Such Power is Dangerous

by Dennis Wheatley

  He made Avril comfortable upon the cushions in the stern near him. The engine coughed and then settled into a steady purr. In a great sweep the boat headed for the open water of the bay.

  The night was fine and cloudless, a myriad stars twinkled overhead and the lights of Los Angeles made it look like a fairy city spreading for miles along the dark, violet coast.

  There were few other craft about, but Nelson Druce did not shut off the engine. When they were some way out, he turned the speedboat down the coast. They skimmed the water at a rapid pace, a foaming cascade of dancing spray tumbling in their wake, the engine throbbing steadily. For the time being Avril was content to sit watching the lights play upon the waters, and the phosphorus brighten every little wavelet as its crest broke and disappeared in the wide waste of the Pacific.

  A dark hull loomed up out of the blackness in front of them. It was a ship anchored in the roadstead, a small single-funnelled steamer lying low in the water, about its masts clung innumerable derricks. Nelson circled it once and then shut off his engine.

  ‘A tramp,’ said Avril quietly.

  ‘That’s so—the good ship Plymouth Hoe—homeward bound for Cardiff via Singapore and Colombo. I know her Captain, he’s a friend of mine.’

  ‘Really—how queer!’

  ‘Well, he has been since this morning.’ Nelson was busy throwing out his bumpers. A figure had appeared on deck, a ladder of rope and wood was cast over the rail. Nelson resumed his place by the engine and brought the speedboat smartly alongside. He made her fast both at the bow and the stern, with quick, practiced fingers.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Avril asked uneasily.

  He drew her to her feet and gripped the ladder with the other hand. ‘Little visit to my friend the Captain. Up you go,’ he said firmly.

  ‘But I don’t want to,’ Avril protested, drawing back.

  ‘Do you walk, or do I carry you?’ said Nelson Druce.

  Avril was thoroughly alarmed. Had he suddenly gone mad? she wondered. Perhaps this business had unhinged his mind.

  He stood there, tall, and for the moment menacing, beside her in the darkness. She felt that he could easily overpower her, and if there was a struggle they might both fall into the water. Avril could swim, but the bay was supposed to be alive with sharks. There were men on the ship, surely they would protect her if he had lost his reason? It seemed best to obey.

  The ladder was difficult to climb, it swayed and gave under her, but the distance was short.

  ‘ ’Ang on, Missy,’ came a cheerful voice from above, ‘we’ll soon ‘ave you aboard.’

  A red-faced man gripped her by the arms and drew her in over the side. She landed safely on the deck, panting a little.

  Nelson Druce jumped lightly down beside her. ‘Evening Captain,’ he cried cheerfully. ‘I guess you’re waiting to up-anchor, but I’d just like to have a look around.’

  ‘Evening, sir.’ The sailor touched his cap politely. Despite the warmness of the night he wore a thick woollen muffler round his neck, the ends tucked into his pea-jacket. ‘If you’ll come this way, sir—mind the ‘awser.’

  Nelson took Avril by the arm and led her after the Captain. He seemed quite normal again now; she did not know what to make of this strange visit to his friend the Captain of the tramp.

  They climbed a steep ladder and the Captain led them to a deck-house on the poop. He flung open the door and switched on the light. ‘There we are,’ he said. ‘Me own cabin.’

  Avril looked inside. It was spotlessly clean and much larger than the average cabin on a liner.

  ‘Them’s the things you sent aboard this afternoon,’ went on the Captain, indicating a great stack of parcels. Avril noticed the handle of a dressing-case protruding from the brown-paper cover of one, and on another the label of a well-known Hollywood book-store. A little apart from the rest reposed one of those long decorative boxes in which florists deliver flowers.

  The Captain turned to Avril with a grin. ‘You can ‘ave yer meals sent up ‘ere, Missy, an’ you’ll be as snug as a bug in a rug. Now if you’re ready, sir, I’ll be gettin’ up on the bridge.’

  ‘What does this mean?’ cried Avril, turning a white, angry face to Nelson Druce. ‘If this is a joke it’s in atrocious taste, and it’s gone far enough. If it’s not, you’re to take me ashore at once.’

