Karen frowned thoughtfully. ‘No, they came aboard at
different times; Mr. Krasicki just before we sailed, I
think. Then he must have become ill almost
immediately; we thought for the first day or so he was
just seasick, until Mr. Lind said he had a fever. They did
see each other once before today, though.’ She told
them about the episode when Goddard was being
rescued. ‘It was the same thing,’ she added. ‘I mean,
the impression that Mr. Krasicki thought he recognized
Mr. Egerton, but Mr. Egerton had never seen him at
all.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 66
‘Delusion.’ Goddard nodded. ‘Paranoia. God knows
what.’ But why had Krasicki asked about the eye?
Captain Steen came in then to assure the two women
that Krasicki was safely locked up and under sedation.
He was soothing and apologetic to them, but bleakly
distressed over the martini Goddard was sipping.
‘I’m surprised, Mr. Goddard, that you wouldn’t have
shown a little more respect for the dead.’
It must be, Goddard thought, that they never attempt
to reconcile the flaws in their argument simply because
they’re not aware of them. They assure us our departed
brother’s not just an unfortunate lump of cooling meat
that’ll never see another sunrise or hear a mockingbird,
or feel softness under him or wine in his belly again, or
design a toilet seat he’s proud of. Perish the thought.
He hasn’t died at all; he’s just gone on to the richer,
more beautiful life for which this was merely the
apprenticeship; and now that he’s caught the brass ring
and entered into this eternal paradise, for some
unaccountable reason they feel sorry for him.
Apparently his luck ran out before he could enjoy all
the suffering he was entitled to.
‘It’s only a different estimate of the appropriate,
Captain,’ he said. ‘And since there’s no way we can poll
Colonel Egerton, we’ll never know who was right.’
Sparks entered, carrying a message form. He ignored
the others and spoke to Captain Steen. ‘I got it off, by
way of KPH in California. And then I finally raised that
Argentine-station that had a message for us.’ He held it
out. ‘It was for Colonel Egerton.’
‘It’s a little late, Sparks.’
‘Yes sir. I’m sorry I couldn’t get it earlier, but it was
only filed this morning. And they should have routed it
through one of the North American stations.’
‘Well, I’d better see what it is.’ Steen opened it, and
looked surprised. ‘Hmmm. It’s signed Consuela. That
must be Consuela Santos, the same woman our
message is to.’
‘Yes, sir. Probably. We should have an answer from
her in a few hours. I’ll stand by.’ The operator went out.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 67
‘It’s not important,’ Steen said wearily, ‘but it would
have been nice if he could have received it.’ He read
the message aloud. ‘Colonel Walter Egerton S/S
Leander Enrique joins me in wishing you bon voyage
All our love Consuela.’
Karen and Madeleine Lennox both had tears in their
eyes at the tragic and unintended aptness of the
message under the circumstances. Goddard was
conscious of the thought that six days out was a little
late for filing a bon voyage message. Well, the sailings
of freighters were usually erratic and unpredictable.
* * *
The dining room was empty when Goddard went in at a
quarter after eight the next morning. Captain Steen
had already had breakfast, the young steward said, and
the two women had asked for coffee and fruit juice in
their cabins.
‘I don’t think I blame them,’ Goddard said. It would
take a little time to knock some of the sharp edges off
the memory of their last meal here. ‘What’s your name,
steward?’
‘Karl,’ the youth said. ‘Karl Berger.’
‘Well, I think all I want, Karl, is some coffee and a
dish of the stewed apricots.’
The crew had done what it could to eradicate the
traces. A new light fixture of a different type had been
installed in the overhead, and the broken mirror
removed. Where the bullet had entered the bulkhead
behind the mirror, the hole had been drilled out and a
plug installed, stained to approximate the shade of the
paneling. Goddard finished the fruit, lighted a
cigarette, and was sipping coffee when he was struck
by the thought that it was curious that Krasicki should
have had a gun aboard. No doubt it had been in that
triple-locked steamer trunk Barset had spoken of, but
unless the trunk had a Customs-proof secret
compartment he was asking for trouble in wholesale
lots. The authorities of all countries took a very dim
view of tourists packing handguns. He shrugged. The
And The Deep Blue Sea — 68
man was unbalanced; he might have been carrying
around a whole arsenal.
Goddard turned then and looked at the back of
Egerton’s chair beside him. Apparently neither of the
bullets had gone on through; the backrest was
unmarked. Unless, he thought, they had passed under
it, between it and the seat, in the space between the
two upright members. He looked around at the
bulkhead directly behind it, thinking this was a grisly
pastime to accompany his morning coffee. There was
no trace of a bullet hole in the paneling.
