"Curacao! Where the hell is that?"
"This is even more baffling. Curacao is a Dutch island-very far south in the Caribbean. Now, that really makes no sense at all."
We scanned the story together. Once again robbery was apparently the motive. The thief had come crashing through a skylight, and had demolished the contents of two rooms. The entire family had been killed. Indeed, the sheer viciousness of the crime had left the island in the grip of terror. There had been two bloodless corpses, one that of a small child. "Surely the devil isn't simply moving south!" "Even in the Caribbean there are far more interesting places," said David. "Why, he's overlooked the entire coast of Central America. Come, I want to get a map. Let's have a look at this pattern flat out. I spied a little travel agent in the lobby. He's bound to have some maps for us. We'll take everything back to your rooms."
The agent was most obliging, an elderly bald-headed fellow with a soft cultured voice, who groped about in the clutter of his desk for several maps. Cura9ao? Yes, he had a brochure or two on the place. Not a very interesting island, as the Caribbean islands go.
"Why do people go there?" I asked. "Well, in the main they don't," he confessed, rubbing the top of his bald head. "Except for the cruise ships, of course. They've been stopping there again these last few years. Yes, here." He placed a little folder in my hand for a small ship called the Crown of the Seas, very pretty in the picture, which meandered all through the islands, its final stop Curacao before it started home.
"Cruise ships!" I whispered, staring at the picture. My eyes moved to the giant posters of ships which lined the office walls. "Why, he had pictures of ships all over his house in Georgetown," I said. "David, that's it. He's on some sort of ship! Don't you remember what you told me. His father worked for some shipping company. He himself said something about wanting to sail to America aboard a great ship."
"My God," David said. "You may be right. New York, Bal Harbour ..." He looked at the agent. "Do cruise ships stop at Bal Harbour?"
"Port Everglades," said the agent. "Right near it. But not very many start from New York."
"What about Santo Domingo?" I asked. "Do they stop there?"
"Yes, that's a regular port all right. They all vary their itineraries. What sort of ship do you have in mind?"
Quickly David jotted down the various points and the nights upon which the attacks had happened, without an explanation, of course.
But then he looked crestfallen.
"No," he said, "I can see it's impossible, myself. What cruise ship could possibly make the journey from Florida all the way to Curacao in three nights?"
"Well, there is one," said the agent, "and as a matter of fact, she sailed from New York this last Wednesday night. It's the flagship of the Cunard Line, the Queen Elizabeth 2."
"That's it," I said. "The Queen Elizabeth 2. David, it was the very ship he mentioned to me. You said his father-"
"But I thought the QE2 makes the transatlantic crossing," said David.
"Not in winter," said the agent, agreeably. "She's in the Caribbean until March. And she's probably the fastest ship sailing any sea anywhere. She can do twenty-eight knots. But here, we can check the itinerary right now."
He went into another seemingly hopeless search through the papers on his desk, and at last produced a large handsomely printed brochure, opening it and flattening it with his right hand.
"Yes, left New York Wednesday. She docked at Port Everglades Friday morning, sailed before midnight, then on to Curaçao, where she arrived yesterday morning at five a.m. But she didn't stop in the Dominican Republic, I'm afraid, can't help you there."
"Never mind that, she passed it!" David said. "She passed the Dominican Republic the very next night! Look at the map. That's it, of course. Oh, the little fool. He all but told you himself, Lestat, with all his mad obsessive chatter! He's on board the QE2, the ship which mattered so much to his father, the ship upon which the old man spent his life."
We thanked the agent profusely for the maps and brochures, then headed for the taxis out front.
"Oh, it's so bloody typical of him!" David said as the car carried us towards my apartment. "Everything is symbolic with this madman. And he himself was fired from the QE2 amid scandal and disgrace. I told you this, remember? Oh, you were so right. It's all a matter of obsession, and the little demon gave you the clue himself."
"Yes. Oh, definitely yes. And the Talamasca wouldn't send him to America on the Queen Elizabeth 2. He never forgave you for that."
"I hate him," David whispered, with a heat that amazed me even given the circumstances in which we were involved.
"But it isn't really so foolish, David," I said. "It's devilishly clever, don't you see? Yes, he tipped his hand to me in Georgetown, chattering away about it, and we can lay that down to his self-destructiveness, but I don't think he expected me to figure it out. And frankly,
if you hadn't laid out the news stories for me of the other murders, maybe I never would have thought of it on my own."
"Possibly. I think he wants to be caught."
"No, David. He's hiding. From you, from me, and from the others. Oh, he's very smart. Here we have this beastly sorcerer, capable of cloaking himself entirely, and where does he conceal himself-amid a whole teeming little world of mortals in the womb of a fast- moving ship. Look at this itinerary! Why, every night she's sailing. Only by day does she remain hi port."
"Have it your way," said David, "but I prefer to think of him as an idiot! And we're going to catch him! Now you told me you gave him a passport, did you not?"
"Clarence Oddbody was the name. But surely he didn't use it."
"We'll soon find out. My suspicion is that he boarded in New York in the usual way. It would have been crucial to him to be received with all due pomp and consideration-to book the finest suite and go parading up to the top deck, with stewards bowing to him. Those suites on the Signal Deck are enormous. No problem whatsoever for him to have a large trunk for his daylight hiding place. No cabin steward would trouble such a thing."
We had come around again to my building. He pulled out some bills to pay the driver, and up the stairs we went.
As soon as we reached the apartment, we sat down with the printed itinerary and the news stories and worked out a schedule of how the killings had been done.
It was plain the beast had struck my agent in New York only hours before the ship sailed. He'd had plenty of time to board before eleven p.m. The murder near Bal Harbour had been committed only hours before the ship docked. Obviously he covered a small distance by the power of flight, returning to his cabin or other hiding place before the sun rose.
For the Santo Domingo murder, he had left the ship for perhaps an hour, and then caught up with her on her journey south. Again, these distances were nothing. He did not even need preternatural sight to spot the giant Queen Elizabeth 2 steaming across the open sea. The murders on Curasao had taken place only a little while after the ship sailed. He'd probably caught up with the ship within less than an hour, laden with his loot.
The ship was now on her way north again. She had docked at La Guaira, on the coast of Venezuela, only two hours ago. If he struck tonight in Caracas or its environs, we knew we had him for certain. But we had no intention of waiting for further proof.
"All right, let's think this out," I said. "Dare we board this vessel ourselves?" "Of course, we must."
"Then we should have fake passports for this. We may leave behind a great deal of confusion. David Talbot mustn't be implicated. And I can't use the passport he gave me. Why, I don't know where that passport is. Perhaps still in the town house in Georgetown. God knows why he used his own name on it, probably to get me in trouble first time I went through customs."