  The Captain must have heard her outburst, but he took no notice. The solid bulk of his broad figure was disappearing in the darkness.

  ‘It’s not a joke, and you’re not going ashore,’ said Nelson quietly. ‘You’re going home to England. I’m sorry that I’ve had to do this, but I’m going to fight this Combine until the roof falls in—that’s why I can’t take responsibility for what I’ve done—and I just had to get you out of it some way.’

  ‘I’ll protest to the Captain—I’ll shout for help to the crew,’ she stormed.

  ‘No good,’ he said. ‘I’ve bought the Captain an’ I guess he can handle his crew. He thinks you’re a mild kind of loony and that your name’s Miss Benson. I took the trouble to get the proper papers off a snide doctor this morning—in fact I mapped out the whole party. If you hadn’t come up to the house I would have phoned you for a meeting, you’d have been here just the same.’

  ‘But you can’t do this—you simply can’t—ship me off on a tramp steamer—it’s impossible.’

  ‘It’s not, believe you me, it’s what used to be known in the old days as Shanghai-ing—and in this case it’s best for both of us.’

  ‘It doesn’t clear me of the charge of murder.’

  ‘That’s true, but it gives me a free hand for a bit to deal with that skunk Hinckman. After that, we’ll see.’

  With a sudden push, Avril thrust him aside and rushed towards the ladder. She was down it in a second, jumping the fast four feet; she slithered upon the deck, but regaining her balance, dashed towards the place at the ship’s side beneath which she knew the speed-boat to be.

  Nelson Druce came pounding after her. She heard him land with a heavy thud upon the deck. She was in the rigging now and had found the top of the ladder. The boat lay peacefully rocking below. Druce was racing across the deck, suddenly he caught his foot in a coil of rope and tripped, he went down full length with a terrific crash. The Captain bellowed something from the bridge, a light flashed in the fo’c’sle. The crew came running. Avril was over the side, clinging to the ropes, her feet feeling wildly for the wooden slats; they slipped and swayed beneath her. She found the second and third, her head disappeared below the iron bulwark. Suddenly a head appeared above her, a hand gripped her wrist so tightly that she almost screamed with pain. It was Nelson.

  ‘You little fool?’ he gasped. ‘There’s sharks—dozens of ’em—in that water; for the Lord’s sake take care.’

  She found her feet skipping. Next moment she was dangling in the air, suspended by the wrist he held. He grabbed for her other hand and got it, then with a terrific heave he pulled her up. Other hands clutched at her and she was hauled in over the side.

  The crew gave back, and shambled off to the fo’c’sle. They had had their instructions and were getting double pay. It was not their business.

  ‘Might ‘ave drowned yerself,’ said the Captain. He seemed not so much angry as concerned. If you gets any of them fits, Missy, we’ll ‘ave to lock yer up, for yer own sake. Think she’s all right now, gov’ner?’

  ‘Yes,’ panted Nelson, who was mopping the blood from an ugly cut upon his hand. ‘She sure won’t do it again.’

  The Captain left them, but Avril was not all right. With a sudden fury she attacked the man before her.

  ‘How dare you—how dare you?’ she cried, as she struck at him with her fists.

  He seized her arms and held them to her sides. ‘Now listen, Avril—Miss Bamborough, I mean—I wouldn’t do this if it wasn’t necessary. Honest, I hate it—but you’ll be all right, the Captain’s a decent sort, he’ll look after you, and you’ll find I’ve done everything I can to
make you comfortable.’

  ‘Let me go,’ she screamed. ‘Let me go,’ and she began to struggle desperately.

  ‘Not unless you promise not to try going over the side again, I won’t.’

  ‘Why not?’ she sneered with sudden fury. ‘If I were dead you’d be out of all your troubles. I wonder you didn’t murder me.’

  He released his hold so quickly that she nearly fell. He stood stock-still in silence a few feet away from her.

  ‘Well?’ she panted.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, and his voice had suddenly gone toneless. ‘If that’s the way you feel I’ll take you ashore right now. I’m just terribly sorry about all this, but I did want to smash that Combine. Don’t worry any more—I’ll surrender to the police in the morning.’