‘They didn’t go through, Sherlock,’ a voice said
behind him. Goddard turned. Lind was smiling at him
from the doorway, seeming to fill it with his height and
great width of shoulder. He came on in and sat down.
‘I was just wondering about it,’ Goddard said. ‘What
was the caliber of the gun?’
‘Nine millimeter,’ Lind said. ‘It was a Czech
automatic. But it’s not the caliber that matters; it’s
what it hits. You got a good grip on your breakfast?’
‘Sure,’ Goddard said.
‘I probed both of ‘em. One broke a rib going in, and
as near as I could tell from the angle the second one hit
one of the vertebrae. There was no exit wound at all,
which is why there was so much hemorrhaging through
the entrance wounds. Where they come out, you could
drain a swimming pool.’
‘I know,’ Goddard said. Something about it still
bothered him, but he wasn’t sure what it was; anyway,
Lind knew more about it than he did. ‘Any word yet
from Consuela Santos?’
‘Yeah.’ Lind lit a cigarette. ‘Skipper got a reply about
one this morning. She says Egerton had no living
relatives except a cousin he’d been out of touch with
for years. She thought he was in Australia, but she
doesn’t know where, and he could be dead himself by
now.’
‘So you’ll bury him at sea?’
Lind nodded. ‘That’s all we can do, and turn his
effects over to the British consul in Manila. It’ll be at
And The Deep Blue Sea — 69
four this afternoon, just at the change of watch. Have
you ever seen one?’
‘No,’ Goddard said.
‘Not much to it.’ There was a nicker of amusement in
the sardonic blue eyes. ‘Dress is optional. With your
extensive wardrobe, I’d suggest a frock coat, black top
hat, and a dark ascot.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got
to check Krasicki again, see if I can get through to him.
You want to come along?’
‘Sure.’ Goddard started to get up.
‘Finish your coffee. There’s plenty of time.’
‘Do you know anything about him at all?’ Goddard
asked. ‘Family? Why he was going to Manila?’
Lind nodded. 'I talked to him quite a bit while I was
trying to treat his fever. He doesn’t know whether he
has any family or not; he was never able to find any of
them after the war. He was in the Polish army and
taken prisoner in 1939. He’s Jewish, of course, so he
went the usual route, the concentration camps, cattle
cars, labor battalions, medical experimentation, waiting
for the gas chamber. Somewhere along the line I think
he was castrated. Couple of times I’ve gone into his
cabin and he’d have a hand in his crotch, crying—’
‘Oh, Christ.’ Goddard said.
‘Yeah. Anyway, after the war he was a DP, shuffled
around from one country to another, but he finally
made it to Brazil and they let him become a citizen.
He’s a botanist, and before the war was an associate
professor of silviculture at Cracow University. He
became quite an expert on tropical hardwoods, and
does surveys for timber exporters. He just finished one
over in the montaña of Peru, and was going to do the
same thing in Mindanao and Luzon. Likes being out in
the jungle; he’s afraid of people.’
‘You wonder why,’ Goddard said.
They went outside and down the ladder to the deck
below. It was a brassy, stifling morning with no breeze
at all except that set up by the forward progress of the
ship itself. The bow wave spread outward and back in a
long V toward the horizon, and far out a school of
And The Deep Blue Sea — 70
porpoises leaped and played in it, keeping pace with its
steady march across the flat and unending prairie of
the sea. Off to port, several miles away, was a piled
dark mass of thunderheads shot through with the fitful
play of lightning and trailing a purple veil of rain.
‘Going to have some squalls today,’ Lind said.
No sound issued from the padlocked door. Lind
unsnapped the lock, and they went in. Krasicki, clad
only in the wrinkled white linen trousers and no longer
bound, lay on one of the lower bunks. His eyes were
open, but he did not even turn his head as they entered,
and gave no indication he was aware of them at all.
Goddard watched carefully as Lind spoke to him in
English, and then in German, but there was no
expression of any kind in the eyes, simply blankness.
Except for the faint rise and fall of the hairless and
emaciated chest, and the motion of a hand as he
brushed an imaginary fly from in front of his face, he
might have been a corpse. University professor to
vegetable, by easy stages, Goddard thought. The
wreckage, Egerton had said; and then he’d been killed
by it. ‘The lines are all down,’ he said.
Lind nodded. ‘Complete withdrawal. There may be a
chance it’s only temporary; all we can do is wait.’
The Filipino boy entered with a bowl of fruit, some
sandwiches, and water. Goddard noted that the bowl
and pitcher were of soft plastic and the sandwiches
were on a paper plate. Krasicki’s belt had been
removed, and the garish tie was nowhere in the room.
