. Then he threw the change-up
pitch, and my reaction time may not have been fast
enough. If I gave away the fact I didn’t really believe
Krasicki was dead, then he was killed for nothing and
we’re right back where we started—except that the
deadly son of a bitch has really got me fingered now.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 100
I’m no longer a reliable witness, and he’s already
measuring me for an accident.
His thoughts broke off then, and he frowned,
conscious again of that odor of burning cloth. He was
standing almost where he had been before, at the after
end of the promenade deck. Maybe it was coming from
one of the open portholes of the dining room. He looked
in the nearest one, and sniffed again. No, it wasn’t from
there. He turned and searched the after well-deck and
the ventilators of number three and four holds, but
could see nothing. But now it was gone.
Karen Brooke came back around the corner of the
deckhouse. ‘Do you suppose poor Mr. Krasicki will be
buried at sea also?’ she asked.
‘Probably,’ Goddard said. ‘I don’t think he had any
family at all.’
She nodded somberly. ‘I love ships,’ she said. ‘But
there’s something about this one that is beginning to
scare me. I know it sounds silly—’
‘No, it’s normal enough,’ Goddard replied. ‘Deaths at
sea affect people that way; to coin a phrase, they’re all
in the same boat.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Do you know what
our cargo is?’
‘Some copper ingots,’ she said, ‘and a little general
cargo, but mostly cotton. Several thousand bales for the
Japanese textile mills.’
He nodded. When she had gone on, continuing her
walk, he stood looking somberly aft across the welldeck.
Cotton. Great, he thought; that’s all we need now.
* * *
What little breeze there was died out by mid-morning,
and the heat became an ordeal. An air of sullenness and
unease lay over the whole ship; the second death in
three days left its mark on everybody. Word was passed
that the sea burial would take place the following
afternoon at four. Tempers were on edge. A fight broke
out on the deck below; Rafferty, the hoodlum room
steward, beat up one of the oilers, and Lind had to be
called to stitch up a cut face.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 101
Shortly after eleven there was another breakdown in
the engine room, and the Leander slowed and came to
rest on a sea like burnished steel. A shaft bearing
running hot again, Barset said; the chief hoped to be
under way again in an hour, but the hour passed, and
then two, while the Leander continued to lie motionless
under the burning sun. No one appeared for lunch.
Both women were apparently in their bunks, under the
fans. Goddard continued to prowl the promenade deck,
stopping every few minutes at the aft end of it to sniff
the air and study the ventilators in the well-deck. It was
just after one p.m., when he finally saw it, a wispy
thread of smoke snaking upward from the starboard
ventilator of number three hold. It thinned and
disappeared, but there was no longer any doubt. The
Leander’s cargo was afire.
Somewhere in the depths of number three hold was a
smoldering bale of cotton like a cancer cell, being
consumed by slow combustion that inexorably spread
outward to attack adjoining bales. It could have been
burning inside when it came aboard, or some
longshoreman’s stolen cigarette might have started it.
The smoldering could go on for days or weeks without
bursting into flame, eating away, charring, halfsmoldering,
while the temperature inside the mass
continued to rise, until it came out on the surface and
some of the bales below began to collapse, exposing
enough of it to the air to become a raging fire.
Did Steen know about it? Probably, Goddard thought,
but unless he had a fire-smothering system in the holds
there wasn’t much he could do about it but hold his
breath and pray. If the burning bales were far down or
in the center of the hold, trying to get water to them
through thousands of others was futile, short of
flooding the entire hold.
Sparks came down the ladder. He jerked his head
curtly. ‘Captain says to come up to his office.’
Goddard studied him with silent and calculated
arrogance for thirty seconds, and then said, ‘It must
have suffered in the translation.’ He could get enough
of this surly bastard; if he were convinced all Yanquis
were overbearing pigs, why disappoint him?
And The Deep Blue Sea — 102
With no change of expression, Sparks repeated the
message in Spanish, which Goddard knew well enough
to follow. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘But I wasn’t referring to
the language. Just the manners.’ He went up the
ladder.
