The Golden Rendezvous. Alistair MacLean

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      Wrapped in a blue haze from the staccato back-firing of its exhaust, vibrating like a broken tuning fork and rattling in every bolt in its superannuated chassis, the truck trundled heavily across the cobbles and pulled up not five paces from where MacDonald was standing. A little man in white ducks and peaked cap jumped out through the space where the door ought to have been, stood still for a couple of seconds until he got the hang of terra firma again and then scuttled off in the direction of our gangway. I recognised him as our Carracio agent, the one with the low opinion of Detroit, and wondered what fresh trouble he was bringing with him.

      I found out in three minutes flat when Captain Bullen appeared on deck, an anxious-looking agent scurrying along behind him. The captain’s blue eyes were snapping, the red complexion was overlaid with puce, but he had the safety valve screwed right down.

      “Coffins, Mister,” he said tightly. “Coffins, no less.”

      I suppose there is a quick and clever answer to a conversational gambit like that but I couldn’t find it so I said politely: “Coffins, sir?”

      “Coffins, Mister. Not empty, either. For shipment to New York.” He flourished some papers. “Authorisations, shipping notes, everything in order. Including a sealed request signed by no less than the ambassador. Three of them. Two British, one American subjects. Killed in the hunger riots.”

      “The crew won’t like it, sir,” I said. “Especially the Gôanese stewards. You know their superstitions and how——”

      “It will be all right, Señor,” the little man in white broke in hurriedly. Wilson had been right about the nervousness, but there was more to it than that, there was a strange over lay of anxiety that came close to despair. “We have arranged——”

      “Shut up!” Captain Bullen said shortly. “No need for the crew to know, Mister. Or the passengers.” You could see they were just a careless after-thought. “Coffins are boxed—that’s them on the truck there.”

      “Yes, sir. Killed in the riots. Last week.” I paused and went on delicately: “In this heat——”

      “Lead-lined, he says. So they can go in the hold. Some separate corner, Mister. One of the—um—deceased is a relative of one of the passengers boarding here. Wouldn’t do to stack the coffins among the dynamos, I suppose.” He sighed heavily. “On top of everything else, we’re now in the funeral undertaking business. Life, First, can hold no more.”

      “You are accepting this—ah—cargo, sir?”

      “But of course, but of course,” the little man interrupted again. “One of them is a cousin of Señor Carreras, who sails with you. Señor Miguel Carreras. Señor Carreras, he is what you say heartbroken. Señor Carreras is the most important man——”

      “Be quiet,” Captain Bullen said wearily. He made a gesture with the papers. “Yes, I’m accepting. Note from the Ambassador. More pressure. I’ve had enough of cables flying across the Atlantic. Too much grief. Just an old beaten man, First, just an old beaten man.” He stood there for a moment, hands outspread on the guard-rail, doing his best to look like an old beaten man and making a singularly unsuccessful job of it, then straightened abruptly as a procession of vehicles turned in through the dock gates and made for the Campari.

      “A pound to a penny, Mister, here comes still more grief.”

      “Praise be to God,” the little agent murmured. The tone, no less than the words, was a prayer of thanksgiving. “Señor Carreras himself! Your passengers, at last, Captain.”

      “That’s what I said,” Bullen growled. “More grief.”

      The procession, two big chauffeur-driven prewar Packards, one towed by a jeep, had just pulled up by the gangway and the passengers were climbing out. Those who could, that was—for very obviously there was one who could not. One of the chauffeurs, dressed in green tropical drills and a bush hat, had opened the boot of his car, pulled out a collapsible hand-propelled wheel-chair and, with the smooth efficiency of experience, had it assembled in ten seconds flat while the other chauffeur, with the aid of a tall thin nurse clad in overall white from her smart, starched cap to the skirt that reached down to her ankles, tenderly lifted a bent old man from the back seat of the second Packard and set him gently in the wheel-chair. The old boy—even at that distance I could see the face creased and stretched with the lines of age, the snowy whiteness of the still plentiful hair—did his best to help them, but his best wasn’t very much.

      Captain Bullen looked at me. I looked at Captain Bullen. There didn’t seem to be any reason to say anything. Nobody in a crew likes having permanent invalids aboard ship: they cause trouble to the ship’s doctor, who has to look after their health, to the cabin stewards who have to clean their quarters, to the dining-room stewards who have to feed them, and to those members of the deck crew detailed for the duty of moving them around. And when the invalids are elderly, and often infirm—and if this one wasn’t, I sadly missed my guess—there was always the chance of a death at sea, the one thing sailors hate above all else. It was also very bad for the passenger trade.

      “Well,” Captain Bullen said heavily, “I suppose I’d better go and welcome our latest guests aboard. Finish it off as quickly as possible, Mister.”

      “I’ll do that, sir.”

      Bullen nodded and left. I watched the two chauffeurs slide a couple of long poles under the seat of the invalid chair, straighten and carry the chair easily up the sparred foot-planks of the gangway.

      They were followed by the tall angular nurse and she in turn by another nurse, dressed exactly like the first but shorter and stockier. The old boy was bringing his own medical corps along with him, which meant that he had more money than was good for him or was a hypochondriac or very far through indeed or a combination of any or all of those.

      But I was more interested in the last two people to climb out of the Packards.

      The first was a man of about my own age and size, but the resemblance stopped short there. He looked like a cross between Ramon Novarro and Rudolph Valentino, only handsomer. Tall, broad-shouldered, with deeply-tanned, perfectly-sculpted Latin features, he had the classical long thin moustache, strong even teeth with that in-built neon phosphorescence that seems to shine in any light from high noon till dark, and a darkly gleaming froth of tight black curls on his head: he would have been a lost man if you’d let him loose on the campus of any girls’ university. For all that, he looked as far from being a sissy as any man I’d ever met: He had a strong chin, the balanced carriage, the light springy boxer’s step of a man well aware that he can get through this world without any help from a nursemaid. If nothing else, I thought sourly, he would at least take Miss Beresford out of my hair.

      The other man was a slightly smaller edition of the first, same features, same teeth, same moustache and hair, only those were greying. He would be about fifty-five. He had about him that indefinable look of authority and assurance which can come from power, money or a carefully cultivated phoneyness. This, I guessed would be the Señor Miguel Carreras who inspired such fear in our local Carracio agent. I wondered why.

      Ten minutes later the last of our cargo was aboard and all that remained were the three boxed coffins on the back of the old truck. I watched the bo’sun readying a sling round the first of those when a well-detested voice said behind me:

      “This is Mr. Carreras, sir. Captain Bullen sent me.”

      I turned round and gave Fourth Officer Dexter the look I specially reserved СКАЧАТЬ