They were taking no chances of a suicide attempt.
There was no head, but he had been given a sanitary
pail; any attempt to lead him to a toilet might provoke
another outburst.
They went out. As Lind was relocking the door,
Goddard remarked, ‘It’s odd he’s so pale; I mean, with
an outdoor job.’
‘Heliophobe,’ Lind said. ‘Can’t stand sunlight at all;
his skin burns like a crisp, so he has to stay covered
completely. And as a matter of fact, in the jungle
there’s practically no sunlight anyway. He had kind of a
lame botanical joke about it; said if he were a plant
And The Deep Blue Sea — 71
he’d be classified as negatively heliotropic. It means
turning away from the sun.’ He broke off as they came
to a companionway at the end of the passage. ‘Come on
down. You can see how it’s done.’
‘Egerton?’ Goddard asked.
‘Yeah. Bos’n’s working on him now.’
They went down to the next deck. There was a dimly
lighted passageway here outside the engine room
casing which contained a number of locked storerooms
and the steward’s big freezer and chill box. One of the
doors was unlocked. Lind opened it and stuck his head
in. ‘How you doing, Boats?’ He went in, followed by
Goddard.
It was a bleak steel cubicle with a single overhead
light, empty except for two wooden horses with a door
lying across them. Egerton’s body was on the door,
being sewn into the canvas burial sack by the bos’n and
one of the sailors, a blond-bearded, heavily built man in
his twenties whom Goddard had heard addressed as
Otto. They looked up from their work and nodded, but
said nothing. The sack was a single long strip of white
canvas a yard wide, doubled under Egerton’s feet and
stitched up the sides by the two men with sail needles
and white twine. They were almost finished; only the
head remained exposed. The gray hair was still neat,
even in death, Goddard noted, and the slender face was
pale as marble under the naked light.
‘It’s weighted at the foot,’ Lind said. ‘The engineers
gave us the cap of an old bearing. Weighs about fifty
pounds.’
Captain Steen came in, carrying a rolled flag. ‘Good
morning, Mr. Goddard,’ he said, and turned to the
mate. ‘Here’s the Union Jack, Mr. Lind.’
Lind took the flag. ‘After well-deck, port side; that all
right?’
‘Yes. And I would appreciate it if everybody who can
would change to shore clothes. That doesn’t include the
black gang on watch, of course.’
Lind nodded. ‘I’ll pass the word. Incidentally, there
are two British subjects in the crew; the eight-to-twelve
And The Deep Blue Sea — 72
fireman and the second cook. It might be a gesture of
some kind if we asked them to bear a hand bringing the
body out. And maybe Mr. Goddard would like to
represent the passengers.’
‘I’d be glad to,’ Goddard said.
He watched moodily as the bos’n pulled the
remaining canvas up over Egerton’s face and matched
the corners. The two men went on stitching up the
edges of the white anonymous sack.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 73
6
There were poisonous-looking squalls on the horizon on
both sides of them, but here the sun bore down with
leaden weight and there was a dead stillness to the air
like the feeling of vacuum before a tornado. It was
oppressive, and Goddard found himself wishing
nervously that Captain Steen would advance the
service a few minutes so they could complete it before
one of the squalls came screaming down on them and
wrecked Egerton’s chances of departing from the
visible world with a little grace and dignity. But he’d
said four p.m., and apparently four it would be.
A single wooden horse had been set five feet in from
the bulwark on the port side of the after well-deck, and
all the crew not on watch on the bridge or in the engine
room were gathered in a semicircle about it, most of
them in shore-going trousers and white shirts that were
already limp with perspiration by the time they’d got
them on. Lind was wearing tropical whites, the first
time Goddard had seen him in uniform. In the
background were two or three of the black gang, just
come up from below and still in singlets and sweat
rags. Goddard was standing by the horse with Lind, the
bos’n, and the two English members of the crew, the
only ones of the whole assemblage wearing ties.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 74
There was a growl of thunder from one of the squalls.
Then Goddard saw Karen Brooke and Madeleine
Lennox coming down the ladder from the deck above,
followed by Captain Steen in full uniform with jacket,
carrying his Bible. The two women were in simple white
summer dresses. Four bells struck, followed
immediately by the jingle of the engine room telegraph.
The engine stopped, and in a moment the ship began to
go astern as the second mate backed her down to take
the way off her.
Lind nodded to the bos’n. ‘All right, Boats.’
The dogs had been knocked loose and the steel door
opening onto the well-deck pulled back and latched.