Steen looked worried. ‘Sit down, Mr. Goddard,’ he
said with attempted casualness that didn’t quite go
over. He was seated at his desk with a block of yellow
paper in front of him. Goddard sat in one of the
armchairs. Before Steen could speak, there was
another knock outside the door. It was Mr. Pargoras,
the chief engineer, a bald, swarthy man in khakis
completely drowned with perspiration. He stepped
inside and nodded to Goddard.
‘What is it, Chief?’ Steen asked. ‘About finished?’
‘It’ll be another half hour.’ The chief mopped his face
with a sodden handkerchief. ‘We can’t work in that
shaft alley more than a few minutes at a time. One
man’s already passed out.’
Goddard could imagine it, with the ship stopped and
no air coming down the ventilators. The shaft alley was
a steel runnel running across the bottom of number
three and four holds from the engine room amidships to
the propeller.
‘What’s the temperature now?’ Steen asked.
‘A hundred and twenty where we’re working.’ There
was a faint pause, and he added, ‘Under number three,
you can’t hold your hand on the plates.’
Goddard caught Steen’s slight nod and the exchanged
glance. They wouldn’t have discussed it in front of him,
except that they didn’t think he would know what they
meant. It was those burning bales of cotton, above or
around the shaft alley, which meant they were right at
the bottom of the hold. So Steen did know it was afire.
That probably accounted for the strain visible on his
face. Or at least part of it, Goddard thought.
The chief went out. Captain Steen cleared his throat,
and said, ‘The reason I asked to see you, Mr. Goddard,
is that I’m writing a report of the—ah—shooting. You
understand, of course, there will be a very thorough
And The Deep Blue Sea — 103
investigation with a great deal of paperwork,
depositions, testimony, eyewitness accounts—’
Goddard was puzzled, as much by the captain’s
uncertain manner as he was by this circuitous stalking
of the obvious. Of course there’d be an investigation.
Steen went on. ‘And there were one or two—ah—
details I wanted to check with you.’
‘Sure,’ Goddard said.
‘Now, you helped Mr. Lind carry Mayr into his cabin.
You put him on the bunk, and Mr. Lind asked you to
send somebody for the first-aid kit and sterilizer, is that
right?’
‘No,’ Goddard replied. ‘He asked me to get them. I’d
been to his cabin, and knew where they were.’ Lind had
made sure of that, all right; he never missed a bet.
‘I see. And during the possibly two minutes you were
gone, Mr. Lind was there alone. You came back, and it
was probably a minute or two before I came to the
doorway. You remarked that the hemorrhaging seemed
dark for arterial blood, and Mr. Lind said it was
probably from the pulmonary artery. Now, Mr. Lind is a
former medical student and very expert at first-aid, so
he knows more about this, probably, than either of us,
but since I’m the master of the ship, the responsibility
is mine, and I have to be absolutely sure that we did
everything we could to save the man. If one of the big
arteries had been severed, of course, there was no
chance at all. Mr. Lind had the shirt cut away and the
chest exposed, but being outside the door I couldn’t see
very well. You were right at the foot of the bunk, so you
could. Would you say the blood was pumping from the
entrance wounds?’
Warning bells were beginning to ring everywhere.
‘That I couldn’t say for sure, Captain. All I know is
there was a lot of it; enough to kill anybody.’
‘I see.’ Steen frowned. ‘But you could see the wounds
all right?’
So we’ve finally got to the point, Goddard thought. He
either suspects I didn’t see any, or he knows I didn’t
And The Deep Blue Sea — 104
see any, but that’s not what he’s after; he wants to
know what I think. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure I did.’
‘You didn’t? But you were right there by the bunk.’
‘Captain, the entrance wound of a nine millimeter
slug is very small, sometimes no more than a dimple.
Mayr had a thick mat of hair on his chest, and it was
completely covered with blood, so his skin could have
been punctured in six places without my seeing any of
them. But I don’t understand what difference it makes,
anyway. We know he was shot twice through the chest
and died within five minutes, so any doctor will tell you
nobody could have saved him.’