  For the moment Avril remained speechless. There was no doubt that he meant it, and when she realised that, a sudden revulsion of feeling came over her, he looked very boyish standing there and utterly miserable.

  ‘Let me bind up your hand,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’ He held it out and a blood-stained handkerchief.

  She took the long, beautifully-shaped hand in her white fingers and commenced to bandage the cut. ‘I suppose it is the only way?’ she said slowly.

  He nodded. ‘Yes—I shall plead the old man’s death and call Mike Downey—he may talk now Angelo’s dead. Perhaps I’ll get off with fifteen years.’

  ‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I mean for me to leave America tonight in the Plymouth Hoe.’

  Part Two

  Hostilities Spread to Europe

  13

  The Menace comes to London

  ‘And that, darling, is Hollywood!’ Avril sipped her second glass of port and looked across at Uncle John. It was two months since she had left Los Angeles in the Plymouth Hoe, and she had reached England only that morning.

  He sat there, bald and fat and smiling, well fed, well groomed. The white waistcoat that he wore beneath his dinner-jacket, just a trifle tight over the ever-increasing tummy with which he fought a continuous but losing battle. ‘My dear!’ he said. ‘You have had a thin time! But I’m delighted to see you home again.’

  She patted his hand affectionately. She was very fond of Uncle John, and he was so splendidly reassuring. She had lost her own father and mother when she was quite young and been brought up by the Bamborough Aunts, Uncle John had acted as her guardian.

  Since she had not lived in the same house with him, he had never been called upon to exercise the restraining influence of a parent in small, tiresome matters; but in times of trouble he had always been on hand. When she was at boarding-school it had been his habit to turn up from time to time, stand gargantuan teas to herself and all her friends, tip her lavishly, and roll away, a comfortable, jovial figure in his big car. He never forgot her birthday, and she was one of the very few people whom he trusted with those precious books from his fine collection. His library was his hobby.

  When she was eighteen he had taken her for a holiday to Paris, and in addition to the usual sights they had visited a number of curious places of which the aunts would not have approved at all. ‘If you are going to act,’ he had told her, ‘you must know life—the best of it, and the worst of it, from the roots up. If you don’t you will never do any good.’ And Avril had found that strange tuition into the possible depravity of human nature, a very great asset in some of the rôles which she had played afterwards.

  Perhaps the thing that had endeared her to him most, was his thought for her on that dreary South African tour, which she had undertaken two years before. At every town where they played, large or small, the local florist had received instructions to send her a bouquet of flowers on the opening night from ‘Uncle John’. Avril loved flowers, and she knew the pains he must have taken in order to arrange that she should receive them.

  ‘You don’t think I shall have trouble with the American police?’ Avril asked. ‘I was terrified this morning when I landed that there would be a policeman waiting for me on the quay.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s possible, but the amount of shooting that goes on in the States is so appalling that I shouldn’t think they’d bother. If they do we can get in touch with this young fellow Druce—but that Italian seems to have needed killing pretty badly and they’ve got your bail, so I don’t think you need worry.’

  She laughed. ‘Isn’t it too delicious … Hinckman’s ten thousand dollars? I was awfully tickled when I realised that.’

  ‘Tell me more about your journey.’

  ‘It was rather fun, really. The most marvellous rest for the first part of the way. The old Captain was a perfect dear, I enjoyed it ever so much better than the liner I took on from Singapore. I was sorry afterwards that I changed ships, but at the time I was a bit fed up with nobody to talk to—and, of course, it would have taken so much longer if I’d come the whole way in the Plymouth Hoe.’

  ‘I should have thought the food was pretty shockin’ on the tramp.’ Food was an important matter with Uncle John.

  ‘Some of it was rather queer, but Nelson Druce had been quite wonderful. I really give him full marks. Of course, the clothes he bought me didn’t fit, one couldn’t expect that; I looked a perfect guy, but he must have spent about a hundred pounds on special food for me—hams and tongues and fruit, and every sort of tinned things you can think of. I gave two-thirds of it away to the Captain, but there was still lots over when we arrived at Singapore.’

