Operation Manhunt

by Christopher Nicole

  “Some climate,” Harman said. “You could set a watch by that rain. At least it helps to keep the decks clean.” He paused at the deckhouse. “Here’s my doss house. Me and Joe Byrne, the mate.” He opened the door. “Mind you, it’s not all that bad. We’ve our own head, and we take our meals aft, with the guests.”

  The tiny cabin reminded Jonathan of the saloon on Headly’s cutter.

  “And over there’s the hatch to the forecastle. Jonas and his mates do their own cooking down there.” Harman waved at the forehatch, and reminded Jonathan that the two deck hands were not to be seen.

  “And how do you get to the engine room?”

  “You’re interested in engines, Mr. O’Connor? Man, these are two proper beauties. I’ll tell you something straight, I darn near wept when I saw what that damned wooden torpedo did to my starboard prop. Down here, it is.”

  The hatch was situated between the deckhouse and the forecastle, just aft of a large life raft strapped to the deck between the chocks for the launch. Jonathan followed Harman down to what was obviously the ship’s storeroom; from here the engineer descended another ladder, and now they were in the bowels of the ship, below the waterline, Jonathan surmised, and between two enormous galvanized tanks.

  “There’s three hundred gallons of water here.” Harman gave them a resounding bang. “The fuel tanks are aft. I’m sorry, Mr. O’Connor, but the head room’s a trifle better suited to me than to you.”

  Jonathan rubbed the bump on his forehead. “And where does that lead to?” He pointed at a bulkhead door leading forward, closed and secured with a wooden catch.

  “Ah, well, that goes down into the bilges themselves. Nothing worth looking at down there. Now, here’s the best part of the ship.”

  He ducked aft through another doorway. Jonathan hesitated, glanced at the forward door again. It was the only door he had not actually been invited to open.

  “These are Chrysler diesels,” Harman was explaining. “A hundred and ten horsepower each. Man, this ship may sail very pretty, I’ll allow her that. But when these are going flat out, she’s more like a half and halfer.”

  “They must burn a bit of fuel,” Jonathan suggested. The engine room extended the full width of the ship, and reached some way aft, but the low ceiling and the endless machinery, added to a continuous high-pitched hum, made it distinctly claustrophobic.

  “Ah, well, what’s money to the owner of a craft like this?” Harman asked. “She has a range of near four hundred miles under power. Under sail, she could travel around the world nonstop, if she wanted to.”

  “What’s that hum? You don’t keep them ticking over in harbor?”

  “Lord, no,” Harman said. “That’s the charging plant. Those guests use a lot of electricity. Now aft here”—he threaded his way down the narrow center aisle between the engines—“through this bulkhead door are the shafts and the fuel tanks. Right back there you can see the ladder leading back up to the lazaretto. You know what a lazaretto is, Mr. O’Connor?”

  “It’s the owner’s storeroom.”

  “That’s right. Very important part of the ship in the old days of the sailing passages, when the passengers had to provide their own grub. In those days a well stocked lazaretto was worth a few hundred quid to the skipper, all right. And from up there you can get into the galley, as you’d expect, and from there into the saloon. But it’s an emergency route only. Well, that’s about the size of it. What do you think of her?”

  “I think she’s tremendous,” Jonathan said.

  “Oh, she’s quite a ship. Now you’ve seen all of her. I’d invite you to stay on board for a bite of lunch with me, Mr. O’Connor, but I’m afraid the owner took the steward with him, to shake the cocktails, eh?”

  “Oh, I quite understand. Can we go up this ladder, as we’re here? I’d like to feel I’d completed a circumnavigation of the ship, so to speak.”

  “Well, and why not. You’d better let me go first. There’s a hatch up there.”

  “By the way,” Jonathan said. “I suppose my cousin, Geraldine, has gone up north too? With the owner?”

  Harman did not look at him, but went farther aft, bending his head to avoid the deck beams. “Oh, yes, Mr. O’Connor. Where her father goes, that Miss Geraldine always goes too. You can be sure of that.”

  “Oh, I am,” Jonathan said. “I say, look at this.”

