He was drenched with rain and his face was smeared with dirt. He carried a parcel under his coat to guard it from the rain. He said, ‘Turn out the light. Let me in quick.’ He followed me into the office and took the parcel from under his wet jacket. It was the travelling cocktail-case. He laid it gently on my desk like a pet animal and stroked it down. He said, ‘Everything has gone. Finished. Capot in three columns.’
I put out a hand to turn on the light. ‘Don’t do that,’ he said, ‘they might see the light from the road.’
‘They can’t,’ I said and pressed the switch.
‘Old man, I’d rather if you don’t mind . . . I feel better in the dark.’ He turned out the light again. ‘What’s that in your hand, old man?’
‘A coffin.’
He was breathing heavily – I could smell the gin. He said, ‘I’ve got to get out quick. Somehow.’
‘What happened?’
‘They’ve begun investigating. At midnight I had a call from Concasseur – I didn’t even know the bloody telephone worked. It gave me a shock ringing like that suddenly by my ear. It had never rung before.’
‘I suppose they fixed up the telephone when they put the Poles in. You’re living in a government rest-house for V.I.P.s.’
‘Very important pooves we called them in Imphal,’ Jones said with the ghost of a laugh.
‘I could give you a drink if you let me put on the light.’
‘There isn’t time, old man. I’ve got to get out. Concasseur was speaking from Miami. They’ve sent him to check up. He wasn’t suspicious yet, only puzzled. But in the morning when they find I’ve skipped . . .’
‘Skipped where?’
‘Yes, that’s the question, old man, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.’
‘The Medea’s in port.’
‘The very place . . .’
‘I’ll have to put on some clothes.’
He followed me like a dog, leaving wet patches in his wake. I missed Mrs Smith’s help and advice, for she had a high opinion of Jones. While I dressed – he had to allow me a little light for that – he ambled nervously from wall to wall, well away from the window.
‘I don’t know what your game was,’ I said, ‘but surely with a quarter of a million dollars at stake you could be certain that one day they’d investigate.’
‘Oh, I’d thought that one out. I’d have gone over to Miami with the investigator.’
‘But they’d have kept you here.’
‘Not if I’d left a partner behind. I hadn’t realized time was so short – I thought I had a week or more at least – or I’d have tried to persuade you earlier.’
I stopped with one leg in my trousers and asked him with astonishment, ‘You’re telling me just like that, that I was to be the fall guy?’
‘No, no, old man, you exaggerate. You can be dead sure I’d have tipped you off in time for you to get into the British Embassy. If it was ever necessary. But it wouldn’t have been. The investigator would have cabled O.K. and taken his cut, and you would have joined us afterwards.’
‘How big a cut had you planned for him? I know it’s only of academic interest now.’
‘I’d allowed for all that. What I offered you, old man, was net not gross. All yours.’
‘If I survived.’
‘One always survives, old man.’ As he dried, his confidence returned. ‘I’ve had my setbacks before. I was just as near the grand coup – and the end – in Stanleyville.’
‘If your plan had anything to do with arms,’ I said, ‘you’ve made a bad mistake. They’ve been stung before . . .’
‘How do you mean, stung?’
‘There was a man here last year who arranged half a million dollars’ worth of arms for them, fully paid up in Miami. But the American authorities were tipped off, the arms were seized. The dollars, of course, stayed in the agent’s pocket. Nobody knew how many real arms there had ever been. They wouldn’t be taken for the same ride twice. You should have done more homework before you came here.’
‘My scheme was not exactly that. In fact there were no arms at all. I don’t look like a man with that much capital, do I?’
‘Where did that introduction of yours come from?’
‘From a typewriter. Like most introductions. But you are right about the homework. I put the wrong name on the letter. I talked myself out of that one though.’
‘I’m ready to go.’ I looked at him where he fidgeted in a corner with a light flex: the brown eyes, the not quite trim officer’s moustache: the grey indifferent skin. ‘I don’t know why I’m running this risk for you. A fall guy again . . .’
