The Golden Rendezvous. Alistair MacLean

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СКАЧАТЬ League college: he was rather less formal in his attitude towards the English language. “Slingsby Caroline, I mean. But what’s this guy got to do with us, Mr. Carter?”

      “As long as he is at large every cargo vessel leaving the eastern seaboard gets a pretty thorough going over to make sure that neither he nor the Twister is aboard. Slows up the turn-round of cargo and passenger ships by 100 per cent., which means that the longshoremen are losing stevedoring money pretty fast. They’ve gone on strike—and the chances are, so many unpleasant words have been said on both sides, that they’ll stay on strike when they do nab Dr. Caroline. If.”

      “Traitor,” said Miss Harrbride. “Thirteen generations!”

      “So we stay away from the east coast, eh?” Carreras senior asked. “Meantime, anyway?”

      “As long as possible, sir. But New York is a must. When, I don’t know. But if it’s still strike-bound, we might go up the St. Lawrence first. Depends.”

      “Romance, mystery and adventure,” Carreras smiled. “Just like your brochure said.” He glanced over my shoulder. “Looks like a visitor for you, Mr. Carter.”

      I twisted in my seat. It was a visitor for me. Rusty Williams—Rusty from his shock of flaming hair—was advancing towards me, whites immaculately pressed, uniform cap clasped stiffly under his left arm. Rusty was sixteen, our youngest cadet, desperately shy and very impressionable.

      “What is it, Rusty?” Age-old convention said that cadets should always be addressed by their surnames, but everyone called Rusty just that. It seemed impossible not to.

      “The captain’s compliments, sir. Could he see you on the bridge, please, Mr. Carter?”

      “I’ll be right up.” Rusty turned to leave and I caught the gleam in Susan Beresford’s eye, a gleam that generally heralded some crack at my expense. This one, predictably, would be about my indispensability, about the distraught captain sending for his trusty servant when all was lost, and although I didn’t think she was the sort of a girl to say it in front of a cadet I wouldn’t have wagered pennies on it so I rose hastily to my feet, said “Excuse me, Miss Harrbride, excuse me, gentlemen,” and followed Rusty quickly out of the door into the starboard alleyway. He was waiting for me.

      “The captain is in his cabin, sir. He’d like to see you there.”

      “What? You told me——”

      “I know, sir. He told me to say that. Mr. Jamieson is on the bridge”—George Jamieson was our third officer—“and Captain Bullen is in his cabin. With Mr. Cummings.”

      I nodded and left. I remembered now that Cummings hadn’t been at his accustomed table as I’d come out although he’d certainly been there at the beginning of dinner. The captain’s quarters were immediately below the bridge and I was there in ten seconds. I knocked on the polished teak door, heard a gruff voice and went in.

      The Blue Mail certainly did its commodore well. Even Captain Bullen, no admirer of the sybaritic life, had never been heard to complain of being pampered. He had a three-room and bathroom suite, done in the best millionaire’s taste, and his day-cabin, in which I now was, was a pretty fair guide to the rest—wine-red carpet that sunk beneath your feet, darkly-crimson drapes, gleaming sycamore panelling, narrow oak beams overhead, oak and green leather for the chairs and settee. Captain Bullen looked up at me as I came in: He didn’t have any of the signs of a man enjoying the comforts of home.

      “Something wrong, sir?” I asked.

      “Sit down.” He waved to a chair and sighed. “There’s something wrong all right. Banana-legs Benson is missing. White reported it ten minutes ago.”

      Banana-legs Benson sounded like the name of a domesticated anthropoid or, at best, like a professional wrestler on the small town circuits, but in fact, it belonged to our very suave, polished and highly-accomplished head steward, Frederick Benson: Benson had the well-deserved reputation of being a very firm disciplinarian, and it was one of his disgruntled subordinates who, in the process of receiving a severe and merited dressing-down had noticed the negligible clearance between Benson’s knees and rechristened him as soon as his back was turned. The name had stuck, chiefly because of its incongruity and utter unsuitability. White was the assistant chief steward.

      I said nothing. Bullen didn’t appreciate anyone, especially his officers, indulging in double-takes, exclamations or fatuous repetition. Instead I looked at the man seated across the table from the captain. Howard Cummings.

      Cummings, the purser, a small plump amiable and infinitely shrewd Irishman, was next to Bullen, the most important man on the ship. No one questioned that, though Cummings himself gave no sign that this was so. On a passenger ship a good purser is worth his weight in gold, and Cummings was a pearl beyond any price. In his three years on the Campari friction and trouble among—and complaints from—the passengers had been almost completely unknown. Howard Cummings was a genius in mediation, compromise, the soothing of ruffled feelings and the handling of people in general. Captain Bullen would as soon have thought of cutting off his right hand as of trying to send Cummings off the ship.

      I looked at Cummings for three reasons. He knew everything that went on on the Campari, from the secret take-over bids being planned in the telegraph lounge to the heart troubles of the youngest stoker in the boiler-room. He was the man ultimately responsible for all the stewards aboard the ship. And, finally, he was a close personal friend of Banana-legs.

      Cummings caught my look and shook his dark head.

      “Sorry, Johnny,” I’m as much in the dark as you. I saw him shortly before dinner, about ten to eight it would have been, when I was having a noggin with the paying guests.” Cummings’s noggin came from a special whisky bottle filled only with ginger ale. “We’d White up here just now. He says he saw Benson in cabin suite 6, fixing it for the night, about 8.20—half an hour ago, no, nearer forty minutes now. He expected to see him shortly afterwards because for every night for the past couple of years, whenever the weather was good, Benson and White have had a cigarette together on deck when the passengers were at dinner.”

      “Regular time?” I interrupted.

      “Very. Eight-thirty, near enough, never later than 8.35. But not tonight. At 8.40 White went to look for him in his cabin. No sign of him there. Organised half a dozen stewards for a search and still nothing doing. He sent for me and I came to the captain.”

      And the captain sent for me, I thought. Send for old trusty Carter when there’s dirty work on hand. I looked at Bullen.

      “A search, sir?”

      “That’s it, Mister. Damned nuisance, just one damned thing after another. Quietly, if you can.”

      “Of course, sir. Can I have Wilson, the bo’sun, some stewards and A.B.s?”

      “You can have Lord Dexter and his board of directors just so long as you find Benson,” Bullen grunted.

      “Yes, sir,” I turned to Cummings. “Didn’t suffer from any ill-health, did he? Liable to dizziness, faintness, heart attacks, that sort of thing?”

      “Flat feet, was all,” Cummings smiled. He wasn’t feeling like smiling. “Had his annual medical check-up last month from Doc Marston. One hundred per cent. The flat feet are an occupational disease.”

      I turned back to Captain Bullen.

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