Goddard followed the bos’n and the two Englishmen
into the passageway. The door to the small cubicle was
open, and the white burial sack still lay upon the door
supported by the two horses, now with the Union Jack
draped across it. The vibration of the reversed engine
ceased and there was silence as they picked up the
door by its four corners and carried it down the
passageway into the sullen glare of afternoon. They put
it down with one end on the wooden horse and the
other extending out over the bulwark about a foot, the
weighted end of the sack toward the sea. They stepped
back, Goddard positioning himself next to the bulwark.
He looked over the side. The Leander was still ghosting
through the water, but slowing as she gradually came
to rest.
‘Let us bow our heads,’ Captain Steen said. The sun
beat down, and there was another roll of thunder as he
intoned the prayer. When he said, ‘Amen,’ at last, they
straightened and there was a general shuffling of feet.
Lind stepped to the bulwark and looked down. He
turned and nodded to the captain. The Leander was
stopped.
Lind and the bos’n positioned themselves at opposite
corners of the door where it rested on the horse.
Captain Steen stood before it, opened the Bible, and
began to read the sea burial service.
‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to
live and is full of misery; he cometh up and is cut down
And The Deep Blue Sea — 75
like a flower; he fleeth as if he were a shadow, and
never continueth in one stay. For as much as it hath
pleased the Almighty God in His great mercy to take
unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here
departed: we therefore commit his body to the deep.’
With the last words, Lind and the bos’n raised the
end of the door, holding the upper edge of the Union
Jack clamped against it. The weighted burial sack slid
from under the flag and dropped over the bulwark into
the sea. It splashed below them. Goddard looked down.
The top of the sack was ballooned with the air trapped
inside it, and it sank slowly at first, trailing bubbles, as
it began its long slide into the abyss. He followed it
moodily, being very careful not to think of Gerry’s
funeral five months ago, and considered that Egerton
would have liked it. ‘Good show; didn’t drag on with a
lot of silly eulogies and bore the chaps, what?’
It began to fade from view. There was another
growling reverberation of thunder along the horizon,
and Lind turned and signed to the captain. It was well
below the propeller now. Captain Steen spoke to one of
the crew. ‘Tell Mr. VanDoorn he can get under way.’
Goddard looked around at Karen Brooke and Madeleine
Lennox. They both had tears in their eyes
Dinner began quietly. Goddard had had three
martinis but could get no lift from them at all.
Depression weighed on everybody except possibly Lind,
and even he was less than his usual vital self. The
weather did little to improve their mood, Goddard
thought. They still hadn’t run into a squall, but the
stillness and the muggy, oppressive heat continued.
The typewritten menu was as limp as a piece of
cheesecloth, and cigarettes, ten minutes after a pack
was opened, were almost too damp to bum. Both fans
whirred at full speed in the dining room, circulating air
that was already too saturated with moisture to have
any cooling effect at all.
‘One more day and we should be out of this,’ Lind
said. ‘When we pick up the trades we’ll be all right.’ He
turned to Goddard. ‘Must drive you crazy, trying to get
across it under sail.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 76
Goddard grinned. ‘The secret of it is don’t eat
grapefruit.’
Even Lind looked mystified. Then Karen Brooke said,
‘All right, I’ll be the goat. Why?’
‘The rinds float,’ Goddard said. ‘It does something to
you when you can throw today’s overboard and hit
yesterday’s with it.’
The wireless operator came in. He handed Captain
Steen a message. ‘I just got this from KPH in California.
Manila’s calling us too, but I think it may be the same
message.’
‘Thanks, Sparks.’ Captain Steen tore it open, read it,
and stood up abruptly. ‘If you’ll excuse us. Mr. Lind,
will you come up to my office?’
They hurried out, followed by the wireless operator.
Goddard and the two women looked at each other,
puzzled and vaguely uneasy, and Madeleine Lennox
asked, ‘What on earth could that be?’
‘Nothing serious,’ Goddard said. ‘My check bounced,
and they’re going to bill Mrs. Brooke for my passage.’
‘That’s the code of the sea?’
‘It’s invariable. Harsh, I’ll admit, but the sea demands
it. Well, I always wanted to be the pampered plaything
of a beautiful woman.’
‘I should warn you then,’ Karen said, ‘that my
standard contract with pampered playthings has a
clause they have to address me by my first name.’
It was no use; the banter fell flat. It was too hot to
eat, the place weighed on their spirits, and they were
all thinking of the radiogram. There was something
very urgent about it for Captain Steen to depart that
way. As if on cue, they got up and went out. Karen
apologized to the dining room steward.
‘It’s no reflection on the food, Karl. It’s just too hot.’