I took the car out on the road with the lights off, and we cruised slowly down towards the city. Jones crouched low and whistled to keep his courage up. I think the tune dated from 1940 – ‘The Wednesday after the war’. Just before the roadblock I switched the lights on. There was a chance the militiaman was asleep, but he wasn’t.
‘Did you pass here tonight?’ I asked.
‘No. I made a detour through a couple of gardens.’
‘Well, there’s no avoiding him now.’
But he was too sleepy to be troublesome: he limped across the road and raised the barrier. His big toe was bound up in a dirty bandage and his backside showed through a hole in his grey-flannel trousers. He didn’t bother to search us for arms. We drove on down, past the turning to Martha’s, past the British Embassy. I slowed down there: all seemed quiet enough – the Tontons Macoute would surely have put guards at the gate if they had known of Jones’s escape. I said, ‘What about going in there? You’ll be safe enough.’
‘I’d rather not, old man. I’ve been a bother to them before, and they won’t exactly welcome me.’
‘You’d have a worse welcome from Papa Doc. This is your great chance.’
‘There are reasons, old man . . .’ He paused, and I thought he was going at last to confide in me, but, ‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘I’ve forgotten my cocktail-case. I left it in your office. On the desk.’
‘Is it so important?’
‘I love that case, old man. It’s been with me everywhere. It’s my luck.’
‘I’ll bring it to you tomorrow if it’s so important to you. You want to try the Medea then?’
‘If there’s a snag we can always come back here as a last resort.’ He tried out another tune – I think it was ‘A nightingale sang’ – but stuck. ‘To think after all we’ve been through together that I’d leave it . . .’
‘Is it the only bet you ever won?’
‘Bet? What do you mean, bet?’
‘You told me you won it in a bet.’
‘Did I?’ He brooded awhile. ‘Old man, you’re running a big risk for me, and I’ll be straight with you. That wasn’t exactly the truth. I pinched it.’
‘And Burma – was that not the truth either.’
‘Oh, I was in Burma all right. I promise that.’
‘You pinched it from Asprey’s?’
‘Not with my hands, of course.’
‘With your wits again?’
‘I was working at the time. Something in the city. I used one of the company’s cheques, but I signed my own name. I wasn’t going to be sent down for forgery. It was just a temporary loan. You know it was love at first sight when I saw that case and I remembered the brigadier’s.’
‘It wasn’t with you in Burma then?’
‘I was romancing a bit there. But I did have it with me in the Congo.’
I left the car by the Columbus statue – the police must have been accustomed to seeing my car there at night, though not alone, and I went ahead of Jones to reconnoitre. It was easier than I thought. For some reason the policeman was no longer by the gangplank, which had been kept down for latecomers from Mère Catherine’s: perhaps he had a beat, perhaps he’d gone behind the wall to urinate. One of the crew was on guard at the top, but seeing our white faces he let us go by.
We went up to the top deck and Jones’s spirits rose �
�� he had hardly uttered a sound since his confession. As he passed the saloon door he said, ‘Remember the concert? That was a night, wasn’t it? Remember Baxter and his whistle? “St Paul’s will stand, London will stand.” He was too good to be true, old man.’
‘He isn’t true any more. He’s dead.’
‘Poor bugger. That makes him sort of respectable, doesn’t it?’ he added with a kind of yearning.
We climbed the ladder to the captain’s cabin. I did not relish the interview, for I remembered his attitude to Jones after he had received the wireless inquiry from Philadelphia. Everything had gone easily up till now, but I had small hope that our luck would last. I rapped on the door and with hardly an interval the captain’s voice came, hoarse and authoritative, bidding me enter.
At least I had not woken him from sleep. He was propped up in his berth wearing a white cotton nightshirt, and he had put on very thick reading-glasses which made his eyes look like broken chips of quartz. He held a book tilted below the reading-lamp, and I saw it was one of Simenon’s novels, and this encouraged me a little – it seemed to be a sign that he had human interests.