  ‘What do you mean to do now?—another play—or are you coming back to me?’

  ‘I’d like to do another film with you, Uncle John, if you’ll have me. I picked up all sorts of tips at Hollywood, although I never really got going. The conferences with Lusatch were quite interesting. Will you take me back?’

  He laughed. ‘Why, of course I will, I would never have let you go if I hadn’t thought that the experience would be good for you. Things have been moving in the film world, though.’

  ‘Have they? I haven’t seen a soul, and there’s nothing in the papers—at least not in those little rags they issue on the ship.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be—there’s hardly a murmur in the daily Press itself as yet, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes.’

  ‘Is there? I’m terribly anxious to hear all about it.’

  Uncle John finished his port and snicked the end off a Punch cigar. ‘Let’s move into the other room,’ he said, ‘then I’ll tell you.’

  They settled themselves in his comfortable library. In most houses of a similar kind it would have been the drawing-room, but it was the only room in the house which was large enough to contain John Bamborough’s fine collection of books. He was a bachelor and never entertained on a large scale, so he used it as his library and living room. The big windows opened onto the balcony in front of the house, and across the road a gentle breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees in Regent’s Park.

  John Bamborough brushed some imaginary ash from his white shirt front; his round, good-humoured face wore a puzzled frown. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t know what to make of it,’ he confessed at last. ‘What you’ve been telling me about this amazing idea of a combine sheds a little light in the darkness, if it’s true.’

  Avril nodded slowly. ‘Yes, it’s true,’ she said, ‘I’m quite certain of that.’

  ‘Well, most of the big people in America seem to be behaving in an extraordinary manner. Any number of films that should have been completed last month seem to have been stopped half-way, and there are all sorts of quaint rumours about. Reno Films have stopped production altogether, so they say, and I heard a story that Harry Honeydew is to start work on a great new super-film for Trans-Continental Electric.’

  ‘Yes, that is true,’ said Avril.

  ‘Oh, you know that, do you? Well, all I can say is, God bless ’em, so much the better for our British Talkies if they start trying to put that sort of trash over. Then there’s Ubiquitous, the people you went out to. As you know, their agent markets a ce
rtain amount of our stuff in America, but I can’t get a line out of the feller, I haven’t been able to for weeks, he simply ignores my cables, damn him.’

  ‘I’m not surprised at that. As I told you, Eberhard Lusatch left them and lost their best technicians as well; poor old Hugo Schultzer wasn’t strong enough to hold Ubiquitous up in the end, and they went over to the Combine, too. Have you heard anything about Mozarts?’

  ‘What?—that Jew feller Vandelstein. Yes, any amount, but I don’t know what to believe. One day there’s a rumour that he’s gone in with the Trans-Continental Electric crowd, the next, that he’s joined young Druce. One thing I do know is that he’s producing at tremendous speed, the market is simply flooded with Mozart stuff. He’s gone in for the type of thing that Renos and Ubiquitous used to produce in addition to his own, at least that’s the report, and he’s sent over some quite unusual stuff during the last few weeks.’

  ‘What about Trans-Continental Electric themselves—what are they doing?’

  ‘Oh, they’re at it night and day, from what I hear. Bigger and Better Pictures is their slogan. In addition to the Honeydew tripe. Von Sternheim, Ring and Lusatch are all working on big pictures for them, and they’re turning out any amount of small films. Do you really think that there is anything in this Combine business, Avril? I can hardly believe it, it seems such a gigantic undertaking.’

  ‘Uncle, darling, I haven’t a doubt about it. Hollywood was in a ferment by the time I left. Just think of it, I was there holding his arm when they shot that poor Mr. Barton Druce, and I’m certain it was because he was determined to wreck the Combine.’

  ‘It will be a terrible thing for us, you know, if it’s true; that is, unless the Government help us further with the quota, and from what I know of them, they’ll let us all go smash first and then have a Royal Commission to talk about helping us afterwards.’

  ‘Perhaps they’ll offer to take you in,’ Avril remarked, curious to see what effect the suggestion would have on her uncle.