Steen nodded. ‘Then you have no doubts at all it was
just as Mr. Lind said?’
‘None whatever, Captain.’ And you can quote me, if
that’s the object of this. By all means quote me.
Steen made a notation on his pad, still frowning and
thoughtful, and said, ‘Well, I guess that’s all. Thank you
for coming up, Mr. Goddard.’
Goddard went back to the promenade deck, puzzled
and even more uneasy. What was that for? The obvious
answer, of course, was that Steen was a party to the
plot and was probing, pretending to have doubts
himself in order to trap him into an admission he was
suspicious of it. But suppose Steen’s doubts were
genuine. Where had they come from? And why now,
with Krasicki dead? It was like sinking into quicksand,
he thought; every time you think you’re back on solid
ground it starts to give way under you again.
With the Leander lying motionless in the water where
there was no whisper of breeze, the smell of burning
cotton was evident for minutes at a time near the after
well-deck, and twice he saw heavy wisps of smoke issue
from the ventilators of number three. They drifted
straight up, thinned, and disappeared. He wasn’t going
to be very popular with the superstitious members of
the crew when they discovered it, he thought; he’d
already caused the death of two men, and now he’d set
their ship afire. In spite of his uneasiness, there was a
certain ironic fascination in the thought that while he
might be able to cope with the blazing intelligence and
And The Deep Blue Sea — 105
educated mind of the mate, against ignorance there
was never any defense at all.
He walked forward and stood at the rail watching the
bos’n and four sailors fish-oiling the rusty deck plates
of the forward well-deck. They were burned black,
stripped to the waist, and dripping sweat under the
malevolent glare of the sun. One looked up and saw
him, and said something, and the others turned to stare
for an instant. He wondered if it were merely the
standard salute to a useless slob of a passenger who
had nothing to do but live a life of ease, or whether it
was more serious.
Madeleine Lennox came out of the passageway and
joined him. She was wearing near the irreducible
minimum of clothing, only shorts, halter, and sandals,
but her upper lip was moist with perspiration and damp
tendrils of hair stuck to her neck. ‘It’s unbearable,’ she
said. ‘Inside or out. My cabin’s like a sauna.’
‘It’ll be a little better when we get under way again,’
Goddard said.
She looked around and spoke in a lower tone. ‘You
recall what we were talking about last night? I finally
remembered the thing that kept bothering me.’
He was instantly alert, but kept his face impassive.
‘About what?’ he asked.
‘Mayr. And that blood that came out of his mouth.
You remember, just before Krasicki came in and let out
that scream, you were telling us a funny story.
Everybody was laughing, and Mayr started to cough.
He put his napkin up to his mouth, and I think he
probably slipped something in it, a plastic capsule of
some kind he could open by biting down on it. Don’t
you think that’s possible?’
Goddard felt a little chill between his shoulder blades
and was aware he knew the answer to the question
even before he asked it. ‘You haven’t told anybody else
this?’
‘Just the captain,’ she replied. ‘At breakfast this
morning.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 106
Maybe it was hopeless now, but he had to make one
last effort. He smiled indulgently. ‘But isn’t there a flaw
in your theory somewhere? If the thing was staged, why
would Krasicki kill himself?’
‘How do we know he did? It could be another
illusion.’
'I hate to tear your script to pieces,’ he said, ‘but he’s
dead. I helped lift his body onto a bunk, and he was not
only cold, but stiff.’
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well, I guess that settles it.’
She would probably shut up now, but it was too late.
Well, he asked himself, aren’t you going to warn her at
all? Take up the ladder, Mate, I’m aboard. He sighed.
‘If there’s a chance in a million you’re right, you’ve
stuck your neck out. Stay away from the rail at night,
and keep your door locked.’
‘But I only told the captain.’
And the captain is a deeply religious man, who
couldn’t possibly be involved in anything like that, he
thought. Read the label attached to his arm. It
identifies him the same as all other members of the
cast. Krasicki was a gentle, persecuted Polish Jew, and
Lind’s a big, exuberant, fun-loving boy who likes to
doctor people. He excused himself and went to his
cabin. He’d done his best, hadn’t he? And maybe Steen
wasn’t involved in it.