‘Mr Brown,’ he exclaimed in surprise, like an old lady disturbed in her hotel room, and like an old lady his left hand went instinctively to the neckline of his nightshirt.
‘And Major Jones,’ Jones added jauntily and moved out from behind me into view.
‘Oh, Mr Jones,’ the captain said in a tone of distinct displeasure.
‘I hope you’ve room for a passenger?’ Jones asked with his unconvincing hilarity. ‘Not short of schnapps, I hope?’
‘Not for a passenger. But are you a passenger? At this hour of the night, I would imagine you lack a ticket . . .’
‘I have the money to pay for one, captain.’
‘And an exit-visa?’
‘A formality for a foreigner like myself.’
‘A formality which is complied with by all except the criminal classes. I think you’re in trouble, Mr Jones.’
‘Yes. You might say I’m a political refugee.’
‘Then why have you not gone to the British Embassy?’
‘I felt I’d be more at home in the dear old Medea’ – the phrase had a good music-hall ring and perhaps that was why he repeated it. ‘Dear old Medea.’
‘You were never a welcome guest, Mr Jones. I had too many inquiries about you.’
Jones looked at me, but I could give him little help. ‘Captain,’ I said, ‘you know how they treat prisoners here. Surely you can stretch a rule . . .’
His white nightshirt, embroidered around the neck and cuffs, perhaps by that formidable wife of his, had a horribly judicial air; he looked down at us from the height of his bunk as from a bench. ‘Mr Brown,’ he said, ‘I have my career to consider. I must return here every month. Do you think that at my age the company would give me another command, on another route? After an indiscretion such as you propose?’
Jones said, ‘I’m sorry. I never thought of that,’ with a gentleness which surprised, I think, the captain just as much as it surprised me, for when the captain spoke again it was almost as though he were offering an excuse.
‘I do not know whether you have a family, Mr Jones. But I certainly have.’
‘No, I have no one,’ Jones admitted. ‘No one at all. Unless you count a bit of tail here and there. You’re right, captain, I’m expendable. I’ll have to sort this out some other way.’ He brooded a little, while we watched him, then suddenly suggested, ‘I could stow away if you’d turn a blind eye.’
‘In that case I would have to hand you over to the police in Philadelphia. Does that suit you, Mr Jones? I have an idea there are people in Philadelphia who want to ask you questions.’
‘It’s nothing serious. I owe a little money, that’s all.’
‘Of your own?’
‘On second thoughts perhaps it wouldn’t suit me all that well.’
I admired Jones’s calm: he might have been a judge himself, sitting in chambers with two experts in a tricky Chancery case.
‘The choice of action seems to be strictly limited,’ he summed the problem up.
‘Then I would suggest again the British Embassy,’ the captain said in the chill voice of one who always knows the correct answer and expects no disagreement.
‘You’re probably right. I didn’t get on with the consul in Leopoldville very well, that’s the truth. And they all come out of the same stable – Career out of Diplomatic Bag. I’m afraid they’ll have a report on me here too. It’s a problem, isn’t it? You really would be bound to hand me over to the coppers in Philadelphia?’
‘I’d be bound to.’
‘It’s just as short as it’s long, isn’t it?’ He turned to me. ‘What about some other embassy where there’d be no report . . . ?’
‘These things are governed by diplomatic rules,’ I said. ‘They couldn’t claim a foreigner had the right of asylum. They’d be stuck with you for keeps, as long as this government lasted.’
Steps came rattling up the companionway. A hand knocked on the door. I saw Jones catch his breath. He wasn’t nearly so calm as he tried to show.
‘Come in.’
The second officer entered. He looked at us without surprise as though he expected to find strangers. He spoke to the captain in Dutch, and the captain asked him a question. He replied with his eye on Jones. The captain turned to us. As though he had at last abandoned the hope of Maigret for the night he put his book down. He said, ‘There’s a police officer at the gangway with three men. They want to come on board.’