  Harman, one hand already on the ladder, turned his head, and ran into Jonathan’s right fist, thrown with every ounce of weight he could command in the confined space. Harman tumbled backward, hit the ladder, and Jonathan swung his left as well. He felt the skin on his knuckles burst under the impact, but Harman, for the moment, was out cold. He slid down the ladder and sat gently on the port propeller shaft.

  Jonathan hurried forward. He was playing his hunches again, just allowed himself time to wonder what the interior of a Vincentian jail looked like, supposing he was wrong. He reached the engine room, checked as Jonas came through the farther door.

  “You going somewhere?” Jonas inquired. Down here, and crouching to give his head more space, he seemed to double in size. Sweat gleamed from the enormous muscles in his shoulders and on his chest. Jonathan ran aft again. He heard Jonas behind him, but did not stop to look back. He ducked through the bulkhead door and came into the confined space of the propeller shafts, shrouded in the sound of the water lapping at the hull.

  “Hey,” Jonas shouted. “You stop right there, eh!” His voice reverberated above the noise of the humming battery charger.

  Harman still sat at the foot of the steps, staring vacantly in front of him. Jonathan leaped over him, scrambled up the ladder.

  “Eh-eh?” Jonas inquired of the world at large. “But what happen with you, chief? Hey, Pete!” he bellowed, his voice rising through the deck boards.

  The hatch at the top of the ladder was closed. Jonathan prayed it wasn’t bolted from above, remembered that Harman had been about to climb through it, lifted it open. He smelled blue cheese, and good wine, and sugar. Jonas had pushed Harman out of the way and was reaching for his heels. Jonathan kicked down, and the big Negro grunted and appeared to slip.

  Jonathan scrambled through the hatch, banged it shut behind him, hesitated, fingers resting on the bolt. To secure the hatch would drive Jonas forward, and he wanted the entire crew aft, if possible.

  He climbed the next ladder, into the galley, and saw Pete in the saloon, laying the places for lunch and apparently not having heard Jonas shouting. Jonathan stepped inside, and the Peke growled. “Hi!” Jonathan said, and turned for the steps up to the wheelhouse.

  “Where is Mr. Harman?” Pete demanded.

  “You go find out,” Jonathan suggested. From below there came the crash of the hatch being thrown open.

  “Stop he!” Jonas shouted. “Get he, Pete, man.”

  Jonathan swept his hand over the table, collected a steak knife. Pete glared at him, reached for a knife himself. Breath coming in short gasps, Jonathan darted the blade forward, and Pete caught it on his own with a faint clang. The sailor jumped backward, tongue snaking between his lips. Jonathan made for the ladder once again, and the dog leaped from its basket, teeth bared. Jonathan kicked it away, and Pete scrambled across the table, scattering cutlery and place mats. Jonathan sidestepped, and Pete cannoned into the doorway, but he could hear Jonas on the ladder to the galley now; he was running out of time. He swung at Pete as the sailor tried to regain his feet, hit him several times, as hard as he could, twice on the chin and three times in the belly. Pete grunted, and sat down. Aristotle growled, but kept his distance. Jonathan stepped over him and reached the wheelhouse and the deck beyond.

  It was raining now, huge drops pounding the decks and slithering off into the scuppers, splashing onto Jonathan’s head and making nonsense of his thin shirt. Kingstown itself was obscured by the teeming shower.

  He paused by the weather rail, freed a life belt, and threw it over the side. The splash was splendidly loud, might have been
made by his body hitting the surface. He reached the deckhouse, and ducked behind it as the two men came on deck aft.

  “Well, and where he gone?” Jonas demanded.

  “Man, he jumped overboard,” Pete said. “You ain’t hear it?”

  “I see the life belt.”

  “Well, he must be underneath it, holding on. Look, I will fetch he back here, while it raining hard so, and you go wake Mr. Harman, eh? Man, this going cause trouble.”

  Jonathan crawled away from the deckhouse, and into the forward hatchway. He slid down the ladder to the storeroom, and then down to the water tanks. From aft he could hear Jonas on the other ladder, and his voice echoed forward. “Hey, Mr. Harman? Hey, man, you got to wake up. We got plenty trouble.”