They went on deck on the port side and walked
forward. The sun had disappeared behind another
ominous mass of clouds in the west and there was a
faintly sulfurous cast to the light. It was twenty minutes
later when Goddard saw Lind come around the corner
of the deckhouse aft and disappear into the
And The Deep Blue Sea — 77
passageway. Something was happening, all right, if he
hadn’t gone back to his watch; the third mate relieved
him only long enough for dinner. They walked back,
and as they came abreast of the porthole of Egerton’s
cabin they saw the mate inside.
‘What is it?’ Goddard asked.
‘All hell’s breaking loose. Tell you about it in a
minute.’ Lind closed the porthole, and they could see
him tightening down the dogs. They went around into
the passageway. He was just emerging from the cabin.
He locked the door and dropped the key in his pocket.
‘Come on into the lounge.’
They followed him, completely mystified and
conscious of a vague foreboding. When the women
were seated, he said, ‘You’re already involved, so the
skipper decided there’s no point in any cloak-anddagger
secrecy about it. We’re all going to be hit by a
wave of police and newspaper reporters when we dock
in Manila, and you might as well be prepared.’
‘Egerton,’ Goddard said.
Lind nodded. He took two folded radiograms from his
shirt pocket, and handed one to Goddard. ‘Read ‘em
aloud. This one first. They were filed about two hours
apart, in Buenos Aires, and Sparks is having trouble
keeping up now.’
Goddard unfolded it and started to read.
MASTER S/S LEANDER SAN FRANCISCO
RADIO
URGENTLY REQUEST IMMEDIATE
VERIFICATION FOLLOWING PHYSICAL
DESCRIPTION OF PASSENGER ABOARD
YOUR VESSEL USING NAME WALTER
EGERTON CARRYING BRITISH PASSPORT
AND CLAIMING BE EX-COLONEL ENGLISH
ARMY STOP WEARS EYE PATCH LEFT EYE
FIVE FEET ELEVEN ONE HUNDRED SIXTY
POUNDS GRAY HAIR GRAY MOUSTACHE
UPPER-CLASS ENGLISH ACCENT STOP IF
DESCRIPTION TALLIES IMPERATIVE DO
And The Deep Blue Sea — 78
NOT AROUSE SUSPICIONS THIS MAN OR
REVEAL CONTENTS THIS MESSAGE AND
IF RADIO NEWS DISSEMINATED ABOARD
VESSEL PLEASE CENSOR ACCORDINGLY
STOP DELIVER NO MESSAGES TO HIM
STOP POLICE WILL BOARD VESSEL WITH
PILOT BOAT YOUR ARRIVAL MANILA STOP
PASSPORT IS FORGERY AND THERE IS
STRONG EVIDENCE MAN IS HUGO MAYR—
Goddard broke off and looked at Lind, suddenly
remembering Krasicki’s scream: Mire! You go Mire!
There were simultaneous exclamations from the two
women. ‘That’s what he was saying!’
Lind nodded. Goddard continued reading.
—HUGO MAYR STOP REPLY LT. HANS
RICHTER CARE BUENOS AIRES POLICE.
It was Karen who broke the silence. ‘But he couldn’t
have been!’ She cried out incredulously. ‘That sweet,
charming man!’
Lind spread his hands. ‘Krasicki seemed to have no
doubts.’
‘But everybody’s believed Mayr was dead,’ Madeleine
Lennox said. ‘For over twenty years.’
‘Not everybody,’ Lind replied. ‘They were still looking
for him.’
‘He must have discovered they were on his trail,’
Goddard said, ‘and tried to run for it.’
‘My guess,’ Lind said, ‘is that Egerton was a new
identity. Simply running wouldn’t have done any good,
if they were closing in on him.’
‘Sure,’ Goddard said. ‘And wait—that wireless from
Señora Santos. Warning, probably, that they were
about to crack the Egerton identity, or were asking
questions.’
‘Good thinking, Sherlock,’ Lind said. He handed over
the second radiogram. ‘You’re right on the button.’
Goddard read it aloud.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 79
MASTER S/S LEANDER SAN FRANCISCO
RADIO
JUST LEARNED THIS HOUR OF YOUR
WIRELESS TO CONSUELA SANTOS
REVEALING DEATH OF ALLEGED WALTER
EGERTON STOP HER TESTIMONY
APPEARS ESTABLISH CONCLUSIVELY
MAN WAS HUGO MAYR BUT IMPERATIVE
REPEAT IMPERATIVE YOU PRESERVE
BODY BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE TO
PERMIT FINAL IDENTIFICATION
THROUGH FINGERPRINTS YOUR ARRIVAL
MANILA STOP ACKNOWLEDGE SOONEST
HANS RICHTER.
