“Declan is right and you, too, are right, Thomas.” Alastair paced the cell. “And so I am right.”
“Whatever do you mean, Alastair?” asked Declan.
“I mean we should get you two off Titanic, and that I’ll stay to see this through.”
The interns looked at one another, unsure what to say to this.
Ransom added, “Look… the only reason you needed to come aboard with me was to give credence to this cock’n’bull story of ours—to carry the letter from your teachers, to be taken seriously. Obviously, that isn’t happening; hell, they don’t believe a word of it, nor the authenticity of my badge.”
They all fell silent, each taking his own council… each wondering about the wisdom of their approach taken with Captain Edward Smith. Somewhere in a nearby room the noise of caged animals, pets no doubt of the rich and famous, making the Atlantic crossing with their masters. It seemed the animals would get excited, begin yipping and crying out and then settle into a silence.
After a silence of their own and a lot of pacing among the caged men, Ransom erupted with, “Smith did have a certain smugness about him, a superior attitude.”
“He’s earned it,” said Declan.
“Attitude like that is hard to break through.” Ransom paced like a lumbering, caged bear. “Damn sick of cages!” He tried to rattle the bars until he realized they were fused to the floor and ceiling. “Can’t believe this!”
“I would think you’d be used to it by now,” muttered Thomas. “What about your burglary tools? Have ’em on ya?” Thomas almost broke into smile.
“Wouldn’t work on this lock.”
“Some detective you turned out to be.”
“Please, Thomas,” said Declan. “No need to be rude.”
“Rude? Look around you, Declan—we’re in a cell in the bowels of Titanic with this thing that dehydrates and kills a man in hours, and you’re worried I may hurt this old fart’s feelings?”
Ransom turned on Thomas and said, “This old fart is old enough to be your father, young man, so hold your tongue.”
“Yes, father.”
“Enough with the sniping, Thomas.” Declan rolled over. “If you’ve nothing kind to say, say nothing.”
“You’ll make me puke with that kind of talk. Damn it, Declan, I can’t believe they locked us up!”
Declan had turned to Alastair, who was now perched on a bunk. “At least this time we get to share a single cell.”
“Somehow that doesn’t help matters,” Thomas muttered.
But Declan merely asked, “Do you have any children, Alastair?”
“Children? Me? Well no… none that I know of that is, but I almost had a daughter once… almost.”
“How do you almost have a daughter? Tell me it wasn’t a stillbirth.”
“No, no, no… .thank God. No, I was in love with her mother, and she—Gabby was her name—she adopted me, so to speak. Killed me having to leave Jane and Gabby, but staying would have only dragged them down with me.”
“I can’t imagine that,” Thomas said and then laughed.
Declan laughed, his eyes meeting Alastair’s.
Alastair could not hold it in any longer, and he burst out laughing at the ridiculousness of their situation; at the same time, he pictured his beautiful girls, the petite Dr. Jane Francis aka Dr. James Phineas Tewes when necessary, and her daughter, Gabby, a firebrand for women’s rights still, and a graduate of Northwestern Medical School, and a lovely younger version of Jane. Jane, who became James so as to deal with prejudices aimed all female surgeons. All this he missed along with his city—Ransom’s city as many called it. He silently laughed at the phrase, a kind of title bestowed on the “Bear” of Chicago. These memories made his heart a led weight in his chest. He missed the three of them—Jane, Gabby, and Chicago in that order.
The combined laughter coming from the three prisoners masked his pain and resonated about the larger room outside the cell, bouncing off crates and sacks of potatoes and boxed grandfather clocks earmarked for Macy’s and furniture crated and marked for Marshal Field’s, Chicago. “I get outta this cage… I oughta slip into that crate going to Chicago. Go straight home to my women, make it official, marry Jane, adopt Gabby. Pipe dreams… regrets, I’ve had a few.”
Then they heard a noise, something or someone approaching but making strange sounds—heavy breathing, someone struggling, knocking into things, gasping. In fact, it sounded like a man suffering from consumption—a great deal of hacking up, gut-wrenching coughing, vomiting. Echoing as it did in the chamber here, the gasping made the trio in the bars shudder when out of the darkness, a man in extreme distress banged into the cage with such force, the entire cage shook.
The distressed man’s right hand extended through the bars, eyes like blackened plums, no seeds showing in them; he reached out toward Alastair and the boys, who’d backed to the rear of the cage as far back as they could manage.
The man seemed on the verge of certain death, his skin seemingly afire—as if crawling with ants, his eyes blind, smoking, drying out before them; from his dress, he appeared a stoker—one of the small army of men aboard who shoveled coal into the furnaces. He wore a leather apron over a grimy shirt, high boots, his left hand still sporting one large leather glove. He tried desperately to walk through the bars to get at them—insanely so, rush-bang, rush-bang, rush-bang! while the inmates began shouting, screaming for someone, anyone to come to their aide.
When they realized no one could hear them except for the poor devil trying to get at them, Alastair and the boys stood transfixed, knowing what they were seeing—knowing the horrid Belfast plague was here before them!
Then as suddenly as he appeared, the victim spiraled away in a horrific, pain-fueled ballet. In fact, his body appeared saturated with pain. It was as if the poor man was attempting to run from himself.
Thomas imagined the scene played out with his uncle as victim. Declan thought of the two miners who most certainly had done this macabre dance.
Ransom imagined just how Tuttle may have gone into the water over the side of Titanic.
All three would-be heroes imagined themselves futilely running from the killer within them… imagined being the suffering stoker, blinded, in terrible pain as every cell was drained of moisture, every organ shrinking—eyes, brain, heart, lungs, pancreas, liver, skin.
All three began rattling their cage, pulling at the bars, shouting for someone to come, praying Lightoller might return soon enough to see what they had seen, but no one came and the darkness around them became darker, and the sounds emanating from the dying stoker had ceased with the suddenness of a dog put down.
“God has a sick sense of humor,” said Declan, head in his hands.
Deflated, fearful, nerves frayed to the maximum, the three inmates of this floating asylum alternately paced and pounded at the bars holding them. From down here at the bottom of Titanic, they could feel the massive ship’s equally massive engines churning. Ransom said, “Feels like Captain Smith means to make Queenstown in record time!”
“Anxious, no doubt, to put us off!” shouted Thomas, struggling with a loose shoelace and almost stumbling over.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Declan said.
Thomas echoed his words. “We’ve got to get out of here.” In the near distance, the caged dogs in a separate compartment began a frightened caterwauling as if they were now under attack by the mad stoker.
TWENTY FOUR
David nearly jumped from his bed and hit his head on the low ceiling on hearing the order to dress for dive come over the PA system. All systems were finally a go. He’d begun reading Declan Irvin’s journal again, not sure why except that the book had a compelling feel to it, one that declared it authentic, and one that declared that it had been held in the hands of this rogue lawman Ransom and the young want-to-be doctor named Declan Irvin, as well as Second Officer Lightoller.