The second message was from Braid. COMESCORT TO MASTER CYCLOPS… No fancy titles this time!.. PLEASE INVESTIGATE CAUSE OF MISFIRE YOUR VESSEL SUGGEST YOU USE APPROPRIATE PRACTICE BLANK SHOT FOR FURTHER DRILLS SIGNED BRAID END.
I bit my lip and looked up at the Captain. He’d got over his blood-lust it seemed, or maybe he wasn’t so keen on finding the anonymous culprit now that he knew it wasn’t the army personnel? But no — I was being unfair to Evans. I recognised his problem, but didn’t know what advice to proffer either. If the guilty party was one of the crew, then how did we even start to find out who? Did we hold a full-scale investigation into the movements of every man on board and break out a list of those without an alibi? If that was the way to go about it, then we could start with the Old Man himself because he fitted into that category — and so did at least another thirty men. So what did we do?
‘We could ask every member of the crew if they saw anyone about on the poop at the time the gun was fired, Sir?’ I suggested, searching desperately for inspiration.
He looked at me and I could see the tiredness and strain in his eyes. ‘Do you really think it’s likely that someone saw something but hasn’t reported it yet, John?’
I shook my head. He was dead right and, apart from that, the shot had been fired while it was still pitch dark. The crew’s quarters were aft, apart from the officers’, and anyone wanting to make himself scarce quickly just needed to slide down the ladder and back into the poop housing. He could have been back in his cabin before the boom of the shot had died away and, with most of the sailors bunked only two to a cabin in a modern ship like Cyclops, the chances were he would have planned it for when his oppo was on watch anyway.
I hesitated before asking myself the next obvious question. What if it had been one of the officers? But, even then, all they had to do was nip forward along the well deck and lose themselves in the shadowy anonymity of the centrecastle accommodation. Again no one would have been likely to have seen them in the darkness.
Oh, Hell! Supposing an officer had been seen, then — what’s so suspicious about a ship’s officer being seen aboard a ship? I’d even seen one myself — Larabee, outside his W.T. Room. No, wait…! I’d overlooked the Third Mate, Curtis. He'd been even further aft, even closer to the gun platform, and he'd looked like a man under severe stress. Could it have been symptomatic of just having caused the deaths of three men by remote control…?
I struggled to get a grip on my imagination and looked at Evans helplessly.
Why? That was the question that was haunting both of us.
Why in God’s name should any man aboard want to fire at our sister ship…?
CHAPTER FOUR
Cadet Breedie bumped into me as I was leaving the saloon after another coffee-and-nothing-else breakfast. He skidded to a halt and waved an apologetic hand. ‘Sorry, Sir! The Old Ma… er — the Captain would like to see you at the radio room soon as you can manage, Sir.’
I hauled my cap down over my eyes and nodded savagely. Everything seemed to be revolving round the radio officers right then, what with Foley’s disappearance and now the recent — I shrank from the word ‘Murder’—the recent deaths of Athenian’s Chief and Second Sparks in particular. What else could have happened since then? The only slim consolation I could cling to was the hope that, if anything had gone wrong, then it had gone wrong with Larabee.
When I arrived at the after end of the boat deck the Second Operator looked pretty well as per normal, which meant still moody and sardonic. The Old Man was engaged in deep conversation with him and I noticed with a feeling of shock the tired creases seaming the normally smooth, ruddy face. He’d had a bad time of it in the past few months, like all of us, but on top of that was the fact that ship’s masters carried a deeper responsibility which, with most of them anyway, seemed to erode their physical health even while they were snatching a few hours of precious sleep below. This current voyage wasn’t being made any easier by the added burden of knowing what would happen should our three crucial secret bags fall into the wrong hands.
The door to the radio room was open behind them and the air was full of the hiss of static with the occasional twitter of rapid morse from some distant transmitter. Almost subconsciously my ears tuned to the signals and I felt an inordinate sense of pride when I found I could distinguish the major part of the traffic, even from the nimble fingers of the professionals. I wondered how Larabee could possibly sleep through the jumble of noise yet remain alert to the slightest rattle of our own ship’s call sign; but then, I could be fast asleep below yet be instantly wide awake and listening at any unexpected alteration of course. Our oil- hungry Chief Engineer was the same — any variation in the even throb of his giant diesels and he was out of his bunk and down below before the watch keeper himself realised it. We were, all of us, in some strange inexplicable way, tuned to the heartbeats and pulse of the ship. All of us like specialists round the bedside of a patient, each one alive to the faintest irregularity in his own field of responsibility. This facility could at times even be anticipatory. I remember once, several years ago aboard one of our old coal burners, the venerable ‘Lamps’, a hoary old seadog of a lamptrimmer, had actually appeared on deck during the middle watch and climbed the foremast just in time to replace the masthead light bulb as it went out.
Evans looked up as I approached. ‘Mister Larabee seems to feel there may be some danger to him in his capacity as wireless operator, Mister Kent.’
I looked inquiringly at Larabee, who nodded, almost apologetically. ‘Yeah, Mate,’ he muttered. ‘I reckon there’s something going on aboard this ship that we don’t understand, and I’m not happy with it. Not now the Sparks over on Athenian have parted their cables.’
‘That could have been an accident, Larabee,’ I said, not very convincingly.
He shook his head for a change. ‘And Alf Foley going over the wall? Was that an accident? In my book, Mate, two accidents make a conclusion… and my conclusion is that some bastard’s out to clobber all the wireless ops for some reason.’
‘What reason, Mister Larabee?’ Evans asked sharply. Larabee shrugged. ‘I dunno, Sir. But I don’t plan on finding out the hard way, if you see what I’m getting at?’
I lifted my chin at him. ‘Then what, precisely, do you expect us to do, Larabee? You’ve already turned down the offer of a replacement for Alf. What else can we do — even admitting you may be right, that is?’
The Second Sparks touched the door behind him. ‘I want a man stationed outside this door twenty-four hours a day, Mister Mate. And armed. Like I said before, I don’t need no one to help me do my job, but I’m bloody sure I’m not goin’ to sit around waitin’ for some crazy bastard to shove me over the side in the middle of the night. No thanks.’
‘I’m not arming any seaman aboard this vessel, Mister,’ Evans grunted. ‘If Mister Kent feels it advisable, then we shall post a man up here, but he won’t be carrying any weapons except his marlinespike and his own two fists!’
He raised a fierce eyebrow to challenge me but I nodded in agreement. It was going to look bad enough to the crew anyway, but start issuing them with weapons and they’d think there were Nazi spies round every corner. The ship’s morale would plummet like an anchor on the run.