There was a moment of stunned silence. Then
Goddard whistled softly. ‘Buenos Aires time is—what?
Sixtieth meridian?’
Lind nodded. ‘Roughly four hours ahead of ship’s
time now.’
‘There will be hell to pay. The first message was filed
at least two hours before he was buried.’
“No, Sparks is in the clear,’ Lind said. ‘His hours of
watch are set by international agreement, according to
time zone. And it’s no fault of the skipper’s. He notified
the responsible party named by the deceased, and was
told there was nobody wishing to claim the body. And,
anyway, the ship’s not operated as a branch of the West
German police; it’s just an unfortunate foul-up, and not
irrevocable, by any means. We’ve already anticipated
the next message.’
‘What? Oh.’ Goddard saw what he meant. ‘Sealing off
the room.’
‘Right,’ Lind said. ‘Skipper fired back a reply to the
first message saying Egerton was dead and had been
buried at sea, and then Sparks got the second one, from
the same station. So they passed each other. It’s
obvious what they’ll want. Apparently Mayr’s
fingerprints are on file, so if the room’s untouched till
we get to Manila it’s almost certain the experts can
raise enough prints to establish positive identification.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 80
‘It was locked, anyway, wasn’t it?’ Goddard asked.
‘Yes. Last night, just as soon as the bed linen was
removed. But I’ve closed the porthole, and we’ll put a
padlock and hasp on the door to double-lock it.’
‘Should be fairly routine,’ Goddard agreed. ‘There’s
the tooth glass, and the mirror on the medicine
cabinet.’
Lind nodded. ‘And the cabin steward says he had a
set of silver-backed military hairbrushes. Well, I’ve got
to get back on watch.’
He went out. The others were silent for a moment,
trying to absorb the fact that the urbane and charming
Englishman they’d all liked so well was the infamous
Hugo Mayr, the butcher of Poland and the most widely
sought Nazi since Eichmann.
Madeleine Lennox shook her head. ‘No. I simply can’t
believe it. I try, but it just won’t go down.’
‘Of course,’ Karen said, ‘they’ll find out it’s a
mistake.’
No, Goddard thought; they wouldn’t find out it was a
mistake. It all fitted together too beautifully; the fake
eye patch alone destroyed the whole Egerton identity,
so you started fresh from that point with a man who
could be anybody. And when a West German police
officer in Buenos Aires and a Polish concentration camp
victim on a ship four thousand miles away
simultaneously made the same identification, it was
hard to argue with. He stopped then, and frowned,
aware of something disturbing about it. Was it the fact
that Krasicki had recognized him after a quarter
century? No, he thought, the basic configuration of a
man’s face might change a great deal between, say,
twenty and forty-five, but after that it was identifiable
until it began to go to pieces in extreme old age. And
the Pole had known him under circumstances
calculated to impress the face on his memory, to say
the least. No, it was something else. He knew what it
was then, and smiled to himself.
He had dealt too long in illusion, and was trying to
make life conform to the rules of fiction. Believe me,
fellas, I’m not trying to pick the script to pieces, but
And The Deep Blue Sea — 81
this I just can’t buy. Look, we’ve got this Nazi schmuck
the whole world’s been looking for for twenty-five
years, and then all of a sudden, on the same day and
practically the same hour, two people make him,
halfway around the world from each other, so he’s
killed, buried, and identified like it was something
programmed on a computer. You see whattamean? He’s
running from this West German fuzz, and just happens
to wind up on a ship with this poor joker he gelded in
1943. You’re right, Mannie, it would never work.
Madeleine Lennox asked, ‘What do you think, Mr.
Goddard ?’
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That the only tragedy of the whole
thing is Krasicki.’
‘Then you do believe he was Hugo Mayr?’ Karen
asked.
‘Yes. And if they’d discovered it only a few hours
earlier, Krasicki wouldn’t have had to spend what’s left
of his life in an institution for the criminally insane.’
By eight thirty the two women had to concede there
no longer appeared to be any doubt. The messages had
continued to come in. As Lind had predicted,
Lieutenant Richter requested the cabin be sealed
immediately. Fingerprint experts would board the
Leander the moment she arrived in Manila. And by now
they had begun to grasp that they were the focus of the
world’s attention—briefly perhaps, but the world
wanted news of just what had happened aboard this
rusty old freighter lost in the immensity of the Pacific
where the notorious Nazi war criminal had met his end.
