“What do you make of it, Dr. O’Laughlin?” asked Murdoch.
“These are burn victims,” he replied and shrugged. “Hardly disease victims. What kind of hoax are you about, you men?”
“Burn victims?” shouted Thomas. “These are not!”
“That darkened skin is the result of complete, total dehydration, Dr. O’Laughlin,” insisted Declan. “Look, we are students at Queens University Medical.”
“How wonderful for you,” replied O’Laughlin, unimpressed, his eyes never leaving the photos.
“Well, I mean presently we’re doing residency at Mater Infirmorum, surely you’ve heard of it? I’ve a letter from my professor and the dean there—read them.”
“I knew this would be a waste of time!” Ransom exploded, grabbed up the photos and was about to hand them to Declan for safekeeping when suddenly a robust-looking Captain Edward Smith stepped into the doctor’s quarters, asking, “What is going on here, William?” He instantly glared eye-to-eye with Ransom. “My officers, crewmen, and passengers have been startled by you men. Do you wish to explain yourselves?”
“They’re not exactly stowaways, sir,” began Lightoller. “Sorry but they talked their way aboard. My doing entirely sir… .I mean my misjudgment.”
Murdoch did his best to cover for his junior officer. “Mr. Lightoller’s brought this to my attention, sir, and I thought it best to bring it to Dr. O’Laughlin’s before we should bother you with any of it, sir, and glad we did.”
The ship’s doctor piped in with, “T’would seem these fellows are here to pull off some sort of fraud, a dreadful, misguided hoax!”
“Ahh yes, a hoax of some sort, just the thing,” replied Captain Smith, looking Ransom and his young partners in crime up and down. “It’s the only thing hasn’t happened aboard yet. We have a lady topside shouting bloody murder about some dream she’s had—demanding she be put off the ship at Queenstown. Making a terrible row among the passengers to the point we had to lock her in her berth until we reach Queenstown. Now this!”
“Deputy Constable Ransom and his traveling companions,” began Murdock, “are claiming the ship’s being ravaged by a plague!”
“Nonsense, of course,” put in the doctor.
“Sounds to me more like a Typhoid Mary situation here, Captain,” countered Charles Lightoller. “A plague-carrier scattering it, so in a sense he’s a murderer if he is knowingly spreading it, sir.”
“I can bloody well speak for myself, Officer Lightoller,” bellowed Ransom. “Captain, we’ve no time to waste haggling over matters. This is of the utmost concern, and I assure you it is no hoax! But rather a matter of life and death, sir, and you must listen to our story and look at our documented proof.”
“Indeed…” Smith looked Ransom over once again, taking his time to size up this stranger; both men were approximately the same height, weight, and age. Both men carried themselves well. “Are you some sort of Sherlock Holmes, sir? I confess a guilty pleasure in reading accounts of the fictional Holmes but meeting a real life Holmes aboard Titanic, now that is grand indeed.”
“The photos they claim to be of diseased men, sir,” said O’Laughlin, “appear to be men burned alive if you ask my opinion.”
“On the contrary, sir,” said Declan, holding out the stack of photos, now smudged with fingerprints. “These men died a horrible, horrible death—one of them Thomas’ uncle.” He paused to pull Thomas into the circle as Thomas had shied off when Smith entered with his thick white beard and darting azure eyes. “These men died from the inside out… from the egg-sacs laid in them and the incredible hunger of this thing, sir, this… this alien creature… a monster and a killer we know far too little of; this enemy of mankind, sir.”
“I see. Well now shall we have a seat everyone about the conference table and have a closer look, Dr. O’Laughlin? Perhaps you are mistaken in your diagnosis; not easy to make judgments based on out of focus, grainy photos, really.”
“Let’s have that rum you fellows were interested in,” said Dr. O’Laughlin. “Perhaps I was hasty in my conclusions after all.” Ransom had missed the glint in each man’s eye, captain and doctor. They had been together for years and knew one another’s most subtle gesture and sarcasm, but Alastair had an ear for such nuances as well, and he began to wonder.
“Rum sounds good indeed,” began Ransom, “but Captain, these men in the photos were not seared to death by fire but by a vile organism that feeds on the entrails of a man; a parasite that we believe originated in the mines in Belfast from where the ore for your came. Crazy as it may sound, this organism has an affinity for the iron and steel, sir.”
“Ahhh… I see. Very odd indeed.”
“I know it sounds mad… crazy, sir, but we only wish to save lives.”
“Dr. O’Laughlin, are you aware of any such unseen organism that can wreak this sort of horror on a man?” Captain Smith held up the photo of Anton Fiore, his chest splayed open.
“These are burn victims undergoing autopsy; at best old reused cadavers, sir,” the ship’s surgeon declared in a tone that said ‘end of story’.
Ransom wanted to leap across the table, grab the man by the throat, and strangle him for his closed-mindedness.
Meanwhile, Smith asked O’Laughlin, “Have you seen anything in your clinic to warrant such drastic action?”
“Nothing of the kind sir.”
“Then you cannot recommend a quarantine?”
“Absolutely not, sir.”
Ransom grabbed his cane as if it might be a weapon. “Hold on, Captain, we’ve not said the word quarantine in your presence, now have we? We may be able to isolate and freeze this thing, ensuring your passengers’ safety.”
Smith looked across the table into Ransom’s steely eyes. “It’s getting round the ship, your calling for a quarantine. Fact is, a crewman overheard something of it… I suppose from you men, and it spread rapidly from there.”
“Are you trying to panic everyone aboard our ship?” asked Murdoch. “To what end?”
“You and the lads here’ll have to do better than this,” conclude Smith. “You’re surely working for our competitors, I’d say. What do you think, Murdoch? Dr. Laughlin?”
“The Cunard people?” shouted Declan. “No, Captain Smith! We are exactly who we say we are—interns from Belfast, and this man is a former Chicago Inspector now a Belfast police officer.”
Ransom added, “I assure, you, Captain, we are not frauds, sir, and neither is the disease!”
Lightoller had made himself useful, having spread out shot glasses, Waterford crystal at that, and poured like a veteran bartender, his nostrils twitching in anticipation, eyebrows bobbing.
Ransom had two shots before he finally said to the doctor and the captain, “We have it on good authority, sir, that a malignant organism has infiltrated the ship as long ago as the day you left Belfast, if not before.”
“I’ve seen no evidence of a plague, or a militant disease of any sort,” repeated O’Laughlin.
“It may well start deep below, sir, probably with the crew… maybe the Black Gang,” said Declan, his voice filled with certainty.
“Mr. Murdoch, Mr. Lightoller,” began the captain, “tell me, have you had any crewmen or others aboard going ill?”
“Or missing?” asked Declan.
“Gone missing? Why… well, yes. You recall the lad, Burne? Burnsey the other stokers call him; rather fond of the young man, they are.”
“And before that?” asked Ransom.
“One… one of the Pinkerton agents who’d booked passage from Belfast to Southampton in fact,” replied Murdoch.
“And he failed to disembark in Southampton,” added Lightoller, stroking his chin. “Chap was called on in his quarters but not there. We spent untold hours searching for him.”