“And he never surfaced?” asked Ransom.
“When I was told of it,” Captain Smith said now, “I decided we could wait no longer and waste no more time on the man.”
“And was it from Southampton to here that—”
“Is when this fellow Burne disappeared, yes?”
“Yes,” replied Lightoller as well, “so we decided he’d somehow got by us—without his trappings and his bags.”
“What of his and the agent’s bags?” pressed Ransom,
Lightoller frowned. “Abandoned… still in their respective rooms—quite odd, really. Left me with an eerie feeling, it did, Captain.”
“Yes, well… odd behavior, but we see odd behavior a great deal in this line of work,” added Smith.
“We’re Seeing it now,” said O’Laughlin with a slight snicker.
“Not so odd behavior if you are dead and thrown overboard or hidden in some storage bin or locker aboard,” replied Ransom, holding his glass out for a third shot of rum. “Do you have anything sharper?”
“It’s rum for pirates and stowaways,” Smith said with a grin that raised his white beard. He laughed and his men, along with his surgeon joined him in laughter.
“I’d prefer my rum to any drink, but we’re hardly stowaways,” Ransom replied, lying about his favorite drink.
As Lightoller located more of the doctor’s liquor, Ransom said, “Look here, Captain Smith, sir, we must convince you to stop this ship, to go passenger by passenger to determine who needs be kept in quarantine.”
“And I tell you there is far too much riding on this voyage to allow the disappearance of one or two men to interfere with it,” replied Smith. “Every great endeavor, every great feat of mankind has required sacrifices. We are engaged in breaking all maritime speed records for a ship of this tonnage, man. To beat Olympic. Don’t you want to be a part of that?”
“A record?”
“Yes, to outperform the record holder—our own sister ship and the only ship of equal or near-equal tonnage—the Olympic.”
“Then it’s not even bout your former, chief rival? The Cunard line?” asked Declan.
“I know what Titanic’s owner and her architect—both aboard—will say,” said Lightoller, downing his second rum.
“What’s that?”
“That you men are all imposters and belong in our brig.”
“Oo-hell-no!” moaned Thomas. “Not more jail time.”
Ransom put his head in his hands at Thomas’ blurting this out. “No, no, the lad means something entirely else—that we have spent hours talking to the authorities in Belfast about a number of murders there—deaths brought about by this plague.”
“The same plague we have chased from Belfast, the same as we are convinced is here, on board, now,” said Thomas, trying to gather back his words.
Dr. O’Laughlin poured Ransom a rum, and Ransom greedily drank it down, and Dr. O’Laughlin asked, “Feel better, do we?”
“Much better, yes. You have a good bedside manner, Doctor.”
“Mr. Lightoller is correct in what he says,” began Dr. O’Laughlin who now offered Ransom and the interns a cigar from a gold-plated tin. “The powers that be on board Titanic will not let what you propose happen; not under any circumstances. Don’t you agree, Captain Smith?”
“I more than agree, Doctor. Even if we were convinced of this uncanny and unlikely story, gentlemen—” He paused to light his cigar. “—it remains to convince Ismay, Andrews, and others with a vested interest. Slowing down much less stopping all engines? Sorry but the owners would have my head—white beard and all.”
“But this could mean the lives of all aboard—every man, woman, and child!” said Declan, punctuating with his unlit cigar while Thomas was coughing on his.
Dr. O’Laughlin had gone about the room to light each cigar in turn from a silver lighter and merely smiled at them. “The death of a few passengers? Not even slightly a deterrent for the likes of these men. Trust me, they will see you as clever saboteurs, anarchists, or worse, sent from Cunard’s Board of Directors to intentionally slow Titanic’s progress enough that it will be disgraced, so the headlines might read: Boondoggle Titanic Limps into New York Off Schedule.”
Captain Smith, also puffing on a cigar now, backed the doctor, spreading out a hand to indicate another headline he spoke: “Titanic Drags Tail Between Legs! Mr Ransom, gentlemen, being late to New York… now that would be the sin. Short of a bomb going off aboard, you see, or one of the boilers exploding, it’s simply not going to happen.”
Alastair took a deep breath of the aromatic cigar smoke. “Excellent leaf, Dr. O’Laughlin. A Cuban, I see.”
“You have taste, Constable.”
“Regardless of what your officers and doctor advise, Captain Smith,” said Ransom, “we lay our case before you, sir, a man who is wise enough to see our point, and brave enough to fight for caution and safety above greed. I have it on good authority that you, Captain, are such a man.”
“This ship is controlled by powerful men,” interrupted O’Laughlin. “Men with vested interest you can’t imagine.”
“Staggering amounts of capital,” choked out Lightoller while Smith remained stoic and silent, listening to every word around him.
Ransom leaned in across the table toward Smith, “Captain, your surgeon and your officers have done all in their power to dissuade you from listening to reason. However, if you continue to stand in our way, many deaths will be on your hands—possibly every person aboard Titanic. I’m sure you’ve heard of the Black Plague.”
“Of course we have,” replied Dr. O’Lauglin, but I saw no such thing in those photos! Wait a moment. Let me have another look at them.” O’Lauglin’s remarks and his going again to the photos belied his uncertainty at this point.
“Well, William Francis?” asked Smith. “Is it or isn’t it Bubonic Plague?”
“I stand by my original assessment—either these corpses are right out of the university freezer used in six months of dissection and study—which is not uncommon in a poor place like Belfast—else they are fire victims. Either way, I see no evidence of Bubonic plague! No sir! You’d cause panic and become a laughing stock should you take action based on this! It’s ridiculous. Plague ship indeed!”
“Constable Ransom has lied to you, Captain,” Declan said, “with the best of intentions—to get you to take us seriously. Dr. O’Lauglin… no one person, medical man or not, has ever seen this disease before, and so far we’ve no cure but to run from it.”
“This is something worse than Bubonic—far worse,” added Thomas. “You’ve got to listen to us, Captain, sir. It’s all true.”
“The hell,” muttered O’Laughlin, choking on his drink as he again stared at the autopsy photos. “These look to be mannequins—bloody burned up dummies, if you ask me.” Shaking his head, he added, “A sure fraud of some sort first perpetrated on 2nd Officer Lightoller. You know how impressionable Charles can be, Captain.”
“No, Dr. O’Laughlin, Captain Smith, sirs–the disease leaves a man completely dehydrated—” countered Declan. “Not a drop of spinal fluid or marrow in the bones!”
“All fluid robbed of him in hours,” added Thomas. “Please, we have a letter from our Dean and our professor of surgery at Mater Infirmorum Hospital where these bodies—not mannequins were dissected.”
“Imagine every organ shriveled to a tenth its size, sir,” continued Declan. “All fluid down to the spinal fluid gone… bone marrow gone. Take a closer look at the photos.”
Both captain and ship’s doctor did so. “There are no… they have no eyes,” noticed Captain Smith immediately.