Captain Steen had already received requests from
Associated Press, United Press International, and
Reuters, bidding for the exclusive story. He sat
drinking coffee with them in the lounge, dazed as they
all were. Lind came in with the news there was no
change in Krasicki’s condition. He poured a cup of
coffee and sat down.
Karen sighed. ‘But it’s still incredible that he fooled
us so completely.’
Lind smiled. ‘Well, he’s been fooling a lot of people
for over twenty years.’
And The Deep Blue Sea — 82
‘He was a consummate actor,’ Goddard said. ‘He had
to be, or they’d have got him long ago.’
Madeleine Lennox lit a cigarette and smiled faintly.
‘Well, that’s praise from an authority. And incidentally,
now that we can begin to think of the scene without
screaming, how would you direct it in a picture?’
‘I wouldn’t change a thing,’ Goddard replied.
‘No, but I mean, the technical aspects of it, the
breakdown of the individual parts, where the cameras
would be.’
‘Camera,’ Goddard said. ‘In a scene like that you can
use only one, because of the lighting. You break it down
into several setups, from different points of view, and
shoot them individually. Usually, there’s a master shot
and then as much backup coverage as the director feels
he needs or can get. The broken glass—’ He stopped,
and asked, ‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘After the real, I don’t think the makebelieve
will bother us. Do you Karen?’
Karen shook her head. Lind watched with interest.
‘In the make-believe,’ Goddard went on, ‘it’s still the
touches of realism that give it the emotional impact.
For instance, in a cheap Western a man is shot at pointblank
range with a .44 and nothing happens except
that, unaccountably, he drops dead. He’s been slammed
with something with the foot-pounds of energy of a
moving truck, but there’s not the slightest indication of
it. With a good director, it’s different. You see what
happens.
‘You shoot it this way: from my point of view, Krasicki
with the gun, screaming, he raises the gun, and shoots.
He’s not shooting at anything, because Mayr’s not even
there beside me, and you may or may not use the shot
itself, depending on the way it works best when you
edit it. Then you set up just back of Krasicki and to one
side to get the shot and the reaction of Mayr’s body to
the impact of the bullet. And on to the next setup for
the best view of Mr. Lind going for him to get the gun,
and of course when you go back to Mayr again the
makeup people have applied the red dye to the shirt
and the corner of the mouth.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 83
‘Breaking the light fixture and the mirror are just
routine special effects jobs. It’s a small explosive
charge that’s set off electrically—’
Madeleine Lennox interrupted. ‘I see. Then all the
shots are blanks, and not just the first two.’
‘Oh, hell, yes; you never use live ammunition. You’d
be locked up. But do you want to know the real accent
of the scene, though, the thing that caps it, and that
only a really superb director would ever think of?’
‘What’s that?’ Lind asked. He had his legs swung over
the side of the armchair, sipping coffee as he watched
with that same smiling interest.
‘When Mayr clutches the tablecloth as he falls. And in
that terrible silence after all that screaming and gunfire
you hear just a faint and very musical tinkling of
silverware. That would leave ‘em gasping. It’d be a
genius of a director who could improve on the staging
of that scene.’
Goddard was conscious then of something very cold
moving up his back, as though somebody were drawing
an icicle slowly along his spine, and the hair began to
stab his neck. He was looking right at Lind, who was
still smiling faintly, and as he realized what he’d said
he knew he was staring straight into the eyes of the
devil.
‘Seems to be a case, then,’ Lind murmured, ‘of nature
holding a mirror up to art.’
And only the two of them knew it, Goddard thought;
the others didn’t even suspect it.
And The Deep Blue Sea — 84
7
How many were there? Goddard lay naked on his bunk
in the darkness and thought about it. The bos’n and
that big sailor named Otto were obviously part of the
apparatus, but was that all? What about the wireless
operator? Or even Captain Steen himself? That was the
chilling part of it; they could be all around him and he
didn’t know who was involved. And maybe Lind already
suspected him; with that diabolical mind you couldn’t
be sure of anything, except that underestimating it was
a mistake nobody would ever make twice.
Lightning flashed, illuminating the whole interior of
the cabin for over a second. Without conscious thought,
he began counting: one-oh, two-oh, three-oh . . . nineoh.
A great crash of thunder rolled and reverberated
over the ship. It was still two miles away but coming
closer. The fan whirred, stirring the lifeless air, but the
cabin was like a sweatbox. The wooden door was pulled
back and hooked, but the screen, which had louvered
slats across it for privacy, was latched. In the silence he
heard the faint sound of six bells striking in the
wheelhouse. It was eleven p.m.
