“Shriveled to the size of a walnuts!” said Thomas.
“Their eyes’ve sunken deep into the sockets!”
“Do you want to see this kind of thing happen aboard Titanic?” asked Ransom. “Captain, you need to make some serious—” Ransom stopped, interrupted by the subtle sensations below his feet. “The ship is moving at a higher rate of speed.”
Lightoller snatched out his watch from his vest pocket where it dangled on a fob and he glanced at the time. “Yes… right on time, and it would appear that you three are on your way to a Queenstown jail cell after you enjoy a stint in our brig below.”
“Captain, you must see our urgency.” Declan opened both hands into a beggar man’s gesture.
When this failed to move the stony captain, Ransom slammed a fist atop one of the photos. “This disease may not be aboard, but it may well be here now, feeding on your crew, your bakers, your wait staff, your maids, those stokers—picture them all dead! Imagine it. Are you officers of Titanic willing to gamble with the lives of all on board—sirs?” Ransom’s iron gaze went from Smith to O’Laughlin and back again.
Officer Lightoller, Dr. O’Lauglin, and Captain Smith all exchanged a variety of confused looks; they then huddled in one corner, muttering to one another until Lightoller stepped away from the two senior officers, to ask, “How’re your drinks? Need refreshing, gents?”
“Where’s Murdoch?” asked Ransom, realizing the other man had slipped from the room.
Even as he said it, Ransom realized the meaning of Murdoch’s disappearing act, for at the same moment, the doctor’s office door slammed open with Murdoch, holding a presumably loaded gun that Ransom recognized as the British Webley, a six-shooter. The two hefty crewmen were also armed and on either side of him.
Ransom instantly sobered up as Captain Smith announced, “All right—let’s see how smart the captain of the Titanic is indeed, gentlemen.”
Smith had given some coded word or signal to Murdoch to act, either that or he signaled for Dr. O’Laughlin to signal to Murdoch. Either way, Ransom and the young interns were now being put in chains and led away—their protests ignored as Captain Smith and Dr. O’Laughlin laughed and toasted their successful ruse.
Ransom heard part of the reason behind the hilarity over the laughter when O’Laughlin said, “And we took the three scoundrels down without firing a shot.”
“And no one harmed,” Smith added.
This as Ransom and his medical friends were shoved along toward the lift to be taken to some dog kennel below and locked up before being put off at Queenstown.
TWENTY THREE
If Dr. O’Laughlin was skeptical, Captain Edward Smith was incredulous—and with good reason. Sadly, Smith proved all too willing to believe the worst, that he had on board three scoundrels with an elaborate scheme to sabotage operations by spreading fear. That they’d come aboard Titanic with the intention of spying on Smith’s progress, and to do all in their power to slow him down. How else to explain these unwashed men? How could they be anything but what they appeared? Goons no doubt hired by the unscrupulous people at the Cunard Line.
“We expected this, anticipated it even. You fools,” Smith stood and shouted at the three of them. “You’ve got some bully nerve, the three of you! Mr. Lightoller, Mr. Murdoch do your duty. Arrest ’em and put the brig to good use!”
“The brig, sir?” asked Lightoller. “Not lockup?”
“Under house arrest, Mr. Lightoller, means the brig, same as for any rowdy aboard. Understood?”
“The same as reserved for the Black Gang, sir?”
“Far below and out of sight, yes!” Smith’s patience had fled, if he’d actually had any; Ransom decided that Smith was playing poker all along.
“And the photos, sir?” asked Murdoch, pointing to where they lay atop the table.
“Confiscate them.”
“They’re sheer nonsense,” added Dr. O’Laughlin.
“Don’t let anyone aboard see or hear of these photos, Mr. Murdoch—and the same goes for all you officers. You too, Dr. O’Laughlin—no gossip mongering. I know how medical men talk—like common washer women at a clothesline. But if I learn this has leaded out, you’ll all be swimming back to England. Understood?”
Smith had been in control from the moment he’d stepped into the room. “We will not have a panic aboard ship on the basis of a dark-skinned—likely torched dummy posed as a corpse, not even four of them! Do you take me for a fool, sir?” Smith addressed Alastair directly. “Shame on you as well!”
“For what?” demanded Ransom.
“For dragging these boys into your schemes! For forgery and impersonation; for attempting to perpetrate a hoax! I had thought I’d seen the worst of men until now!”
“All right then, you three miscreants,” added Murdoch, “come along quietly. That’s good lads.”
“Here we go again,” bemoaned Thomas, his manacled hands extended. “Now we can bloody well die along with everyone else aboard.”
“Stop that kind of talk aboard my ship, young man!” ordered Captain Smith, his stern, white-whiskered face pinched and sour.
“But he’s right,” shouted Declan. “Captain Smith, mistaking us for saboteurs is as serious an error as when you rammed the Hawke with Olympic, ah… sir.”
Smith’s eyes grew wide, his neck and cheeks blushing red against his snow white beard.
“You must believe us!” shouted Ransom, his cuffed hands raised. “We came direct from Belfast, I tell you!”
Smith stepped as close to Ransom as he might to keep from the days-old travel odors emanating from the man. “And you look and smell like a Belfast sewer rat, Constable. So you came from the ship yard at Belfast—Harland & Wolff is it?”
“Yes, yes. Contact them. Get Constable Ian Reahall on the wireless. He’ll tell why we’ve come; that I am his deputy, and that these lads are interns at the surgery at Mater Infirmorum and Queens Univeristy in Bel—”
“There’ve been Cunard spies lurking around those ship yards since we began building Olympic. I suspect, sir, you are one of that riff-raff. As for these young fellows, I am sure you paid them well for their time and trouble—as you did the Captain of Trinity, long behind us now. How did you plan to get off Titanic?”
The Titanic crew and officers laughed along with their captain, Lightoller included. Ransom knew it was another jail cell for him, but this one was a floating death cell, and not a sentence imposed by a judge and jury, rather one imposed by a captain at sea. Under maritime law, the captain was judge, jury, and executioner.
“Get them out of my sight. We’ll deal with them later. Turn ’em over to the authorities in Queenstown, eh?”
“You’re making the third mistake in an otherwise spotless record, sir!” shouted Declan as he was being led away.
“The third?” asked Smith, somewhat amused at the lad’s impertinence.
“First the Hawke, second was almost sending The New York to the bottom! We watched from Trinity, and you nearly scuttled us as well. Don’t make a third fatal error.”
Thomas took up the argument. “We killed ourselves to get to you on time. You must abort this voyage—at least long enough to determine if the ship is carrying this horrible parasitic disease… to determine if you have a carrier on board.”
“It’s worse than the smallpox and the Black Plague combined!” shouted Ransom but by now they had all been hustled out of the floating clinic and down a flight of stairs to the lower deck, and here, at gunpoint, Murdoch and Lightoller marched them to the same lift they’d used earlier to meet the charming Dr. O’Laughlin. But this time, the lift was taking them down and down, reminding Ransom of the mine shaft where this long journey had begun. Down further still and down into the lowest reaches of Titanic where they had no idea regarding the size of the accommodations awaiting them.