  Jonathan turned the wooden catch, eased the door open. The space beyond was utterly dark, but the faint scent of perfume mingling with the stale tar rising from the bilges told him that his instincts had led him the right way once again.

  “Hi!” he whispered. “You must be Geraldine O’Connor.”

  CHAPTER 4

  She drew away from him with a slithering sound. He pulled the door shut, took out his penknife, inserted the blade into the space between door and bulkhead, found nothing. He shook the door, gently, once, and then twice. The second time the catch shifted across, just enough for Jonathan to be able to pin it with the sharp point of his blade and pull it down, into the locking position.

  Still the girl had made no sound. Jonathan crept forward into the darkness, and knelt beside her. Water slurped in the bilges, only inches beneath them.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “I’m a friend of Tom Crater’s.”

  Still she did not reply.

  “Excuse me,” he said, and touched her legs. She wore shorts and a shirt, and her legs were bare, but to his surprise she was not bound in any way. “Can you swim?”

  “Please go away,” she whispered.

  He could hear feet thumping the deck above him; and there were splashes from alongside the hull, also, disturbingly, above his head. “You don’t understand, Miss O’Connor. Tom sent me.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Something about a photograph. But apparently you were free enough then.”

  “He’s made a mistake,” she said. “I’m perfectly free now.”

  “You’ll have to convince me.”

  She hesitated. Now he could just make out her face, as he became accustomed to the darkness. It was a small oval, framed in dark hair. Her enormous eyes glowed at him. “It’s all my fault,” she said. “Listen, tell Tom I was completely wrong.”

  “Explain about the steward.”

  She sighed. “He’s a great talker, our Tom. Okay, Mr. Anders, it’s as simple as this. Mr. Malthus has this friend, who suffered an accident, and lost his memory, and just wandered off and disappeared, oh, for over a year, and then suddenly showed up working as a bartender. Mr. Malthus went into this bar one day and saw this man behind the counter and recognized him. He tried to get through to him, but it didn’t work. So he gave him a job, as steward on board this yacht, and then he asked Daddy if he’d come for a cruise with him, and see if anything could be done about this poor man’s condition. Before he retired, Daddy was an authority on amnesiac diseases, you see.”

  “And where do you come in?”

  “Daddy asked me along. He, well, he’s always giving me little treats like this. He and my mother are separated, you see, and I don’t see him very often.”

  Again he listened. The scurrying feet and the loud voices had stopped, and he could hear the dinghy bumping gently against the schooner’s hull. They had regained the life belt and their immediate panic was over; therefore they must have guessed he was still on board.

  “Go on,” he invited.

  “Well, that’s it. Except that as Daddy wasn’t making progress, and it’s obvious that Benny, that’s what the steward is called, you see, is an important man, I got curious. They wouldn’t tell me who he was, you see. So when we put into Bridgetown, and I went ashore, there was Tom’s sign. I guess maybe I really wanted an excuse to look Tom up. I’ve always liked the big lug. But I also thought maybe he’d have seen Benny’s face in Time, or something. Anyway, the next morning, when Benny brought Daddy his rum punch, I called to him as he was walking back to the wheelhouse, and I snapped him and took it ashore. Oh, boy, did I boob. But luckily, Benny told Mr. Malthus. Not right away. He just let it slip out over breakfast the next morning. He’s always making jokes, and that morning he grinned at me and asked if I’d like him to pose this time, and when Mr. Malthus sat up very straight, he said, ‘Oh, I’m Miss Geraldine’s favorite, Mr. Malthus; she took a photograph of me yesterday, and went rushing ashore, to have it copied, I guess.’

  “Oh, boy, what a row. Even Daddy was upset. But while Mr. Malthus was ranting and raving and saying we must put to sea immediately, guess what? Tom comes out in his speedboat and starts trying to get aboard. So Mr. Malthus, well, he had to tell me the truth about Benny. Boy, did I feel a fool.”

  “Care to share the secret?”

  “Of course I won’t. But you can take it from me, Benny is a very important businessman, and if the truth about what had happened to him came out it would cause the most terrible scandal.”