It’d be a genius of a director who could improve on
the staging of that scene. One more stupid remark like
that, he thought, and the next burial sack that goes
over the side will have somebody in it, all right. Lind
And The Deep Blue Sea — 85
was the ship’s doctor, and with an imagination of that
order there’d be no dearth of illuminating detail to
enter in the log as to cause of death. Found dead in
bunk of obvious cardiac arrest. Went to bed drunk, set
mattress afire with cigarette, and suffocated. Suffered
severe concussion in fall, and died two days later
without regaining consciousness. With enough
morphine in him to kill a rhinoceros. The findings would
be subject to review by higher medical authority, of
course, except for the minor difficulty that the body
was buried in the ooze five miles down in the Pacific
Ocean.
But there’s still a chance you’re wrong, he told
himself. You don’t really know any of this; you’re only
assuming it. All you really know is that it could be the
greatest piece of illusion since Thurston, you know why
it could have been done, and how it could have been
done, but there’s no proof whatever that it was done.
The cabin was lit up by another long flash of lightning,
and the thunderclap came almost on the heels of it. A
faint breeze came in the porthole now, with the smell of
rain in it. Lightning flashed again, and the thunder was
a sharp, cracking explosion that was very near.
Maybe he’d been led down the garden path by his
subconscious distrust of all those coincidences of
timing between the ship and Buenos Aires, and then
when Mrs. Lennox had asked that ridiculous question
about the first two shots being blanks he’d boobytrapped
himself and leaped to the conclusion that just
because it was possible it had to be true. Of course
Mayr would like to be written off as dead, and what
better way than being shot to death in front of five
reliable witnesses and buried in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean?
Then what about Krasicki, or whatever his real name
was? If the thing had been staged, there had to be
some plausible and foolproof escape already
prearranged; no matter how great his devotion to the
cause or how high the pay, it was hardly likely he would
set himself up as a human sacrifice. Just how did they
wave the wand and make him disappear?
And The Deep Blue Sea — 86
An escape could be engineered, of course, even after
he was turned over to the Philippine authorities, but
there was a flaw in that. The chances were there had
been a real Krasicki, a Polish Jew and a botanist
resident in Brazil, who’d either died out in the jungle or
received an individual dose of the ‘final solution’ so
they could take over his identity, in which case this one
could hardly be put on display for the world’s press
with the obvious danger that somebody who’d known
the real one would spot the fraud. Passports could be
doctored, if you had the price and connections, and a
blown-up reproduction of a 2½ by 2½ passport photo
would seldom be recognized by the sitter’s mother, but
turn those Time-Life photographers loose on the
subject himself and you were in real trouble.
No, Krasicki—he might as well continue to call him
that—Krasicki had to disappear before they reached
Manila. And the simplest way, of course, was another
death and sea burial. The cast and staging wouldn’t
have to be anywhere near as elaborate as the first one,
and the groundwork for it had already been laid—the
precautions against suicide, removal of the tie and belt
and the serving of his food in soft plastic containers
without cutlery. Conveniently, of course, nobody had
given a thought to the fact that he could tear strips
from the bed linen and hang himself. Some morning
when they opened the door, he’d be dangling from
those overhead pipes. Lind would send the other party,
the witness, for something, cut him down, and
announce with that manly and understated despair he
did so well that it was no use; Krasicki’d been dead for
hours.
He wondered what the mate would use to simulate
the bruises of strangulation and to give the lips that
distinctive blue of cyanosis, but no doubt that had been
carefully planned. He’d done a beautiful job with
Mayr’s death pallor, with the aid of that white overhead
light; probably just a light cream base of some kind
with a liberal application of ordinary talc. Nobody had
been within ten feet of the body except the two men
who were sewing it into the sack. He’d been invited to
And The Deep Blue Sea — 87
watch the final stitches, of course, but what about
Steen? Was he a witness, or a party to it?
There was another flash of lightning, followed
immediately by a crashing explosion of thunder that
seemed to shake the whole cabin. Then he sat up,
suddenly alert. Somebody had rapped on the screen
door. He pulled on the boxer shorts and slipped over to
it. Opening the louvers, he looked out through the
screen into the lighted passageway. It was Madeleine
Lennox, in pajamas and a nylon robe. He unlatched the
screen. ‘May I come in?’ she asked.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Just let me put on—’
She pushed the screen on back and stepped in. ‘Men
and their idiotic modesty. We could be dead in the next
five seconds.’
There was another searing flash that illuminated the
cabin as though an arc light had been turned in the
porthole, with a simultaneous crash of thunder. He saw
her wince. She really was afraid of it, he thought. ‘I
can’t stand it, on a ship,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing else
for it to hit.’
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