"You mean he just went in to look around?"
"That, or more likely he wanted to be alone to look at something he brought in with him. No, he didn't leave anything there," he caught her glance, "I'm sure of that"
"Then he did something to the cast."
"I would say yes. But we don't have enough to go on. If I were sure of anything I might be able to get the Captain's cooperation. But as of now, we're stymied."
The jet engines throbbed smoothly. Occasionally someone rose to stretch his legs. People talked and dozed.
Nick settled back and watched. His two main objectives were Lyle Harcourt's seat and the general area occupied by the man with the broken arm. The latter was too far forward for Nick to see directly; Nick could only see him when he stood up.
Flight 601 was two hours out of London when the bandaged man stood up again. Nick shook Julie. Her head was resting on his shoulder, and he breathed in the fragrance of her hair and skin.
"Julie, honey."
She came awake instantly. "Is this it?"
"I think so." The closer they got to London, the sooner somebody had to make his move.
The man with the bandaged arm went into the lavatory. Julie stiffened.
A woman with a crying baby opened the door opposite and entered. Both signs read "Occupied."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Much the same thing as before, but this time I'll go first. With any luck the baby'll keep that one busy for a while. But follow me down the aisle in a minute and get yourself a forward seat — his, maybe — and be ready to beat me to the punch if the woman comes out first. I've got to see what's going on in there. Okay?"
She nodded.
He kissed her lightly on the cheek and left his seat. Several passengers looked at him as he passed. His jaw was working and his face was pale. It was Yoga, not airsickness, that brought about the pallor, but they were not to know that.
He brushed against Janet Reed in the aisle again, turning his body sideways and avoiding her eyes.
"Mr. Cane," she began solicitously.
He shook his head dumbly and went on his way. When he got to the pair of occupied cubicles, his expression was that of a man praying for death to deliver him. He sighed, and leaned against the outside wall of the one occupied by the man with the cast and strained his ears for whatever there was to be heard. From the corner of his eye he saw Julie coming toward him, her purse open and a comb in her hand. She reached the vacated forward seat and stopped, looking at him with lovely, sympathetic cat eyes.
"Oh, sweetheart," she whispered, "can't you get in?"
He shook his agonized head and turned away.
His ears were primed for the slightest sound.
The baby was still crying. Water splashed into a sink.
Three minutes crawled by in which the only sounds were coughs, low conversations and the pulsing of the jet engines.
Then he heard something else.
Faint, slapping, sliding sounds. The soft, clothy sounds of someone dressing or undressing.
Carter tensed. Still not enough to go on. If he were wrong and burst in like a fool, he'd lose all hope of stopping whatever was going to happen. If anything was going to happen.
Then he heard the sound that removed all doubts.
It was a coarse, tearing, cracking sound. Given his memory of the lavatory as he had last seen it, and his suspicions of the man who had just entered, there was only one conclusion to be drawn.
Nick had heard that familiar combination of sounds, too many times, in dressing stations all over the battlefields of Europe. The tearing, ripping sounds of bandagesbeing removed and plaster-of-paris casts being cracked apart.
Why should anyone remove a brand-new bandage?
The baby gurgled and stopped crying.
Right or wrong, he had to act — now.
The belt around his waist slipped quickly off into his hands. He adjusted it rapidly and clamped the metal buckle over the doorknob, fitting it over the lock mechanism like a vise.
Carter adjusted the tongue of the buckle and stepped to one side. Julie had taken her .22 lighter out of her bag and was watching with rapt attention.
It took only two seconds for the power train of fulminate of mercury — similar to that of the U.S. MI grenade — to ignite and energize a quarter ounce of nitro starch.
The lock blew and the door caved inward neatly, almost noiselessly. But not completely. Nick flung the battered barrier to one side and threw himself past it into the tiny room. Behind him, the Jetliner came alive. Someone screamed. Not Julie. He could hear her speaking in a calm reassuring voice.
A clutter of trailing white bandage and plaster lay discarded on the floor. The broad-shouldered man had swung around to face him, his right hand free of its bandage and raised to his mouth as if in a gesture of shock. The hard edge of Nick's palm slashed at the thick neck, and two sinewy arms turned the square body and snaked about the man's back. A strangled foreign oath split the air. Suddenly, the man's back undulated powerfully and Nick found himself slamming backward until he was cruelly checked by the wall.
The man's face loomed close to his. It was mottled with rage and surprise. A knife, point upward, sprang into his fist and jabbed viciously forward. Nick rolled swiftly and the blade clanged against the wall. The man lost his balance and staggered, clutching the metal rail of a shelf, leaving himself wide open.
Nick brought his right knee up in a savage jab which found the lower vitals. There was a high-pitched groan of agony and the man doubled over, clutching his body and wheezing bitterly. Nick followed up with a chopping thrust of his hand into the base of the man's skull.
The man lay inert, crumpled into a half-sitting position against the seat. The main job was still to be done.
Ignoring the clamor at the door and an insistent male voice demanding to know what the hell was going on, Nick crouched beneath the sink and found what he was looking for.
The man with the false broken arm had lined the underside of the sink with the plaster of paris which had bound his arm. It clung damply to the curvature, dropping little fragments to the floor. There was no mistaking the copper blasting cap device and the connected watch timer that jutted ominously from the doughy mass of plaster.
Nick worked swiftly, removing the cap and timer.
Julia stood in the doorway, a restraining hand on the arm of an angry pilot. In a controlled, authoritative voice, she was saying something about security, government agents and enemy saboteurs.
Nick filled the sink with water and doused the detonating mechanism. Then he scraped off the remaining plaster from underneath the sink. Wrapping the hardening mess in the bandage he placed the innocuous bundle in a waste container.
"Captain," he said, not stopping in his work, "Is there some way we can jettison this stuff? It's out of action now, but I shouldn't like to take a chance."
The pilot was pushing Julia to one side. He was a stringy, tanned young man with a moustache and sharp, intelligent eyes.
"When you've explained all this. And you'd better do that now."
"In a minute," he answered crisply. Nick was leaning over his victim. He went through the pockets. The wallet, passport and driver's license identified one Paul Vertmann, Munich businessman. That was all. There was no weapon of any kind other than the knife that had failed to kill him.
Nick rose. A knot of people clustered in the forward aisle. Janet Reed's beautiful face was white with fear and incomprehension.
"Please ask everybody to return to their seats. I'll see you in your compartment — this isn't for the passengers."