Jones gave a deep unhappy sigh. Perhaps he was watching Sahib House and the 18th hole and the Desert Island Bar disappearing for ever.
The captain gave an order in Dutch to the second officer who left the cabin. He said, ‘I must get dressed.’ He balanced shyly on the edge of the bunk like a hausfrau, then heavily descended.
‘You’re letting them come on board!’ Jones exclaimed. ‘Where’s your pride? This is Dutch territory, isn’t it?’
‘Mr Jones, if you will please go into the toilet and keep quiet, it will be easier for all of us.’
I opened a door at the end of the bunk and pushed Jones through. He went reluctantly. ‘I’m trapped here,’ he said, ‘like a rat,’ then altered the phrase quickly to ‘a rabbit, I mean,’ and gave me a frightened smile. I sat him firmly down like a child on the lavatory seat.
The captain was pulling his trousers on and tucking in his nightshirt. He took a uniform jacket off a peg and put it on – the nightshirt was concealed by the collar.
‘You’re not going to let them search?’ I protested. He had no time to reply or to put on his shoes and socks before the knock came on the door.
I knew the police officer who entered. He was a real bastard, as bad as any of the Tontons Macoute; a man as big as Doctor Magiot and one who wielded a terrific punch; many broken jaws in Port-au-Prince testified to his strength. His mouth was full of gold teeth, probably not his own: he carried them as an Indian brave used to carry scalps. He looked at us both with insolence, while the second officer, a pimply youth, hovered nervously behind. He said to me, the words like an insult, ‘I know you.’
The little captain looked very vulnerable in his bare feet, but he replied with spirit, ‘I don’t know you.’
‘What are you doing on board at this hour?’ the policeman said to me.
The captain said in French to the second officer so that his meaning was clear to everyone, ‘I thought I told you he was to leave his gun behind?’
‘He refused, sir. He pushed me on one side.’
‘Refused? Pushed?’ The captain drew himself up and almost reached the negro’s shoulder. ‘I invited you on board – but only on conditions. I am the only man allowed to carry arms on this ship. You are not in Haiti now.’
That phrase spoken with conviction really disconcerted the officer. It was like a magic spell – he felt unsafe. He looked around at all of us, he looked around the cabin. ‘Pas
à Haïti?’ he exclaimed, and I suppose he saw only the unfamiliar, a framed certificate on the wall for saving life at sea, a photograph of a grim white woman with iron-grey waves in her hair, a stone bottle of something called Bols, a photograph of the Amsterdam canals ice-bound in winter. He repeated distractedly, ‘Pas à Haïti?’
‘Vous êtes en Hollande,’ the captain said with a masterly laugh as he held out his hand. ‘Give me your revolver.’
‘I am under orders,’ the bully said miserably, ‘I am doing my duty . . .’
‘My officer will return it to you when you leave the ship.’
‘But I am looking for a criminal.’
‘Not in my ship.’
‘He came here in your ship.’
‘I am not responsible for that. Now give me your revolver.’
‘I must search.’
‘You can search all you like on shore but not here. Here I am responsible for law and order. Unless you give me your revolver I shall call the crew to disarm you and afterwards I will have you pitched into the harbour.’
The man was beaten. His eye was drawn to the disapproving face of the captain’s wife as he unbuttoned his holster and handed over his gun. The captain put it in her charge. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I am prepared to answer any reasonable questions. What is it you want to know?’
‘We want to know if you have a criminal on board. You know him – a man called Jones.’
‘Here is a passenger-list. If you can read.’
‘His name will not be on it.’
‘I have been captain on this line for ten years. I stick to the letter of the law. I will never carry a passenger who is not on that list. Nor a passenger without an exit-visa. Has he an exit-visa?’
‘No.’
The Comedians Page 23