  Jonathan sighed. Like Linda Boarding, Geraldine O’Connor was a terribly poor liar. But she wasn’t scared, and she didn’t want to be helped, which was puzzling.

  “Trouble was,” she said, “I had to go on deck and tell Tom that I didn’t want to speak with him, and I told the boys not to let him on board. Oh, boy, he looked hurt. But what was I to do?”

  “Well, as you see,” Jonathan said, “he got to worrying about it.”

  “I guess. I’m afraid you’ll just have to go back and tell him to leave me alone. And you can also tell him I don’t much care for his sending his friend to do his dirty work for him.”

  “You haven’t told me why you’re locked in this hole.”

  “I came in here of my own free will, when Mr. Harman told me you were on board asking questions. I didn’t want to cause any more trouble, so I thought the best thing was just not to see you at all.”

  “And you asked to be locked in, I suppose. So tell me where your friends have gone to this morning.”

  “I don’t know why I’m answering all these questions. It so happens that Mr. Malthus has found out there’s a waterfall up at the north end of the island. I can’t remember the name.”

  “Baleine,” Jonathan said.

  “That’s it. And apparently Benny was born close to a waterfall. So. they went off to show him the fall and see if it aroused any memories.”

  “And you say your old man has made no progress in six weeks?”

  She shook her head. “Benny’s memory begins with him being a bartender.”

  “Where was he a bartender?”

  She hesitated. “Now that’s funny, Mr. Anders. I don’t think Mr. Malthus has ever actually said. But it’s certainly no business of yours. I believe you’re a reporter. I bet Tom showed you that photograph and you recognized it. You’re not interested in me at all.”

  “Oh, yes, I am. Where did you join the ship? You and your old man?”

  “We came on board at Miami.”

  “And Benny was already on board, eh? Ssssh.” Feet sounded on the deck outside, and someone tapped the catch. Jonathan stood up, as best he could under the low deck beams, pressed himself against the bulkhead. But after a moment the feet went away.

  Think, he told himself. Think. Of course this girl was under some kind of duress, or she would have called out. Equally, her life was in danger, whether she realized it or not. But not so long as they needed her father. And he had already compromised himself by playing the knight errant. He needed time to work out the implications of Pobrenski becoming an amnesiac. It was not a possibility that had occurred to Craufurd. And how had an amnesiac found his way from Poland to the Caribbean, and into the clutches of this man Malthus?


  “Listen,” he whispered. “Malthus. What can you tell me about him?”

  “I’m not going to tell you anything about him,” she said. “He’s an acquaintance of Daddy’s from New York.”

  “A business acquaintance?”

  “He was a patient, I think. But of course, Daddy never discusses his patients with me. He owns the ship. Mr. Malthus, I mean. The vessel isn’t really chartered. He just tells everyone we meet that it is.”

  “And who is the woman?”

  “Mrs. Malthus, silly. Listen, don’t be alarmed, but I’m going to call for Mr. Harman to let me out now, and I’ll explain about you. He’ll set you ashore.”

  He grinned, chucked her under the chin. “If you don’t mind, I won’t involve you any more. I’m going to sneak out and hop over the side. I’ll see you around.”

  “And please, when you get ashore, take Tom back to Barbados and forget about it. Please!”

  “I’ll try.” He crawled past her, inserted the blade of his penknife between the door and the bulkhead, very gently pushed the catch straight. As he did so, the whole ship came to shuddering life as Harman started the starboard engine, and at the same time the confined space was set trembling by the rattle of the anchor chain coming in. Hurriedly Jonathan pushed the door outward and burst into the area between the water tanks. He reached for the ladder, and a tremendous light seemed to explode inside his head.

  Jonathan awoke to a throbbing headache. He lay on his back, on a remarkably comfortable bed, and watched the deckhead shuddering above him. The engines purred, sending their vibrations through the ship to the accompaniment of the various creaks and groans and water-rustlings of a wooden vessel at sea; being under power the schooner was rolling slowly and easily, a regular, almost hypnotic movement to and fro.

  Of all the stupid things to have done, pushing his head through the doorway in that careless fashion was about the most idiotic. Although he presumed they would have nailed him in any event. And at least they had not bothered to secure him in any way.