If she figured out the mechanics of that dribble of
blood from the corner of Mayr’s mouth, why hadn’t she
been able to go one step further and grasp the selfevident
fact that if the thing had been staged you no
longer knew who anybody was? Of course, it was
simple enough; so, also, was the blood on the shirt. It
had been in a small balloon, or perhaps even another
rubber article more likely to be found in the possession
of seamen, attached to the inside of the shirt and
punctured by the tiny awl Mayr’d had in his hand as he
clutched his chest so dramatically after the second
shot. Unfortunately, Mayr had dropped the awl in his
cabin as they were lifting him onto the bunk, the only
slip-up in the whole operation.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 107
Then he, Goddard, had accidentally stepped on it, and
had looked down and pushed it over against the
bulkhead. The chances were Lind, who was washing his
hands at the basin, had seen this in the mirror. This
coupled with Goddard’s innocent remark that the
hemorrhaging seemed dark for arterial blood, could be
partly responsible for Krasicki’s death. The rest of the
massive hemorrhage, of course, was easy. Lind had
been alone in the cabin with Mayr for over ninety
seconds while Goddard was running up to the next deck
for the first-aid kit and sterilizer, and the blood was
already there in some kind of container in the
bedclothes. Obtaining it would have been no problem,
not with three of them to donate, and Lind’s dispensary
was equipped with hypodermic syringes and, no doubt,
anticoagulants.
The rest, of course, was simply consummate staging
and acting. Krasicki’s scream was calculated to
paralyze the witnesses for the length of time necessary
for him to get off the first two shots, the blanks, into
Mayr’s chest, with the appropriate shuddering reaction
from Mayr. Then Lind came in on cue, caught his arm
and swung it up, while Krasicki kept pulling the trigger,
now shooting live ammunition and breaking glass all
over the place to give it the final touch of
verisimilitude.
But all that was no longer important, he thought, as
he lay in the sweltering stillness of his cabin. The
question now was Steen. If he were involved, then
Madeleine Lennox had told them the thing was never
going to hold up; they had to eliminate her and anybody
else they suspected she’d talked to. But even if the
captain had had no part in it, there were still two very
ominous possibilities. One was that he might now be
suspicious enough, and naive enough, to order a search
of the ship, which could trigger the final explosion of
violence if Lind’s forces were strong enough. The mate
couldn’t back out now; he was committed. The other
danger was that even if the captain had better sense
than to force the issue while the ship was at sea, Lind
might already know of that breakfast conversation.
Who knew where his spies were? The dining room
And The Deep Blue Sea — 108
steward could have overheard them. So could Rafferty,
or Barset.
And what about the fire? The tween-decks of number
three hold was the most likely place for Mayr to be
hidden. It was directly below that cubicle where he’d
been stitched into the burial sack, and when the switch
had been made they wouldn’t have moved him any
farther around the ship than they had to; the risk of
detection was too great. What happened if the heat and
smoke drove him out?
He swore irritably, and sat up to light a cigarette,
trying to shake off the uneasiness. For God’s sake, he
still didn’t know any of this, did he? The whole thing
could be imagination. As though to corroborate this, the
Leander began to vibrate then as the engine went full
ahead and she got under way again. How could there
be anything sinister about this prosaic old rust-bucket
slogging her way around the Pacific?
* * *
The two fans droned monotonously in the dining room,
stirring the muggy air. Krasicki’s death weighed on
everybody’s spirits, as well as the enervating heat that
apparently would never end. Captain Steen was more
silent and withdrawn than ever, and even Lind was
subdued. The state of their nerves was apparent when
Karl dropped a dish as he was serving the jellied
consommé. They all jumped, and had to restrain
themselves from looking at him angrily. A sullen
Rafferty came in to clean up the mess.
Karen Brooke spoke to Steen. ‘This weather must
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